Nika Kohn Fleissig

Nika Kohn Fleissig was born to a well-off family in Krakow, Poland. She had an excellent education and a very happy childhood with her two parents and younger brother. When she was 20, the Nazis invaded her hometown and she was kicked out of her house. They went to live with other family members in a nearby town. Subsequently, the Germans rounded up that town of mostly Jews and took them on a bus. Nika’s father bribed the bus driver to keep her in the front of the truck and pose as his non-Jewish girlfriend. She was separated from her mother, father and brother, all of whom were taken to Auschwitz and killed. Alone, she assumed a false identity of a non-Jew and had various jobs in Poland while it was under Nazi occupation, as she could speak Polish, German and French fluently. She joined the underground forces during the Warsaw uprising, but was soon captured by the Germans and taken to an all-women prisoner camp on the Dutch-German border. She was liberated by Canadian and British forces in April of 1945, still under a false persona. She then worked under British and US intelligence, serving as a translator. Nika was placed on a liberty ship in 1946 to be reunited with her aunt and uncle in Philadelphia in the United States. Five weeks later, she married Alfred Fleissig, a Polish man who had lost his wife and four-year-old daughter in the war. They moved to Westchester, New York and raised two kids, Alicia and Will Fleissig.