Behind the Name Sabina Green
By Frieda Cohen
Growing up, going to a Jewish day school, I was never able to question the importance of knowing and hearing from a Holocaust survivor. The emphasis on hearing a story directly from a survivor to “never forget” was something that was ingrained in my mind and made me interested in Holocaust studies. Through a program offered at my high school, Yeshivah of Flatbush, I participated in a program called Witness Theater that allowed me to take my curiosity from the textbook to a real-life experience. I had the privilege of building relationships with five survivors of the Holocaust, learning about their lives then and now. We shared laughs, cried together, and built bonds that will last a lifetime. At the very end of my senior year in high school, I was introduced to Sabina Green, a ninety-six-year-old woman at the time. She, too, had participated in the Witness Theater program just five years before I did. I had never met her before, but I instantly gravitated towards her charm and wittiness, and. Lucky for me, I found out we were neighbors in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn.
For the past four years, I have been visiting Sabina and learning more about her. Although I have asked survivors for their stories before, with her, it was different. We became best friends. I didn’t want to ask in the fear that she would shut me down. Come to think about it, I only know Sabina as a great person who always has a smile on her face. I didn’t want to imagine her struggle, suffer, or be close to death. I didn’t want to know that she was alone for months at a time, lived in fear for her life while pretending to be someone else, and watched her entire family die in order to become the funny, wise, and graceful Sabina that I know and love. I didn’t want to look into my Sabina’s eyes and hear her say that every single family member died in the Holocaust. Mother. Father. Sister. Two brothers. Cousins. Aunts. And uncles. All gone. I can’t even imagine a world where Sabine Green was sad.
Sabina turned 100 on March 21, 2022. That day, I realized she sure is a survivor, and there is so much I don’t know about her. What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t ask her for her story? So, I worked up the courage to do exactly that. Instantly, my question to Sabina led to a smile on her face that said if I wanted to know, then she would be happy to share with me. When I first said to Sabina, “Tell me more about . . .” I learned about Shaindl Lòw and the horrors she went through at just about my age.
Shaindl Lòw was born in Ulanów, Poland, second to her oldest brother, Hershl, on March 21, 1922. Later, her parents, Beirish and Feige, had a daughter, Udl, whom everyone called Adela, and a son, Marcos, but everyone called him Moniek. While most Jewish families in Ulanów were poor, the Lòws lived a great life—they had lots of friends, spent their summers down at the Tanew and San Rivers, and were steady congregants at their local synagogue.
Sabina speaks much about the emphasis her parents placed on her to help people in need. She would go to her friends to collect money for poor Jewish people so they’d have enough money for their Shabbos meals. To Shaindl, there was no mixing between Jews and non-Jews; there was always segregation and antisemitism. From first through seventh grade, Shaindl attended public school. Afterwards, she went to Beis Yaakov, an afterschool religious institution where she learned Jewish law and traditions. This was where she made most of her friends.
Shaindl was just about my age when “hell broke loose.” The Nazis came to power after Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. Eighteen-year-old Shaindl had to live in fear for her life, hoping that the Nazis would not kick her and her family out of their homes, but, as the German army bombarded Ulanów with planes, destroying bridges and bombing homes, there was no hope. The beautiful local synagogue that their Jewish community was built upon was burned to ashes. Slowly, Shaindl’s memories got destroyed—building by building, place by place, person by person.
Following the Nazi occupation, things changed. Shaindl and her siblings had a German tutor because they recognized that knowing German would be a tool they could leverage, and Shaindl did. As a Jew living in Poland, they knew they weren’t completely safe, but they did not know the extent of it. They weren’t quite aware of what was happening in the rest of the world, but from a young age, it was ingrained in Shaindl’s mind that they would be the first to be killed and that they needed a backup plan.
There was a lot that Shaindl didn’t find out until the end of the war. Whatever the family did hear was too hard to believe, so they never truly knew what was happening. Shaindl’s role during the Nazi occupation was always “the messenger.” When things went wrong, she was the trusted person to consult to see if others were okay. The Sabina I know now was the same growing up, willing to take risks and always getting the job done. No one can say no to Sabina.
In 1941, the Germans ruled that every home in Ulanów must provide male laborers to work for the army. Shaindl’s brother, Hershl, was one of them. He was taken to a labor camp called Janow Lubelski, twenty miles away from their home, along with twelve other boys from Ulanów. They weren’t given any work to do but were forced to mindlessly dig ditches while being overseen by the guards. The boys labored day and night and were not given much food. For four weeks, Shaindl would sneak food for her brother and the other boys through the fence, hoping it would help them get through the intense labor. Shaindl could no longer watch her brother be forced to work hard and be beaten. He needed to be let free and come back home. Shaindl tried and failed to bribe the Judenrat, one of the Jewish administrative councils serving their ghetto, so Shaindl’s father obtained papers for Hershl and one other boy, stating that they are needed for work in Ulanów. Shaindl’s parents sent her back to the labor camp to get the boys out.
It was a Wednesday when she went back to the Judenrat with money and the papers. She told Hershl that he had to bring it to the Gestapo, who were running the camp, as soon as possible. He looked at her and said that, unluckily, they will not be visiting the Gestapo house until next week and cannot help until then. Shaindl couldn’t take that as an answer. “How can I let my brother suffer here for another week when I can get him out today?” Shaindl thought, the only thing that went through her mind. That same day, Shaindl moved her armband around to hide that she was Jewish and marched right into the Gestapo house and looked for Rataisky, the only man that could help as per a tip from a landowner near Ulanów. She found his office, put the papers and the money on his desk, and ran away. She was lucky she wasn’t killed, even Poles couldn’t walk in there. Just two days later, on Friday, Hershl was let out with a few of the boys and they went back home to Ulanów. Although Hershl was out of the labor camp, this was by no means freedom.
It was Chol HaMoed Sukkot of 1942 when Shaindl and her family heard that forty-three people in three homes were killed in Vulka, where her uncle Shlomo Greenshpan lived with his family. Shaindl, the messenger, was sent to check how the Greenshpan family was doing and if they were still alive. She walked to her uncle’s home when, suddenly, Shaindl saw her uncle laying on the floor of the yard taking his last breaths. His stomach had been shot open; half of his face was bloody, the other half clean. Shaindl lay down next to him. Shaindl kissed the clean side of her uncle’s face and said: “Uncle, let me bring you a doctor. He can help you.” With his last words, her uncle said, “No doctor can help me, but I pray to G-d that you should survive.” She repeated this sentence to herself through the Holocaust to carry herself to the end.
Her uncle Shlomo died at age forty. He used his dying breath to give enough strength to save my dearest Sabina. As I looked at Sabina with tears rolling down my face, I held her hand. I thought to myself that poor Shaindl was just twenty. I realized that she was just about my age. I could not even imagine being able to handle this, but sadly, this was only the beginning.
Shaindl went inside to find something to cover her uncle. As she walked in the house, she saw her aunt Chana and their four children, Hershl, Gitl, Golda, and Elki—all under the age of thirteen, dead. In an instant, Shaindl walked into that house and lost her entire extended family.
Heartbroken by her loss, she went back home and brought her family for the funeral. The elders of the town took all the dead bodies of those murdered in Vulka in three wagons to the Ulanów cemetery. Shaindl’s father said to her, “We are here to bury them, but nobody will be here to bury us.”
A few days after the murders in Vulka, on October 4, 1942, Simchat Torah, the Jews of Ulanów, were chased out of their homes by the Nazis. They had to split in search for safety in other towns and the hope to live. The elders of the town dug themselves graves and walked into them with their tallit on, not wanting to endure the suffering they knew they would go through. Years after the war, Sabina helped identify one man buried in the graves and created an exhibit there to honor the elders of Ulanów. No one knew who was in the grave or how they died. Sabina was the one able to provide that story.
Once Ulanów was invaded, the Lòws were quickly split apart. Shaindl’s brother and sister had fake papers, but their photos were mixed up by the man who forged them, rendering them unusable. Shaindl’s fake papers were the only ones that would pass inspection, which was why she was forced to separate from her family. Left with no other choices, Shaindl’s brother Hershl and her father went a few towns down to Krzeszow, seeking safety in a town that still had Jews. However, they did not make it out alive for very long. Her mother, brother Marcos, and sister Adela hired a Polish peasant, Valek Dronk, to take them to a town that still had Jews called Sandomierz. Betrayed by Dronk, they were taken to the local Gestapo house, where the remaining Lóws were murdered.
Luck and fake papers were the two things that got Shaindl through the war. Bernard, a friend of Hershl’s who was originally from Ruzvadóv, also escaped using fake papers. Hershl asked Bernard to take his sister Shaindl with him. He wasn’t sure why, but he agreed to leave with Shaindl. Through bribery, Shaindl got herself across the San River out of Ulanów and onto a train to Stryj where she temporarily settled in Bernard’s cousin’s home seeking work. They were later given the apartment of a Jewish family that had been expelled from their homes to live in. From then on, she adopted the name Sophia, and survived most of the war pretending to be a Protestant. From 1942 to 1944, she survived with Bernard, who later became her husband. Of twenty-seven Jews who hid in Stryj, only three survived—Shaindl, Bernard, and an old lady.
In 1942, when Shaindl and Bernard first got to Stryj, they were not attending church with the rest of the people. A neighbor of theirs asked why they weren’t there and her excuses were not sufficient, so they began attending church. Bernard always waited outside with all the “troublemakers” since he didn’t want to go in, but Shaindl was forced to be the representative, praying for them both. Shaindl bought a prayer book and the melodies came easily.
Sabina says that she still knows all the songs and prayers and can sing them in her sleep. She said: “I cried my heart out singing. I thought to myself, My G-d must hear me too, and my uncle’s prayers have to mean something.” Sometimes, Shaindl would speak a word in Yiddish to make herself remember the language. Despite all she was going through, Shaindl knew and remembered who she was deep down. She wanted to protect and preserve her Jewish identity throughout the war.
Bernard on the other hand was working for the Germans and, as a Polish man, he was given one piece of bread a week and a scant amount of jam, hardly enough to live on. As time passed, Shaindl and Bernard needed more food in order to survive. Bernard started stealing nails from the Germans and Shaindl would sell them to make some money to buy more food. They started with nails and had a lot of success doing so due to the shortage in Poland. Because of Shaindl’s skills, even Poles who couldn’t sell their nails brought them to Shaindl for her to sell them. They then started selling linen as well, and the money ensured that they always had potatoes to eat. Eventually, they were able to buy flour and take it to the bakery to make some more bread. For dinner, Shaindl and Bernard would buy fish from the local fishermen on the Stryj River and go to the market to buy the potatoes, milk, and other foods. One day, Shaindl decided to speak Ukrainian to be friendly with the salesman at the market. The marketman noticed a Jewish accent in Shaindl’s Ukrainian. She never pretended that she knew Ukrainian again, only speaking Polish from that moment onwards. Shaindl could not take a chance that someone might catch her—she knew she would be killed.
In 1944, Soviet planes bombarded Stryj, so Shaindl and Bernard moved to a small village nearby, Khromohorb, for half a year until the war ended. They were able to get a room in a lady’s house. In return, Bernard helped around the house building floors and Shaindl helped in the fields. Still, the village was surrounded by Soviet-occupied Ukrainian towns and the villagers were afraid for their lives.
Shaindl constantly took risks for the necessities. Instructed by the Partisan group in Khromohorb, Bernard became a state guard and was sent with Shaindl to get three rifles from a place seventeen miles away. Shaindl carried the three rifles back to the town, fearing that she would be killed if caught carrying them through the town. They went back to the village the next morning. When winter came in Khromohorb, Shaindl had no coat. She watched a girl steal a coat from a pile of coats guarded by a Hungarian soldier. When Shaindl saw this, she knew she could do it too. She waited for the soldier to turn around, grabbed a coat, and left. She had it fixed to her size, put in a red hood, and made a belt as she always felt she had to look beautiful.
In the second half of 1944, the Soviet Union finally reached Khromohorb and ultimately ended Nazi rule in Eastern Europe. When Germany was kicked out of Poland, they thought they’d be free. Instead of being saved, two Soviet tankmen were killed by the Soviet army because they didn’t fight against the Germans. Although Shaindl and Bernard were happy the German occupation was over, they quickly realized they were not safe yet—Sabina described it as “bitter-sweet freedom.” It didn’t feel like there was much hope for her and Bernard. All men, including Bernard, were gathered and taken to the Polish division of the Soviet army and, at just twenty-two years of age, Shaindl was left alone again for months. In the Allied treaties after the war, Poland was given new borders and Shaindl was left on the Ukrainian side and, thus, Soviet side. However, she felt that she needed to register as an ethnic Pole since her identity as a Pole was all she had left connecting her to a place. Being registered as a Pole meant Shaindl could go back home—go back home to Ulanów—and see if anyone she knew was still alive. Shaindl went to the nearest local government office in Ukraine and told the lady that her papers had gotten lost in the war. Luckily, she was registered as a Pole.
Shaindl was finally liberated and free to go find her family. With a glimmer of hope and the clothes on her back, Shaindl went alone on the Soviet trucks that would take her back to Ulanów. As the train stopped halfway from home in a town called Przemyśl, she found a Jewish woman. The lady took her to stay at her apartment with a few other ladies and gave Shaindl a dress to sleep in. Shaindl then went to cross the same San River she had to traverse when she left and saw the same man she bribed to take her out of Ulanów at the ferry. He recognized her instantly, and Shaindl asked him, “Is there anybody from my family in town?” He said to her, “Not from your family and not one Jew.”
Shaindl was left alone.
Shaindl lost her siblings, her mom, her dad, her uncles, her aunts, her cousins, her friends all in that second. Everybody was gone. This is the first time Shaindl accepted the reality that almost no one was left.
Shaindl was always the one who could never cry. But this was a moment of defeat. Shaindl sat alone by the river and cried bitterly. There were no Jews left in Ulanów, so Shaindl went to search in nearby towns. A rich peasant said to her, “Go where your people are, it’s not safe here for you.”
As I looked at my Sabina, I dreamed of myself. During the holidays, as I sat at the table with all my uncles, aunts, and cousins, I truly understood how very lucky I am and realized how strong of a woman Sabina truly is.
Shaindl went back to the village near Stryj, Khromohorb, in hope she would be safer there. She couldn’t find any Jews in her hometown. But with G-d’s luck, Shaindl miraculously bumped into Bernard standing there in his army suit. She could barely speak when she saw him. She finally had someone after being alone for many months.
Once they were reunited, Shaindl and Bernard got a place to stay given to them by the Polish government. They moved to Piława Górna and started building a life together. Bernard worked as a miller there to make some money for them. Shaindl and Bernard got married in 1946 and had two children, Chris David and Felicia, in Poland. They then moved to Israel in 1957, but they, Bernard in particular, did not like it there, so they moved to New York in 1960 in search of freedom.
When Bernard and Shaindl, now calling herself Sabina, arrived in the United States, they started from zero and had to build themselves up. After three years of hard work, Sabina and Bernard were able to buy a home in New York where they lived with their children. Although she had no formal education in finance or economics, Sabina was smart at saving money and they were able to get whatever they needed. Both of them worked while the kids were in school. This was the first time in her life that Sabina was truly free.
Today, Sabina still lives in New York City. She lives in Brooklyn. She lives a very happy life. She rides her stationary bike and goes for a walk every morning. If you walk into her room, she will probably be knitting a blanket, a scarf, or a hat for someone she loves. Sabina has many friends, young and old, who can’t get enough of her. Sabina is the true definition of a young soul with a heart of gold.
For me, the most beautiful part about asking Sabina where she came from is that it opened a new conversation that didn’t exist before. Once she told me her story, I noticed Sabina bringing it up far more often in conversation. She finally felt comfortable speaking about her life. I started to hear Sabina say, “Oh, well, during the war . . .” a dialect that was unfamiliar to me.
Sabina and I have a very special bond. Every time I visit Sabina, I am greeted by a German song. I now understand where the song comes from and the life she remembers when she sings it. I am lucky to have her. And I have the utmost love and care for Sabina. Sabina is charming, selfless, witty, fierce, clever, talented, caring, elegant, friendly, successful, beautiful, and thankful. Most importantly, Sabina is living.
FALL 2025
Illustrations were done in collaboration with the New Media Artspace at Baruch College. The New Media Artspace is a teaching exhibition space in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College. Housed in the Newman Library, the New Media Artspace showcases curated experimental media and interdisciplinary artworks by international artists, students, alumni, and faculty. Special thanks to docent Cindy Qiu for creating artwork for this piece.
Visit the New Media Artspace at http://www.newmediartspace.info/