Cecillia Etkin

Content type
Collection

Cecillia Etkin

Project
Weaving Women's Words

Pamela Brown Lavitt interviewed Cecillia Etkin on June 14 and August 1, 2001, at her home in Seattle, Washington, as part of the Weaving Women's Words project. Etkin discusses her childhood in Romania, her experiences in concentration camps, her work as a "mikveh lady," and her role in educating youth about the Holocaust, highlighting her resilience and dedication to preserving Jewish traditions and supporting her community.

Cecillia Etkin

Cecillia Pollock Etkin’s faith in Judaism delivered her from seven concentration camps during the Holocaust and in 1950 to the Seattle Orthodox Jewish community where she lovingly served as the “mikveh lady” for 27 years, from 1970-1997. Born in Sighet, Romania in 1922, Cecillia was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 where her parents and many siblings were murdered. In 1945 Cecillia emigrated to New York City, married Seattle native Nathan Etkin, and moved to Seattle with him where she ran her own dressmaking business and raised four children. As Seattle’s first volunteer “mikveh lady” she prepared the ritual bath according to Orthodox Jewish law, and counseled brides and married women, converts, the sick and the elderly, who sought her quiet spiritual guidance.

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