Photograph of Pasha Aliakseyeva with two friends at a military hospital where she worked in Minsk, 2000.
Children of Survivors seated in front of a memorial to the six million murdered Jews, c. 1948.
Photograph of Pasha Aliakseyeva with two friends at a military hospital where she worked in Minsk, 2000.
Pasha Aliakseyeva was born in Minsk in 1924 to her mother, Evdokiya Mordvkhovna Zigler, nee Girshik, and her father, Mark Abramovich. She had two siblings, Roza (b. 1927) and Marik (b. 1940). At the start of the war, the family was moved into the Minsk Ghetto. Most of her family was killed in the Minsk Ghetto, including her mother, her brother, her sister, her paternal aunt, Berta Isakovna Zigler, nee Minglina, (b. 1906); her cousin, Ada Zigler, (b. 1936); her cousin Galya Zigler, (b. 1938); Berta’s sister, Liza Minglina; Berta’s sister, Lyuba Minglina. Two other sisters of Berta Minglina Zigler survived: Emma (Zigler) Shapiro and her sister were evacuated and lived in foster homes. Emma Shapiro now lives in the United States. On June 23, 1941 Pasha was able to escape from the Minsk ghetto with a group of employees of the textile plant “KIM”, where she worked. They traveled about 200 miles on foot and reached the city of Orsha. She traveled further east on a train before settling in a military base. After a year there she finished food preparation courses and was able to join the military during the war from 1942 to 1945. She immigrated to the USA in 2002-2003.
