Luba Drew

Luba Drew (née Hajman ) was born in 1924, in Łódź Poland. Along with her family, she endured four years in the Littzmanstadt (Łódź)  ghetto. When the ghetto was evacuated, Luba and her family were deported on cattle cars to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Luba’s mother did not survive the selection process at the concentration camp and was sent to the gas chamber. Luba and her sister were chosen for work and sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and later to Salzwedel, where they worked in an ammunition factory.

After liberation, Luba met her future husband Leon at the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons camp in Germany. There, they were married by a field Rabbi, and their first child was born in the DP camp. They immigrated to Canada in 1949 and began a new life in Toronto.

Luba was a founding member of the Lodzer Centre Holocaust Congregation, and active as a speaker, sharing her experience in the Holocaust with school students.

Luba Drew died in 2014 and her full testimony is part of the Canadian Collection of Holocaust survivor testimonies. It is preserved in the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive and accessible through the Ekstein Library.

Luba Drew

My brother and I found a hole in the floor that we thought a little bit of air is coming so we spent the whole, a whole night breathing that dirty air which was coming through that hole.