"The first wife of my father, Shlomo Posner, and their two daughters died in the Shoah. What were their names? What was his wife’s maiden name? Is it possible to locate her family?"
Shlomo Posner (1899-1983) was born in the town of Jaworzno in Galicia, Poland, son of Haim Posner and Dina nee Glass. He was married in the town and moved to the large city of Krakow where his two daughters were born. In the beginning of the war he went to Russia and was arrested, did forced labor In Siberia, and when released went to Tashkent. There he joined other adults who were escorting “the children of Teheran” and arrived in Israel. In Israel he discovered that his wife and daughters had not survived.
Like many Holocaust survivors, he kept quiet about his past and did not recount many stories. He started another family in Israel and occasionally told us about a white Shpitz dog they called Shpitzer who was very clever. He told us that Shpitzer would accompany his daughters every morning to the bus stop on their way to school and wait for each one separately when she returned.
“Recently I found an old suitcase with two crumpled family photographs hidden inside a book. The photographs were yellowed and faded as if they had been saved in my father’s pocket, absorbing sweat on his long, circuitous journey from Poland to Israel. At the home of my uncle Haim Posner who had come to Israel before the war, I found a postcard combining a portrait of a couple and a New Year’s greeting which had been sent from Poland to Haim and his wife. I also found another photograph, my father’s two daughters holding a white dog. I know the dog's names but do not even know the names of the girls!”
Photographs and documents:
(source: databank of victims of Soviet repression)
(source: Davar newspaper, September 29, 1942)
