Names Not Numbers

Eva Ozarowski

Warsaw, Poland

In Hiding

1930

Eva Ozarowski

Warsaw, Poland

1930

Eva Ozarowski was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1930. At the age of three, she and her mother relocated to Lisbon, Portugal, to join her father, where Eva spent most of her childhood. In Lisbon, the Buchbleter family lived as “crypto-Jews,” similar to the Jews who concealed their identities during the Spanish Inquisition. Outwardly, they presented themselves as Catholics while privately practicing Judaism.

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Eva attended a public school that was deeply influenced by Catholicism, where she was required to learn the catechism and participate in religious traditions such as kissing the cardinal's ring. During this time, Portugal was a fascist country with sympathies toward Hitler, making life for Jews even more precarious.

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Eva's family had limited contact with their relatives trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto, and her father grew increasingly concerned about the possibility of a Nazi invasion of Portugal.

In 1942, funds were raised by Eleanor Roosevelt and the Quakers to rescue refugee children and send them to safety in the United States. Lisbon was one of the few European ports open for this effort.

With great effort, Eva's father managed to secure a spot for her on a ship called the Serpa Pinta. In 1943, at the age of 13, Eva sailed on the Serpa Pinta alone, without any family members and without knowing a word of English.

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Upon her arrival in the United States, Eva was taken in by a Jewish foster family in St. Louis, Missouri. She still maintains contact with this family today. In 1949, after many difficult years, her parents were finally able to escape to the United States as well. Eva eventually married a fellow Holocaust survivor, Uszer Ozarowski.

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Names Not Numbers

Eva Ozarowski

Eva Ozarowski

The End