Womanhood

Helen Ryba

Helen added an orange bead to her prisoner’s blouse.

Helen was born in Dzialosyce, Poland, in 1918. In 1939 Helen married Manek Apt of Bedzin. Apt was mobilized for military service immediately after the wedding; Helen never saw him again. When the ghetto was established, she fled to Zakopane and went into hiding with friends. Later, she found refuge in a village and accepted sewing jobs from Poles. After she escaped to Plaszów, she received another woman’s papers in return for sewing a dress for a German officer’s wife, and received a job at a men’s clothing factory. She was sent from there to the Skarzysko Kamienna Camp, where she worked with hazardous materials. Subsequently, she was marched to a camp near Leipzig, where she worked in a munitions plant. The clothing that Helen received at the camp carried an X on the back in order to identify its wearer as a prisoner.
After the liberation, Helen returned to Kraków and discovered that her brother had survived. Her mother had been murdered in Auschwitz. Helen married Herman Katz and immigrated to the U.S. After his death, she remarried Mr. Lichtenbraun.

Women remain women no matter what, even on the brink of death. The prisoners asked the seamstresses to cut prisoner gowns and blouses to fit, to add collars and cufflinks, in order to improve their appearance. The camp commander, SS-Sturmführer Hirsch, found out about it. He burst into the sewing shop and roared at us, “You Jew-bitches, you’re sentenced to death and you’re being coquettish?”

Penina Arkin
From La-Isha, March 19, 1961