Holocaust Remembrance Day: Ida Paluch

Ida Paluch, a survivor of the Nazi-run Sosnowiec ghetto in Poland during World War II, will be the Quad Cities Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Ha’Shoah) speaker.

Paluch was born in May 1939, in Sosnowiec. Soon after the German invasion, Ida, her mother, her twin brother, and her older sister were put into the Sosnowiec ghetto. When she was 3, her mother committed suicide, while her father was fighting as a Polish soldier against the Germans.

Like many Jewish children in Poland, Ida Paluch was sheltered by a Catholic family. After the war, her father found her, and she stayed with him in Poland until they immigrated to Israel in 1957. She was married in Israel, and her daughter was born there. Ida and her family came to Chicago in 1963, and she has volunteered at the Illinois Holocaust Museum for more than 25 years.

In 2019, Paluch published "Unveiled Memories: Twins Reunited After the Holocaust," about finding her twin brother, whom she had not seen since she was 3.