For a long time, an 89-year-old child survivor of the Holocaust in Poland didn’t believe her story merited telling.
Janet Singer Applefield was “hidden in plain sight,” as her daughter said, for almost four years as Germany’s Nazi Party terrorized Europe in its systematic murder of 6 million Jews during the European Holocaust in the 1930s and 1940s. Antisemitism, the prejudice against or hatred of Jewish people, was a basic principle of the Nazis.
Singer Applefield, born as Gustawa Singer in 1935 to Jewish parents, was separated from her family four years later when the Nazis started World War II with the invasion of Poland. The Nazis killed almost all of the 2,000 Jews in Singer’s village.
Singer Applefield’s mother, Maria, was transported to a death camp at Belzec in southeastern Poland. Lolek Singer, Janet’s father, was assigned to a waystation to the extermination camps. Singer Applefield was taken in and hidden as a Jewish child until she was reunited with her father in May 1945. They came to the U.S. two years later. Maria Singer, Janet’s mother, did not survive.
Singer Applefield, a resident of suburban Boston, last year published a memoir, “Becoming Janet: Finding Myself in the Holocaust.”
The book jacket photo of Janet Singer Applefield’s 2024 memoir “Becoming Janet: Finding Myself in the Holocaust.” The book is about her separation from her parents as a Jewish child trying to survive after Nazi Germany invaded her native Poland in September 1939. (Courtesy/Janet Singer Applefield).She will talk about the book and her experiences as the featured speaker in the annual Voices from the Holocaust series put on by the Holocaust Memorial Observances of Greeley and Northern Colorado. The organization will host events starting Sunday and running through April 13 in Greeley and Eaton.
Singer Applefield will give three presentations Tuesday and Wednesday. The public presentation begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 9 at Aims Community College’s Welcome Center in Greeley. She will speak to students in Greeley and Eaton in closed talks on both days.
Singer Applefield began speaking about her experience in the early 1980s. Over the years, she has reached a growing number of groups and schools. Singer Applefield will turn 90 in June, and she’s scheduled for more than 60 presentations this year.
“I didn’t feel my story was worthy of telling because I had never been in a concentration camp,” Singer Applefield said. “I didn’t consider myself a survivor.”
Singer Applefield’s story comes from her father’s transcription of her memories while they were apart. He requested she tell him what happened to her after they came to the U.S. Those papers and pages were found decades later, beginning the process that led Singer Applefield to write the book.
“The idea was germinating for a long time,” she said, adding she joined a writing group. “Over time, this book sort of evolved.”
Singer Applefield’s story changed because she learned more about what happened to the Jewish victims who lived in her village. In 2012, a doctoral student in Poland named Karolina Panz reached out to Singer Applefield after finding Janet’s website. Panz, who has a doctorate in sociology from the University of Warsaw, researched Jews in Poland during the Holocaust.
She wrote her doctoral dissertation on the Holocaust of the Jewish Inhabitants of Nowy Targ, where Singer Applefield grew up.
“She is the reason that we know, almost to the exact date, of what happened to my mother’s mother and many of her family members,” said Deb Milley, Singer Applefield’s daughter. “We know the definitive truth based on historical research, what happened to my mother’s family.”
Janet Singer Applefield, 89 and a resident of suburban Boston, was a child survivor of the Holocaust in Poland, where she was born in 1935. Four years later, Singer Applefield was separated from her parents. (Courtesy/Janet Singer Applefield)Milley said her brother encouraged their grandfather — Janet’s father — to write down his memories and recollections of his experience, and Singer Applefield used all of the information to come up with a better sense and understanding of her own history and story.
“With all of these pieces, my mother’s story is very rich and filled with so many details that many wouldn’t know because of all these special pieces that came together,” Milley said.
The Nazis also came after non-Jewish people such as Soviet prisoners, Polish citizens, Black people, gay men, people with disabilities and political opponents.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates millions of people who weren’t Jewish were also persecuted.
Laura Manuel, the Holocaust Memorial Observances of Greeley and Northern Colorado committee chair, said they put on these events to give people a sense of history and to “prevent hate from taking over the world again.”
“We need to recognize what drove people and regimes,” Manuel said. “I think it’s also important to recognize it’s one of the biggest human disasters, and it gave us the word genocide in trying to eliminate a people. I think there is still that sentiment — them vs. us and it’s OK to harm people who are different from you.”
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