Aza’s Story
In early 1943, Aza and her friends started to learn more about what was happening in Nazi occupied Europe. First, they heard inspiring news about Jewish resistance against the Nazis. They heard that in Warsaw, the Polish city where Dr. Korczak lived, there had been an uprising. For Aza and the others, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising became a symbol of Jewish heroism. Though they were few in number, starving, untrained and barely equipped for battle, the Jews in Warsaw were able to fight back against the Nazis.
In February 1943, Aza and her friends on the kibbutz got their first glimpse of the real devastation of the war. A group of children had arrived at the kibbutz from Europe. They had escaped through the Soviet Union, and then through Tehran, in Iran. Many of the children had experienced terrible suffering in the ghettos and camps, had lost their families, and now found themselves many miles away from their homes, in a strange land. Aza and the other children on the kibbutz tried to be kind, but it was difficult to understand all that these immigrant children had endured. The children did not speak much about their experiences.
TESTIMONY: “TEHRAN CHILDREN”
“Some of them were our age, and some were younger.”
—Aza Cohen