Disguises and Identities

Most Jews who went underground did not spend all their time in hiding, but instead tried to assume a false, non-Jewish identity. In order to not attract attention, it was absolutely vital for them to have identity and working papers, as well as food ration cards. Often, large sums of money were required to procure these documents. People who went underground sometimes also used ID cards of non-Jewish friends, which in turn gave them an opportunity to acquire other urgently needed documents. Sometimes the ID cards did not pass muster during checks by police and other authorities, exposing those in hiding.

As a Christian

Lola Gottlieb and her husband Samuel were forced to live in the Dombrowa ghetto (Dąbrowa Górnicza) in Upper Silesia as of the summer of 1942. In July 1943, the ghetto was cleared and its inhabitants were deported. A group of twenty people were left there for the cleanup operations. Among them were the Gottliebs, who managed to escape a short time later. Both of them procured false documents and went underground in the Silesian town of Krapkowice. Samuel Gottlieb was a construction worker there. Lola Gottlieb passed herself off as a Catholic and worked at first on a farm, then in a butcher’s shop and a kitchen. When she heard in August 1944 that her husband had been denounced and then arrested, she destroyed her forged ID papers. She wanted to flee by train but was caught and sent to a satellite camp of Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Lola Gottlieb and her husband both managed to survive.

As a Polish Forced Laborer

In the fall of 1940, Franciszka Rabiner was forced to move to the Warsaw Ghetto. Her husband Maurycy had already died in December of 1939, just a short time after he had been seriously abused during a house search. Franciszka Rabiner was able to flee the ghetto; she assumed a false identity as a non- Jewish Pole named Jadwiga Marcinkowska. In 1944 she was deported as a Polish forced laborer to Bad Cannstatt in Germany. She worked there in a ball bearing factory. Like all Eastern European forced laborers, she was poorly provided for and mistreated. Her assumed identity protected her nevertheless from being deported to an extermination camp. She managed to maintain her disguise until the end of the war. <br/>© Bejt Lochamej haGeta’ot, Kibbuz Lohamei Hagetaot, West Galiläa, 1198, Artifacts Section

With Forged Papers

Lilli Michalski lived in Görlitz and was persecuted as a Jew. In 1938 her non-Jewish husband was supposed to divorce her, but he refused and consequently lost his business. Herbert Michalski was hired by the Schwarzkopf company in Berlin, and Lilli Michalski moved to her family in Breslau (Wrocław). Her Jewish family members were deported one by one. In October 1944, Lilli Michalski was afraid that she too would be deported. She fled Breslau with her two sons. They were accompanied by Gerda Mez, a colleague of her husband. Their papers were checked in the train to Vienna. Gerda Mez presented her passport and then secretly passed it to Lilli Michalski. The gendarmes did not notice the deception because the trains were crowded and the two women were both wearing headscarves. The Michalskis survived in a number of hiding places, at times separated from one another.

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