Allan

Allan Hall

Allan was born in Krakow, Poland, in 1935 into a well-to-do Jewish family. The first years of his life were very happy. His father who had studied in Vienna and was fluent in German, worked for an Italian insurance company. His mother was a violinist. Allan was only four and a half years old when the war broke out. His family, who didn’t want to leave Poland, decided to go to Lviv, a 220 miles trip on foot. But in June 1941, the Nazis attacked Lviv. Allan and his family were then forced to move into the Lviv ghetto. They managed to escape and go back to Warsaw where they were arrested and sent to the Warsaw ghetto. But in 1943, the ghetto was destroyed. Among the 380,000 jews living in the ghetto, only 40,000 survived, including Allan, his parents and his younger brother who miraculously was born during the war. More united than ever, the family left Poland and went to settle in the United States soon after the war ended.