Luba Keller was born in May 1926 in Szydłowiec, Poland. She attended school there. She had never seen airplanes as it was a small town. One Friday, Keller was watching her younger sister. Her older sister was helping cook for Shabbat and her middle sister was cleaning the house. Keller saw large amounts of airplanes coming overhead. She was only 11 years old. They threw down candies, but she was afraid. She ran inside and told her mother who said "oh, they're here". Her parents and older siblings had been reading the papers. Her mother told them all to stay in the house. On Saturday the Germans came into town and told everyone to go up the main street. They were counting all of the people and then they sent them home. One month later they came into the city again and went into the houses were the Jewish people lived. They lined them up and asked their ages. Keller's sister was a year and a half old. The Germans told her to stay in line, but she ran to her mother. A German started to hit her to make her stay in line. She kept going back to her mother who pushed her down to the ground out of desperation. She started bleeding from the nose, ran outside and hid in the garden. The Nazis left and Keller's older brother went outside and prayed. He saw his little sister hiding. The sister would not go to her mother now and would only sleep when with her older brother. Keller had no idea what was happening or what a Nazi was. They then started having to wear a Jude whenever they were outside of the home. They were afraid to go out at night. [Annotator's Note: Keller's story gets hard to follow. It sounds like she is saying that the Nazis would pick people up and take them to non-Jewish Poles and basically offer them up for slave labor.]

Luba Keller was 11 years old in 1937 when the Nazis came into her town of Szydłowiec, Poland. Keller went to the synagogue one Saturday and some Germans came with a truck. They took her and two men in the truck and dropped them between Radom and Szydłowiec. They gave them to some Polish people to work in their fields. The people had the two men stay in a chicken coop, but took Keller upstairs and gave her a blanket and dinner. The men came to her and told her that the Polish people would go to church the next day and they could escape and go home. Keller became afraid but she went along. It got dark and she was not sure of where to go but told the men that she did. She was walking barefoot, and it took her a long time to find the house. She could not reach the door on her own home, so she knocked on the window of her neighbor's house. The neighbors helped her. Her mother put compresses on her feet. She could not be taken to a doctor at this time, so her feet were swollen for days.

Luba Keller was 11 years old when some Nazis abducted her in her hometown of Szydłowiec, Poland. They took her and two men to some non-Jewish Poles for slave labor. Keller and the two men escaped when the Polish family went to church. Keller says she asked God how this could happen when she went to synagogue and prayed. The Nazis would come suddenly with trucks and take people away, so they were afraid to go outside. She only went to synagogue accompanied by her parents now. The Germans left the town alone for a couple of months but then they returned and tried to burn the schools. Keller and others took as much water as they could carry to try and put the fire out. One school was burned to the ground, but one did not burn completely. Her father asked her mother where God was. He then made a joke that it was the fault of the women and that the good deeds of the men had saved the school. Keller asked him what he said, and he told her it was a joke, but she never forgot it. [Annotator's Note: Keller asks the interviewer "where was God?"]

Luba Keller and the working-age Jewish population of Szydłowiec, Poland were taken to an ammunition factory in Skarżysko, Poland [Annotator's Note: now Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland]. Keller was too short for the factory work so she took bullets off the production line and put them in cans. She had to kneel on the table. They only received a small amount of soup and a piece of bread for one daily meal. They wore the same clothes all of the time. They slept in bunk beds with no blanket. One day they were told to go home. A month after that everyone was called out to the main street of town. The Nazis took the men and women who were 19 years old and separated them out. The others went home. Keller's parents could not go to sleep because their children were there. The Germans would leave and then come back and do this all again and again. Many people were afraid to go and pray but also felt that if they did not go and pray something bad would happen. This went on from 1939 until 1942. [Annotator's Note: Keller returns to talking about waiting for the 19-year-olds to return from being separated out in her story.] After her sister came home, she was told she had to sign-in at six o'clock the next morning or the Nazis would come to the home and kill everyone. Keller offered to go in her place. Her sister said no, but Keller said she would wear different clothes and could pass as her. Keller was very afraid as she knew something was going to happen to the 19-year-olds. Keller went up to the main street that morning and was ordered to get on a truck. Her sister's friends were already in the truck. They were taken to the ammunition factory, picking up more people along the way. Keller started crying and wondering what she had done to herself. She would not see her family again.

Luba Keller was taken to the ammunition factory in Skarżysko, Poland. [Annotator's Note: Now Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland. Germans carried out mass executions of the population of the town in 1940.] The truck she was on had stopped to get more people so many times, that Keller thought it was very far away from her home. Polish non-Jews were working there too but the Jews were separated out. Keller saw that the Polish workers were receiving pay. The fences between them were electrified. [Annotator's Note: Keller speaks of going home but it overlaps with her previous stories earlier in her oral history. It is not clear what she means.] They were given a very thin slice of bread for lunch. She sometimes cannot believe what she went through. She saw some Polish people eating lunch and she asked them were she was. When she realized she was actually close to her home, she asked them to take a letter to her parents. She said her father would give them some money if they would. She asked them to bring her paper and pencil the next day. She wrote to her parents and one of the men delivered it. She received a letter from her father saying that maybe God was up there after all. She lied in her letter and told her father she was fine. [Annotator's Note: Keller gets emotional.] A year or two later, the Nazis killed everybody. Her parents were taken from their home and killed outside while the other children were inside. The Polish man who had been carrying her letters back and forth did not want to tell her. [Annotator's Note: She repeats the story a couple of times.] At one point, something was spilled in the factory and the two groups were outside together. Keller's courier told her that her parents had been killed on Yom Kippur [Annotator's Note: Yom Kippur o the "Day of Atonement" is the holiest day in the Jewish faith]. The younger men had been ordered to clean up the bodies.

Luba Keller was sent to camp Work A in Skarżysko, Poland [Annotator's Note: now Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland]. They lived in barracks and had to walk two hours each way to the factory. There were three separate camps. The girls were raped at the factories. Keller was only 12 years old. She describes the factory boss [Annotator's Note: the company that ran the factories was HASAG, Hugo Schneider AG, the third largest user of forced labor in Europe] as Hitler-like [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler]. He was very tall and could look in the windows. [Annotator's Note: She repeats herself.] In the barracks they had bunk beds and the children were in the bottom beds. She did not like the bottom bed as some people would go to the bathroom right in the beds. She finally got a top bunk. At one point there were so many people coming into the camp that they had two people per bed. Keller had to hold on to keep from falling out of the top bunk. One of the girls was in love with the cook. She told Keller the cook could come in at night. The cook came in and was holding onto Keller to keep from falling off the bunk, while having intercourse with the other girl. Keller was frightened that he was going to do that to her next. She was able to extricate herself and get on the floor where she slept that night. The cook got soup for the girlfriend and offered some to Keller, but she refused, thinking that he put something in it that would make her want to have sex with him. When she would see him coming after that, she would go to the floor. The girlfriend tried to get her to eat the soup. Keller says that the Germans put poison in the regular soup so the women would not menstruate. The girlfriend started giving Keller her regular soup which meant she got two soups per day instead of one. She then left Częstochowa, Poland for Germany. [Annotator's Note: Częstochowa is a city county in Poland. This is the first time Keller mentions the name. The area is the site of Bloody Monday, or the Częstochowa Massacre, of 4 September 1939 where the Nazis murdered 1,140 Polish civilians, about 150 of them Jewish.]

Luba Keller says that the Nazis came to the work camps over time, and took people out. Some were killed and some were taken to Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz was a complex of over 40 concentration camps and extermination camps in German-occupied Poland]. Ultimately, took everyone to Germany. The cook came to the barracks and told Keller and one of the girls he was having sex with, that he could get them out. Keller did not want this because being out of the camp in Poland was bad too and was afraid the cook wanted to have sex with her too. Keller climbed to a window and broke it. She got out and went up some stairs. The Nazi truck was still outside loaded with prisoners. She was running when a German stopped her and put in her in the truck. Another German who recognized her told her that all of Poland was burning and that she would be burned if she stayed there. Once in Germany, the whole thing started all over again. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks her if she ever thought about why the Nazis hated Jews. She does not really answer the question.] The Nazis never really talked to her. [Annotator's Note: She returns the story to the beginning of being placed in the factories at Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland]. The girls were made to get undressed. She had never seen an older girl naked before this. There were three bosses who came in and looked over the girls. They all came over to look at Keller and she was very frightened. One of them called her a no-good Jew and told her to get dressed and go downstairs to the factory. She went to work with the men. Keller's cousin was there, and he came and asked her what had happened to her. She said nothing. Another girl came down a few hours later and her cousin asked her. She told him she had been raped but that Keller had not. Keller asked her cousin what had happened to the older girls but did not understand what rape meant. Back at the barracks, a girl explained it to her, and Keller became insanely frightened.

When Luba Keller was walking from her concentration camp to work in the munitions factory she would talk to God and ask why she wasn't being helped. For five months she had to walk two hours each way to work in the factories. No sleeping, no eating other than a half a slice of bread. She kept telling herself it was not happening. She was taken to Germany at one point. [Annotator's Note: Another oral history by Keller indicates she was in Feldafing, a subcamp of Dachau and then deported to Bergen-Belsen, Bergen, Germany.] Three or four men on bicycles told her the Russians were close and were coming. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks her to expound on her talks with God.] She would talk to God when walking from one camp to the other. [Annotator's Note: In the other oral history she explains she was on the death march to Allach, a sub-camp of Dachau.] It was winter and they had no shoes. Keller says that once in the camp, her clothes were too big for her. Another woman had clothes too small and asked to switch but because Keller was sleeping on the floor, the large clothes kept her warmer and she said no. The woman died a few days later.

Luba Keller says she was liberated by the Russians in Feldafing, Germany. The Russians came in the morning and the Americans came in the evening and were throwing candy to them. The Germans had thrown candy to them when they came into Poland too. That candy was poisoned. When the Americans were throwing candy, Keller had no idea of who they were. [Annotator's Note: Keller forgets that she has already related how her parents were killed by the Nazis. The interviewer asks her to return to her talking with God.] Keller was so tired when being moved between the camps by the Nazis, that she told God she would have to die on the ground. She asked God to help her and got no response. She kept walking and thought that maybe God was afraid of Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] too. This actually made her feel better. She heard that the Germans had killed the group who had gone before her group. She was told a number one morning but she could not think clearly. She still remembers the number though, 143683. The girls who could not remember the numbers were separated out. Keller went over to the other section where she asked the boys where the girls had gone. She was told they were sent to Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz was a complex of over 40 concentration camps and extermination camps in German-occupied Poland]. She did not know what that was, so the boys explained it. It had been snowing so Keller had written the numbers in the snow with her foot so she would remember them. She attributes this to her surviving the Holocaust because it meant she did not get sent to the extermination camps.

The Russians liberated the camp where Luba Keller was held. Keller was hiding because the bombs were falling around them and there was shooting. Her cousin was killed by the guards who were trying to kill them all before they could be freed. The SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel, the German paramilitary organization] had been removed from their quarters and that was where the Russians stayed. She could not walk, and a Russian carried her out. She did not understand Russian. Her clothes were wet. She thought he was taking her to be raped. He covered her with a blanket and brought her food. Keller was still afraid and did not go out to see the Russian who had helped her. She was worried they would think he was her boyfriend. He gave her a letter and said they would see each other again. They received baths and nice beds. A boy who had been scheduled to go to Auschwitz was sent in to make the beds for them. This boy talked to her and it made her feel good. She was finally able to sleep. The next day they were sent to eat but Keller just wanted to sleep more. She dozed but woke up and thought she saw a German in the room, but it was her friend Benim. He asked her if she wanted to go to Israel. She was worried that if she left and anyone tried to find her, they would think something had happened. He told her she would be free in Israel and that the UNRRA [Annotator's Note: United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration] would know where she had gone. Benim had a friend for her, a Yeshiva boy, to talk to her. He was a smoker, which Keller did not like. [Annotator's Note: Keller repeats that the Germans gave them cigarettes which they kept. It's likely she means the Americans.]

Luba Keller says that after being liberated from the concentration camp, more people came in from Radom, Poland, so more beds were needed. A woman from Radom asked if she could join Keller. Keller had a big bed for the first time, and she said she could sleep in her bed too. She and her male friend were holding onto the cigarettes they had been given. Every month they would be given cigarettes and they could have used them to buy something good, but they used them to get more pictures instead. Her friend told her his family's story and his own concentration camp story. She got married and was living in Germany. She was not actually married but her friend acting as her husband wanted to go to America where his three uncles lived. She thought he was a nice man as he would not touch her, so she decided to go with him. It was not an easy life. In New York, she discovered she had an aunt there. [Annotator's Note: It gets difficult to follow her story line here.] Her aunt's sister had a store. Keller lived across the street. Her uncle took them in. They slept on the couch. She did not know anyone because it was her husband's family. Before leaving Europe, they were told that married couples would leave first, so they said they were married. [Annotator's Note: She repeats her previous story.] No one knew how old Keller actually was, so they were told to use a European holiday date of 15 May. Another person suggested 1926, so that is how her birthdate of 15 May 1926 came about. He registered them as married to board the SS Marine Flasher. Keller did not see that she was signing that they were actually getting married. When they spent their first Friday in America, they were readying for Shabbat dinner and Keller told her husband that in America, they had a God. The new Jewish arrivals were called "The Green" and everyone wanted to see them. Keller was so tired that she could not eat. Her husband suggested they eat off of one plate to not waste food. She just wanted to go to sleep but more company came. The company thought they were being rude. Keller could not eat the next day either. Her uncles saw the papers from the ship and asked her when she got married. Keller explains and then the following week, they had an actual marriage.

Luba Keller was motivated to tell the stories of her time in the concentration camps because her synagogue suggested she tell schoolchildren. Her grandchildren attended Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California and they had been asked if they had family in the Holocaust. The teacher asked to speak with Keller. The principal of the school was not Jewish, and she told her story. He told her she went through hell and said that one child's mother was a Holocaust denier. He said he wanted the children to know the truth and to tell the parents. Two Filipino girls came to her and hugged her. She told her stories to the children for six years.