In 1941, Dawson and her family were living in Kharkov when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and began to strategically and brutally kill Jews. All the Jews in Kharkov who had not left, more than 16,000, were grouped together by the Nazis and sent on a long forced march to be killed and buried in the ravine Drobitsky Yar near Kharkov. A mile from the ravine, her father bribed one of the guards by giving him a gold watch, so that he would allow Zhanna to escape. Zhanna hid among the crowd that had gathered to watch. She was later reunited with her sister Frina at the home of the Bogancha family in Kharkov (Frina has to date never revealed how she too escaped). The two concealed their Jewish identity by inventing a cover story on how their parents were killed, calling themselves Anna and Marina Morozova. They made their way to an orphanage in Kremenchug, Ukraine to get official papers to certify their aliases where a piano technician noticed their talent, and introduced them to a theater director who was in charge of entertaining the Nazis. Thereafter, the sisters performed piano for Germans (who never knew they were Jews) throughout the war. Though several people accused them of not being who they said they were they were never caught.
