I dont know that much about my paternal grandfather, Moshe Lebowicz (Moshe Yehuda ben Henoch Yitzchak), having never gotten to meet him since he passed away in 1970 when my father was 11 years old. From what my dad and other relatives have told me, he did not like to talk much about the war. But from records that my uncle has found, I learned that he was from the town of Osoj in Czechoslovakia and he was arrested at some point in 1938. At one point, he was in the Theresienstadt ghetto and for more than 6 years, he was imprisoned in various concentration camps, specifically Flossenburg, Auschwitz, and Dachau. In an affidavit that he had signed in 1957, there is the only written description we have from him of his life in the camps: “In all the concentration camps the living conditions were bad and there was little food. I remember that for the morning meal 12 people would have to share 1 piece of bread; we were also given potato peels and 1 teaspoon of fake coffee. For dinner all we had was a small dish of flour soup . . . in Auschwitz and all camps after that I wore a band on my wrist with the number 6204; I wore a blue and white striped uniform in Auschwitz and after that in Dachau . . . I was subjected to beatings by the concentration camp guards.” He also states that he was the only 1 of his 11 siblings to survive the war. But also, his first wife and their 4 children had also perished. My grandfather went on to later marry my grandmother, and have another 7 children, of which my father is the youngest. Though I know little about his life, one of the things I know that he did was say kaddish for people who couldnt read the text themselves. May we never forget all the victims of the Holocaust.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Apr 2014 19:13:56 +0000
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