Born: 18 December 1903, Ukraine
Died: 31 May 1976
Country most active: Poland
Also known as: Rachela, Rokhl or Rachel Oyerbach or Auerbach
The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.
In 1943, Rachela Auerbach (Rokhl/Rachel Oyerbach/Auerbach), a Polish-Jewish writer, escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto and worked as a Polish secretary on the Aryan side, leveraging her non-Jewish appearance and German fluency. She recorded historical notes about the Jewish community at night. Responding to an underground Jewish committee’s request, she penned Yizkor, a detailed essay on the 1942 Warsaw Ghetto deportations (mostly to the death camp in Treblinka), and another piece about Jewish writers, artists, and cultural activists in Warsaw. Both gained wide underground circulation. She was one of only three surviving Oyneg Shabbos (Oneg Shabbat; The Ringelblum Archive) group members.