Descendants of Remembrance: 3G Survivor Talk with Galit Prince Hedaya

Ester was born in 1932 in Radomsko, Poland. She enjoyed a normal and peaceful childhood until the outbreak of World War II. When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Radomsko's Jews were forced out of their homes and into a walled ghetto within the city. Since her father was a photographer, the Nazi authorities initially spared her family from aktions and deportations. In late 1942, her mother was deported from the ghetto with a large group of Jews, and her brother was killed for sneaking out of the ghetto to find coal. A ghetto policeman tipped off her father that the Nazis were planning a final liquidation of the ghetto. He managed to secure false identification papers for Ester and her sister and smuggled them out.  

Ester went to live in the city of Czestochowa with the mother of her non-Jewish friend Krysia. A neighbor who suspected her reported Ester and Krysia's mother to the police. They were both arrested and after an interrogation, she was set free. With Krysia's help, Ester went to live in a convent in Radomsko. The nuns soon doubted her Catholic identity, and Krysia helped Ester move to Warsaw where her father was residing under a concealed identity. After a few months, Ester went to Austria, where her sister had been living, to volunteer for the Germans under her false identity. Ester and her sister were both liberated there by Soviet troops in April 1945. After the war, they went back to Radomsko where their father had already returned. They gradually immigrated to Israel, and while serving in the Israeli army Ester met and married Nisan Tepper. They had four children, and in 1976 moved to Los Angeles, California.

This is a Descendants of Remembrance (DOR@HMLA) program.

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