Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

In March 1941, Hirsch Weinfeld, his wife, Bronia, and children, Rela-Lusia, Miriam and Izio, were transported to the Kraków ghetto Getto krakowskie. where the family shared a small apartment with 20 other people.
The authorities confiscated Hirsch Weinfeld's business and part of the apartment, where they installed two Germans.

By May 1940, the Nazi occupation authority announced that Kraków should become the "cleanest" city in the General Government, an occupied, but unannexed part of Poland.
They ordered deportation of Jews from the city, and of the more than 68,000 Jews in Kraków when the Germans invaded, only 15,000 workers and their families were permitted to remain.
All other Jews were ordered out of the city, to be resettled into surrounding rural areas.

On March 3, 1941, the Kraków Ghetto Getto krakowskie was formally established in the Podgórze district, not in the Jewish district of Kazimierz. Displaced Polish families from Podgórze took up residences in the former Jewish dwellings outside the newly established Ghetto.
15,000 Jews were crammed into an area previously inhabited by 3,000 people who used to live in a district that consisted of 30 streets, 320 residential buildings, and 3,167 rooms.
The Kraków Ghetto Getto krakowskie was surrounded by walls that separated it from the rest of the city.
All windows and doors that gave onto the Aryan side were ordered bricked up.
There were 4 guarded entrances allowed traffic to pass through.

In November, 1942, Hirsch Weinfled sent his daughter, Miriam, age 15 years, and her brother, Izio to Lwów to look for refuge.
Izio Weinfeld helped people in the Lwów Ghetto, providing false identity cards, but he was captured by the Gestapo and was never seen again.
Miriam was left alone in Lwów, so she returned to her family to the Kraków Ghetto.

On May 30, 1942, the Nazis began systematic deportations from the Kraków Ghetto Getto krakowskie to surrounding concentration camps. Thousands of Jews were transported as part of the Aktion Krakau headed by SS-Oberführer Julian Scherner.
Jews were assembled on Zgody Square first and marched to the railway station in Prokocim.
The first transport consisted of 7,000 people, and the second transport consisted of 4,000 Jews, deported to Belzec extermination camp on 5 June 1942.

On March 13-March 14, 1943 the final liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto Getto krakowskie, carried out under the command of SS-Untersturmführer Amon Göth. in which 8,000 Jews deemed able to work were transported to the Plaszow labor camp, while those deemed unfit for work, approximately 2,000 Jews, were killed in the streets of the ghetto.
Remaining were sent to Auschwitz.

Rela-Lusia and Miriam Weinfled were sent to the Płaszów concentration camp, a forced labor camp, supplying work force to several German factories, where the 3 small cousins, whom Miriam took care of after their parents were sent to their deaths, were murdered immediately.

In 1944, Bronia Weinfeld and her daughters, Miriam and Rela-Lusia, were transported to Auschwitz concentration camp.

Bronia Weinfeld and her daughters, Miriam and Rela-Lusia, were interned at Auschwitz concentration camp until January, 1945, when they were forced to walk in the death march to Bergen-Belsen

In January, 1945, tens of thousands of prisoners in Auschwitz concentration camp were forced marched to Bergen-Belsen, for nearly two weeks in harsh weather, and many of them died on the way.
Miriam Weinfeld and her sister, Rela-Lusia, survived, but theri mother, Bronia, could not take it any longer and died a few days before the camp was liberated by the British Army, on April 15, 1945.

Miriam Weinfeld cites, regarding the liberation of Bergen Belsen, "I myself was lying on a heap of dead bodies and beside me was my sister Lusia, our mother was there with us, but she was no longer alive. For her, the war ended too late... Sweden chose the weakest and sickest. Nothing was demanded of us. They sanitised us... dressed us, checked us, fed us vitamins and cod liver oil and sent us to pretty localities, most of us to hospitals."

After the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Miriam Weinfeld stayed in the hospital near the camp, and then was sent to recover in a hospital in Halmstad, Sverige, for 8 months.
Miriam joined her sister in Mykelby, and worked for the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), as an assistant.

On July 15, 1945, Miriam Weinfeld and Hanan Jakobovicz arrived in Haifa, with a Youth Aliyah group on a boat from Marseille.

Tom Segev cites: "Miriam Weinfeld felt shunned by the young people at Degania Bet. Although she did not speak Hebrew, their cliquishness hurt; she sensed arrogance, sometimes even mockery and hostility. The older members were more welcoming; they tried to adopt the new couple, but did not know how to make life easier for them. She sensed in their kindness guilt, even shame. She wanted to be asked about herself; her story was the only thing she had to contribute to her relationship with the new country. But no one asked.
.... Often, the stories were simply not believed. (p. 155) "
"A few days after he came home from his mission to Hungary, paratrooper Yoel Palgi went to a veterans´ club in Tel Aviv. It was June 1945. Everyone received him warmly and with admiration, he later wrote. They all
wanted to hear what had happened over there. But no one was interested in accounts of Jewish suffering. They wanted a different story, about the few who had fought like lions. “Everywhere I turned” Palgi wrote, “the question was fired at me: why did the Jews not rebel? Why did they go like lambs to the slaughter? Suddenly I realized that we were ashamed of those who were tortured, shot, burned. There is a kind of general agreement that the Holocaust dead were worthless people. Unconsciously, we have accepted the Nazi view that the Jews were subhuman."
"... History is playing a bitter joke on us: have we ourselves put the six million on trial?”

In 1948, Hanan Jakobovicz and Miriam joined a group of young refuges who came to Israel from Sverige, and established kibbutz Nachsholim., and stayed there for 6 years.

Miriam Akavia wrote:
* An End to Childhood, written by Miriam Akavia, Jeanette Goldman, translated by Michael P. McLeary published by Mitchell Vallentine & Company, 2003 Tamuz, 1975 [Neurim Be-Shalechet] Yad Va-Shem, 1982
* The Price המחיר, published by הוצאת ספרית פועלים
* Galia and Milkosh: Severance of Relations גליה ומיקלוש - ניתוק יחסים, published by הוצאת ספרית פועלים
* My Own Vineyard, Dvir, 1984 [Karmi Sheli]
* Ma vigne et moi, written by Miriam Akavia, Elie Wiesel, Sylvie Cohen, published by Les Editions noir sur blanc, 1991
* Bus Adventure הרפתקה באוטובוס ועוד הרפתקאות, Dvir כנרת, 1986
* The Other Way: The Story of a Group הדרך האחרת, published by הוצאת ידיעות אחרונות
* Autumn of Youth נעורים בשלכת, published by Yad Vashem
* Jesień młodości, written by Miriam Akavia,
* Moja własna winnica, published by Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1990
* Life and Books in the Shadowof the Holocaust חיי וספרי בצל השואה, written by Miriam Akavia, 2006
* In the Land of Janusz Korszak בארצו של יאנוש קורצאק, written by Miriam Akavia,