This is Florence Mayer Lieblich’s Holocaust memoir — a Czortkow, Poland Holocaust survivor testimony told in full, in her own words, from a childhood before the war through occupation, survival, and the family she rebuilt afterward.
Nothing here is excerpted or condensed: her prologue, all three parts, and her epilogue are presented exactly as she wrote them, alongside her own family photographs and the primary source material that documents the world she came from and the Nazi occupation that destroyed it.
Someone is Watching Over Me
A Holocaust Memoir by Florence Mayer Lieblich
My name is Florence Mayer Lieblich. I was born on July 29, 1923 in Czortkow, Poland. It is now part of Ukraine. The city is still in existence today, but it is dead without the Jews. I was named after my father’s mother, Fruma Mayer. I am the only family member who survived the Holocaust.
It pains me very much that my darling devoted Gloria is deprived of the love and devotion of her grandparents. She missed a lot. Therefore, I will share and tell her all about my wonderful home, my devoted parents, and the wonderful parents of her father who loved her so very much. I will tell her about my experiences, and the horror I lived through during the Second World War and the Nazi Occupation. We, the Holocaust survivors, had only one wish: to be able to live and to be able to tell the world what had happened to us.
Read the Complete Memoir Online: Someone is Watching Over Me
Florence’s memoir is presented here in full, in five parts, tracing her life from a comfortable childhood in Czortkow through the Nazi occupation and into the life she rebuilt afterward.
Prologue
Florence’s introduction to her own story — why she chose to write it down, and who she wrote it for.
Part 1: The Quiet Before the Storm — Pre-War Years, 1923–1939
Florence’s childhood in Czortkow: her family, her home, and the community that shaped her before everything changed.
Part 2: The Storm — The War Years, 1939–1945
Her account of the Nazi occupation of Czortkow and the years of the Second World War — the years she survived and her family did not.
Part 3: The Silver Lining — Liberation and Post-War Years
Life after liberation: rebuilding, and carrying her family’s story forward for her granddaughter Gloria and future generations.
Epilogue
Florence’s closing reflections on survival, memory, and what she hopes readers carry forward.
Read the complete “Someone is Watching Over Me” Holocaust memoir on one page.
Historical Photos of Czortkow and the Lieblich Family Archive
This archive brings together nearly 30 photographs across five pages — Florence Lieblich’s own family photographs alongside images drawn from The Memorial Book of Czortkow, edited by Dr. Yeshayahu Austri-Dunn and published in 1967 by the Association of Former Residents of Czortkow (Irgun Yotzey Czortkow) in Israel. Together they document prewar Jewish life in Czortkow — its synagogues, its cheder, its community institutions — and the Lieblich and Mayer families themselves, through occupation, the Aktion of August 1942, hiding, and liberation.
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Expulsion of Poles from villages in the Zamość Region by German SS soldiers, December 1942
Primary Source Documentation: The Nazi Occupation of Czortkow
This section rests on two primary sources. The first is Florence Lieblich’s own family collection — photographs, an armband worn during the occupation, a tablecloth returned to her after the war, and a 1946 telegram from her brother welcoming her to America.
The second is The Memorial Book of Czortkow itself: a 471-page Yizkor book documenting the history, culture, and destruction of Czortkow’s Jewish community, edited and translated by Dr. Yeshayahu Austri-Dunn and available in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English through the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project. It stands as one of the essential documentary sources for this region’s Jewish history.
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Prologue
Florence’s introduction to her own story — why she chose to write it down, and who she wrote it for.
This is one of 27 Holocaust survivor books gathered on Remember.org since 1995, all centered on the same idea: let survivors tell their own stories, in their own words. Six are complete books you can read here in full, free of charge.