Halina Birenbaum is a Holocaust survivor, writer, poet and translator. Born in Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

, Birenbaum spent her childhood in the Warsaw Ghetto

Warsaw Ghetto

The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 15, 1940, in the territory of General Government of the German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity...

 and later on in Nazi concentration camps

Nazi concentration camps

Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...

: Majdanek

Majdanek

Majdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during the German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army...

, Auschwitz

Auschwitz concentration camp

Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...

 (Oświęcim), Ravensbrück

Ravensbrück concentration camp

Ravensbrück was a notorious women's concentration camp during World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück ....

 and Neustadt-Glewe

Neustadt-Glewe

Neustadt-Glewe is a German town, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in the district of Ludwigslust-Parchim.-Sights and monuments:* The Alte Burg, a 13th-century castle, considered to be the oldest military castle in Mecklenburg....

, from which she was liberated in 1945. In 1947 she moved to Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, where she started a family.

In March 2001 she was awarded a title of Person of Unity 2001 by Polish Rada

Rada

Rada is the term for "council" or "assembly"borrowed by Polish from the Low Franconian "Rad" and later passed into the Czech, Ukrainian, and Belarusian languages....

 Chrzescijan i Żydów.

Books

• Hope is the last to die (Nadzieja umiera ostatnia), 1967. Translated into English, German, French, Japanese, and Hebrew
• Return to ancestors' land (Powrót do ziemi praojców), 1991
• Scream for remembrance (Wołanie o pamięć)

Poems

• Even when I laugh (Nawet gdy się śmieję)
• Not about flowers (Nie o Kwiatach)
• How in words (Jak można w słowach)

External links

• http://www.zchor.org/birenbaum/halina.htm
• http://www.dialog.org/dialog/hbirenbaum.htm