Comp. 102-118
Mr. Neuburger
3-18-13
Survivor Testimony
Malka Baran (Klin)
Malka Baran was born in Warsaw Poland on January 30th of 1927. Baran grew up with her family
in a small one bedroom apartment. Her story started out slow, mainly talking about how she grew up
and what some of her hobbies were. At age 15 she and her family were driven out of their home by
the Germans and taken to the camps. In the beginning the family was immediatly split up, her father
and brother remianed with her, but her mother and a house worker she had known got split up from
them and they never saw each other again. Baran was put into several different places, she started in a
small ghetto where she worked as somewhat of a maid. She cleaned several houses which included
washing windows and scrubbing floors. After the ghetto concentration she was moved to a factory
that dealt with war artillary items. Baran's job was to sort shell casings from ammunition, the good
from the bad. Arriving wearing a skirt, shirt, and jacket, she nor the others had a change of clothes so
they would manage cleaning by using the water that cleaned the ammunition to put their shirts in to
wash with and drying them using what dried it as well. She described being around people who tried
to fight the Germans but would end up dying right in front of her instead. Doing what she was told
and obeying was what she thinks helped her live. In 1943 Baran was taken to Basak, a concentration
camp and remained there until liberation day. What I found most interesting was from 1941-43
she had completely blocked from her memory, she couldn't remember anything that had happened.
The only reason she knows some about those years was what friends and people had told her what
went on. Eventually she got married at age 25 and moved to Israel.
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