Eva Galler

Due to Hurricane Katrina, Galler and her husband moved to Dallas, Texas. Galler returned to New Orleans briefly after the city was reopened by the National Guard, but contracted pneumonia from toxic mold exposure during her return to her Katrina-ravaged home. She never recovered and died in Dallas on January 5, 2006, aged 82.

In 1985, Galler graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of New Orleans. She said in an interview that at first she did not want to talk about the war, but eventually she and Henry saw the necessity of educating others about their histories and the lessons they learned as teenage survivors of World War II.

In 1956, the couple emigrated to the United States, living in New York City for seven years, and then settling in New Orleans. Galler had 3 daughters, one son in Poland and 14 grandchildren, including 6 in Polen.

Eva and Henry wed in Stockholm in 1946 and lived there for 8 years. At first they lived in poverty, off of a dishwashers’ salary, but eventually Henry went to school and was eventually hired as a foreman in a clothing factory. During this time, Galler made blouses in the same factory. After three years in Sweden, their first child was born.

On January 4, 1943, when Galler was only seventeen years old, the Gestapo evacuated the Lubaczow ghetto. They put her family and many other Jews on a cattle train to take them to the Belzec death camp. Galler said in an interview, "my youngest brother was three years old and I still hear him screaming [in Yiddish, his preferred language], 'I want to live, too.'"

During the occupation of Poland, the Nazis persecuted the Jews in the town, burning down synagogues and parading Jews through the streets. Galler vividly remembered seeing her Polish neighbours and former close friends laughing as their Jewish neighbours were humiliated and physically attacked. On October 14, 1942, Galler and her family, along with the other Jews in the community, were ordered to leave their homes and taken to the ghetto in Lubaczow. They were only allowed a short time to pack their belongings. While at the ghetto, a Jewish man, who had escaped from Belzec concentration camp, came to warn the inhabitants of the Lubaczow ghetto that Belzec was not a work camp but an extermination camp.

Eva Galler (née Vogel; January 1, 1924 - January 5, 2006) was a Jewish Holocaust survivor, born in Oleszyce, Poland. While being deported to the Belzec Extermination Camp, she escaped by jumping out the train window with her brother and sister. Her siblings were shot and killed as they fell out the train, but Galler managed to escape by landing in a deep hole.

Eva Vogel was born on January 1, 1924, in Oleszyce, Poland, a small community where over half of the people were Jews. She was the oldest of eight children. Her father, Israel Vogel, was a wealthy merchant and head of the Oleszyce Jewish community. He had an international business that distributed religious articles including Torahs and tefillin to France, Belgium, England, the US and other countries across the world. Galler's mother was Ita Prince from Jozefow.