Johanna Tukhshnyder / Johanna Krawczyk (F / Poland / Russia, 1941), Holocaust survivor

Johanna Tukhshnyder / Johanna Krawczyk (F / Poland / Russia, 1941), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Refugees> <Soviet Union> -- <Poland> <Israel> <Chile>

Biography

Johanna Tukhshnyder was born in 1941 in Russia, where his parents had come as refugees in 1939. They were sent to Siberia, but were liberated in 1940. They lived in Central Russia during the entire war. They returned to Poland, moved to Israel in 1957 and then to Chile.

USHMM Oral History Collection

Johanna Krawczyk (née Tukhshnyder), born in Russia in 1941, describes her parents, who escaped to Russia from Poland as Jewish refugees during the war; how her parents were sent to Siberia, but escaped in 1939 and were liberated from Siberia in 1940; her parents moving to Central Russia; returning to Poland in 1945; her parents having progressive ideas and belonged to the BUND; how the reality of Russia did not coalesce with their ideals; never living as a Jewish family; how between the ages of 4 and 8 she heard and understood the Yiddish language, in which her parents would discuss the fate of their close relatives; her maternal grandparents surviving; her father’s family being thrown from a balcony in Chelm; how Chelm’s streets had been paved by the tombstones of the Jewish cemetery; the murder of all of her paternal cousins in concentration camps; how before the war two uncles left for Palestine and an aunt went to South America for economic reasons; how the return to Poland from Russia was very painful and sad, and she remembers her parents crying bitterly; the efforts of all citizens to rebuild the city, including school children; keeping their Judaism hidden; being taunted at school for her religion, and changing schools often to avoid the suffering; her family moving to Israel when the Jews were allowed to leave Poland; how it was a tough experience and they arrived in 1957; being a teenager, and having no Jewish knowledge or background; how their neighborhood was populated by poor people, mainly from Morocco; her father being unable to do the only job offered to him; being shunned because she was white and wanting to return to Poland; her aunt visiting from Chile and inviting them to go to Chile; how her family had never adapted to changes easily, neither to Israel nor to Chile; the journey on a ship to Buenos Aires; the Andean train; having to learn another language and adapt to a new environment; not experiencing antisemitism in Chile; and her dilemma between being a Jew and a citizen of the world.