Bella Tovey (born Bella Jakubowicz, September 18, 1926 - July 14, 2019) was a

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

survivor who told her survival story in Europe, the United States, and Canada.

Life before WWII

Tovey was the oldest child of four, born in Sosnowiec, Poland. Her father owned a knitting factory.

Experience in WWII

In 1943, after four years of German occupation in Poland, Tovey was sent to northern Germany, to a labor camp. She was moved to the

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concent ...

in December 1944. In April 1945, the camp was liberated, at which point she weighed 70 pounds and had lice.

Life after WWII

In 1948, she married a fellow survivor, Henry Tovey. Visiting her only other surviving sibling in 1959, Tovey pivoted from becoming an accountant to focusing on telling her story. She talked at schools across North America and Europe, as well as being a teacher within the Washington Hebrew Congregation.

References

External links

* Manuscript of "Living Through the Holocaust" * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tovey, Bella 1926 births 2019 deaths Bergen-Belsen concentration camp survivors Polish emigrants to the United States 20th-century Polish Jews