Tola Herszenberg was born in Lodz [Annotator's Note: Łódź, Poland] in October 1921. She had an older brother. She was the only member of her family to survive [Annotator's Note: World War 2]. When the war broke out, things got bad for the Jewish community very quickly. She did not see any distant relatives at all during the war. She remained in Lodz during and after the war until she went to Germany. Before the war, her father had a factory which manufactured ladies' coats. During the occupation, times were very bad for the Jews. Starvation was ever-present. The Lodz Ghetto [Annotator's Note: Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto] contained all the Jewish population, with very few exceptions. Every day in the ghetto was very bad. Food was rationed and minimal. Some bread and other items could be obtained from a black market. Herszenberg was put into a room with her parents and brother. The room contained more than one family in the beginning. She had to work in the factory nearby every day. She worked on ladies' coats bound for Poland and Germany. She had no choice but to follow the orders of the German overseers. Some in the Lodz Ghetto were fortunate to survive the war. Rumkowski [Annotator's Note: Chaim (Hayim) Mordechaj (Mordecai) Rumkowski] was in charge of the factory workers. He had been a nobleman and president of an orphanage in Lodz before the war. He was president of the ghetto. Herszenberg and her parents had to sew the coats by hand even though her mother had never performed that work prior to the war. Hunger was constant throughout the day. Questions about her experiences during the occupation and ghetto life bring back many unpleasant memories. Every day, people would be extracted from the ghetto destined for the concentration camps. Herszenberg's family was sent to Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oswiecim, Poland]. She was fortunate and lucky that she was not sent there as well. She learned of the deaths of her family over the radio. Herszenberg was very happy when she was liberated by the Russians [Annotator's Note: 19 January 1945]. The Russians were nice to her. The Lodz Ghetto survived by a miracle. She danced in the streets when she was liberated.

Tola Herszenberg was liberated from Lodz [Annotator's Note: Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto in Łódź, Poland on 19 January 1945] where she was born. She was lucky to have survived. She lived because she was kept working in a factory making clothes for the German people. She and her husband came to the United States in the 1940s. She had married him while still in the ghetto in July 1943. A son was born in 1946. They decided to come to America because it was the best country in the world. She has a nice family. She is getting old [Annotator's Note: Herszenberg laughs] and it is hard to remember details of the past. Lodz was a big city with over 200,000 people before the war. She was fortunate to be among the few to survive. Her husband developed tuberculosis [Annotator's Note: bacterial disease of the lungs] in the ghetto. He was operated on in Germany, but he later died from the disease. It is important to remember the circumstances the Jewish people went through during the Holocaust [Annotator's Note: also called the Shoah; the genocide of European Jews during World War 2]. Museums help continue the story of what happened. Herszenberg was the only member of her family to survive the war.