Ellen Dorman

Her Story

I was born on December 28, 1926, in Tarnow, Poland, the only child to an adoring family. In Tarnow, where I grew up, I led a privileged and sheltered life.

Before World War II, about 25,000 Jews lived in my town, comprising almost half the population. Moreover, Jews had been living in Tarnow since the mid-fifteenth century. Before the war, I cannot recall any antisemitism, but I was sent to Jewish schools and only had Jewish friends. In fact, until the German invasion, the only non-Jew I knew was my father’s worker.

My community varied from secular Jews to religious Hasidim. My family fell somewhere in between; my father, Pincus, was a religious Zionist, and my mother, Chaia, came from an Orthodox family.

My mother very often took me to visit her family who lived about thirty kilometers from Tarnow, near a town called Mielec. My mother was very close with her family, and that is perhaps why I have such vivid memories of them. They had a farm and most summers we spent a few days with them. They had a beautiful garden with wild flowers. Every time I see flowers, I remember my grandmother’s garden.

My mother loved it there and we visited a lot, especially during the summer. There were no other children there and nothing for me to do, so I hated every minute there. There wasn’t one year that I gave my mother peace in Krynica.

My mother had very light features: blond, reddish hair and blue eyes. She was a pretty woman, but not very happy. I wasn’t close to my mother. She wanted me to be perfect, which of course I was not.

I looked more like my father; we both had dark complexions, brown hair and brown eyes.

Most of my father’s family did not survive the war. He had three brothers and one sister. My father ran a business with one of his brothers, but then went into business on his own, making leather goods, such as attaché cases, shopping bags and school bags.

My father and I had a very special relationship. I just adored him and always came to him with all my problems. He never raised his hand to me, never screamed at me, and was always very patient. He used to walk me to school and carry my school bags until I was at least in the sixth grade.

Father did not want me to go to public schools due to the antisemitism that Jewish students experienced there. He wanted to shelter me from the world of hate, so I was sent to a private Hebrew school called Safa Berura. I remember the school being expensive. Because my parents could not always pay tuition on time, I remember being called into the principal’s office, and the principal would scold me and tell me that I needed to bring money for school. This used to make me very upset.

Father’s dream was to move to Palestine, which was another reason that he sent me to the Hebrew school. Though I was not a great student, he made me study Hebrew diligently. My mother however, being so close to her family, did not want to leave Poland.

On August 28, 1939, while in Krynica, we heard that the railroad station in Tarnow was bombed. Tarnow was a crossroads between Vienna and Moscow, as well as other major destinations in Europe. I remember everyone talking about the probability of war, because Germany had already annexed Austria and all of Czechoslovakia. It was apparent to many that Poland was next.

As it turned out, we didn’t have long to wait. September 1, 1939, is a date I’ll never forget—the day the war actually broke out. I was twelve and a half years old. I didn’t know much of what was going on except that the Germans had invaded.

In November 1939, all Jews in Tarnow were forced to wear a white armband with the Star of David on it. Later, in 1941, we also had to sew a Star of David on the left side of all our outer clothes. The next thing I recall is the burning of all the synagogues. The outer wall of our apartment building was attached to an Orthodox synagogue. We were sure that our building was going to catch on fire too, but thankfully, it didn’t.

The Germans eventually closed our schools. My mother hired a tutor for me and seven other Jewish children. One of the other children in my class, Todek Dorman, was the brother of the man who was to eventually become my husband.

Conditions under German occupation worsened. Germans started arbitrarily picking people off the streets to do manual labor. I was once caught and taken to the home of a Gestapo officer to clean for the day. I quickly learned which streets to avoid.

The Germans took over the largest and most beautiful Jewish homes in Tarnow and forced the Jews to move out. Jews were only allowed to live in certain areas of Tarnow, which became incredibly crowded. My father’s sister Rivka, her husband and two sons came to live with us in our two-room apartment. We didn’t live in the most fancy neighborhood, but the Germans took our valuables. My mother loved to do needlepoint, and the Germans took all of them. Only one needlepoint survived the war. My mother sent it to her brother in the United States before the war. It’s now been promised to one of my sons.

At some point, and I’m not sure when, someone had left a violin in my house. I always wanted to learn how to play. I started teaching reading and arithmetic to a young boy in my building and used the money I earned to pay for my violin lessons.

My violin instructor was a Mr. Eisenbach. That is how I met Frania Eisenbach, a girl who became as close to me as an actual sister.

I always felt my father had somewhat of a sixth sense. He had special boots made that he wanted me to wear all the time. They were so heavy and warm that I resisted wearing them, but he insisted. As a result, those boots became part of my daily attire, even in the summer. Ultimately, they saved my life. He also felt I needed to learn a trade. One of our neighbors had a little tailoring factory in the ghetto. Father gave him money so he could teach me how to become a finisher. I went to work in the morning and returned home before curfew. No Jews were allowed to own businesses, so this was all done behind closed doors.

My mother was able to pass as a Polish Christian, using the birth certificate of the deceased sister of my father’s former employee. In this way she was able to avoid living in the Jewish ghetto.

My father and I had little to eat. Knowing she was risking her life, as it was a major violation of German policy, my mother would occasionally sneak into the ghetto and bring food. On one of these visits she was caught and murdered for helping a Jew. I’ve always blamed myself for her fate.

Life became increasingly difficult. By 1941, there were about 45,000-50,000 Jews in Tarnow. The Germans brought in all the Jews from the small towns and villages whom they didn’t kill. You can imagine the poverty. The streets were full of people living there.

By 1942, we knew something terrible was going to happen. We did not yet know about the death camps, but we did hear about other terrible things. In June 1942 German trucks and tanks surrounded the main streets of Tarnow. They brought dogs and loudspeakers and started pulling people out of their homes. We didn't know what was going on; we tried to stay quiet in our apartment. We then started to hear shooting, a lot of shooting. As a result of the aktion, or round-up of the Jews, about 11,500 Jews were deported to the death camp at Belzec. Hundreds of people were shot. It took the Germans three days to complete the killing. We were told not to look out our windows, but I peeked out and actually saw a river of blood coming down the street. After the killing, the Germans put up the ghetto.

Once the quarantine was over, I traded my worn-out shoes with a woman who gave me an almost-new pair of side-buttoned, high-topped shoes. In retrospect, I’m a little sorry I didn’t keep my boots. I was also given a blouse, which I still have.

I wasn’t going to leave Bergen-Belsen until I heard from my father. I waited there from April 15th until September, just before the Jewish holidays. I finally left for a place nearby. There I was living under minimal conditions again. Hungry, never enough food, only one dress.

Then came the realization that there is nobody alive. We only had one thing—to live through the war. Some of the other girls found family members. Unfortunately, I didn’t. There was one girl whom I had met in Hindenburg who had not found family either; her name was Susha.

Together, we traveled to the U.S. Zone, to a town called Bad Nauheim. It was well-known as a place where people would go to take the curative waters to help their heart conditions.

When Susha and I reached Bad Nauheim, there were maybe four men there who were Jews, and they all worked in the Army camps for the Americans. We had to register in the town to live or work there. I got a job with the US Army—cleaning tables in the soldiers’ mess hall. I was so pleased to have that job! I finally felt a sense of liberation that I could work and support myself. Susha and I rented a room together in a small villa for refugees.

On the way home from a shopping trip to Frankfurt, we walked to a DP camp called Zalcheim, looking for a place to sleep. It was a huge, well-known DP camp and we were told that they would help us. Refugees from all over Europe lived there. We walked forever until we reached the mess hall, where Jews were allowed to eat for free. It was tremendous hall with hundreds of people. All of a sudden I saw a young man who looked familiar; it was Victor Dorman from my hometown. He was sitting with a good friend of both of ours, Jack Birenhak, and another group of people.

They found room for us to sleep at their house. The next morning there was a truck leaving for Bad Nauheim. Victor went with us and never returned to Zalcheim. He stayed and got a job with the US Army in Bad Nauheim.

Then I got sick. I had an enlarged heart. I saw a doctor and was told that I should not have any children because of my heart. I was bedridden for quite a while.

When I was feeling better, Victor and I decided to get married.

Victor and I were “adopted” by an American soldier named Smith. When he learned that we were going to the United States, he asked us to visit his parents who lived in Bronxville, New York. My uncle Nathan had gotten visas for us and we finally came to the United States with an immigrant ship that left from Germany in June 1946. We made a point of visiting Smith's parents and thanking them for their son’s kindness.

We lived with my aunt and uncle at first, but eventually moved into our own apartment four blocks from them.

I had problems from the beginning. I cried constantly. We needed love and a psychiatrist. Sometimes Victor was afraid to walk in the street because he forgot his armband. Every time a policeman came by we would have the shivers. Little things that always counted in the ghetto came back to us. It was painful to remember.

When I was in the hospital about to give birth to my first son, Steven, an anesthesiologist came into the delivery room, took one look at my scar from the appendectomy I had at Plaszow and said, “I know you! I was the doctor who did this surgery!” his name was Dr. Schindler, and he told me that the other intern from Plaszow, Dr. Lefkowitz, was also working at the hospital. We had a wonderful reunion!

I spoke about my experiences during the war for the first time in Pitttsburgh when a friend of mine, an evangelical Christian invited me to speak at her children’s school. I have continued to share my story since that time in 1957.

We moved back to New Jersey, built a network of friends, but still maintained a connection with our marvelous friends from the war years.

Though I created a whole new life in the United States, I always kept hope alive that my father would be found. In 1996, I read in a newspaper article that East Germany was releasing documents with the names and dates of concentration camp inmates. The article stated to get in touch with the Red Cross for more information. Documentation about my father’s fate finally arrived; it was very detailed—it listed his birth date, where he was sent throughout the war, his prisoner number and where he died on March 3, 1945. I was terribly upset, but it finally gave me closure. My father was someone that I loved so much, and finally, 52 years later, with the document in my hands, he once again became a person; not just someone who was only in my imagination. One of my most haunting memories was finally laid to rest.