"Into the No Man's Land"
Extent and Medium
folder
1
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Irene Miller
Irene Miller donated her memoir to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Scope and Content
Consists of one memoir, 133 pages, entitled "Into the No Man's Land," by Irene Miller, originally of Warsaw, Poland. In the memoir, she recalls her Holocaust experiences when, as a child, she and her family escaped from Warsaw and were told that they would be taken over the border into the Soviet Union. In reality, their possessions were stolen and they were abandoned in no man's land on the border with other Jews who were unable to enter the Soviet Union. Irene, her father Srulik Miller, and sister Halina were able to escape into the Soviet Union, but her mother, Bella Miller, had to pose as a non-Jew to return to Warsaw and wait for an attempt to join her family. Bella managed to cross the border on foot and by train, and reunited with her family in the Ignatki refugee camp. The family was deported to a labor camp in Siberia, and from there, to a farm in Laish, Uzbekistan. She and her sister were then separated from their parents and taken to an orphanage in Chelek. Irene's father, Srulik Miller, passed away in a wartime typhus epidemic. After the war, Bella, Halina, and Irene returned to Poland, where Irene lived in an orphanage until she and her mother immigrated to Israel in 1952, joined by Halina and her husband a few years later.
Subjects
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Poland--Personal narratives.
Genre
- Document
- Personal Narratives.