Shulamit Bastacky was born shortly after the Nazis seized power in Vilnius. Her parents made the difficult decision to give up their daughter to protect her from being killed by the Nazis. A Polish Catholic nun kept Shulamit in a basement, where she was deprived of nourishment and nurturing for the first few years of her life. Nevertheless, Shulamit credited the nun with saving her life. Meanwhile, Shulamit’s parents spent the war enslaved in a small labor camp.

After her parents were liberated, they began looking for their daughter, as did many families who had placed their children in the care of others. After liberation, the nun left Shulamit on a riverbank, where a Lithuanian man found her and took her to an orphanage. There, she was given a new name, until by chance her father walked into the orphanage and was able to identify her from a birthmark. She was very malnourished and did not look like the baby they had seen just a few years before.

After the family was reunited, they moved to Poland. It took Shulamit a long time to readjust to life outside of the basement, and her parents had to learn how to be parents again.

In 1959, Shulamit traveled to Israel, where she lived for five years and served in the Israeli army. She then immigrated to the United States in 1963. She began learning English and finished high school, and was later accepted to the University of Pittsburgh, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in Social Work. After graduating, she worked in the field of geriatric social work.

Shulamit developed a teddy bear project where children collect and distribute teddy bears to those who, like her, were not fortunate enough to have them. She spent more than thirty years speaking and sharing her story with children and adults, and her presentation focused on ignorance, hate, and prejudice.

Shulamit passed away after a brief battle with cancer on January 1, 2021.