Sarah Meller — The Flight, the Mountains, and the Miracle of Survival
Sarah Meller was born in Split, Yugoslavia, where her family lived a peaceful, observant Jewish life. Her father ran a small fabric shop, they kept Shabbat, and Sarah remembers a childhood filled with neighbors, school, and normalcy — until the Axis invasion shattered everything.
When the Germans occupied Yugoslavia in 1941, Split fell under Italian control. At first, the Italian occupiers didn’t immediately target Jews, but antisemitism simmered: posters, intimidation, and violence by fascist “Blackshirts.” Sarah’s father fought in the Yugoslav army, and when Italy surrendered in 1943, the Germans rushed in with a brutality the family knew they would not survive.
Neighbors warned them the Germans were coming to seize Jews. Sarah’s father, brother, and 16-year-old sister fled to the partisans in the mountains. Days later, Sarah, her mother, and younger sister escaped as well — leaving everything behind. A local farmer hid them for six months in a tiny room barely large enough for a mattress. They couldn’t speak, go outside, or make noise. When it became too dangerous, they moved again, hidden by strangers who risked their lives.
Eventually, the family was led at night into the mountains to join the partisans. What followed were months of starvation, constant hiding, and climbing steep, jagged terrain while being hunted by German forces. At one point they went seven days with no food or water. Sarah’s mother collapsed and begged to be left to die, but partisans carried her forward — an act that saved all of them.
They crossed mountains repeatedly, reaching an island where they waited for a British or American rescue that didn’t come — six times. On the seventh attempt, a British ship appeared offshore. With Germans shooting from the coastline, partisans rowed Sarah’s family out in a tiny boat. They were pulled aboard the warship and finally knew they were safe.
The British transported them to Italy, where they reunited with Sarah’s father and brother. President Franklin Roosevelt later arranged for 1,000 refugees to come to the United States for sanctuary. Sarah’s family was approved and made the dangerous three-week ocean crossing to New York in 1944. They were resettled at Fort Ontario in Oswego, where Sarah attended school, joined Girl Scouts, and began rebuilding a life.
After the war, the family legally immigrated, settled in Philadelphia, found work, and started again from nothing. Sarah later married, raised three children, and worked alongside her husband to build their future.
Her message is direct: hatred caused the Holocaust — and the next generation must reject it. She wants her children and grandchildren to value the safety, freedom, and opportunity they have in America, and to understand that Jews are human beings like anyone else.
Her survival was a chain of risks, strangers’ courage, and relentless will — and she considers her family her greatest accomplishment.