REMEMBERING

I have a family tree printed in 1993 on many sheets of paper that were taped together to form a roll about 10 feet long. Cousin Mel Pollack made it, and my uncle Louis Fishman did an earlier draft by hand. 

I’ve been thinking lately about family history; maybe a lot of people my age do this as we watch the precipice getting closer. One thought has nagged at me for many years: what relatives of mine were killed during the Holocaust? 

Below is a list of names from the Pollack (Pulik) family tree, of families for which all or many of the members died the same year during World War 2. I don’t know the circumstances of these deaths, and so I am making an assumption that they were killed by the Nazis or Nazi sympathizers in Poland, Russia or elsewhere. 

Yetta (Yentle) Pollack (1909-1942) and children Shulamis Oberman (1934-1942), Henya Oberman (1936-1942) and Malka Oberman (1936-1942)

Kossel Pollack (1912-1942) and wife Chaya Suchman ( - 1943)

Chaim Lieb Pollack (1917-1942)

siblings Yossel Pulik (1907-1941); Berrel Pulik (1909-1941); Yentel Pulik (1912-1941); Siegel Pulik (1914-1941) - (brother Aaron Paul (Pulik) survived and wrote a memorial book (Yizkor Book) about the town of Motol where my father’s family lived before coming to the United States

Benjamin Pollack and wife Tzaitel and 6 children: Raisel, Yossel, Yentl, Schloime, Osher and Herschel; all died in about 1942

Chaike Fishman and husband Chaim Tevyansky, and 3 children: Zloty, Sorreh and Masheh Tevyansky; all died in about 1942

Reva Pulik (1874-1943) and husband Moishe Pruzansky (1872-1943) and 5 children: Sorren, Yudel, Tanye, Channah and Dora Pruzansky - all died in about 1942; (daughter Cyril Pruzansky (born 1908) survived and married Charles Glassman, I knew them and their sons Art and Jeffrey when I was a kid in Chicago)

Peril Pollack (1895-1943) and husband David Aizenberg (1892-1943) and daughter Chaske (1919-1943)

I don’t know, and can not imagine, the suffering these people went through before they died. I don’t know if they were murdered outright, tortured and murdered, or rounded up and sent to the death camps to be murdered. I do know that they, and all others killed in genocides, should be remembered.