Mary Baran's Story

From Roma's mother's Wiedergutmachung - German government holocaust reparations - affidavit.

I, Maria Rose Baran, née Klueger-Karas, teacher in Montreal, having been informed of the significance of declarations under oath, do declare the following:

When the war broke out I was living in Przemsyl, Leszczynski St. 13, and went to Lemberg [Lvov] in October of 1939 where I studied medicine; my address was Snopkowska 4. Lemberg was occupied on 28 June 1941 and we had to wear the star of David as of 1 July 1941. At the Gestapo [site] in Lemberg, three of my teeth were knocked out when my accordion was confiscated. Unfortunately I do not know the name of the official.

In autumn, October or November of 1941, I went back to Przemysl where I lived together with my parents first in Dworski St. 51 and then in Cerkiewna St. in the ghetto.

During this time I had to do hard work in a forced labor camp. Following two large-scale Jewish cleansing campaigns [Judenreinigungsaktionen], I left Przemysl in December of 1942 and lived with my parents in the village of Mogila near Krakow, in hiding with a family by the name of Sawitzki. I had to get the money from Krakow, however, and had to go to Krakow at great risk with illegal ID documents every month.

Once I left Mogila for a few days in order to bring money to the man who is now my husband, who was in hiding at the time in Sokoliki.


I remained in Mogila until it was liberated by the Russians on 19 January 1945.

Read to, approved by, and signed
[signature: Maria Baran]

Montreal, 11 October 1956

Roma wants to thank her friend Marlene Schoofs in Berlin for the translations and for wringing these files out of the German bureaucracy.