Kestenberg Archive

HZ was born in January 1935, in Czernowitz. She had an older brother. Her father was a glass and crystal specialist and her mother had a degree in economics. The family's financial condition was very good. In 1941, they crossed the Dneister river in boats. Her mother gave an Ukranian woman a fur coat and jewlery and therefore she agreed to hide them for a night. They eventually were sent to Mogilev concentration camp in Belorussia. There, she witnessed her cousin being raped. In the end of 1944, the Russians liberated them and took her father to rebuild camps and airports. The rest of the family returned to Czernowitz. The Russians wanted to take her mother to Odessa, but she managed to stay and work as a manicurist. Her mother begged for food. HZ and her brother went to school. After her father came back, they fled to Transylvania, settling in Ploieşti. HZ's father worked in a glass factory. The children at school would hit her because she was Jewish. They moved to Bucharest, where her mother worked as a manicurist. The JDC gave them clothes. ; In 1946, they returned to Ploieşti, and from there made Aliyah aboard the Galila ship. They arrived in Haifa and moved to a Ma'abara. HZ worked in an orchard. After the battle in Lod during the War of Independence, they moved into an Arab house. In 1953, HZ enlisted into the Nahal Brigade where she served as a medic in Kibbutz Gonen. In 1955, she started working as a clerk for the mayor of Jerusalem, Gershon Agron. Later, she worked in a bank eventually becoming a branch manager. At the same time, she went to a night school in Tel Aviv. HZ got married in 1973 and soon had twin girls. They moved to Petach Tikva. HZ receeved payments from the Germans and did not tell her family her experiences from the Holocaust.