Anna Sultanik, née Tiger, was born May 20, 1929 in Krakow, Poland as the older of two children of Dr. Tiger and Sara Meth Tiger. Her pre-war memories include her family’s sheltering of German-Jewish refugees en-route to America. She describes the sudden changes in her secure, upper-middle class life with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 including her father’s escape, confiscation of the family’s possessions, forced sharing of the family’s apartment with five other families when the Krakow ghetto was established, involuntary participation in medical experiments. In March 1940, she begins to work in Plaszow work camp connected to the Krakow Ghetto after mother volunteers to join her 6-year-old brother in transport from the ghetto. She describes work in detail and mentions Amon Goeth, camp commander, later tried and executed as a war criminal. She details her narrow escapes from death after being forced to dig her own grave, being hidden from camp hospital evacuation by her parents’ friends. She describes her work as tailor’s apprentice until Plaszow was evacuated in 1944.

She describes march to Auschwitz and her one-week stay there followed by prolonged cattle-car trip to Bergen-Belsen. Many details are included about her one-year stay in Bergen-Belsen until liberation by British on April 15, 1945. She tells of immediate tragic aftermath of liberation from misguided overfeeding of prisoners. She mentions her two-year stay in Displaced Persons Camp in Frankfurt-am-Main including efforts to find her father. Following her marriage in 1948, she was able to emigrate to U.S. with sponsorship of a family who had received pre-war shelter from her family. She details her eventual reunion with her father shortly before his death in Israel in 1967.