Trauma, Memory, and the Art of Survival: The Memoir of Holocaust Survivor Gabriella Karin

“Hitler did not get my body, and he will not get my soul.” This is Gabriella Karin's motto for living a happy life. Gabriella was born in 1930 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. Her parents owned a delicatessen located next to the police station. When the war broke out, her mother was able to get deportation lists from the police department and warn the families in advance. Gabriella’s parents soon secured false papers for her and sent her to a convent in Bratislava. Afterwards, they decided to hide together in the apartment of Karol Blanar, a young, courageous lawyer. Knowing the vital consequences, he illegally sheltered eight Jews in his small apartment. Gabriella lived in this apartment for nine months until Russian troops liberated Bratislava. Soon after the war, she married and moved to Israel and then to Los Angeles.

Gabriella's book is available for purchase at gabriellakarin.com.

Photo by David Miller, Jewish Journal

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