At one point, Hart-Moxon became ill with typhus, but eventually recovered. In order to aid in their survival, they took items from the dead, and traded those and other items with other prisoners. They found jobs working with dead prisoners, which was less physically demanding than jobs outside the camp. On 2 April 1943, at the age of 16, Hart-Moxon and her mother arrived at Auschwitz. After the squad conducted a mock execution, the victims were told that their sentences had been commuted to hard labor. They were told that they would be executed and placed in front of a firing squad.
The family members were interrogated, and charged at trial three days later with "endangering the security of Third Reich" and "illegally Germany with forged papers". On 13 March 1943, Hart-Moxon and 12 other Jews at the factory, including her mother, were betrayed and were taken to Gestapo headquarters. Farben in Bitterfeld and commenced working at a rubber factory. The family split up to increase their chance of survival. With these passports, birth certificates and identity cards, the two were smuggled onto a train of Polish workers bound for Germany. The family returned to the vicarage of Father Krasowski, where her father bribed some officials and obtained false documents for her and her mother. Forced to return to the Polish side of the river, they abandoned their escape attempt and returned towards Lublin. They attempted to cross the frozen river by sleigh, but were sighted when they were about three-quarters of the way across and shot at. They made it to the border, but found that it had closed 24 hours previously. In the winter of 1940-41, the family attempted to escape to Russia. Eventually, all the Jews in Lublin were moved into a single area of the city, creating the Lublin Ghetto. The conditions for Jews living in Lublin deteriorated after the invasion. On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. To escape the danger of proximity to Germany, Kitty’s family moved to Lublin, in central Poland.
The house was emptied in response to the anti-Semitic mood which had swept the town. She won a bronze medal and was the youngest selected on the squad.ĭuring a holiday when Kitty was 12, her parents decided to leave Bielsko because of its proximity to the German and Czechoslovakian borders. Her father operated an agricultural supply business.Īs a child, Hart-Moxon represented Poland as part of the Youth Swimming Team in 1939. She had one brother, Robert, who was five years older. Kitty Hart-Moxon was born Kitty Felix in 1926, in the southern Polish town of Bielsko.