Irka Reichman
Lwow & Warsaw Ghetto Survivor

Irka was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Lwow Poland. Within days of the German arrival in 1941, the Jews were herded into a ghetto. From her hiding place at the top of a cupboard, Irka aged nine, watched her neighbours being gunned down in the street. She saw their beards being cut off, their skin sheared away with their hair; she saw babies taken by the legs, their skulls smashed against a wall. One night the Germans came to her home. They took away her mother and father. Irka remained hidden in a cupboard where her mother had concealed her. She became what is now known as a 'rat child', surviving in the sewers, scavenging for food.

Irka never saw her parents again. She has no photographs of them and can't even remember what they looked like.

Having made it to the Warsaw ghetto and from there to the safekeeping of a convent, she can hardly believe she was that child. The story is incomplete but the pictures are vivid in her mind. She cries as she sees them.

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