I Am Ella

Ella Blumenthal’s story of surviving the Holocaust and building a new life in South Africa could easily be mistaken for fiction. From the ashes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising to the fires of Majdanek, Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz; from the abandon of post-war Poland to the refuge of Paris, Palestine and getting married and moving to Johannesburg and eventually Cape Town; from stateless refugee to displaced immigrant, Ella’s 101 years of life have been nothing short of herculean.

Together with her niece Roma Rothstein, five years her junior, Ella survived three concentration camps before being liberated by the British Army in 1945. They made their way across Europe to join their last surviving family member in Palestine where Ella met the South African man she would marry after just thirteen days. She followed Isaac Blumenthal to the tip of Africa where they settled in Brakpan, outside Johannesburg where Ella and her husband built a business and raised their four children.