Paula Burger (Pola Koladicki)

Paula Burger (Pola Koladicki) was born in Novogrudek, Poland on July 27, 1934. Her father Wolf Koladicki owned a shop and traded in various local goods, which brought him in contact with people throughout the area. Her mother Sarah (née Ginienski) was a pharmacist who had studied at the University of Vilna at a time when quotas limited the number of Jewish students and the number of women admitted. She was the only one of her seven siblings to attend university. Paula’s younger brother, Isaac, was born in 1939.

Novogrudek is located between Bialystock and Minsk in what is today Belarus. The city was home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the region. In 1939, about half of Novogrudek’s approximately 12,000 inhabitants were Jewish. Paula was just five years old when the Soviet Union occupied Novogrudek. In August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany negotiated a non-aggression pact and agreed to divide the territory of Poland between their two nations. Within just two years, however, Hitler violated his pact with Stalin and pushed across the agreed-upon border to invade the Soviet Union.

German forces entered Novogrudek on July 4, 1941, and immediately implemented anti-Jewish laws and began confiscating Jewish property. On a snowy night in December 1941, Paula and her family barely escaped a Nazi raid that ended with the mass murder of 4,000 Jews. Soon thereafter, the remaining Jews of Novogrudek were ordered to pack their necessary belongings and move into a ghetto.

Paula’s family escaped and returned to the ghetto several times. Thanks to Wolf’s contacts throughout the area, they were sometimes able to find shelter, moving frequently to avoid discovery and minimize the risk taken by their helpers, who rightfully feared Nazi reprisals if caught. Sometimes, the ghetto was the only place for them to go. Not all of their neighbors were inclined to help Jews. When Wolf learned that one of them had reported him to the Nazis, he was forced to go into hiding in the countryside, sure that he would be killed if caught.

When the SS came looking for Wolf and did not find him, they arrested Sarah because she would not disclose her husband’s location. With their mother imprisoned and their father in hiding, Paula and Isaac stayed with their aunt and cousins in the ghetto. Paula never saw her mother again—Sarah was murdered in a mass execution in 1942—and she never learned where her mother was buried.

After her mother’s arrest, Paula’s father devised a plan to smuggle his children out of the ghetto inside an empty water barrel. Barely eight years old, Paula had to keep three-year-old Isaac calm and still during the hours they spent hiding inside the damp barrel, praying they would not be discovered. They were taken to a farm, where they waited for several days until their father came for them. Wolf brought his children to a partisan camp in the nearby forest. Paula and Isaac were among the only children in the group and were tolerated because of their father’s knowledge of the terrain and his valuable contacts throughout the region. Paula assumed responsibility for her young brother while their father was gone from the camp, often for weeks at a time.

The family spent the next two years with a group of Jewish partisans led by Tuvia Bielski and his brothers Asael and Zus in the Naliboki forest. They survived on what they could forage or trade, slept under trees and in makeshift camps, and lived in constant danger of being discovered. The group was forced to move frequently, and Paula was expected to keep up with the adults on long treks through the wilderness. Once, during a Nazi campaign targeting partisan activity, they were forced to cross a swamp within the forest to reach a remote island where they would be safe. The crossing took nearly a week. They walked at night through water that sometimes reached Paula’s neck, and they rested during the day. As Jews escaping from nearby ghettos found their way to the Bielski camp, the group grew. By the time of their liberation by the Red Army in the summer of 1944, the Bielski partisans numbered over 1,250.

After the war, Paula and her family lived briefly in Lida, where Paula attended school for the first time. They did not stay long, however, soon joining the streams of refugees flowing across the European continent. They made their way westward in hopes of reaching the American-controlled zone. In 1946, they arrived in Foehrenwald, Germany, where they lived in a displaced persons camp until they immigrated to the United States in 1949.

The Koladicki family settled in Chicago and Paula attended high school. In 1951, she married David Zapiler, whose family had fled from Poland into the Soviet Union and survived the war there. Together they had three children, and in 1967 the family relocated to Denver. Their marriage did not last, and in 1981 Paula married Sam Burger. Soon thereafter, she fulfilled a lifelong dream and began to study painting, eventually enrolling at the Art Students League of Denver. Her work is now displayed in the Colorado State Capitol and in many collections.

Paula Burger passed away in Denver in September 2019, at the age of 84. She described her art as a source of light with which she honored the shadows of her life. Paula believed that she survived those years in the forest so that she could tell others about what happened. As a member of the Survivor Speakers Bureau of the Holocaust Awareness Institute for years, Paula shared her story many times, speaking to countless school classes and community groups. Her story will continue to reach new readers through her memoir, Paula’s Window, published in 2014.