Arielle Potasznik (F / Belgium, 1943), Holocaust survivor

Arielle Potasznik (F / Belgium, 1943), Holocaust survivor

<Brother?>

• KEYWORDS : <Hidden Children>

Biography

Arielle Potasznik was born June 18, 1943 in Tirlemont, Belgium. She survived in hiding in a convent with her mother and an older brother.

USHMM Oral History Collection

Arielle Potasznik (born on June 18, 1943 in a convent in Tirlemont, Belgium, where her mother Golda Potasznik (née Zinger or Zingier) had taken refuge) discusses the circumstances that led to the interview; her parents’ Polish backgrounds, educations, and life in Belgium; her father’s participation in the armed resistance and his execution in September 1943; the help she, her older brother, and her mother received from members of the resistance after her father’s execution; her mother’s struggles in finding work and being a single parent; her mother’s efforts to get recognition from the Belgian government for her late husband’s resistance actions; her mother’s death in 1955; moving to Israel to be with an uncle and living in the kibbutz Ginegar for a short time; returning to Belgium in 1956 and living in a Jewish children’s home in Rhode-Saint-Genèse; her passion for painting and work in theater; and her marriage and two daughters.