Published: 31 December 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
This year ALLAN PREISS finally found an archive with photos of his father’s family, who perished in 1941. Here he rejoices in the elation of casting eyes on them for the first time
A FEW YEARS AGO I was asked to speak at the Jewish Labor Bund’s annual April 19 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Commemoration. I spoke about the spaces at our Seder table that would remain forever empty. They would never be filled by my paternal grandparents, or the aunts, uncle and cousins on my father’s side. That was part of my family’s Holocaust legacy.
Coincidentally, my father’s birth date was April 19, 1923.
My father was the oldest of five children. He was 16 when Germany invaded Poland. Only he survived the Holocaust. About Pop’s family all I knew were the names of his parents and siblings. There were no records, no photos. No stories.
My father was a quiet, reserved man. He didn’t talk much. He left that to my mother. It was from her that we learnt Pop’s survival story. We only got it in broad brush strokes from her. I’m unsure whether she knew the details or whether she wanted to spare us the pain of knowing.
But I knew grief from an early age. he home I grew up in was full of Holocaust survivors. Apart from our family there was Mrs Vadasz, a Hungarian survivor who was a boarder for a short time. She was followed by Kurt and Carla Schaeffer. He was Austrian, she was Rumanian. My family affectionately called him “der yekke” – the Austrian. After they left, Mr Lipschitz moved in.
I remember being woken up at night by the nightmares my father was having and my mother consoling him.
I learnt about the Holocaust at the Sholem Aleichem Yiddish Sunday school I attended and the SKIF Jewish youth movement. In both organisations I was taught and led by Holocaust survivors. I got to hear their stories, see their photos, meet their families.
But of my father’s family I knew next to nothing.
