Sylvia Richman Biography

Sylvia Wien Richman was born in Krakow, Poland in 1938. When she was a small child, she and her parents moved to Lemberg shortly before that city was occupied by the Nazis; they lived in the ghetto there. Her father was deported to the Janowska concentration camp, and Richman and her mother remained in the ghetto for a few more months before escaping. Richman was separated from her mother and spent two years in a convent outside Warsaw. After the war, she stayed with her aunt until her father could return to Poland for her. Eventually, they reunited with her mother, who had been in a displaced persons camp in Austria, and immigrated to the United States. Richman describes her experiences in the Lemberg Ghetto, in the convent, in the displaced persons camp, and her family's journey to America and their lives as Americans.