Estelle Laughlin / Estelle Wakszlak (F / Poland, 1929), Holocaust survivor
Estelle Laughlin / Estelle Wakszlak (F / Poland, 1929), Holocaust survivor.
- KEYWORDS : <Warsaw Ghetto> <Majdanek> <Skarzysko> <Czestochowa>
- MEMOIRS : Transcending Darkness (2012)
Biography
Estelle Laughlin (née Wakszlak) was born July 9, 1929 in Warsaw, Poland. She was imprisoned with her family in the Warsaw Ghetto. In April 1943 she was deported to Majdanek, then Skarzysko, and Czestochowa, where she was liberated in January 1945. After the war, she moved to Bavaria and then in 1947 to the United States.
USHMM Oral History Collection (I)
Estelle Laughlin was born in Warsaw, Poland, on July 9, 1929 to Michla and Samek Wakszlak. Estelle also had an older sister, Freda, who was born in January 1928. Michla tended to the home and children while Samek ran a jewelry shop. Estelle and Freda attended the local public school.
Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. The siege on Warsaw began a week after German forces invaded Poland. On September 29, shortly after Poland’s surrender, German forces entered Warsaw. Estelle and Freda were no longer able to attend the local public school. In October 1940 German forces decreed the establishment of a ghetto. The Wakszlak family and more than 400,000 Jews from the city and surrounding areas were forced to live in a 1.3 square mile area and to wear a white armband with a blue Star of David. The food allotments rationed to the ghetto by the German authorities were not sufficient to sustain life; however, Samek was able to get extra food for his family from the black market. From July to September 1942, 300,000 ghetto residents were deported to Treblinka II, an extermination camp. During this time Estelle and her family hid in a secret room to escape the deportations.
In April 1943 German forces made one last push to liquidate the remaining 55,000-60,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to work or death camps. Samek, who helped to organize the resistance movement, built a bunker in which he and his family could hide during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. As SS and police units began roundups they were met with artillery fire from resistance fighters. In retaliation, the SS began razing the ghetto, block by block. The bunker where Estelle and her family were hiding, which was in the basement of a house, was exposed by a bomb. Everyone was dragged out onto the street. The Wakszlak family was marched to the umschlagplatz (concentration point), forced to board freight train cars, and transported to Lublin/Majdanek.
Upon arrival at Majdanek the women and men were separated. Estelle, Michla, and Freda were chosen for forced labor but Samek was sent to the gas chamber. The women moved turf from one place outside the camp to another. At one point Freda was badly beaten by a German guard and could not work. She hid in the barracks, but was discovered. Her name was put on what she thought was a gas chamber list. Estelle and Michla switched places with two women who were on the same list, thus believing that the remaining Wakszlak family members could die together. Michla, Estelle, and Freda were, instead, sent to the Skarzysko concentration camp to work in a munitions factory. Later, they were sent to the Czestochowa concentration camp to work in a different munitions factory.
Soviet forces liberated Czestochowa in January of 1945. To escape pogroms in Poland the three women moved to Bavaria in August 1945 and lived there until 1947, when they moved to the United States to join Michla’s two sisters and brother in New York City. Estelle is a volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
USHMM Oral History Collection (II)
Estelle Laughlin (née Wakszlak), born on July 9, 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her parents Michla and Samek; her older sister Freda (born January 1928); the jewelry shop her father operated; attending a local public school; the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the siege on Warsaw beginning one week later; the German occupation and not being allowed to attend school; the establishment of a ghetto in October 1940 and being forced with other Jews to live in the ghetto; the conditions in the ghetto; the massive deportations of Jews to Treblinka from July to September 1942; hiding in a secret room with her family during the deportations; her father’s efforts in the resistance movement; the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943 and hiding in a bunker with her family; being discovered in the bunker and the deportation of her family to Majdanek; being selected for forced labor along with her mother and sister; her father’s death in the gas chamber; her sister being badly beaten and placed on a list that she and her mother thought was a gas chamber list; their decision to switch places with two other women so they could be on the same list with Freda; being sent together to Skarzysko concentration camp to work in a munitions factory and later to camp Czestochowa; being liberation by Soviet forces from Czestochowa in January 1945; moving with her mother and sister to Bavaria, Germany in August 1945 and living there until 1947; immigrating as a family to the United States; and joining two of Estelle’s aunts and an uncle in New York City.
Chicago Tribune (12 August 2016)
Holocaust survivor from Lincolnshire recounts her experience, by Karie Angell Luc.
A native of Warsaw, Poland, Estelle Glaser Laughlin can describe the moment when residents in her home country resisted Nazi Germany and when many were forced to work in labor camps during World War II.
That's because Laughlin, now a Lincolnshire resident, experienced it firsthand.
"Warsaw was the center of my universe," Laughlin said. "Don't let anyone ever tell you that we didn't fight back. We fought back with every fiber."
On Aug. 10 in Glencoe, Laughlin recounted her experiences during the Holocaust and World War II to numerous supporters of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Laughlin is one of the first people to give videotaped interviews maintained by the museum, and she also published a book in 2012 called "Transcending Darkness: A Girl's Journey Out of the Holocaust."
As a young teenager in Warsaw in 1943, Laughlin and her family witnessed the Warsaw ghetto uprising, a resistance effort led by an outnumbered group of Jewish residents in a German-controlled ghetto in Warsaw, she told the audience.
She also described escalating chaos in her home country at the time, recalling how children died, and how members of her family eventually were forced into freight cars and transported to labor camps.
"We had no idea that deportations meant death," Laughlin said.
By January 1945, Laughlin worked inside a labor camp at an ammunition factory surrounded by electric barbed wire, she said. Laughlin and her family members ultimately regained their freedom and made their way to the United States.
"We came to this blessed land," she said.
Laughlin later worked in a garment factory near New York. She became a teacher and reading specialist.
Her sister became a professor, she said.
During the event in Glencoe, Matthew Friend, an 18-year-old Chicago resident, and his grandmother Elaine Levinson, of Glencoe, talked with Laughlin during the question-and-answer session.
"My generation is the last to hear these stories in person and to meet people who actually lived this atrocity," Friend said. "We have to keep carrying on this message, so that this never happens again."