Inna Kendzersky was born on June 13th, 1940, in Vilna in Lithuania, which was under Polish regime.
Between 1940 and 1941 she lived in the ghetto with her parents: Leon and Genia Kendzersky. She was an only child.
Inna's parents had two German friends: Professor Lucian Klein and his wife Lidia. They helped her family during the war and hid Inna in their house between 1942 and 1945. The exact location of the house in unknown, the only thing Inna remembers is that you could see a bridge crossing a river through the window. During the war Lidia went 40 kms on foot to some village where her sister lived to take food from. Inna doesn't remember the name of the sister.
Inna went to a Christian school where she lived. She was aware of the fact that there was a war going on, but not of the fact that she was Jewish. As a child Inna thought Lucian and Lidia Klein were her parents.
When the Germans built the ghettos in Vilna (The large one, and the small one), Inna's real father, Leon, was sent to "Ponar", a pastoral forest 19 kms south to Vilna which, under the Nazis occupation, became a valley of death for Jews. Today historians estimate that the number of victims in "Ponar" reached 80,000. Most of them Jews, and the rest were people who were defined "Enemies of the state" by the Nazis. Leon managed to escape from "Ponar", but died after a short time.
In the end of November 1947, after the end of the war, Inna and her mother moved to Haifa in Israel. They lived in a small room, just like all the other families. Today Inna lives near "Tochnit Lamed" in Tel-Aviv.
