Biographies | Regina Feldman

One morning the Gestapo came to our door. We were ordered to pack one suitcase each, and immediately assemble in the courtyard outside. There I saw my friends, relatives and neighbours. We were marched to an area of our city designated to be a Jewish ghetto. There we were assigned living quarters consisting of one large room, which we as a family of five had to share with another family of four. I saw nothing unusual about the situation. I simply thought my parents had decided to move. We were forbidden to own a radio, to go outside of the ghetto, or to attend school. We were given coupons for rationed food. I can still see my mother dividing the bread for the day. We got used to living in these conditions. My dad and one of my brothers were picked up every morning to work in a factory making uniforms for the Germans.

III. Concentration Camps

IV. The End of the War

V. Immigration to Canada

VII. Becoming Canadian

Gestapo
From the German Geheime Staatspolizei or secret state police during the Nazi period. A branch of the SS, a quasi-military unit of the Nazi party, which dealt with political opponents using terror and arbitrary arrest. Adolf Eichmann commanded the section of the Gestapo charged with implementing the "Final Solution" the deportation and mass murder of European Jews.

Ghetto
The Nazis revived the medieval term ghetto to describe the compulsory "Jewish Quarters" often in the poorest section of the city, where Jews from the surrounding areas were forced to live. Surrounded by barbed wire or walls, the ghettos were sealed before the deportation of Jews to the concentration camps. Established mostly in Eastern Europe, the ghettos were characterized by overcrowding, starvation and forced labour.