Helen Wamstok Diker reflects on her Holocaust survival

Holocaust survivor Helen Wamstok Diker recently attended a birthday party hosted by Goodman Jewish Family Services in Broward County. The celebration, honoring Helen and five fellow centenarian survivors, was a testament to their resilience and strength. When I visited her Pembroke Pines home, Helen reflected on her survival and expressed the importance of family.

“I was born May 6, 1922 in Lodz, Poland. My father’s name was Liv and my mother was Gitla. I had one brother and three sisters. My father was a shoemaker in Lodz, which was the center of the textile industry in prewar Poland. He struggled to make a living, however we were a close-knit, happy family. I attended a public school for Jewish girls and never experienced antisemitism as a child. Lodz was the second largest Jewish community in prewar Poland (Warsaw was the largest). When I was 17, life in Lodz took a horrific turn: German troops occupied the city on September 8, 1939. This was one week after Germany invaded Poland on September 1.  In February 1940, the Germans established a ghetto in Lodz, forcing my family along with 160,000 Jews into a small area. The Germans established factories in the ghetto and used Jewish residents for forced labor. My work detail included sewing soldiers’ uniforms. Hard labor, overcrowding and starvation were the dominant features of life in the ghetto. In 1944, the Germans deported my family and most of the surviving ghetto residents to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Once we disembarked from the trains, my mother and brother were sent to the line on the right and I never saw them again. My sisters and I were sent to the line on the left and our lives were spared. I spent 11 days in Auschwitz and was then transported to Stutthof along with two of my sisters. Stutthof was a concentration camp located in a wooded area near the Baltic port of Gdansk. One of my sisters and I hid in an attempt to stay together. Our only source of nourishment was soup and water. Conditions in the camp were brutal and many prisoners died from typhus epidemics that swept the camp. I was liberated by the British army in 1945 and was the only survivor from my family”.

Helen reflected on her life after liberation.

“After the British liberated me, I was fed, given clothing and admitted to a hospital to recuperate. After the war I moved to Sweden. New immigrants like myself were housed in schools that were converted into dormitories. Sweden offered a good life for Holocaust survivors. Swedes were broadly critical of Nazism and I can’t recall any antisemitism. I met my husband (a survivor from Poland) in Sweden and we were married in 1947. My oldest of two sons was born there in 1948. After living in Sweden for a few years, we moved to New York in 1952 after my uncle sponsored our move. We settled in the Bronx and received $500 from HIAS, the nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian aid and assistance for refugees. My husband and I both found employment in a coat factory. Our youngest son was born in 1955. I moved to South Florida 25 years ago for my husband’s declining health. Our two sons became accountants. My oldest son was well respected in his community and when he passed away in 2020, 700 people attended his funeral. I have four grandchildren and four great grandchildren. My granddaughter, Tova, is a television writer and she recently won a Writers Guild Award for her work on ‘Inside Amy Schumer’”.

Helen expressed her words of wisdom.

“I share my story to inspire, educate and create unity among all people”.