Rokhl Auerbach

Rokhl Auerbach (1899-1976) was born in a small Podolian village in the Habsburg Empire and received her higher education in Lwow, where she studied psychology. A fervent supporter of Yiddish culture, Auerbach wrote for the Yiddish- and Polish-language Jewish press in both Lwow and, after 1932, in Warsaw. In the Warsaw Ghetto she ran a soup kitchen and began to write for Emanuel Ringelblum's secret archive. After she left the ghetto in 1943 she survived using forged Polish papers, becoming a...See more

Rokhl Auerbach (1899-1976) was born in a small Podolian village in the Habsburg Empire and received her higher education in Lwow, where she studied psychology. A fervent supporter of Yiddish culture, Auerbach wrote for the Yiddish- and Polish-language Jewish press in both Lwow and, after 1932, in Warsaw. In the Warsaw Ghetto she ran a soup kitchen and began to write for Emanuel Ringelblum's secret archive. After she left the ghetto in 1943 she survived using forged Polish papers, becoming a courier for the Jewish underground and writing the first installment of her memoirs. One of only three survivors of the Ringelblum archive collective, Auerbach worked as a Holocaust researcher and journalist in postwar Poland until her emigration to Israel in 1950. Auerbach founded the witness testimony department at Yad Vashem and played an important role in the preparation of the Eichmann trial. She died in 1976. See less