Rena Quint was born as “Fredzia Lichtenstein” in 1935 in Piotrkow Tribunalski, Poland.
In 1939, when Fredzia was three years old, the Nazis invaded and occupied her hometown.
In 1942, her mother and brothers were sent to Treblinka, a concentration camp, where they were murdered. Fredzia and her father were directed to another concentration camp where she pretended to be a boy in order to survive. Eventually, Fredzia’s father was killed and she was transported to Bergen-Belsen where she remained until liberation.
Orphaned, alone, and without a coat, shoes, or food, Fredzia was taken to a hospital and displaced persons (DP) camp and ultimately to Sweden. It was there, in Sweden, where she was introduced to a German survivor named Anna Philipstahl whose daughter had recently passed away. Fredzia assumed the identity of Anna’s deceased daughter. Suddenly, Fredzia became known as “Fannie” who had been born in Germany in February, 1936. Fannie used this name and documentation to travel to the United States with her new mother and new brother, Sigmund.
But only months after their new family arrived in Long Island, New York, Anna died. That was when “Fannie” was introduced to Leah and Jacob Globe, a childless couple from Brooklyn. In 1946, the Globes adopted Fredzia, and renamed her Rena – the Hebrew word for joy. They gave her everything she had lost during the Holocaust – a large family as well as a safe, loving home. Rena learned English, attended a Jewish day school, and earned her bachelors and masters degrees in education. She married, became a mother to four children, and worked as a teacher before becoming a lecturer at Adelphi University and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1984, Rena and her husband immigrated to Israel where some of her children and her adopted mother, Leah Globe, had settled. They built a beautiful home in Jerusalem where she continues to live to this day. Rena has volunteered teaching English to Russian immigrants and has spent decades working as a docent at Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. In 2017, she published her memoir, A Daughter of Many Mothers, and continues to share her life story through speaking engagements. In July, 2022, Rena was one of two Holocaust survivors to meet with President Joe Biden when he visited Yad Vashem.
