Her Story

Betty Grebenschikoff, née Ilse Kohn, was a mother, author, speaker and consultant, and led a full and vibrant life.

A Berlin childhood

Born in Berlin, Germany, in 1929, she was part of a large and loving extended family that included her sister, Edith Faris, and her parents, Olga and Max Kohn. Life in Germany at that time was full of music, family and peace. In the 1930s, all this changed with the advent of the Nazi regime in Germany. Betty's family's world was severely changed as the citizenship of Jews was revoked.

Escape to Shanghai

In 1939, Max Kohn received a summons to appear at the Gestapo headquarters. Just before that could happen, the Kohn family managed to escape Germany and get to Shanghai by way of Naples, Italy, and a ship to China. There, safe harbor was available. Shanghai was the only place in the world at that time to offer a place of refuge for people without passports.

Becoming a witness

Shanghai eventually came under axis control during WWII, and Jewish refugees were put into the Shanghai Ghetto. Betty wrote a book, Once My Name Was Sara, that was originally meant to give her family her full life story and has since become a part of Holocaust studies around the world. The little-known story of the Shanghai Jews is now more well known due to the many lectures Betty gave to audiences at museums, community organizations, religious institutions, schools and colleges. She is featured in two documentary films: Shanghai Ghetto, which premiered in 2002, and Survival in Shanghai, released in 2015.

Betty met her husband, Oleg D. Grebenschikoff, and they were married in Shanghai in 1948. She died at age 93 on February 22, 2023, at home in Florida.