‘He Was Sent by God to Take Care of Us’: Inside the Real Story Behind Schindler’s List

For Rena Finder, Dec. 31, 1942, was not a day for celebrating New Year's Eve. It was the beginning of a new, terrifying chapter in the life of the Jewish 13-year-old in Krakow, Poland. That was when her father was accused of being a member of the resistance and arrested; she never heard from him again. "I was a little girl, and it seemed like overnight, I became an enemy of the state," Finder, now 89, told TIME in a recent phone call from her home in Framingham, Mass.

For Rena Finder, Dec. 31, 1942, was not a day for celebrating New Year's Eve. It was the beginning of a new, terrifying chapter in the life of the Jewish 13-year-old in Krakow, Poland. That was when her father was accused of being a member of the resistance and arrested; she never heard from him again. "I was a little girl, and it seemed like overnight, I became an enemy of the state," Finder, now 89, told TIME in a recent phone call from her home in Framingham, Mass.