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Halina Birenbaum
Honorary Citizen of Warsaw since 1 March 2018
She was born in 1929 in Warsaw. During World War II she lived in the Warsaw Ghetto from its establishment to mid-May 1943. Some of her family members died during the displacement operations of 1942. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising she was hiding together with her mother and her brother’s wife in the bunker at 3 Miła Street. Later, she was held in concentration camps in Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbrück and Neustadt-Glewe, where she lived until liberation in 1945. Two years later she moved to Israel, where she started her family and lives to this day. She is a member of the International Auschwitz Council and the Polish Writers’ Association. At the numerous meetings with Polish, Israeli and German young people, she talks about her experiences from the camps. The books written by Halina Birenbaum (Return to ancestors' land, Every Given Back Day, Scream for remembrance, the volumes of her poems Even when I laugh, Not about flowers, How in words, and more importantly Hope is the Last to Die were translated into a dozen or so languages. She has written a great many articles for prestigious magazines.
In 1999, she received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and, in 2001, the Polish Council of Christians and Jews awarded her with the title of “Person of Reconciliation”. In 2015, the Warsaw City Council presented her with the “Merited for Warsaw” distinction.
fot. Maja Nowak