(JEWISH GROUP) A Holocaust survivor born in a concentration camp shares her story
In the last months of World War II, Lola Kantorowicz tried her best to hide her pregnancy. She succeeded because most of the prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had bellies that were distended and bloated from extended starvation.
As she went into labor in March 1945, the Russians were advancing through Germany, and Bergen-Belsen was in chaos. Her daughter, Ilana, was born on March 19, 30 days before the camp was liberated by the British.
Now 81, Ilana Kantorowicz Shalem is among the youngest Holocaust survivors. She survived only because she was born when the Nazi leadership was in disarray as the war was ending. Otherwise, she most certainly would have been killed.
More than eight decades after the end of the Holocaust, Shalem is sharing her story — and her mother’s story — for the first time, realizing how few Holocaust survivors are left.
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