Remembering the Unforgettable 

Mrs. Sarah Jakobovits (née Kuntslinger), as dictated to her granddaughter, Rayle Rubenstein

January 26 marked the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Toruń concentration camp, where I was during the war. I have never found mention of the camp anywhere. I share my story in memory of the more than 1,000 women who perished there.

I was born in 1928, the youngest of six children. I had three older brothers and two older sisters.

My father was a native of Sanz, and my mother was born in a tiny town near Krakow called Uście Ruskie. They married only a few years before World War I. When the war broke out, they fled Poland with my eldest brother, who was then very young. They first settled in Satmar, and then moved to Sighet, where my father got a job as a melamed. Word of my father’s beautiful tenor voice spread, and soon after he was invited to Hermannstadt to serve as chazzan. Ultimately, my parents settled in Bistritz, where my father served as the chazzan of its large and beautiful shul.