Ania Drimer was born Franciszka Silbiger on April 16, 1942 to Adam and Ernestine (née Berglas) Silbiger. She was born in a Soviet forced labor camp (gulag) in the interior of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union) in a town called Kharitonovo, near the Arctic Circle.
Adam was a physician specializing in the treatment of lung disease. To avoid the antisemitism widespread in many Polish universities, he had studied in France and Switzerland. Ernestine, however, was able to study at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, where she earned a law degree. Adam and Ernestine lived in Bochnia, a small city in southern Poland.
Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, starting World War II. Shortly afterwards, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. Adam and Ernestine fled Bochnia, hoping to escape the Nazis and moved to Lwów (today Lviv, Ukraine), which was under Soviet occupation.
In Soviet-occupied Poland, the Soviet authorities repressed the Polish population and confiscated private property. They deported hundreds of thousands of Poles (Jews and gentiles) to the interior of the Soviet Union. Refugees who had fled the German-occupied zone were pressured to accept Soviet citizenship. Adam and Ernestine refused and were deported to a gulag. Deportation to the camp took two weeks by freightcar, with little water or food. When they arrived, the gulag contained Estonian prisoners of war and other Poles (including other Polish Jews) who had refused Soviet citizenship.
Ania was born about a year after her parents’ arrival in the gulag. Adam was forced by the camp administration to work as a lumberjack but after all eligible Soviet doctors in the town had been sent to the war front, he became the only practicing doctor in the gulag. Occasionally, he could use his medical services to barter for goods for his family. For delivering a baby he might receive a chicken and for giving a physical exam he might receive an egg. The poor sanitary conditions and lack of medical supplies made it difficult for Adam to efficiently provide medical care. Ernestine looked after Ania and would collect berries and edible grasses for the family. In 1944, Adam, Ernestine and Ania were finally permitted to leave the gulag. They relocated to Kharkiv, Soviet Ukraine.
In 1946, the family moved to the town of Lubawka. Before 1945, Lubawka had been known as Liebau, Germany. As part of the redrawing of Poland’s postwar borders, Liebau became Lubawka, Poland. The border changes were also accompanied by significant population transfers. The family changed their last name from Silbiger to Sadowski. They were the only Jewish family in town and therefore unable to attend religious services. In 1946, the family moved to Wałbrzych, Poland in the Lower Silesia region. On April 22, 1949, Ania’s brother Martin Sadowski was born.
Ania met fellow survivor Marcel Drimer and they dated for six months before Marcel immigrated to the United States in 1961. Ania studied at the Medical Academy, School of Pharmacy in Wrocław, Poland. Ania and Marcel wrote letters to one another for two years and in 1962, Ania visited him in the US and they married.
Ania’s paternal uncle, Feliks Silbiger, survived the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. The rest of Ania’s extended family was killed. Ernestine’s only sibling, a sister, Leah Berglas, was deported from Bochnia to the Belzec killing center where she was murdered. Abraham Berglas, Ernestine’s father died in a Soviet forced labor camp. Ernestine’s grandmother, Scheindel Lowenstein, and uncle were murdered in the forest near Bochnia. Ernestine’s other aunts and uncles were forced to live in a ghetto and, in 1942, either were killed in mass shooting operations or deported to the Belzec killing center.
In 1967, Adam and Ernestine immigrated to the United States. In the United States, Ania pursued further pharmaceutical education and was a practicing pharmacist. Ania and Marcel have one child. Both Ania and Marcel are volunteers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.