Lola Kline z"l (April 4, 1941 - March 2, 2025)

It is with great sadness that we share the news that Lola Kline, one of Chhange’s beloved Survivor Speakers, passed away March 2, 2025. 

Lola was born in Nowogrodek, a town in Grodno Region, Belarus. After the German occupation, Lola’s parents escaped to the Polish forest with her uncles, the Bielski brothers, forming the renowned Jewish partisan group that rescued more than 1,200 Jewish men, women, and children. Since Lola was an infant who would have posed a danger to the partisan group, her family arranged to have her hidden with a Christian family. Post-war, the Christian family refused to return Lola to her parents, so Lola’s parents resorted to kidnapping to retrieve their daughter. Over time, she bonded with her natural parents, and once she learned more about her courageous family, her love, pride, and admiration for them was unbounded.

Lola was one of Chhange’s four Holocaust Survivor docents in our Journeys Beyond Genocide exhibit. She had been an active speaker for many years, recounting her family’s history to students visiting Chhange, as well as going out to schools throughout New Jersey to tell her story. The history of Lola’s family, the Bielski partisans, has been shared in books and in the movie "Defiance."