Woolf Raychbarta
Lask Ghetto Poland Survivor

Woolf Raychbarta escaped from the Lask ghetto just before the Germans liquidated it in 1942. His father and two brothers were sent to Auschwitz as were most of his family, except for his mother who had come to London for a Bar Mitzvah just before the war and couldn't return. Wolf recalls how in the ghetto they were made to watch public hangings. "One day they hanged two young brothers for stealing some food, they forced the little children to stand and watch them die."

With forged papers for six months Woolf got work with a German timber company, he then joined a transport of slave labour going to western Germany, escaping to work as an interpreter in a German hospital.

After liberation, and with the help of an American office, he made his way to Paris were he became gravely ill. In December 1946 Wolf joined his mother in London.

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