Eva Unterman

Voices of Oklahoma

In the summer of 1939 there was a little girl living in Lodz, Poland who was looking forward to the first grade. It was while on the family summer vacation that Eva Unterman heard her family members quietly talking about Germany and war. They cut short their vacation and went home to Lodz and soon little Eva was looking at black, shiny boots. The German invasion of Poland was underway. Eva’s family was forced into the Lodz Ghetto. After four years in the ghetto they were deported to Auschwitz, Stutthof and a labor camp in Dresden and then marched to Theresienstadt. This march is referred to as the Death March. It was May 1945 when Eva and her parents were liberated.The German Third Reich took the lives of three million Polish Jews in World War II. Only a small number survived or managed to escape. And today, survivor Eva Unterman, now an Oklahoman, tells her story to honor the millions of children whose lives were cut short by the Nazis, and to be sure the Holocaust shall never happen again!Eva’s granddaughter Phoebe has written a children’s book Through Eva’s Eyes about her grandmother’s early life in Poland.