Holocaust Survivor Event

Zahava Rendler was born in Stryi, Poland just before the Nazi invasion. A Polish neighbor named Stachek hid her, her parents, and about 30 other people in an underground bunker, and brought food about once a week. Zahava was only a baby, and the bunker had to remain quiet, so the adults would give Zahava sleeping pills to muffle her cries. After hiding there for about a year, her parents gave Zahava to a Polish woman participating in the Resistance movement, then a Polish Catholic family in Lvov took her. When it became too dangerous to hide her in their home, the family sent her to live in a nearby convent. Zahava had false papers, which gave her the name “Olga Pachulchak. At the conclusion of the war, her parents, having also survived in hiding, were eventually able to retrieve her at the convent. Zahava and her family attempted to illegally settle in Palestine, but were caught by the British, and detained on the island of Cyprus. Eventually, the family was allowed to settle in Haifa, and finally, Cincinnati.