If my heart didn't break then

Identifier
irn504244
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • 1994.A.0145
  • RG-02.146
Dates
1 Jan 1963 - 31 Dec 1963
Level of Description
Item
Source
EHRI Partner

Extent and Medium

folder

1

Creator(s)

Biographical History

Jean Beller (née Genia Bryl, d. 10 Oct. 1993) was born to a Jewish family in Łódź, Poland. During the Holocaust she was a prisoner at Auschwtiz. Jean immigrated to the United States in 1947.

Archival History

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Acquisition

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, gift of Bernard, Roseanne and Sheila Beller

Jean Beller began writing her memoir in Feb. 1958, and she completed writing it in July 1963. Sheila Beller, Jean's daughter, sent the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum a copy of the memoir in Jan. 1994.

Scope and Content

Jean Beller's memoir describes Jean's childhood and adolescence in Poland; her experiences as a student of elementary education in Tel Aviv, Palestine; her return to Poland before the outbreak of World War II; conditions inside the ghetto in Łódź, Poland; her experiences with Chaim Rumkowski; her work as a kindergarten teacher and as the head of an orphanage in the ghetto; her attempts to hide when the ghetto was evacuated; the death of her parents and a brother; her deportation to Auschwitz and other concentration camps; and her life in the United States after the war.

People

Subjects

Genre

This description is derived directly from structured data provided to EHRI by a partner institution. This collection holding institution considers this description as an accurate reflection of the archival holdings to which it refers at the moment of data transfer.