Dunedin resident Ewa Rozecka-Pollard said her mother Janina Rozecka celebrated her 101st birthday earlier this month.
Her mother was 17 when the war broke out and the large school opposite her family’s suburban home was requisitioned as a headquarters and hospital by German troops, Ms Rozecka-Pollard said.
But the Wehrmacht had little clue the house across the road was being used by the Polish resistance as a covert school and weapon stash.
In 1942 Ms Rozecka’s family risked their lives to take in the Teicher family.
The mother and father were discovered and killed while moving to a new safehouse, but 7-year-old Henry Teicher stayed on for three years until the end of the war, living in the attic.
He was very quiet, read a lot and never asked questions, Ms Rozecka-Pollard said.
Ms Rozecka’s mother was sewing one time and Mr Teicher’s mother’s thimble fell off her hand and into the fire.
"He put his hand in and got it out — that was the only [sign] of what was important for him," Ms Rozecka-Pollard said.
Along with some other resistance members, Ms Rozecka volunteered to join medical patrols so they could enter the Warsaw Ghetto and smuggle in food and medicine.
Her mother had described The Pianist as the most realistic film about the ghetto, but said the reality was much worse, Ms Rozecka-Pollard said.
About 400,000 people were concentrated into an area of high-rise flats about 3.4sq km, completely cut off from the rest of the city.
There was no greenery or parks, only hard streets with nowhere to bury bodies.
"I cannot comprehend how they lived through it ... When you left the house and you never knew if you’d come back," Ms Rozecka-Pollard said.
Ms Rozecka-Pollard will address Dunedin’s first United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Day event this evening.
People wishing to attend are asked to email Dunedin@holocaustcentre.org.nz.
