Life-saving skills

Medical instruments in an enamel tin. Items include a reusable syringe, a spring loaded intravenous needle and intravenous needles owned by Wolf Liberman.

Without these items and his skills as a nurse, Wolf would not have survived the ghettos and camps. Wolf (Zev) Liberman was born in Pabianice, Poland in 1913 to Abraham and Liba Liberman. From 1937 to 1938 Wolf was stationed in Lodz with the Polish army. There he obtained the position as ‘Hilfsarzt’, an assistant physician.

Wolf was in Pabianice ghetto from September 1939 until it was liquidated in May 1942. Initially he worked sewing buttons, until a small hospital was established, where he then worked as a nurse “to help make injections, to help making plaster, give medicine, to take care of the sick people”. When the ghetto was liquidated in May/June 1942, Wolf witnessed that “First they went to the hospital, they throw out through the window all the sick people on the wagons”. Understanding what this would mean for his father, Wolf disguised him in a doctors uniform that he took from the hospital, and thus they were both then sent to Lodz ghetto. His father would die in 1943.

In August 1944 during the final liquidation of the ghetto, Wolf was deported to Auschwitz. He remained there for 8 days before transferring to Gleiwitz to work in a factory. The conditions were terrible and he would not have survived if he wasn’t called up to help the doctor there. As a nurse he received slightly improved food and rest.

He was finally taken to the sub-camp Blechhammer where he was liberated. The medical kit was found after Wolf died in 2000 and donated by his son.