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Characteristics of Critical Thinkers

Crowds of
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Jews, surrounded by armed guards with dogs, were led out of the ghetto
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towards the railroad station some two kilometers from the center of town.
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During this forced march, those who could not keep up with the pace were
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beaten and bitten by the dogs.  Those unable to go on, were shot on
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the spot.  Squeezed into packed freight cars which were directed towards
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Belzec and, later on, towards Majdanek near the city of Lublin was the
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human cargo destined for destruction.  In one of them was the family
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Hochberg.  They made a desperate decision to push their daughter Ginia
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through the narrow bars of the tiny window, imploring her to save herself,
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crying out:  "You have got to survive!"  The German guard shot
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after and hit the escaping girl.  She lost consciousness, but fortunately
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it was a flesh wound.  After a while she came to in a pool of blood.
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Two villagers were in the process of stripping her clothes, thinking she
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was dead.  Realizing she was alive did not prevent them from taking
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all her clothes.  They were going to hand her over to the Police when
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a Polish railroad employee intervened, stating that the area was under
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the jurisdiction of the railway department and that he would take custody
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of the girl.  He escorted the wounded, chilled girl into a booth,
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where he dressed her wound, gave her some food and clothing and released
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her.  Ginia made her way to a church in a nearby village, where a
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compassionate priest helped the unfortunate girl.  He gave her shelter
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until she recovered and provided her with a false birth and baptism certificate.
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Such documents were extremely valuable, and some Poles with the help of
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Catholic priests would make them available to a few Jews.  Thus, they
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could try to survive the "final solution."  It must be said, however,
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that there were also those who would blackmail individuals trying to get
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by on Aryan documents and would sometimes betray them to the Germans.
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Eugenia (Ginia) Hochberg (now Gina Lanceter) is the daughter of Bernard and Dina (Harmelin) Hochberg. She was born November 27, 1928 in Brody, Poland, where her father earned a living as a grain shipper. She had one brother, Sigmund (b. 1922). Eugenia attended a private, non-religious, Jewish school in Brody. After the German invasion and the repartition of Poland in the fall of 1939, Brody came under Soviet occupation. For two years the Hochbergs remained in their home, but were compelled to share their living quarters with other Jewish families. No longer permitted to run his own business, Bernard was forced to take work as a night watchman. In June 1941, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Brody fell under Nazi domination. On November 27, 1941 Bernard was deported to a labor/concentration camp in Zborow, where he remained for five months until his wife could purchase his freedom and bring him home. The Hochbergs relocated to the ghetto after its establishment in the winter of 1942. During this period Eugenia was sent for forced labor to various sites outside the ghetto. She also performed secretarial tasks in the offices of the Judenrat. The family was rounded-up during the final liquidation of the Brody ghetto on May 21, 1943. While on the deportation train to Majdanek, Eugenia's parents forced her to jump off before they reached their destination. Eugenia was found semi-conscious by Polish peasants who stole her clothing and were about to take her to the police, when a railway worker appeared and insisted on taking her himself. Instead of turning her in, however, he offered her temporary shelter and found clothes for her to wear. Eugenia found her way back to Brody, where she smuggled herself into the forced labor camp. Several weeks later, she smuggled herself back out and found refuge with a Polish woman, who harbored other Jews for payment. Eugenia narrowly escaped capture by the Gestapo during a raid on her place of refuge in November 1943. Though she was able to find another hiding place in the home of a Russian woman, Eugenia had to spend the last six weeks of the war concealed in a hole under a bed where two German officers were billeted. Following her liberation in March 1944, Eugenia lived for a time in Brody and then in Lublin. She married Henryk Lanceter in July 1945, and five months later left for Germany. The couple took up residence in the Finkenschlag displaced persons camp in Fuerth, where their daughter was born. In the summer of 1949 the family emigrated to the United States, sailing aboard the General Holbrook to Boston.