Paula Fradkoff was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, an author, a linguist and a holocaust survivor. This is her story.
Paula was born 31 December 1918 in Lublin, Poland in a traditional Jewish family. Her father was a furniture designer and her mother’s family owned an edible oil-processing factory.
She had two brothers. The elder, Theodor (Thadek) Kleinman became a violinist and painter who left Poland before the Second World War and settled in Basel, Switzerland where he held a position with the Basel Philharmonic Orchestra. Thanks to his tireless efforts he got Paula a visa to Switzerland in 1946, after the war. Her younger brother, Hershel Yekutiel Kleinman was a member of the Jewish partisans and was assassinated by the Poles at the age of eighteen years.
In April 18, 1942 she was transferred with the surviving members of her family to Majdan Tatarski. In June 1942 her parents were assassinated there approximately in November 1942 and March 1943. They were about 50 years old. She was sent to Laskiewitz (part of Majdanek ) and then to Majdanek.
She was sent to a seamstress/tailoring workshop – sewing and repairing Nazi uniforms when she miraculously succeeded to run away, and she masqueraded as a Christian Pole with a lot of difficulty and help from many good people. When the whole area was liberated by the Russian troops, she returned to Lublin. There Paula was faced with the bitter tragedy – none of her numerous relatives in Poland, about eighty people – had survived. She decided to leave Poland. Through International Red Cross broadcasts she managed to get in touch with her brother Theodor in Switzerland.
Thus after overcoming countless difficulties she arrived in Basel, Switzerland beginning of 1946 with her meager belongings, the clothes she was wearing and a small cardboard suitcase containing few photos and documents…..
Paula Fradoff wrote a book, a historical novel relating life in Warsaw during the fateful Bor Komorovsky uprising. The book’s title is “To die for Warsaw” and the sub-title is “Fugit Amor” (in Latin "And love disappeared…").
The theme reflects the disappearance of human love/care/respect during these tragic times. She researched historic facts and descriptions in archives and documents during 12-15 years, from the UN and the Paris Libraries among others. She already had her novel in mind much before, as many drafts from the fifties were found in her files. The manuscript is in French, with many quotations in Polish, Latin, Yiddish, German and Russian.
For more details, please see her Biography.