Paula Frankel–Zaltzman, Holocaust survivor, Haftling NO. 94771 (Prisonor), in Yiddish, 1st ed., 1949
Memoirs of Nazi Concentration Camps
Experiences in German camps 1941-1945, Lithuania: Dvinsk, Riga, Kaiserwald ; Germany: Stutthof, Tarin, Bromberg
Canada, Montreal, 1949., 175 pp., 22 x 15 cm., orig. cover. First edition. Illustrated by photos.
Condition: Cover worn, rubbed, stained and foxed. Spine over taped. 2 repair strips near spine
Foxing stains throughout the book, some pages foxed more, some less, some minimal.
Some damping stains
This memoir by Paula Frankel-Zaltzman of her experiences in German labour
and concentration camps, published in Yiddish in 1949. It was published in
Montreal by a committee of supporters composed of many Latvian Jews who
provided financial assistance. The memoir was edited by M.M. Shafir, a teacher
in the Jewish People’s Schools and the Jewish Peretz Schools, and a well-known
Yiddish poet, author of many volumes of Yiddish verse. His difficult task was
to transliterate the memoir – written in Yiddish but using the Roman alphabet –
into the standard Yiddish version using the Hebrew alphabet.
PESYE ZALTSMAN-FRENKEL (PAULA FRANKEL-ZALTZMAN)
(b. February 23, 1916)
She was born in Dvinsk (Daugavpils), Latvia. She received a Jewish and a secular education. She later became a bookkeeper. After the Germans under Hitler occupied Latvia in 1941, she was confined in the Dvinsk and the Riga ghettos, from which she was deported in 1944 to the Stutthof death camp. By a fortunate turn of events, she was sent from there to work in a factory in Thorn (Toruń), where she survived until liberation in 1945. She remained in Germany until 1947 and then moved to Canada. From 1953 to 1957, she lived in Israel. In 1946 she began writing her memoirs from the ghetto years, which appeared in book form under the title Heftling numer 94771, iberlebenishn in daytshe lagern (Prisoner number 94771, experiences in German camps) (Montreal, 1949), 175 pp., with an introduction by Melekh Ravitsh. Aside from historical documentation, this book also has a literary value thanks to the unmediated descriptions full of numerous impressions of the tragic events, and—as noted by M. Ravitsh—it is a voice in the Jewish chorus that accuses the world for the suffering of the Jewish people. She was last living in Mexico City.