A Holocaust survivor born in a concentration camp shares her story

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — In the last months of World War II, Lola Kantorowicz tried her best to hide her pregnancy. She succeeded because most of the prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had bellies that were distended and bloated from extended starvation.

As she went into labor in March 1945, the Russians were advancing through Germany, and Bergen-Belsen was in chaos. Her daughter, Ilana, was born on March 19, 30 days before the camp was liberated by the British.

Now 81, Ilana Kantorowicz Shalem is among the youngest Holocaust survivors. She survived only because she was born when the Nazi leadership was in disarray as the war was ending. Otherwise, she most certainly would have been killed.

More than eight decades after the end of the Holocaust, Shalem is sharing her story — and her mother’s story — for the first time, realizing how few Holocaust survivors are left.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed across the world on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the death camps where some 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were killed. The U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2005 establishing the day as an annual commemoration.

About 6 million European Jews and millions of other people, including Poles, Roma, people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ people, were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators. Some 1.5 million were children.

Commemorations this year are taking place amid a rise of antisemitism that gained traction during the two-year-long war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Shalem’s mother and father met as teenagers in the Tomaszow Ghetto in Poland. Lola Rosenblum was from the town, while Hersz (Zvi) Abraham Kantorowicz was moved to the ghetto from Lodz, Poland.

After spending several years in the ghetto under hard labor conditions, including losing family members, they were shuffled through several labor camps, where they were able to continue meeting clandestinely for several months.

“My mother said there was actually a lot of love in those places,” Shalem recalled of the labor camps. “They used to walk along the river. There was romance.”

Her mother’s friends used to help set up secret meetings between the two, who had married in an informal ceremony back in the ghetto.

In 1944, the couple was separated. Hersz Kantorowicz would eventually perish in a death march just days before the war ended. Lola spent time in Auschwitz and the Hindenburg labor camp. She completed a death march to Bergen-Belsen in Germany while pregnant.

“If they discovered she was pregnant, they would have killed her,” Shalem said. “She hid her pregnancy from everyone, including her friends, because she didn’t want the extra attention or anyone to give her their food."

Yad Vashem archivist Sima Velkovich, who has researched Shalem’s story, called it “unimaginable” that a baby was born in such conditions.

“In March, the conditions were really awful, there were mountains of corpses,” Velkovich said. “There were thousands, dozens of thousands of people who were ill, almost without food at that time.”

To this day, Shalem doesn’t have an explanation for how her mother not only survived the conditions of the camp but gave birth to a healthy baby. Mother and daughter spent a month in the Bergen-Belsen camp before it was liberated by the British, and then two years in a nearby camp for displaced persons.

They then moved to Israel, where her father’s parents had moved before the war. Shalem's mother held out hope for years that her father had survived. She never married again, nor had additional children.

In the immediate months after the war, baby Ilana was constantly fussed over, one of the only children in the refugee camp.

“Actually, I was everyone’s child, because for them, it was some kind of sign of life,” Shalem said. “Many, many women took care of me there, because they were very excited to be with a little baby.”

Photos from that time show a beaming baby Ilana surrounded by a cadre of adults. Her mother’s friends spoke of her as “a new seed,” and a ray of hope during a dark time, Shalem said.

She’s not aware of any other children born in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp who survived. Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum and research center, has documented over 2,000 babies born at the Bergen-Belsen refugee camp after its liberation, between 1945 and 1950. The museum at Bergen-Belsen was able to locate documentation of Ilana’s birth, including the hour she was born, which is now kept at Yad Vashem.

Shalem, who studied social work, started asking her mother questions while she was in university in the 1960s, when it was still taboo in Israeli society to dig into the experiences of survivors.

“Now we know, in order to absorb trauma, we need to talk about it,” Shalem said. “These people didn’t want to talk about it.”

She noted how, in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, many survivors of that attack immediately began to speak about what happened to them.

But the aftermath of the Holocaust, especially in Israel, was different. Many survivors were trying to forget what had happened. Ilana’s mother often faced disbelief when she shared her story of giving birth in a concentration camp, so she mostly stopped telling it. Sometimes her mother would talk about what she endured with other survivor friends, but rarely with strangers, Shalem said.

Shalem has never publicly shared the story of her mother, who died in 1991 at the age of 71. Last year, she completed a genealogy course at Yad Vashem and began to understand how few Holocaust survivors are left to share their stories.

According to the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference, there are approximately 196,600 living Holocaust survivors, half of whom live in Israel. Nearly 25,000 Holocaust survivors died last year. The median age of Holocaust survivors is 87, meaning most were very young children during the Holocaust. Shalem is among the youngest.

Shalem, who has two daughters, remembers sharing her own pregnancies with her mother, and marveling at what she had endured.

“It’s a situation that was very unusual, it probably required special strength to be able to believe,” Shalem said.

“She said that one of the things was that if she had known my father was killed, she wouldn’t have tried so hard. She wanted him to know me.”

A Photo of the birth certificate of Holocaust survivor Ilana Shalem-Kantorowics, born in the Nazi Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1946 , is on display in Tel Aviv, Israel, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Photos of Holocaust survivor Ilana Shalem-Kantorowics born in the Nazi Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with her with mother Lola in the camp in 1946, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Holocaust survivor Ilana Shalem-Kantorowics, born in the Nazi Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, holds a photo of her with her mother Lola taken in the camp in 1946, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Holocaust survivor Ilana Shalem-Kantorowics born in the Nazi Bergen-Belsen concentration camp holds a photo of her with her mother Lola in the camp in 1946, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is drifting around its all-time high on Wednesday, while the U.S. dollar’s value stabilizes against other currencies after falling to its lowest level in nearly four years.

The S&P 500 edged up by 0.1%, coming off its latest record. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 63 points, or 0.1%, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher.

Some Big Tech companies helped support the market following an encouraging report from ASML. The Dutch company, whose machinery helps make chips, gave a forecast for 2026 revenue that topped analysts’ expectations.

ASML's customers have been notably more encouraged about the medium term, CEO Christophe Fouquet said, mostly because of expectations for “the sustainability” of demand related to the artificial-intelligence boom. That helped allay some concerns that the AI frenzy has gone overboard and created a potential bubble that may burst.

Nvidia, the stock that’s become the poster child of the AI boom, climbed 1.7% and was the strongest single force lifting the S&P 500. ASML’s stock that trades in the United States swung from an early gain to a drop of 1%.

Stocks elsewhere in the market were mixed following the latest flurry of profit reports.

Seagate Technology jumped 16.8% for one of the market's biggest gains after the seller of hard drives and other data-storage products reported bigger profit and revenue than analysts expected. CEO Dave Mosley cited AI applications for its strong performance, among other things.

Starbucks climbed 5.3% after its revenue for the latest quarter topped analysts’ expectations, thanks in part to a viral bear cup. That was even though its profit for the end of 2025 fell short of analysts’ targets.

Elevance Health rose 4.9% after reporting a stronger profit than analysts expected. That helped it recover some of its stock's 14.3% sell-off from the prior day, when it and other health insurers got walloped by a proposed rate increase for Medicare Advantage by the U.S. government that fell well short of what investors hoped.

But Amphenol’s stock tumbled 12.8% even though the maker of fiber-optic connectors and other high-tech equipment reported stronger growth in profit and revenue for the end of 2025 than analysts had forecast. Expectations were high for the company after its stock came into the day with an already big surge of 23% for the young year so far.

Companies across the market are under pressure to deliver solid growth in profits following the record-setting runs for their stock prices. Stock prices tend to follow the path of corporate profits over the long term, and earnings need to rise to quiet criticism that stock prices have grown too expensive.

Apple slipped 0.7% ahead of its profit report coming on Thursday, and it was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500.

In the foreign-currency market, the U.S. dollar found some stability and was up against the British pound, Japanese yen and others. A day earlier, an index measuring the U.S. dollar’s value against several of its peers dropped to its weakest level since early 2022.

The dollar’s value has been generally falling since President Donald Trump entered the White House last year, and its descent accelerated after Trump threatened tariffs earlier this month against several European countries that he said opposed his taking control of Greenland.

Such threats, along with worries about risks like the U.S. government’s heavy debt, have periodically pushed global investors to step away from U.S. markets, a move that’s come to be called “Sell America.”

In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady ahead of an announcement coming in the afternoon from the Federal Reserve on interest rates. The widespread expectation is that it will hold its main interest rate steady.

The Fed cut rates several times last year in hopes of shoring up the job market, but inflation remains stubbornly above its 2% target. Lower interest rates could worsen inflation while giving the economy a boost.

Lower interest rates could also further undercut the U.S. dollar’s value, which would help U.S. exporters. Trump has been pushing aggressively for lower rates.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury inched up to 4.25% from 4.24% late Tuesday.

As global investors have stepped away from the U.S. dollar due to political instability and other worries, prices have surged for gold and other metals as investors searched for something safer to own. Gold’s price topped $5,000 per ounce this week for the first time, and it added another 3.5% to $5,258.70.

In stock markets abroad, indexes sank in Europe following better performances in Asia.

South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.7% to another record, thanks in part to a 5.1% leap for chip company SK Hynix, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rallied 2.6%.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

The Fearless Girl statue stands in the snow in front of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Specialist Michael Pistillo works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

People stand in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Shanghai, Nikkei and New York Dow indexes at a securities firm Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person stands in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)