Holocaust Survivor Oral Histories

Alex Raden was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1934. He was the oldest son of Gertrude and Isaac Radenski and had a younger sister. He grew up in an upper-middle class household. His father owned a business selling furniture and his mother was a teacher at one of the Jewish schools. Following the Invasion of Poland in 1939, the Nazis forced the Radenskis and other Warsaw Jewish community members to live in a ghetto. Before the ghetto was sealed off from the rest of the city in November 1940, Alex’s father managed for his family to escape and go into hiding. At the end of the war in 1945, Alex, his mother and sister returned to Warsaw. Alex’s father did not survive.

Alex lived in England for a time before he immigrated to the United States. Upon his arrival in Brooklyn, New York, Alex stayed with his aunt and shortened his last name to Raden. Alex met his future wife, Eva, while working at a restaurant while in high school. In the summer of 1958, Eva and Alex moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and began teaching children Hebrew at a school. In 1960, three years after Alex had married Eva, he brought his mother and sister from Poland to the States. They lived in Kansas City for eight years before moving to Norwich, Connecticut in 1966. Alex and Eva are married and have two children.