Narrative of Barbara Gora

A Father’s Love

    Barbara Gora vigorously concludes that her family survived World War II with the 

help of three anomalies her family had acquired which other Jewish families lacked . 

Throughout the war Barbara’s father stuck by his family and saved them countless times 

from dangers lurking everywhere. Moreover her family members were all blessed with 

blonde hair and blue eyes, 2 perfect features in the eyes of the Germans which emancipated 

Barbara more than once. But Barbara strongly regards luck as the primary reason why she 

and her family withstood the terrible war which struck all of Europe. What made Barbara 

incomparable to other survivors of the war was that she managed to inform us of her 

unsettling and depressing childhood in an optimistic and buoyant tone.

    Born in 1932 as Irena Hochberg, she was brought up in an assimilated Jewish family. 

All of her family members bore vivid blond hair and had luminous blue eyes. What they later 

used to their advantage was that all of them, except Barbara’s mother, looked Polish. 

Exactly one year before the war occurred, 6-year-old Barbara started school. She was 

consistently bullied because she was the only Jew at school. Barbara revealed to us how 

she was firm  at school and would never sob because she had to be tough. One day she 

departed for home and when she arrived she wailed to her mother how all the children at 

school would tease and menace her. After her mother witnessed her daughter’s outburst, 

she decided to approach her daughter’s teacher and stated to her what was happening to 

Barbara. When she confronted the teacher she learned some unfortunate news. The teacher 

was a Protestant, a religion not widely accepted in Poland, causing her students to point at 

her as well.  The teacher could not help Barbara in her situation. Today, Barbara accepts 

that the reason most students would bully her was because she would not attend religion 

class. Instead she would spend the class time treading up and down the hallway. One time a 

janitor who was cleaning the hallway offered her a seat and they spent their time sharing 

stories and communicating their feelings to each other. “It was my best school memory,” 

Barbara remembers. One day during recess a Polish boy approached Barbara and 

pondered to her why she wasn't participating. Barbara responded that the other kids would exclude 

her and shove her away so the boy vowed to always be with her and act like a guardian angel.

    Barbara did not have to attend school the following year as war had embarked, much 

to her delight as she despised attending school. What she did not realize at the moment was 

that the following year, in 1940, Barbara and her family were forced to immigrate into the 

ghetto on orders from the Nazis, who ordered all Jews residing in Warsaw to move into the 

ghetto. Barbara described early life in the ghetto as easy because her dad had obtained 

different jobs around the ghetto resulting in him gaining a salary larger than most inhabitants 

in the ghetto. One more reason which not only made early life in the ghetto easy, but also 

helped her family survive was that a lot of people helped them with different tasks. While 

Barbara and her mother rested in their apartment in the ghetto, her sister was working with a 

workforce and her dad was shovelling coal in a chemical laundry factory which was located 

right beside the family’s apartment. Later this factory was taken apart and turned into a 

factory which took apart Jewish fur coats and made uniforms out of them for the German 

army. In front of this factory there was a Polish guard stationed to protect it. On a sweltering 

summer day, that guard warned Barbara, her mother and other mothers with children that 

Germans were coming and looking to eliminate mothers with children. When he spread the 

news, Barbara and her mother, along with other mothers and babies, made their way to the 

factory and to the top floor where all the coats that had been collected were stored. They all 

hid under the coats as the Germans made their way around the factory shouting, “Gibt es 

hier Juden?” (“Are there any Jews here?”) When the Germans arrived at the top floor 

Barbara knew that if any one of the babies present would have cried they would all have 

been shot and died right there at that moment, but fortunately for them no one cried. A 

couple of minutes later Barbara heard German soldiers rushing actively around the factory 

shouting blatantly her father’s name. After that she heard two very clear shots which echoed 

through the factory. She and the fellow people hiding under the coats waited and pondered 

when it would be safe to reappear so they stayed for a while, how long Barbara does not 

remember but it seemed to have lasted an eternity,. When they decided it was safe they returned 

downstairs where Barbara learned that her father was called because he had to go back to work 

and instead their neighbours who were not able to work anymore were shot. After this event her

sister’s workforce was called up to stand in a line and every 10th worker was taken and sent of

to a camp, but luckily Barbara’s sister was not one of those workers.

    One day Barbara’s father asked her if she wanted to depart from ghetto, to which 

Barbara answered yes without a doubt. Her father arranged that a Polish man who worked 

and went in and out of the ghetto each day would take her with him when he left the ghetto. 

So one day the man took Barbara with him through the front gate of the ghetto. Barbara now 

recalls that the guard had turned his back to them so she believes that he had been bribed 

by her father. The man took her to his apartment but she could only stay there for a couple 

of days as it aroused suspicion that there was suddenly a new girl on the block. For the next 

couple of months Barbara changed identities and moved between homes frequently to avoid 

being captured. Then her dad had found a permanent place for her to stay. She ended up 

staying with a family of parents and 3 sons of whom only one son worked because the father 

was fired for drinking vodka on a job. She often helped the mother smuggle food and 

cleaned the house while she also helped the middle son make vodka illegally.

    She stayed at this house until July, 1944 when her father came to pick her up and he 

took her to where her mother was hidden. There Barbara was reunited with her mother, 

father and sister. This was the moment when Barbara officially considered the war to be over 

because she had everything she wanted. They stayed in this apartment until the war finished 

and the Russians took over. Even though she was in Warsaw during the time of the Uprising 

she did not participate in it and was only a civilian. This comment was how Barbara ended 

her story. Our group had the extraordinary opportunity to interview a survivor of World War II 

and that is why our group thanked Barbara for sharing her experiences with us. Before she 

departed from us she was asked the question, “Do you hate Germans?” She immediately 

replied with a solid no stating that every country has exceptional people but also atrocious 

people. She gave one piece of advice to all of us. Maybe living an uninteresting life is better 

than an interesting one.