"My European Childhood"

Copyright Holder: Mrs. Kayla Szumer Consists of one memoir, 92 pages, entitled "My European Childhood," by Adam Zygmunt Szumer, originally of Nieglowice, Poland. In the memoir, he describes his childhood in Nieglowice and Jaslo, where his parents worked for a small oil refinery. At the time of the German invasion of Poland, the family temporarily relocated to Stanislawow in eastern Poland, before moving to Drohobycz in late 1939. In 1942, Adam acquired Aryan papers and temporarily went into hiding with two Polish Catholic sisters, but was returned to his parents after a traveling mishap. He describes the Drohobycz ghetto and labor camps, and his work as a lab assistant in the oil refinery. The family hid in a bunker in the garden during and after the liquidation of the Drohobycz ghetto in March 1944 and were liberated by the Russian army in the summer of 1944. The family returned to Poland in 1945 before moving to Paris in 1947 and then to the United States. They were not allowed to remain in America, and so, after one month, flew to Australia.