Born on November 18, 1905, Mischket Liebermann was the fifth of eight children in a poor family that lived in the Galician [jwa_encyclopedia_glossary:404]shtetl[/jwa_encyclopedia_glossary] of Tytschin (Tyczyn), which had two synagogues. The one that had a golden dome was where the rich prayed, while the old ramshackle one served the poor. This was where her father, Pinchus Elieeser Liebermann, served as rabbi. Fearing pogroms, the family fled to Berlin in 1914. Here, living in the slum Scheunenviertel, her father soon gathered an orthodox congregation around him and established a synagogue in the Grenadierstrasse. As his daughter lovingly describes him, he was in constant movement, a one-man service combination, who cared for his flock from the cradle to the grave, as mohel (circumciser) and [jwa_encyclopedia_glossary:299]Bar Mitzvah[/jwa_encyclopedia_glossary] teacher, as celebrant at weddings, as a dayan granting divorce, as leader of prayers and as a judge in the ghetto.