Mala Dorfman

"I worked in a hospital in Kozienice ghetto, there was an old man, and he was asking for help. No one was helping him. I thought this man could be like my father and I helped him. I remember he said to me, “you will survive the war and you will have a good life.” If you help people you get help too. You have to have a heart and help others. Never lose hope and stand up for your rights. If you lose hope you lose everything. "

Name at birth

Malka Weintraub

Date of birth

12/25/1923

Where were you born?

Lodz, Poland

Name of father, occupation

Joel Weintraub, Scrap business, glass and cloth materials

Maiden name of mother, occupation

Esther Rachapel, Helped in the business, homemaker

Immediate family (names, birth order)

Parents and seven children: Franks, Rosa, me, Beyrish, Mendell, Meyer, and Menashe

How many in entire extended family?

At least 50

Who survived the Holocaust?

Franka, Rosa, me, and eight first cousins: Larry and Jack Wayne, Ruth Kent, Lola Schwartz, Franka Iglewicz, Lola Weintraub, Mickey Milberger, and Malka Mossenson

I was born in Lodz, Poland. After the Germans invaded, my mother sent me and the three younger children, Menashe, Beyrish, and Mendell, to stay with our grandmother in Kozienice. She figured it was a smaller town and that maybe the Germans wouldn’t touch us there. My mother was with us for a short while and then went back to Lodz. I was taking care of the younger children. We had a wealthy uncle who lived nearby who saw what was happening and said that he would help out; he would take the younger children to be with him. He was well off he said and he could protect them if the Germans came. The Germans wound up taking my uncle and my brothers and sister to their deaths, either to Treblinka or Majdanek.

I was alone and stayed in the Kozienice Ghetto. I worked there in the hospital in the ghetto. I had appendicitis, the doctor sent me out of the ghetto to have an operation in a hospital. While I was in the hospital, I heard someone ask if the were still going to evacuate the Jews out of the ghetto. I also heard that all of the Jews in the hospital were going to be killed.

I left that night after having had my appendix removed. I walked and wound up at a barn where I fell asleep. I still had the clamps in me from the operation; my wounds were not sewn up. Much later, a good German Kapo at Skarzysko-Kamienna concentration camp helped me get antiseptic.

The barn it turned out was part of a Nazi slave labor camp, Gorczytski. There was a Selection and I survived it. I was there for seven weeks, digging ditches. We were then sent to Skarzysko-Kamienna concentration camp. I worked in the ammunition factory in the Camp A, separating the good bullets from the bad bullets. I was there for about one year. It was good and it was bad. Camp A was better than the Camp C which was very bad.

The German Kapo we had was very good to us. She helped get me antiseptic to treat my wound from the appendicitis operation. She told us if they tell you to leave the camp, do not go, hide from them. Those who did leave, we heard, were killed on the road.

She was with us at Skarzysko-Kamienna and at Czestochowa. She was wonderful to us. She would bring us non-kosher food, but that I wouldn’t eat.

I was liberated on January 17, 1945 at Czestochowa.

Everything is Beshart, or fate. I went back to Lodz. I met my future husband at the Jewish community center there. I later found out that I had a sister who survived who was in Germany. We went there to be with her.

Name of Ghetto(s)

Kozienice

Name of Concentration / Labor Camp(s)

Corczytski (Or Gorczytski) / Czestochowa / Skarzysko Kamienna

Where did you go after being liberated?

Lodz, then Germany

When did you come to the United States?

We came to America in 1949

Where did you settle?

We settled originally in Wichita, Kansas through the Jewish agency. My husband was a butcher. There were not too many Jews in Wichita and there were no other Holocaust survivors. But we learned English when we were there. The wife of the principal of the high school used to come to our home in the evenings and taught us to converse in English

How is it that you came to Michigan?

We came to a wedding of one of my first cousins who lived in Detroit, Larry Wayne. We liked Detroit because there were many people here and we heard many different languages spoken here. My husband went out on his own in the meat business at Eastern market. He later founded the Thorn Apple Valley meat company.

Occupation after the war

Homemaker

Spouse

Henry Dorfman, Master butcher, founder of Thorn Apple Valley Meat Company

Children

Joel, lawyer and managing partner of investment firm; Gayle Weiss, homemaker; Carolyn Gallick Dorfman, choreographer and Artistic Director of Dance Company

Grandchildren

Nine grandchildren: Noah, Jordan, Joshua, Michael, Rebecca, Samantha, Layne, Devin, and Logan. One deceased, Brandon Weiss.

What do you think helped you to survive?

My faith in G-d. I believed that G-d would help, and I survived. I asked let me live just one day after the war to see the Germans defeated. I hoped that I would have bread and sugar again. When I was liberated, we were four girls together. Some soldiers left behind sugar candy and whiskey. We went straight for the candy.

What message would you like to leave for future generations?

I worked in a hospital in Kozienice ghetto, there was an old man, and he was asking for help. No one was helping him. I thought this man could be like my father and I helped him. I remember he said to me, “you will survive the war and you will have a good life.”

If you help people you get help too. You have to have a heart and help others.

Never lose hope and stand up for your rights. If you lose hope you lose everything.