the poignant testimony of a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto

She is the last surviving Polish Jew from this era. 80 years after the Warsaw ghetto uprising in Poland, Krystyna Budnicka has forgotten nothing. She was 10 years old in 1943. Today, the 90-year-old woman wants to testify, a duty of memory that she considers essential. “No child in the world deserves such a fate. Sure, I survived the ghetto, but my life has never been easy”she says.

“Hitler wanted to kill us all”

“Orphan, homeless, illiterate, because I never went to school. Why did I have to go through all this? Because a guy like Hitler didn’t want a Jewish child to live. He wanted to kill us all . But I live, and he must regret it”, continues Krystyna Budnicka. By 1940, in Warsaw, the Nazis had isolated within a wall more than 400,000 Jews in just three square kilometers. Many lost their lives, due to epidemics, famines and deportations. Those who had risen up to avoid the same fate were exterminated.