Toby Holocaust Survivor Testimony
Toby Levy was born in 1933 in Chodorow, near Lvov, Poland, into an Orthodox Jewish family. In the spring of 1941, the German army invaded Soviet-occupied Poland, and soon after, Jews were forced into ghettos. By the fall of 1942, Toby and her family went into hiding.
They were taken in by a courageous Polish woman—a former customer of her father’s fabric shop—who hid them in a barn for nearly two years. In June 1944, the Red Army liberated the area, bringing an end to their time in hiding.
In 1949, Toby and her family immigrated to the United States, where they rebuilt their lives in freedom.
Today, Toby shares her story as a powerful witness to history—a testament to resilience, survival, and the quiet heroism of those who chose humanity in the darkest of times. Now in her 90s, she continues to speak to students across the country, warning of the dangers of unchecked hatred and the resurgence of antisemitism—not as distant history, but as a reality that still demands vigilance.
Her voice reminds us that the past is never truly behind us—and that the responsibility to remember and to act belongs to all of us.
