Morgan, Tola

Survivor/Camps
Lodz, Poland, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, Targua

Tola Morgan was born in Lodz, Poland.  She was raised in a very strict, orthodox, religious family of eight children.  In 1940, she was on vacation with her parents when the war broke out.  In 1942, the family was living in the Lodz Ghetto in an apartment with parents, siblings and grandfather.

She and a younger sister survived the war; her five brothers, youngest sister and her parents perished. Her father was 46, mother was 44 and youngest sister was 8 years old.

Tola is not her real name. She gave herself a non-Jewish sounding name in the concentration camp to try to save herself.

Tola was in the Lodz Ghetto for four years and then taken to Auschwitz and Ravensbruck.  She worked very hard in the Targau munitions factory near Liepzig, Germany making ammunition.  There were three shifts (24 hours a day) and the women walked back and forth from the barracks to the factory through the woods daily. Food consisted of one slice (chunk) of bread every ten days and soup was given in the factory every twelve hours.

The men, women and children were separated. They slept on wooden bunk beds (three high) in long barracks with no other furniture. No fresh water, no facilities, no soap. Everyone only had one striped dress with their number on it.

Tola was liberated in May 7th in Germany by the Russian Army and was immediately sent to a hospital in Prague, Czechoslovakia to heal.  Once a little better, she went back to her hometown of Lodz, Poland to look for her family.  In June 1945, from a survivor camp listing, Tola discovered that one sister survived the war and was at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Her sister now lives in California.

Tola’s message to the students, “Never be prejudice.”

Interview information:
Date: November 30, 1989
Length: 1 hour and 52 minutes
Format: Video Recording
Lecture: Given to students of the Idea Seminar of Madison High School at The Holocaust Memorial Center