Holocaust survivor pays tribute to lost family

  • Published
  • By Matt Tulis
  • 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
RAF MILDENHALL, England --  Small and frail looking, this year’s speaker at the Holocaust remembrance luncheon held at the Galaxy Club here May 3, spoke plainly, with strength and conviction, about her experiences as a survivor and eyewitness. 

Speaking softly and clearly with a slight accent revealing her upbringing in Krakow, Poland, Janina Fischler-Martinho recounted the events during World War II that took lives of her family and friends among the estimated 6 million Jews eradicated by the Nazis. 

Ms. Martinho, now in her 60s, spent two years of her life in Krakow’s ghetto where Jews were required to live and remain when not working. In 1943, the ghetto was “liquidated” and the Jewish residents were dispersed, mainly to concentration camps. Ms. Martinho was 12 years old. 

“I had two years from 1943 to 1945 totally on my own,” she said. “I was a kind of vagrant. I tramped from village to village and I worked on farms until I was liberated by the Russians in January 1945.” 

Soviet liberation didn’t bring an immediate improvement to her life. 

“In a sense it was the hardest time of all (because) I realized my entire family had perished and nobody wanted someone else’s child,” said Ms. Martinho. “Food was scarce; times were hard.” 

One stroke of good fortune was her older brother, Joseph, was found clinging to life in Mauthausen concentration camp, just outside of Linz, Austria that same year. 

“He was liberated by the Americans on May 5” said Ms. Martinho. “He had just one tiny spark of life in him left.” 

American military doctors looked after Joseph for 12 weeks, she said, and eventually brother and sister were reunited in Krakow. 

After two weeks they escaped from the city and embarked on an odyssey through Czechoslovakia, Austria and Italy. Eventually they settled in Scotland in 1946 and London in 1949. 

Although she doesn’t speak at many functions these days, Ms. Martinho said her purpose is to share what happened to her and how she survived. 

Maj. Eric Hauff, 488th Intelligence Squadron, who attended the luncheon, said Ms. Martinho’s story resonated with him. 

“Her heartfelt stream-of-thought testimony of the horror she and her family experienced put into perspective what exactly happened, not just what has been written into history,” he said. 

Although the history of the Holocaust will never completely fade, Ms. Martinho acknowledged fewer and fewer people are left to share their direct experiences with and make an impact on future generations. 

“It’s bound to be (that way) isn’t it,” she said. “I have made my contribution. I have done what I could. I can’t do any more.”