Shoshana Loven
Author: Shoshana Loven
Publisher: Makor Jewish Community Library
Place of publication: Caulfield South, VIC.
Year of Publication: 2010
Location of Book: Lamm Jewish Library, Melbourne Holocaust Museum, Sydney Jewish Museum, State Library of Victoria and other public libraries.
Cities/towns/camps: Poland: Sosnowiec, Srodula ghetto; Sudetenland: Gabersdorf and Ober Alstadt forced labour camps; Germany: Munich, Foehrenwald DP camp; Israel: Hadera, Tel Aviv, Kfar Bilu, Tzrifin; Australia: Melbourne.
Note: those cities/towns/camps underlined are those which are most central to the narrative
Genre: Memoir
Key events/experiences: ghetto; concentration camp; child/adolescent survivor.
Blessings and Curses is the story of Shoshana Loven, a Polish-Jewish survivor who as an adolescent endured life in the Srodula ghetto and slave labour in Nazi concentration camps. Pages 1-7 describe Shoshana’s childhood in Sosnowiec. Pages 8-21 cover the period from September 1939 to Autumn 1943, describing the Nazi occupation of Sosnowiec and the establishment of the Srodula ghetto. Pages 22-44 narrate the author’s internment in Nazi concentration camps from autumn 1943 until her liberation in May 1945. Pages 45-67 discuss her emigration to Israel and eventual settlement in Melbourne. Pages 71-78 present final words, family photographs and a poem written by the author.
Shoshanna Loven was born Rozalia Wulc to parents Leah and Yitzchak in the small Polish town of Sosnowiec. Her birth-date is not provided. She had three older sisters Eva, Zosia and Pola and brothers Henius and Pinchus. The family had a comfortable life, and though they were Orthodox, Shoshanna attended the local public school, although she also attended Cheder. In September 1939, when Shoshanna was 11, Nazi Germany occupied Poland and her brother Pinchus escaped to Russia. Soon, the family was ordered to wear armbands and the synagogue in nearby Bedzin was burnt. Shoshana’s fourteen-year-old brother Henius disappeared and returned to report he had been taken as a slave labourer in Gleiwitz, Germany. Not long after, her sister Eva and her two children were arbitrarily shot.
Over the next few months, there were several round-ups of Jews in Sosnowiec. Fearing for their safety, the children hid with their Polish neighbour for several months. However, one night, when they returned home to visit their parents, sixteen-year-old Pola was arrested and sent on a transport to a slave labour camp in Czechoslovakia. Soon thereafter, Henius was caught in an Aktion and never seen again. At the end of 1941, Shoshana and her remaining family was forced to move to the Srodula ghetto. There, Shoshana and her mother worked producing German army uniforms.
In the autumn of 1943, Shoshana was sent as a slave labourer to Gabersdorf concentration camp, a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen in the Sudetenland, where she worked at a flax factory until November 1944. At this time, Shoshanna received word from her sister Pola who was interned in the Ober Alstadt forced labour camp. Through various contacts, Pola was able to arrange for Shoshana to be transferred to Ober Alstadt, where the girls remained until liberation by the Soviet army on 8 May 1945. Together with some fellow survivors, Shoshana and Pola made the journey back to Sosnowiec to find their home looted. There, they were reunited with their brother Pinchus, who had joined the Soviet army. Pola also met her future husband, Meni. Tragically, Pinchus died in a car accident in October 1945. Afterwards, Pola and Shoshana left for Germany with Meni and his friend. The group stayed in Munich for a few months, during which Pola and Meni were married. Through a former contact at the Ober Alstadt labour camp, the group decided to travel to the Foehrenwald DP camp where Shoshana studied nursing.
In 1946, the Jewish Brigade arrived at the DP camp to recruit volunteers to emigrate to Israel. Shoshana decided to emigrate to Israel alone, traveling to Marseilles after which she boarded a Greek fishing boat to Israel. She landed secretly in Hadera, near Haifa, and spent several days in a transit camp. After she was released, Shoshana travelled to Tel Aviv. She joined the army as a nurse, serving in a field army hospital in Kfar Bilu during the War of Independence. She was then transferred to the Tzrifin army base hospital where she lived for the next five years. During this time, she travelled to several transit camps to treat Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Pola and Meni emigrated to Australia, and sponsored Shoshana, who arrived in Melbourne in 1952. There, she met and married her husband, Ray.
Blessings and Curses is a very short memoir which summarises the author’s core experiences and, as such, details such as specific dates and time periods are missing. The author was reluctant to write of her experiences but, in 2009, contributed a short piece to volume 6 of the anthology Memory Guide My Hand published by the Makor Jewish Community Library. At this time she met Elaine Davidoff who became the editor of Blessings and Curses. Under the guidance of Davidoff, in 2010 Blessing and Curses was published by the Makor Library as part of the “Write Your Story” Collection.