Meed was born in
Praga, a district of
Warsaw,
Poland to Hanna Peltel (née Antosiewicz) and Shlomo Peltel. Her mother ran a
haberdashery store, and her father worked in a leather factory. Meed was the oldest child; she had two siblings, sister Henia and brother Chaim. At 14, she joined
Jewish Labor Bund and in 1942 the
Jewish Combat Organization. Vladka's father's died before and then her mother, brother, and sister died in
Treblinka extermination camp. She was spared when they were taken because she worked in a German factory and had papers to show the Nazis when they raided her town. Vladka and her future husband
Benjamin Meed pretended to be
Aryans and helped organize the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After the final destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, Meed was active in the Jewish underground movement (the
Jewish Coordinating Committee) which supported Jews to survive in Warsaw and its surroundings. Using a false identity, she traveled with forged permits to bring financial and emotional aid to hiding Jews, deliver fake documents, etc. Meed and Benjamin married in 1945 and survived both the
Holocaust and
World War II. They arrived in the US in 1946 with $8 between them. == Career ==