Gdalina Novitsky - NNN 2023

FAMILY:  Only child of Miriam and Samuel Warshawsky

STORY OF SURVIVAL:  When Operation Barbarossa began, just after Gdalina’s third birthday, her father joined the Red Army. Gdalina and her mother fled east on a cattle car train, stopping through countryside villages, finally making it to Kazakhstan. They faced danger and terror, bombed railroads, hunger and thirst, and uncertainty for their survival. Grandparents and family members stayed in Kiev and were marched outside the city to a ravine called Babi Yar. There they were murdered by Einsatzgruppen C soldiers (Mobile Killing Units) with the assistance of local collaborators. In the course of two days, September 29-30, 1939, the eve of Yom Kippur, close to 34,000 Jewish men, women, and children were shot and murdered at  Babi Yar. Germans continued mass murders at this killing site until 1943. As many as 2 million Jews were killed with bullets at Babi Bar and at similar massacre sites across the former Soviet territory. Gdalina and her family faced antisemitism after the war in the Soviet Union that limited their educational and professional opportunities. In 1979, Gdalina, her husband, daughter and her mother came to the United States. They first lived in New Jersey and Gdalina worked in New York City as civil engineer. The family eventually moved and settled in Chicago.

MARRIAGE: Has one daughter and two grandsons.

IN GDALINA’S WORDS

“Faced antisemitism in the Soviet Union and decided to immigrate to America, arriving in 1979.

“We spent a couple of days in the Kiev train station. It’s a very terrible experience. A lot of people on the train. It’s a terrible feeling to be hungry every day.”

 “Do not forget about the Holocaust …I am a witness of the Holocaust; right now you are a witness to the Holocaust.”