Hechtkopf and Berger families papers

Alice Schelling was born as Alicka Berger on July 16, 1932 in Łódź, Poland. She was the only daughter of Abraham Roman Berger, born October 30, 1904 in Bodzow near Krakow, Poland and Jadzia Ewa Hechtkopf Berger, born November 4, 1905 in Łódź, Poland. Due to the ingenuity and survival instinct of her parents, they survived escape from Poland to Lvov; German invasion of USSR, hiding in Tenczynek village near Krakow and later in Warsaw. Alice was deported to Lanshut slave labor camp, a sub-camp of Dachau, after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. Immediately after the liberation, Roman found his small daughter Alinka and the small family was finally reunited. In 1946 the Berger family under the name Modzelewski (Roman's false name during the war) went to the US because Zygmunt Modzelewski was an official representative of the Polish Communist Government, but shortly after that he defected and decided they would stay in the US.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Alice Coleman Schelling

The photograph was taken by Abraham Roman Berger, Alice C. Schelling's father. Alice C. Schelling donated the photograph to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2004. An accretion of additional documents and photographs was added to the collection by Alice Schelling in 2017.