Toby Levy (then, Toby Eisenstein) was born in 1933. That same year, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. As Toby grew up in Poland, Hitler gained control over Europe. And when she was 8 years old, Hitler’s army reached her hometown of Chodorow.
Toby and her family were Jewish. Hitler and his army — called Nazis — were killing Jewish people. This terrible time was called the Holocaust. Toby saw Jewish people taken from her town. Like another young girl named Anne Frank, Toby went into hiding with her family.
Toby and eight members of her extended family briefly hid inside. Her grandfather refused to hide, however. The Germans found him and shot him. Soon the members of Toby’s family found another place to hide in a Polish woman’s barn.
The family spent two years in the barn. Toby was there with her parents, her aunt and uncle, her grandmother, and three brothers and sisters. They lived with pigs, chickens, and rats. The Levy family was in June 1944.
Ms. Levy is now 87 years old. She lives in an area of New York City called Brooklyn. As a survivor of the Holocaust, she wants to share her story with others — especially children. News-O-Matic will interview her next week.
Do you have any questions for Ms. Levy? She would like to hear them. She will answer your questions for Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27. Send them to the News-O-Matic News Room, or ask a teacher to send to them to ask@newsomatic.org.
Updated January 12, 2021, 5:02 P.M. (ET)
By Russell Kahn (Russ)
