Erna Gorman was born in France to a Polish father and Ukrainian mother. She traveled with her parents and older sister to her father’s hometown south of Warsaw for her aunt’s wedding in the summer of 1939, and the onset of the war made it impossible for the family to return home. They eventually made their way to Erna’s mother’s hometown. Her father survived an Einsatzgruppen massacre, and the family ultimately hid for 18 months in the hay loft of a barn on a remote Ukrainian farm.
