Last Friday, January 27th was the “International Holocaust Remembrance Day”.
For me to remember the people who were impacted by the holocaust I’ve decided to research about a girl named Bertha Adler who was very much impacted by the holocaust.
Bertha was born on June 20,1928 in Selo-Solotvina, Czechoslovakia, Bertha was also the second to three daughters, her parents were both Yiddish speakers and Jewish, Her parents lived in a village in Czechoslovakia’s easternmost province. A little after Bertha was born her family moved to Liege, an industrial, largely Catholic city in Belgium that had many immigrants from Eastern Europe. In 1933 to 1939 Bertha’s parents sent her to a local school were most of the students who studied there were Catholic. At school Bertha spoke French and at home she spoke Yiddish and only sometimes her parents would speak Hungarian to each other because it was the language they learned while growing up, Bertha’s mom was very religious so she also made sure Bertha studied Hebrew. From 1940 to 1944 the Germans occupied Liege at the start of it Bertha was only 11 years old. Two years later Bertha’s family and all Jews, were ordered to register, Bertha and her two sisters were forced to leave the school, some of her Catholic friends from the school decided to help Bertha and her family to obtain false papers and rented them a house in a nearby village. After they moved to the nearby village Bertha’s father became ill one Friday and he had to go to the hospital, she promised to visit him on Sunday so she can bring him shaving cream, that Sunday her family was awakened at 5:00 am by the Gestapo who found them, fifteen-year-old Bertha was taken to Auschwitz on May 19, 1944. She was gassed there two days later.