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glencoeanchor.com life & arts
the glencoe anchor | August 18, 2016 | 19
Holocaust survivor speaks in Glencoe
Danielle Gensburg
Freelance Reporter
In one small room concealed
by a wardrobe,
13-year-old Estelle Laughlin
hid with her family
from German SS soldiers
in the Warsaw Ghetto to
escape being deported to
extermination camps.
In the 1.3-square-mile
ghetto, where more than
400,000 Jews from Warsaw,
Poland, and surrounding
areas were forced to
live after German soldiers
invaded and entered Poland,
suffering from starvation,
sickness and death
happened daily. But the
Jewish community continued
to build a life for
itself, and in the midst of
the inconceivable, formed
schools (holding secret
classes for children), hospitals,
refugee centers,
public soup kitchens, secret
libraries, and even a
symphony orchestra.
Laughlin, who is in her
late 80s today, described
the experience of living
with her family in the
Warsaw Ghetto, and later
being transported to an
extermination camp and
two different concentration
camps, before a small
crowd at a private location
in Glencoe Aug. 10.
“To own a book was an
act of defiance punishable
by death,” Laughlin said.
She remembers fondly
how the small room in the
ghetto where her family
hid felt like a paradise,
even in the middle of
all the suffering around
them, when her father
would read to them, and
she could escape into the
world of those books.
“The soul needs to be
nurtured. Our ability to
create is our godliness,”
Laughlin said.
As Laughlin and her
family hid in a secret
“The soul needs to be nurtured.
Our ability to create is our godliness.”
Estelle Laughlin—Holocaust survivor on her
father reading to her and the rest of her family
while hiding in the Warsaw Ghetto
room, 300,000 ghetto residents
were deported to the
extermination camp, Treblinka
II. In April 1943,
German soldiers entered
the ghetto to eliminate
the 55,000-60,000 Jews
who remained and send
them to work or death
camps. Laughlin’s father,
who was part of a resistance
movement within
the ghetto, built a bunker
where his family could
hide while resistance
fighters fought against the
roundups.
Laughlin described how
people fought back during
the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
“While we were in the
bunker, fighting erupted
in the streets. Freedom
fighters ran out from the
bunkers and out into the
streets and fought the armored
soldiers and tanks,”
Laughlin said.
But the bunker where
Laughlin and her family
hid was soon exposed by
a bomb, as the SS began
to destroy the ghetto, and
she and her family were
marched to a deportation
station, loaded onto freight
cars and sent to Lublin/
Majdanek.
Laughlin describes
how, upon arrival to the
camp, she, her sister and
her mother were separated
from her father, who was
killed in the gas chamber.
They worked forced labor,
moving turf from one
place outside the camp to
another, when Laughlin’s
sister was badly beaten by
a German guard, his in the
barracks and was discovered.
Her name was put on
a list, and Laughlin and her
mother switched places
with two other women to
be put on the list, believing
they were all going to
be sent to the gas chamber.
Instead, Laughlin, her
sister and her mother were
transported to another
concentration camp, Skarzysko,
and later, Czestochowa,
where they worked
in different munitions factories
and ultimately survived
when Soviet forces
liberated the camp in January
1945.
Laughlin, her mother
and her sister moved to
Bavaria and lived there until
1947, when they moved
to New York City.
Marcia Fraerman, who
has volunteered with the
U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum for many years,
said Laughlin’s story was
very inspiring.
I’ve been volunteering
with the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum for
many years, and I volunteer
for it because it’s very
fulfilling, and I believe
in the cause,” Fraerman
said. “Estelle, today, was
very enlightening when
she talks about her story,
which is very moving and
sad and scary. But also her
courage and her faith in
humanity is very inspiring.”
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