Chava Nissimov, formerly Ewa Altszyler, was born in Warsaw in the summer of 1939. She spent her childhood in the Warsaw Ghetto, where her father died of typhus. Ewa and her mother survived several operations. Eventually, they managed to escape the ghetto. Initially, they hid by themselves. Later, her mother, using false papers, went to work in the Reich, entrusting her daughter to the Walczak family, who lived near Siedlce. Three-and-a-half-year-old Ewa, along with another – an adult Jewish woman - hid behind a wardrobe.
Following liberation, Ewa went to Łódź with her aunt, her mother's sister, where she attended school. After leaving Poland, she and her mother found themselves in a DP camp in Bad Reichenhall, from where they travelled to Israel. From childhood, Ewa had felt a sense of alienation. In the Polish school, right after the war, she encountered antisemitism and, in Israel, she had to redefine her identity. She never lived again with her mother. She now describes their relationship as "complicated".
She currently lives in Israel and is a recognised writer and poet, although she only began writing following her retirement. She mainly creates literature for children. Her book "The Secret of Florian", which was also published in Poland, won the main prize in the World Friendly to Children competition organised by the Committee for the Protection of Children's Rights. In 2023, Chava Nissimov also received the most prestigious Israeli literary award for her work for young readers – the Dvora Omer Award.
The interviewee often appears publicly in Israel, Poland and around the world, advocating for the memory of the Holocaust. In recent years, she has begun visualising her memories and ideas using artificial intelligence. Chava also uses AI to recreate lost childhood photographs, and she eagerly shares her works on Facebook. She is one of the protagonists of Mariusz Szczygieł's book "Nie ma".
Chava maintains close contact with the grandchildren of the family who saved her and still, to no avail, strives to have Bronisława and Wawrzyniec Walczak recognised with the title of “Righteous Among the Nations”.
