Hanna Pankowsky / Hanna Davidson (F / Poland, 1928-2020), Holocaust survivor
Hanna Pankowsky / Hanna Davidson (F / Poland, 1928-2020), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <Refugees> <Soviet Union>
- MEMOIRS : East of the storm (1999)
Biography
Hanna Pankowsky, daughter of Sofia (Zofia) and Simon (Zellman) Davidson, was born on September 22, 1928, in Łódź, Poland. Hanna had an older brother, Kazik. Her father owned a prosperous textile wholesale business; her mother was an accomplished artist. Hanna was raised in an assimilated family that focused on secular Judaism. Following the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, anti-Jewish measures were imposed.
When the rumor started that the ghetto was being formed, Hanna’s mother made arrangements to obtain false papers to leave and flee to Soviet-occupied Bialystok, Poland. Hanna and her mother continued their journey until they arrived at their point of safety inside the Soviet Union. By then they had reunited with her father and brother. Hanna attended school in Orsza, a city in what is now Belarus.
As refugees, the family continued their journey east, escaping the front-line battles between the Germans and the Soviet armed forces. They made their way to Ioshkar-Ola, where they lived under harsh conditions. Her brother was drafted into a Polish unit of the Soviet armed forces. Hanna was later allowed to attend a metallurgic technical college in Moscow.
After the war, Hanna’s parents made their way to Proskurov – now Khmelnytskyi in Ukraine – before returning to Poland. Hanna returned to Łódź as well, where she was reunited with extended family members. She eventually obtained a visa to go to Mexico. She met and married her husband, Jaime Pankowsky, in Mexico City.
The couple moved to the United States in 1952 and settled in San Antonio, Texas.
Book : East of the Storm (1999)
- Hanna Davidson Pankowsky, East of the Storm: Outrunning the Holocaust in Russia (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 1999).
On September 27, 1939, after the Nazi invasion, Poland ceased to exist as a nation. Ten-year-old Hanna Davidson's father, Simon, and older brother, Kazik, had been drafted to defend Warsaw. Hanna and her mother, Sophia, found themselves subjected to Hitler's efforts to dehumanize Poland's Jewish population. But when they got word that Simon and Kazik were alive in the Soviet-occupied zone of Poland, Hanna and her mother decided to risk a harrowing escape from Nazi Poland into safer Soviet territory. With only the clothes on their backs, they left their apartment. If the two-percent chance of surviving the crossing were not daunting enough, then the Davidsons' prospects in the Soviet Union should have been. Simon Davidson's capitalist and anti-communist activities in Poland would brand him an undesirable. Worse, he had been born in Russia - escaping years before by fooling Soviet authorities into presuming him dead - and his resurfacing would endanger those members of his family who remained behind. So the Davidsons were compelled to invent and memorize not only their own new identities but also an extended family history. Moreover, avoiding persecution by the Soviet regime entailed maintaining a pretense of allegiance to Stalin. As recounted by Hanna, the Davidsons' journey into the Soviet interior makes for a singular story.