Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

When the Germans entered Sarvar, Alice Lok, 15 years old, and her sister Edith, 17, opened a kindergarten in the ghetto to teach the children songs and poems in order to ease their fear.
Alice Lok obtained permission from the Hungarian policeman who guarded the ghetto gate to take the children to the ritual bath, that was outside the ghetto, to clean them before Shabbat.

United Staes Holocaust Memorial Museum cites Alice Lok was born in Budapest.

In May 1944, Alice Lok arrived at Auschwitz with her family in a cattle car.
As she stood among a group of mothers and children, the camp physician Dr. Joseph Mengele came up to her and asked, “Haben sie kinder (Do you have children?)”.
Alice Lok replied in German, “No, I am just 15”. Mengele gestured, removing her from where she stood, and placed her in another group of arrivals.
She later learned she had been removed from a group of women and children immediately sent to the gas chamber.

Alice Lok's mother, sister, brothers, aunts, uncles and cousins were among the 6 million Jews who perisheed in the Holocaust. Alice Lok looked for ways to be reunited with her sister, Edith, who had been sent to another lager.
When they were reunited, they initiated Shabbat services in one of the latrines, where many children joined them for a moment of Shabbat experience.
Alice and Edith Lok struggled to stay together in spite of the many selections that took place in Auschwitz.
She and her father, who had escaped to Budapest and received one of Raoul Wallenberg's fake Swedish passports, were the only survivors of a vigorous and thriving family.

Alice Lok was selected for the gas chamber, but survived because of a malfunction.
She was sent to the gas chamber in Krema V (The purpose of the red brick Krema V building was deceptively disguised by red geraniums in window boxes), and told that she would be given new clothes after taking a shower.
On October 7, 1944, when the revolt by the Sonderkommando unit in Krema IV began, she was inside the gas chamber in Krema V.
The Sonderkommando blew up the Krema IV gas chamber building with dynamite that had been sneaked into Birkenau by some of the women prisoners who worked in factories outside the camp.

As Allied forces approached the camp, Alice Lok and other inmates were evacuated from Auschwitz to Guben labor camp. Alice, her sister, and another girl escaped during a forced death march fto Bergen-Belsen.
They escaped from the March, but three days later were caught and brought to Bergen-Belsen.

Two days after liberation, Alice and Edith Lok were separated from each other when Edith became very ill and was taken to a Red Cross Hospital.
Edith Lok was never found.

In April, 1945, Alice Lok was freed when British troops liberated Bergen- Belsen, and was sent to Sweden to recuperate.

Rabbi Moshe Hillel Cahana and his wife, Alice, left Israel after he was blacklisted by David Ben-Gurion for his high position in ETZL.
They moved to a community of Holocaust survivors outside of Gothenburg,Sweden, where they lived for 5 years before immigrating to the United States.