Sara Zyskind, also Sara Plager-Zyskind () (b. 26 March 1927 in Łódź; d. 1 January 1995 in Tel-Aviv), was a prominent PolishIsraeli writer on the Holocaust. She was a survivor of the Łódź Ghetto, and of the Auschwitz, the Mittelsteine concentration camp, and the Grafenort Nazi concentration camps. Her style as a writer on the Holocaust has been praised for its effective literary technique that allows the reader to identify with the reality of the period.Paul Wieser, "That We Do No Less"; in: Working to Make a Difference: The Personal and Pedagogical Stories of Holocaust Educators across the Globe, ed. S. Totten, Westport (Connecticut), Praeger Publishers, 2002, p. 229. . Her writings constitute valuable primary sources in Holocaust historiography.Thomas Taterka, Dante Deutsch: Studien zur Lagerliteratur, Berlin, Erich Schmidt, 1999, p. 203. .Cf., e.g., Die Chronik des Gettos Lodz / Litzmannstadt, ed. S. Feuchert, et al., 5 vols., Göttingen, Wallstein-Verlag, 2007, passim. , .Andrea Löw, "Arbeit, Lohn, Essen: Überlebensbedingungen im Ghetto"; in: Ghettorenten: Entschädigungspolitik, Rechtsprechung und historische Forschung, ed. J. Zarusky, Munich, Oldenbourg, 2010, pp. 7172. .
Life Sara Zyskind was born in Łódź to the family of Anschel (Anszel) Kalman Plager (18971943), a native of Drohobycz, and his wife Mindla, née Biederman (19001940), who came from a well-known family of Łódź industrialists. (At least on some occasions, Zyskind will spell her maiden name "Sala Plagier": see External links below.)Cf. Andrzej Strzelecki, The Deportation of Jews from the Łódź Ghetto to KL Auschwitz and Their Extermination: A Description of the Events and the Presentation of Historical Sources, tr. W. Kościa-Zbirohowski, Oświęcim, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2006, pp. 12, 97. . (Cited invariably as "Sara Plagier [sic]" throughout.) Zyskind's childhood in Łódź was a very happy one, as she was swaddled in love and support from family members.Sara Zyskind, Światło w dolinie łez, tr. (from the Hebrew) Sara Zyskind (in collaboration with K. Koźniewski), Łódź, Wydawnictwo Łódzkie, 1994, publishers' blurb on back cover. .
At age 12, the German occupation radically altered the conditions of her childhood and family life.Michal Unger (2004), "The Status and Plight of Women in the Lodz Ghetto"; in: Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, ed. David Cesarani, vol. 4 (Jewish Confrontations with Persecution and Mass Murder), London, Routledge; p. 235. . Cf. Isaiah Trunk, Łódź Ghetto: A History, tr. & ed. R. M. Shapiro, Bloomington (Indiana), Indiana University Press, 2006, p. 224. , . Within three months the town's residents of Jewish origin were required to move into a newly designated Ghetto, which was subsequently declared off limits to outsiders on 8 February 1940 and sealed to the outside world on 1 May 1940.Michal Unger (2004), "The Status and Plight of Women in the Lodz Ghetto"; in: Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, ed. D. Cesarani, vol. 4 (Jewish Confrontations with Persecution and Mass Murder), London, Routledge; p. 235. . Her mother, whom Zyskind later remembered for her composure during this period, died later that year. She and her father mutually supported each other during the following years, successfully evading arrest and deportation, until he died during the Passover of 1943. Upon the "liquidation" of the Ghetto Zyskind was deported to Auschwitz in August 1944. At the age of 16, she was deported to Auschwitz and registered as prisoner number 55091.David Patterson, Sun Turned to Darkness: Memory and Recovery in the Holocaust Memoir, Syracuse (New York), Syracuse University Press, 1998, p. 165. . She was later sent to Mittelsteine, an all-female Gross-Rosen subcamp located about 17 kilometres northwest of Kłodzko, then known as Glatz. She subsequently was moved to the Grafenort Nazi concentration camp, 27 kilometres away (12 km south of Kłodzko). At the end of the war the hundreds of prisoners held there (virtually all Jewish women deported from the Łódź area) were forced to march under brutal conditions, building trenches to fortify the Nazis' retreat against the advancing Soviet forces. Zyskind concluded that she would not be able survive her wartime ordeal.On the Grafenort camp, see Zygmunt Zonik, Anus belli: ewakuacja i wyzwolenie hitlerowskich obozów koncentracyjnych, Warsaw, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1988, p. 293. . The work was far beyond our capacity. We were nothing but living skeletons, unable to lift the shovelfuls of heavy soil above our heads, let alone work at the speed demanded of us.Sara Zyskind, Stolen Years, tr. M. Insar, Minneapolis (Minnesota), Lerner Publications, 1981. .In the spring of 1945, after the liberation, she returned to Łódź only to find that deportations and killings destroyed much of the family and social network in which she had grown up. She eventually decided to emigrate to Palestine and left Poland on forged wartime papers with a group of other refugees from Łódź. Because of British restrictions on Jewish emigration, they wandered across Europe for two years, crossing national frontiers aided by a Jewish relief group called Escape. She finally reached Palestine on 15 May 1947. Zyskind would not return to Poland until 1988.
During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Zyskind served in armed combat alongside Eliezer Zyskind, whom she married in December 1948. Born in 1925, he was from Brzeziny, near Łódź.Andrzej Strzelecki, Deportacja Żydów z getta łódzkiego do KL Auschwitz i ich zagłada: opracowanie i wybór źródeł, ed. T. Świebocka, Oświęcim, Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2004, p. 161. . Karl Liedke, Das KZ-Außenlager Schillstraße in Braunschweig 19441945, Braunschweig, Appelhans, 2006, p. 18. . Her brother was a co-founder of the first textile mill in Tel-Aviv.
In his monograph about the memoirs of Holocaust survivors, David Patterson wrote about Sara Zyskind : The essence of Nazism was murder, and the target of Nazi murder was the image and essence of the human being; it was the image of the divine that makes this being human, which is to say, it was the being-for-the-other of human being. (...) Sara Zyskind remembers, "Our friendship and our care for one another enabled us to preserve something of our humanity..."David Patterson, Sun Turned to Darkness: Memory and Recovery in the Holocaust Memoir, Syracuse (New York), Syracuse University Press, 1998, p. 152. . The Zyskind quotation is taken from Sara Zyskind, Stolen Years, tr. M. Insar, Minneapolis (Minnesota), Lerner Publications, 1981, p. 223. .
Works (1977) העטרה שאבדה : בגיטו לודז׳ ובמחנות Stolen Years (1981; translation of ha-ʻAṭarah she-avda), Signet. Bet loḥame ha-geṭaʼot (1985) Struggle (1988; translation of Maʾavako shel naʻar), Lerner Pub Group. Światło w dolinie łez (1994)
See also History of children in the Holocaust Polish culture during World War II Ruth Minsky Sender
Notes
Bibliography "A Second Opinion" (letters to the editor), Children's Literature Association Quarterly (Baltimore (Maryland), The Johns Hopkins University Press), vol. 9, No. 4 (1984), page 203. D. H. R. [sic], "Sara Zyskind: Struggle", West Coast Review of Books (Los Angeles), vol. 14 (1988), page 44. ISSN 0095-3555. (Review of Struggle.) Bibliographic Guide to Soviet and East European Studies, vol. 3 (RZ), Boston, G. K. Hall, 1991, pages 418 & 838. ISSN 0162-5322. Mary Ann Paulin, More Creative Uses of Children's Literature, Hamden (Connecticut), Library Professional Publications, 1992, pages 41, 450. , . Women in the Holocaust: A Collection of Testimonies, comp. & tr. J. Eibeshitz & A. Eilenberg-Eibeshitz, vol. 2, Brooklyn (New York), Remember, 1994. , . Anna Eilenberg-Eibeshitz, Preserved Evidence: Ghetto Lodz, 2 vols., Haifa, H. Eibeshitz Institute for Holocaust Studies, 19982000. . David Patterson, Sun Turned to Darkness: Memory and Recovery in the Holocaust Memoir, Syracuse (New York), Syracuse University Press, 1998, passim. . (Detailed analysis of selected aspects of Zyskind's narratives.) David Patterson, "The Moral Dilemma of Motherhood in the Nazi Death Camps"; in: Problems Unique to the Holocaust, ed. H. J. Cargas, Lexington (Kentucky), University Press of Kentucky, 1999, page 12. . Karl Liedke, Das KZ-Außenlager Schillstraße in Braunschweig 19441945, Braunschweig, Appelhans, 2006. . (On Eliezer Zyskind.) David Patterson, Open Wounds: The Crisis of Jewish Thought in the Aftermath of Auschwitz, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2006, page 140. , . Andrzej Strzelecki, The Deportation of Jews from the Łódź Ghetto to KL Auschwitz and Their Extermination: A Description of the Events and the Presentation of Historical Sources, tr. W. Kościa-Zbirohowski, Oświęcim, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2006, pp. 12, 97. . (Cited as "Sara Plagier".) Isaiah Trunk, Łódź Ghetto: A History, tr. & ed. R. M. Shapiro, Bloomington (Indiana), Indiana University Press, 2006. , . (For background.) Gordon J. Horwitz, Ghettostadt: Łódź and the Making of a Nazi City, Cambridge (Massachusetts), The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008, pages 326, 327, 329, 362. , . Zoë Waxman, "Testimony and Silence: Sexual Violence and the Holocaust"; in: Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives: Violence and Violation, ed. S. Gunne & Z. Brigley Thompson, New York City, Routledge, 2010, page 118. , . Zoë V. Waxman, "Towards an Integrated History of the Holocaust: Masculinity, Femininity, and Genocide"; in: Years of Persecution, Years of Extermination: Saul Friedlander and the Future of Holocaust Studies, ed. C. Wiese & P. Betts, London & New York City, Continuum, 2010, page 317. , , , . The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., online Holocaust Encyclopedia, s.v. "Sara Rachela Plagier".
External links Sara Zyskind's wartime autograph (as "Sala Plagier") written at the age of 14 (in 1941) An undated photograph of Sara Zyskind (Sara Plagier)