Łódź ghetto scrip, 20 mark coin, acquired by a young Polish Jewish woman held as a slave laborer

Cesia (later Carol) Zylber was born on March 22, 1929, in Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland, to Chaim and Laja Redlich Zylber. Chaim, born in 1890 in Opoczno to Kalman and Cerka Zylber, was a weaver in a textile factory. Laja, born in 1895 in Tomaszow to Nusen and Rivka Redlich, worked in her mother’s fabric store. Laja had two older brothers: Michael, who left for the US in 1921, and Nusen David born 1894. In 1895, Laja’s father died and her mother, Rivka, remarried, to Itzak Michlewicz and had five children: Avram born 1904; Esther born 1905; Josek born 1906; Gershon born 1907; and Tosia born 1911. Itzak died in 1933. Cesia had three brothers: Niutek born 1925; Moniek born 1931; and Icek born 1932. Cesia and her brothers attended Polish public schools. Cesia’s aunt Esther married Mayer Uncyk in 1936. They had a daughter Niusia in July 1937, and moved to Piotrkow. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and soon occupied Tomaszow and Piotrkow. Cesia’s family was forced out of their home and they moved into her grandmother’s apartment. On October 8, the first Jewish ghetto in German occupied Poland was established in Piotrkow. Tomaszow’s Jewish quarter was also turned into a ghetto, but people could still come and go. The German took residents from both ghettos to work in forced labor groups. In April 1940, Cesia, 11, and her grandmother went to Piotrkow to visit her Aunt Esther. While they were there, Esther decided that the best way to save Cesia and her daughter Niusia would be to pay a Polish woman in advance to take the girls when they were scheduled for transport. Cesia’s grandmother left her with Esther and returned to Tomaszow. Cesia learned that her brother Niutek was in a group of 100 Jewish youths shot in the ghetto square by the Germans. Cesia begged Esther to let her visit her family and Esther helped her sneak out. After a week, at her parent’s insistence, Cesia returned to Piotrkow. Cesia and Niusia attended school secretly while Esther worked in a kitchen and Mayer in a tailor shop that supplied German soldiers. In late October 1942, the Tomaszow ghetto was liquidated. Cesia’s entire family was loaded onto transports. The Piotrkow ghetto was liquidated by the end of November. Esther’s plan to save the girls failed because the Polish woman’s neighbors threatened to turn them in to the Germans. When the ghetto was emptied, people with work cards, like Esther and Mayer, were sent to one side, and everyone else was loaded onto trains. When Esther was told to stay aside, she pulled Cesia and Niusia with her, even though they were on the other list and the guards kept trying to separate them. When the selection was over, the family was among the few sent back to the ghetto. They found an apartment, where Esther dug out a hiding space for the girls who were supposed to be gone. Cesia and Niusia hid quietly all day, although sometimes when they got hungry, Cesia would go steal food from Esther’s kitchen. Once, when she snuck out, Cesia was caught by German soldiers and taken to a synagogue with 500 other Jews. Esther found out that she had been taken and begged a cousin to go save her daughter. The cousin didn’t know that she was actually a niece, and he identified her as Cesia Uncyk when he searched for and saved her from the holding center. After this, she was known as Cesia Uncyk. In February 1943, one of Niusia’s uncles was arrested in the street by the Germans, and revealed that Esther had a space where she hid people in her home. The German soldiers arrived and ordered anyone in the dugout to come out. Only Cesia emerged, promising that no one else was with her. She was transported to Skarzysko-Kamienna slave labor camp for the munitions factory run by HASAG (the Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft Metalwarenfabrik.) She worked 12 hour days, on rations of one slice of bread and a bowl of watery soup. She was befriended by an older woman, Myriam, who had been separated from her own daughter Pnina. Myriam brought her extra bread, and nursed her back to health, through typhus, diphtheria, and other illnesses. Cesia lost her hair and her front teeth. Sanitation was minimal, there was no medical facility, and the sound of shootings and fear of the frequent beatings were constantly with her. In August 1944, the camp was closed, and Cesia and Miriam were transported to another HASAG munitions / slave labor camp in Czestochowa. On January 16, 1945, the inmates saw the German guards running away and soon the Soviet Army overran the camp and liberated the prisoners. The inmates were not allowed to stay in Czestochowa, so Cesia went to Tomaszow. She learned that her parents, younger brothers, grandmother, and almost all of her extended family had been transported on October 22, 1942, to Treblinka killing center. Cesia went to Łódź to live with Myriam and her daughter, Pnina, who had survived Auschwitz. The war ended with Germany’s surrender in May 1945. After what had happened to them, Cesia, Myriam, and Pnina wanted to get out of Europe. In December 1945, Cesia learned that her Aunt Esther and cousin Niusia had survived Ravensbrueck and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps and were living in Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp in Germany. Her Uncle Mayer had been deported in 1944 to Buchenwald concentration camp and killed. In April 1946, Cesia, Myriam, and Pnina illegally left Poland and made their way to Bergen-Belsen. Esther and Niusia had fallen ill and been sent to a sanatorium in Sweden, but Cesia and the others were able to stay in their room at the camp. Cesia attended an ORT school and learned how to sew. She had originally planned to go to illegally to Palestine with Myriam, but Myriam convinced her that she should go live with her maternal uncle, Michael Redlich, who had offered to sponsor her immigration to the United States. Esther had written him, telling him that his son was the right age to join the army and he should come and get Cesia. This cousin Norman Redlich was in the US Army in Germany and Cesia and he met in 1946 in Munich. Cesia emigrated to the US with the help of United Children’s Care. She arrived on August 3, 1947, and went to live with her uncle’s family in New Jersey. In December 1950, Esther, her second husband, and Niusia arrived in the US. On January 20, 1951, Carol married Norman Redlich. Soon after, Cesia, was treated for tuberculosis related to her malnutrition and the poor conditions of the camps. She and Norman had two daughters. Cesia rarely spoke of her experiences until 1983, when she attended an American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors. She then became committed to speaking out about her experiences in order to set the record straight as one who was there. Carol, age 81, died on November 21, 2010 in Los Angeles, California.

The coin was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2012 by Norman Redlich, the husband of Cesia Uncyk Redlich.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Norman Redlich

Funding Note: The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.