06/07/2025
On the 14th of November, 1932, in the Polish city of Radom, a baby girl named Celina Gutman was born into the warm arms of her parents. The winter was drawing near, and while the streets outside were turning cold, their modest home was filled with warmth, songs, and the quiet joy of new life. Celina’s arrival brought laughter to the Gutman household—a gift, a miracle, a hope.
She was born into a Jewish family that valued tradition, music, learning, and community. Radom, located in central Poland, had a thriving Jewish population before World War II. Its synagogues, schools, bakeries, and cobblestone alleys hummed with the vibrant energy of Jewish life. For centuries, families like the Gutmans had lived and loved there, passing down stories, prayers, and melodies from generation to generation.
Celina was a bright, spirited child with a sparkle in her eyes and a voice that filled every room she entered. From the earliest age, she was drawn to music. Her mother often sang Yiddish lullabies to her at bedtime, and by the time she was four, Celina was already singing along—clearly, loudly, with all the joy of a child who believed the world was kind.
She loved school, especially choir practice. Her teacher noticed early on that Celina had a pure, clear voice, a soprano tone that seemed to rise like sunlight through the classroom windows. Though she was shy when speaking, she came alive in song. Music was her language, her way of expressing everything she didn’t yet have words for.
Her favorite songs were in Polish and Hebrew—classical school songs, folk tunes, and religious hymns. During school performances, she stood in the front row, her small hands clasped before her, her eyes fixed on the teacher, and her voice leading the others. Her parents beamed from the back of the classroom, proud beyond words. “Our little nightingale,” her father would say.
Celina’s family lived a modest life, filled with love and ritual. Her father worked in a textile factory; her mother tended the home and cared deeply for Celina and her siblings. On Shabbat, the table was laid with care—candles glowing, challah bread warm from the oven, and the hum of blessings weaving through the air. Celina especially loved Friday nights when the family would sing Zemirot together—traditional Sabbath songs that linked them to generations past.
She adored the seasons: the crisp apples of autumn, the gentle snowflakes of winter, the scent of blooming trees in spring. She sang when she walked to school, when she played with friends, when she helped her mother hang laundry. She sang for birthdays, for holidays, and sometimes just to cheer someone up.
But Celina’s joyful world did not last.
In September 1939, when Celina was just six years old, N**i Germany invaded Poland. The beautiful rhythms of her childhood were shattered by the thunder of war. German soldiers flooded into Radom, and overnight, everything changed. Jews were forced to register, to wear armbands, to give up their businesses. Families were crammed into ghettos. Food became scarce. Freedom disappeared.
Still, Celina sang.
Even when she was no longer allowed to attend her old school, even when books were taken and synagogues burned, she hummed her favorite songs to her younger siblings at night. Her voice—so small, so sweet—became a source of comfort, a way to hold onto something human when the world was turning inhuman.
By 1941, the Radom Ghetto had been established. Jews were crammed into a small, enclosed district. There was little food, no clean water, and disease spread rapidly. Men were taken for forced labor. Children grew thin and tired. But inside one of the overcrowded apartments, you might still have heard the faint sound of a child’s voice—Celina, singing softly as she cradled her little brother or washed a pot for her mother.
Her songs were no longer about spring and sunshine. They became lullabies for survival, prayers set to melody, a child’s attempt to bring light into darkness.
In 1942, the N**is began to “liquidate” the ghettos as part of Operation Reinhard—their plan to exterminate the Jews of Poland. On August 5, 1942, the Radom Ghetto was raided. Thousands were rounded up and deported to Treblinka, one of the most infamous N**i death camps.
Treblinka was not a labor camp. It was designed solely for one purpose: mass murder. Almost all those sent there were killed within hours of arrival.
Celina was just 10 years old.
We do not know exactly how or when she arrived in Treblinka. We do not know if she cried, if she clung to her mother’s hand, or if she tried to comfort a sibling on that final train. But we can imagine. We can imagine that even in her last hours, the memory of music—the comfort of song—was with her.
Maybe she hummed a lullaby to herself. Maybe she sang a verse of a song from choir class. Maybe she whispered the words of the Shema, the Jewish prayer she had heard every night of her life:
"Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad..."
"Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One."
And then she was gone.
Murdered in a camp built to erase her, by men who saw her not as a child, not as a person, but as something unworthy of life. A little girl with a song in her heart—silenced forever.
But they failed.
Because Celina Gutman is not forgotten. Her name, her voice, and her spirit live on. We cannot hear her sing, but we can remember that she sang. We can imagine the brightness of her voice, the way it must have soared through the hallways of her school, the way it must have warmed her family's hearts.
Celina’s story is not only a tragedy. It is a reminder.
It reminds us that the victims of the Holocaust were not just numbers. They were children. They had favorite songs and favorite games. They had dreams. They had talents. Celina wasn’t a symbol. She was a person. A daughter. A friend. A singer.
She should have grown up to become a music teacher, a mother, a grandmother. She should have sung at her wedding. She should have passed on her favorite lullabies to her own children. But that life was stolen—from her, from her family, and from the world.
Today, when we light a memorial candle, when we teach about the Holocaust, when we speak against hatred and bigotry, we carry her name forward. We become her voice.
Every child who sings today sings for Celina, too.
