Dr. William Gingold - NNN 2023

FAMILY: Mother: Leah, Father: Dovid. Siblings: Sam, Baruch, Jacob. Aunt and Uncle Froim and Chava.

STORY OF SURVIVAL: The Gingold family fled Warsaw with their brand-new infant, William/Baruch, and thousands of other refugee families to the Russian border while German planes shot down at them. They were stopped by Russian soldiers at the border and shipped back to Warsaw. For more than two years the Gingolds endured impossible living conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto. Enclosed by a brick wall topped with barbed wire, sealed off from the rest of the city, and patrolled by armed guards, William’s 8-year-old brother, Sam, helped the family survive by smuggling food and medicine through tunnels dug under the Warsaw Ghetto. The family escaped internment in the Warsaw Ghetto via underground tunnels opening into the Warsaw Jewish cemetery. Pursued by the Gestapo as they fled eastward through the Polish countryside, the family reached a Russian military encampment where they were then transported to a Siberian lumber camp. After 11 months, they eventually found their way to Kazakhstan. After the war, they were placed in Foehrenwald displaced persons camp where they lived for six years and then made their way to the United States settling in Milwaukee. William became a clinical psychologist and professor of family medicine at the University of Illinois and served as vice president of several hospitals.

MARRIED: Phyllis, married 58 years, three children and six grandchildren.

IN WILLIAM’S WORDS

“I was born on September 20, 1939. One day later, bombs dropped on the hospital where I was born. He (Father) went to the hospital almost immediately after I was born and took my mother and me out of the hospital a day after I was born”

“When we were put into the Warsaw Ghetto, the six of us were put in one room. No heat. No light. No ventilation. No mattress. You can envision taking one third of the total population of Warsaw and putting them into a one square mile area. The Ghetto had anywhere from 300,000 to 450,000 people at any given time.”