Museum admission will be waived on Wednesday, May 15, 2024 in honor of Holocaust survivor Stefi Altman, z”l.
Stefi Altman was just 13 years old when Germany overran Poland in September 1939. Soon after, Stefi’s two older brothers were arrested and sent to a labor camp, and Nazi soldiers brutuall beat her fater and drove the family from their house. They fled to Stefi’s grandfather’s farm, taking shelter in the barn.
The family remained together until 1940, when Stefi was sent to the labor camp of Jastkov. Later she was sent to Treblinka and Majdanek. Next, she was sent to the camp of Dorohucza. Although Dorohucza had neither gas chambers nor crematoria of the other camps, death always hovered nearby. Like Stefi, many of the inmates were only half alive by the time they got there. At the end of 1943, Stefi discovered that her sister, Kayla, had also been sent to Dorohucza. But relief soon turned to horror when Kayla was brutally murdered.
Stefi managed, against all odds, to escape Dorohucza. For the remainder of the war, she hid in a coffin-like space underneath a barn that belonged to a sympathetic Polish farmer. After she was liberated by the Soviets, she learned that her entire family had been murdered.
Stefi Altman, z”l, passed away in December 2017.
