I was born in 1927 and lived in Lvov, once Ukraine, subsequently Poland, then Russia and now the Ukraine. 

When the Nazis arrived in my town, my father made an arrangement with  a Christian farmer to hide my mom and sister in an underground bunker in exchange for money.  Fearful of being caught, the Christian farmer told my father that he only had room for two.  At some point my father and I were picked up by the Nazis and sent to a work camp called Janowska, after my dad claimed he was a professional that they needed. 

I became friendly with a number of boys at the camp and we looked out for each other.  One boy became my best friend.  This boy’s brother was a Kapo that was a liaison between the Jewish inmates and the Nazi officials.  It must have been near the end of the war and the Nazis were planning on destroying the camp before it fell into enemy hands. 

My friend was sown to secrecy by his Kapo brother that there was a plan to get him out of the camp before it was destroyed.  The night of the escape, my friend could not hold back his secret and told me that he was leaving and wanted to take me with him.  We hid in a laundry truck that was leaving the camp and escaped successfully.  Eventually, I was able to get my dad out of the camp and we made our way back to where my mom and sister were hidden. 

The Christian farmer repeated that he would not take my dad and I in.  I looked at the farmer’s wife and knowing that she had a son who was my age, I began to cry.  It was the first time that my tears ever helped me in my life.  The farmer’s wife talked her husband into letting my dad and I join the rest of the family in the underground bunker. 

With little food, air and light, the bunker was a difficult place to hide out but the family managed to survive until the end of the war. 

After the war, we traveled to the United States in 1947.  We changed our last name from Elfenbein to Ellis.  We chose Ellis because it was similar to my middle name and because I thought that if Jews would be persecuted again in this country, having a non Jewish name would allow me more time to hide my family or to escape.

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