In Fire and In Flowers includes the memoirs of both Phyllis and Nathan Dunkelman, who met after the war in a displaced persons camp. Nathan, only twelve years old when the Germans occupied Poland, survived the Łódź Ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and Althammer labor camp. Phyllis, only ten years old when WWII started, lived in Kozienice, Poland, where a ghetto was established in 1941. In 1942 she was sent first to Gorzyczki Polenlager, a labor camp for non-Jewish Poles, next to Skarżysko Kamienno labor camp, and eventually to five other camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen.
After liberation, Nathan and Phyllis ended up in Zeilsheim displaced persons camp, where they met and fell in love. In 1951 they immigrated to the U.S., settling in Vineland on a poultry farm and raising three children as well as chickens. Their work evolved into a prosperous wholesale egg and chicken business, and the family continued to thrive with six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. As Nathan remarked, “We went through hell and came back. We have been in fire and in flowers.”
Nathan and Phyllis, a loving and resilient couple, surmounted many obstacles both during the Holocaust and in the New World. In Fire and In Flowers will inspire readers, especially those dealing with adversity.
Table of Contents
Preface i
Part I Nathan
Chapter One A Child in Łódź 1
Chapter Two Łódź Occupied 7
Chapter Three The Łódź Ghetto 9
Chapter Four Abused 23
Chapter Five The Irony of Fate 28
Chapter Six Facing the Future 30
Chapter Seven Love at First Sight 33
Chapter Eight A New World 35
Chapter Nine A Farm in Vineland 37
Chapter Ten Nathan’s Epilogue 40
Part II Phyllis
Chapter Eleven Kozienice 42
Chapter Twelve School and Play 46
Chapter Thirteen The Dogs of War 50
Chapter Fourteen Slave Labor 56
Chapter Fifteen Skarżysko Kamienna 60
Chapter Sixteen Reunion 65
Chapter Seventeen Pionki Labor Camp 71
Chapter Eighteen Auschwitz-Birkenau 75
Chapter Nineteen Baumlitz 78
Chapter Twenty Into Hell 80
Chapter Twenty-One Elsnig 83
Chapter Twenty-Two Bombed and Liberated 91
Chapter Twenty-Three Our Welcome Home 96
Chapter Twenty-Four The DP Camps 99
Chapter Twenty-Five Phyllis’s Epilogue 106
Reflection 111
Works Cited 113
Endnotes 116
Maps 143
Photographs 151