Sabina: In the Eye of the Storm

As in Anne Frank's "Diary of a Young Girl" and Elie Wiesel's "Night", Bella Kuligowska bravely marshaled unexpected resources to manage as a teen during the horrors of World War II. "Sabina" offers a different perspective on how many Jews survived outside of the concentration camps, in more familiar yet infinitely hostile settings, with the help of others along the way. "I have gone by the name Sabina Mazurek," I tell the clerk at the Displaced Persons Center, "but I was born Bella Kuligowska. I am a Jew." In September 1939, Bella was a carefree teenager living in Serock, Poland when the German army struck. She was rounded up with her friends and family and sent to a series of grim Jewish ghettos. As loved ones were separated and lost through the war years, Bella survived by changing her identity. Narrowly escaping discovery and death time and again, she moved from place to place, odd job to odd job, new name to new name. After stealing the birth certificate of a Catholic girl five years her senior, she became Sabina Mazurek. Then she went into the eye of the storm, Germany, where she believed she might be safest. "Sabina" is her story.