Lillian Polus Gerstner has honored her mother, Rosalie Husarzewski Polus, who was born in Berlin, Germany, on May 31, 1924. She was imprisoned during the Fabrikaktion, the Nazi’s attempt to round up and deport the remaining Jews in Berlin on February 27, 1943. Unlike her father, who was sent to Auschwitz, she was released. When the war ended, she maintained a residence in the American sector of Berlin, where she soon worked as a secretary in a Displaced Person’s camp. There, she met her husband-to-be, Moses Polus, who had recently been imprisoned in a Siberian labor camp, Vorkuta. In 1949, she and her husband moved to Nashville, where she first worked at the May Hosiery Mill, then for Sam Saturn at Roberta Lee, and had a family.
The Nashville Holocaust Memorial