Cyla Wiesenthal
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9 August 1908
Cyla Wiesenthal | |
|---|---|
| Born | Cyla Müller 9 August 1908 Buczek, Poland |
| Died | 10 November 2003 (aged 95) |
| Known for | Holocaust survivor, wife of Simon Wiesenthal |
| Spouse |
Simon Wiesenthal (m. 1936) |
| Children | 1 |
Cyla Wiesenthal (née Müller; 9 August 1908[1]– 10 November 2003) was a Polish-born Holocaust survivor during the Second World War. She was the wife of nazi hunter and writer Simon Wiesenthal.[2][3][4]
Wartime experience
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Following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, Soviet authorities occupied Lvov. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the couple were forced into a ghetto and then into a labour camp working on the railways. In 1942 Simon Wiesenthal arranged for Cyla to escape with false papers under the name “Irena Kowalska,” assisted by the Polish underground.[2][3]
She was taken to Lublin, where she lived under an assumed identity and worked informally as a nanny. After increased risks of arrest, Wiesenthal returned to Lviv to try and contact her husband. She succeeded and the underground arranged her move to Warsaw. There, she obtained work in an electrical factory. Cyla was later deported for forced labour to Solingen, Germany, under a Polish identity, which spared her deportation to an extermination camp. In April 1945 she was liberated by the British Army. Simon Wiesenthal was imprisoned at Mauthausen concentration camp and both believed the other to be dead by 1945. Between them, 89 of their relatives were killed during the Holocaust.[2][4]
