This is the true story

Abraham (Abe) was born in 1931 in Lodz, Poland. He experienced unbearable antisemitism during the 1930s and stopped going to school in 1939 when Jews were forbidden to attend. A ghetto was formed in the area surrounding Abraham’s family home. Ghetto life was marked by starvation and death. Abe kept busy as a runner and transmitted several messages each day for factories and the Judenalteste (chief elder of the Jews). He was rewarded not with money but with soup – a valuable commodity which he shared with his family.

When the Germans regularly came to round people up at night, Abraham hid with others in an attic which is how he survived in the ghetto for so long. He was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Despite his small stature, Abraham tried to appear taller and older than his age to avoid the gas chamber. He was put in the holding block for the gas chamber at Birkenau but escaped, despite dogs chasing him as he found a work block with an open door.

At dawn he was thrown onto the wagon by the Sonderkommando, with other men, bound for a factory in Braunschweig, Germany where munitions were manufactured.

Abraham was liberated by the Americans in early May 1945. Many people were too sick to be taken anywhere. He got on a train and found himself in Czechoslovakia, where he came across the British Refugee Committee which were offering to send orphaned children to England. This was as part of a British government scheme to bring 1000 children to England which became known as the Kindertransport.

They were taken to the camp at Theresienstadt on 14 August 1945, from where they were flown to Carlisle in England. 300 child survivors were then taken to Windermere for recuperation. Abe decided to move to Manchester where he began work at 15 years of age, in a bag manufacturing factory in Cheetham Hill. He later began his own business, manufacturing bags.

He met Rosalind and married her in 1958 and went on to have four children – two boys and two girls.

Abe now has grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“The antisemitism in those years was absolutely unbearable...As we walked home there would be a lot of thugs with stones hiding where we couldn’t see them, ready to throw them at us.”

Abraham Pawlowski

“What I am about to tell you is unique, you won’t hear from anyone else, I am the only person to leave Birkenau on the transport without a number.”

Abraham Pawlowski

“I don't like to tell my story to everyone, though I have been asked to do so many times.”

Abraham Pawlowski

This is the true story

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