Clara Vinacore — Survival Against All Odds
Clara Vinacore grew up in a small Ukrainian shtetl, in a close-knit family with her parents and younger brother. When the Germans occupied her town in July 1941, the community still believed the worst wouldn’t reach them. That belief shattered quickly. Her father was arrested in the first roundup and never returned. Soon after, the Jewish population was forced into a small ghetto marked with white armbands and the Star of David.
Clara was taken with a group of workers to a forced labor camp, where she helped build a road. When typhus spread, sick prisoners were executed. Clara fell ill — and survived only because a young doctor hid her fever and later moved her to another room. The next morning, German guards marched the sick to a mass grave. Clara was among them. When the shooting began, she ran. A storm covered her escape.
Weak and feverish, she hid for days before making her way back to the ghetto, where she reunited with her mother and brother. With forged documents and the help of local Ukrainians, Clara left under a false name and worked on a state farm until Soviet forces liberated the area in January 1944. She was wounded during liberation and hospitalized for weeks, then returned home to find that her entire family — except for her sister — had been murdered.
After the war, Clara rebuilt her life. She married, moved to Kyiv, became a teacher, and later dedicated decades to Holocaust remembrance work across multiple countries. After immigrating to the United States, she helped build survivor and memory organizations, ensuring the stories of those who were killed would not disappear.
Her escape from the grave — and her entire life afterward — is an act of defiance against erasure.