Klara is from Belarusia. When Klara was 10 yrs old she lived in the Ghetto with her family. One day they were all rounded up in a group and shot. (Some of the ghettos had pogroms [programs] for extermination, just like the concentration camps.) When the group was shot, her 5 yr old sister was killed right away. Klara was wounded and her mother mortally shot. Klara lay underneath her dying mother and other dead bodies for several days. She was eventually found by a neighbor who was pulling gold teeth from the dead people for money to buy food.

Later she was taken and passed among the neighbors. She spent a number of years going from one family to another, eventually getting out of the Ghetto. She worked during the day for various families in exchange for food, but was not always fed. At night she sometimes slept in the forest under the snow, next to a pile of coal, to keep warm. Sometimes when she was able to stay with a family, she would wake up and find they had left during the night and did not take her along, leaving her alone again. She was eventually discovered and returned to the Ghetto. During the time she was there she was often sick and had to work for others anyway. She again got out, was found again, and returned to the Ghetto a third time. Several years after the war, her father found her.

Klara’s interview was taped by Stephen Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation and is registered at Vad Yashem here in Israel. Since it is in Russian, one of the translators had an opportunity to hear part of it as it is a total of three hours. He was shaken by the content of the tape. Stephen Spielberg has spoken to Klara about using her story in another film.

Klara and her husband, Yacov, came here to Israel 13 years ago. He is now sick and in the nursing home in Beer Sheva. She only gets to see him when someone can give her a ride there to visit. Her only income is the Holocaust fund from Germany. It takes all the government money given to help with the cost of the nursing home plus some help from her daughter in Eilat. Her daughter had an accident at work last year that crushed her pelvis. Since that time she does not see her very much. Klara also has a son in Boston but lives alone in Israel.

She and her husband had one other son but he was killed in a car accident when he was small. She and her husband have been married 49 years though they rarely get to see one another.