Names Not Numbers

Chaya Gurkov

Miadziol, Poland

In Hiding

1935

Chaya Gurkov

Miadziol, Poland

1935

Chaya Gurkov was born on May 1st, 1935, in Miadziol, Poland, a town situated outside of Vilna. She grew up in a family that ran a business selling shoes and other items. Chaya had one sibling, an older brother, and her grandmother also lived with the family. Unfortunately, due to the discriminatory policies of the time, Chaya was prevented from attending school because she was Jewish.

Tragedy struck on August 25, 1941, when her father was murdered in Myadel, along with 20 other men who were rounded up by the Germans and attacked by their dogs. This violent event followed a previous attempt by local Poles to drown him in a lake. In the aftermath, the family business was confiscated, forcing Mrs. Gurkov to flee the town with her mother, grandmother, a cousin, and an uncle to a town in Belarus called Dolhinov.

In Dolhinov, Chaya, her uncle, and cousin initially survived after being discovered by the Germans while hiding in the forest near the town. However, as the war progressed, Chaya found herself alone when her uncle was shot by German soldiers while they sought food at a house, and her cousin fled. Fleeing into the forest for safety, Chaya was eventually found by a Russian woman who took care of her for the remainder of the war.

After the war, Chaya returned to her hometown of Myadel, where she was taken in by a family friend. She lived with this family in the city of Lodz until the end of 1945, after which she spent time in a displaced persons (DP) camp called Foehrenwald. Tragically, Chaya was the sole survivor of her household, having lost her entire family to the horrors of the Holocaust.

From the DP camp, she left with a large group of orphaned children on a transport to the United States, where she arrived on August 31, 1946.

Names Not Numbers

Chaya Gurkov

Chaya Gurkov

The End