Jula Weinstock / Julie Keefer (F / Poland, 1941), Holocaust survivor
Jula Weinstock / Julie Keefer (F / Poland, 1941), Holocaust survivor
Tola Weinstock / Antonina Noviska (F / Poland, 1943), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <Lwow Ghetto> <Hidden Children> -- <United States>
Biography
Jula Weinstock Eisen was born April 19, 1941 in Boryslav, Poland (now Ukraine) to Herman Weinstock and Sala Eisen. Escaped the Lwow Ghetto. She survived in hiding, hosted by a Christian family. Separated from her baby sister (who also apparently survived), stayed in orphanages. Moved to the United States, where she was adopted. Emigrated to Israel and then the United States.
USHMM Oral History Collection
Julie Keefer (née Jula Weinstock Eisen), born on April 19, 1941 in Lvov, Poland (present day L'viv, Ukraine), discusses her family’s forced relocation into the Lvov ghetto; the escape of her grandfather, Aiski Eisen, from a camp in Janov; her grandfather finding help from Mr. Borecki, who told him in late 1943 that the ghetto was to be burned, and her grandfather’s rescue of her family from the ghetto; her memories of a tunnel or bunker in the forest, to which a few dozen people were smuggled out of the ghetto; her memories of her grandfather donning a Nazi uniform to smuggle people out of the ghetto; being taken out of the bunker because she and her baby sister, Tola, were endangering others by crying; being placed with Mrs. Szwarczynski, a Catholic woman; the arrival of the Russians in Lvov in June 1944; staying in three displaced persons camps in 1945; living in Camp Taylor in Linz, Austria; traveling alone at seven years old to the United States, where she lived in a series of Catholic orphanages, seeing relatives on weekends; being called a Nazi because she spoke German; being sent by the Joint Distribution Committee to the Bellefaire Jewish Children's Orphanage in Cleveland, OH; her adoption by Fred and Tea Klejstadt; attending Oberlin College; getting married and earning a graduate degree in education; feeling grateful to United States; and her desire to find out what happened to her hidden sister whose name became Antonina Noviska.