Holocaust Survivor, Hidden Child, Author, Educator, and March of the Living Witness

Anita Helfgott Ekstein was born on July 18, 1934, in Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), to Edzia and Fischel Helfgott. An only child in a close-knit Jewish family, she spent her early years in Synewódzko, where her father worked as an accountant. Her childhood was disrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, when eastern Poland came under Soviet occupation. In 1941, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Nazi persecution brought increasingly severe restrictions on Jewish families, and Anita and her parents were forced into the Skole ghetto.

In October 1942, Anita’s mother was seized during a roundup and subsequently murdered at the Bełżec extermination camp. Her father, desperate to save his eight-year-old daughter, turned to Josef Matusiewicz, a Polish Catholic man he had met while working on the construction of a railway bridge. Although Josef barely knew the family, he agreed to risk his own life and his family’s to rescue Anita.

One night, Josef entered the ghetto and carried Anita out concealed inside a large sack. He brought her to his home, where his wife, Paulina and daughter, Emilia, helped care for her. Anita was given a new identity and taught Catholic prayers and customs to conceal her Jewish background. She was introduced to neighbours as an orphaned relative, while the Matusiewicz family lived with the constant fear that someone might discover her identity.

In February 1943, Ukrainian police arrived at the Matusiewicz home, apparently following a denunciation. Anita narrowly escaped discovery when Emilia helped her flee through a window and hide in the bushes. With the danger of discovery growing, Anita was temporarily returned to her father, who was living among Jewish forced labourers. During the day, while he was away at work, Anita remained hidden inside a wardrobe.

Unable to bear the child’s suffering, Josef Matusiewicz intervened a second time. He obtained false identification papers for Anita under the name Anna Jaworska and arranged for her to live with his nephew, a Catholic priest in Liczkowce, near the former Polish-Soviet border. There she continued to live under an assumed Christian identity, protected from those who might expose her as Jewish.

Anita survived the war, but both her parents had been murdered. Her father died in 1943, and she never saw him again after Josef arranged her second rescue. When Soviet forces reached the region in 1944, Anita was eventually reunited with the Matusiewicz family, who continued caring for her as the war drew to a close.

In April 1946, Anita was reunited with her aunt Sala, who had survived the Holocaust through Oskar Schindler’s efforts. Leaving the people who had protected and raised her during the war was emotionally difficult. After spending time in postwar Poland, Anita and her aunt travelled to Paris in 1946, hoping eventually to join relatives in the United States. Instead, in 1948, they immigrated to Canada and settled in Toronto. Anita was fourteen years old.

Anita has been especially connected with March of the Living, participating in eighteen journeys to Poland and Israel and serving as National Chair of March of the Living Canada. Through these experiences, she has shared her testimony with students at places connected to the destruction of European Jewry, including Bełżec, where her mother was murdered. For Anita, returning to these sites has been a deeply personal act of remembrance and an opportunity to encourage young people to carry the lessons of the Holocaust into the future.

In 2019, Anita’s memoir, Always Remember Who You Are, was published through the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program. The book recounts her childhood in Poland, the loss of her parents, her rescue by the Matusiewicz family, the challenges of living under a false identity, and her postwar struggle to reconnect with her Jewish identity. Its title reflects the lasting importance of her father’s final message to her before their separation.

Anita’s testimony has also been preserved through the March of the Living Digital Archive Project. MOLDAP features recordings of her experiences as a hidden child, her reflections on the loss of her family at Bełżec, and her participation in Holocaust education programs. These recordings connect her personal story with the broader history of Jewish persecution, rescue, survival, and remembrance.

“I lived because of the Righteous Among the Nations.”

Through her memoir, educational work, March of the Living journeys, and MOLDAP testimony, Anita Ekstein has helped ensure that the experiences of hidden children and the courage of the Righteous Among the Nations remain part of Holocaust memory. Her life is a reminder that the decisions of individuals, even in times of extraordinary danger, can preserve not only a single life but the generations that follow.