“My Name Is Now Nechama. My Life Between Königsberg and Israel”

Nechama Drober (1927–2023) was born as Hella Markowsky into a Jewish family in the East Prussian capital of Königsberg. She witnessed the two major deportations in the summer of 1942, during which she lost close friends, relatives, and schoolmates. She experienced the conquest of East Prussia by the Red Army in early 1945. Subsequently, her father Paul was deported to Siberia, while her mother Martha and her five-year-old brother Denny starved to death. Hella Markowsky fled with her sister Rita through Lithuania to Kishinev, where they lived until their emigration to Israel in 1990.