Blajberg Family

In this picture, unfortunately, three of the four seated in the first row perished Al Kiddush haShem in the Shoah. They were: my grandparents Szlama Blajberg and Chana Frejda Blajberg and my cousin Hilusz, z"l.

Szlama was a merchant.  He dealt with values, and had money to buy visas & passports to send his children abroad.

There were a total of 11 children.

• Three died at a young age, perhaps because of Tay Sachs disease. [ Later in the USA, we had two cases of Tay Sachs in our family.]
•  My father, Abram Blajberg, was the first to leave, in 1929 at 19 yrs old, to Brazil.
• Ada/Etale survived because she left in 1938 to the country then called Palestine and lived in Telaviv. She later married Ovadya Gotlieb
• Moshe - went to Palestine as a founder of Kibbutz Usha. He married Leika Kerbel who was also from Ostrowiec. Moshe wrote about his pre-war experience in Ostrowiec in an article in the Yizkor book of 1971.
•  Maier went to Trinidad & Tobago, and after the war to San Diego
•  Lola was hidden during the Holocaust and after the war went to Palestine. She was married to Shlomo Politanski
• Yerachmiel went to Palestine before the war; Yerach was a POW of the Egyptians, and later was one of the first Jews to came to Beersheba where his wife Amira, a nurse, attended the first deliveries of Jewish children in Beersheba.  Amira was from an old family of Jerusalem, their forebears came to Israel from Bukhara, some even by walking .

The following two children were married, and it was not possible to send them abroad with their children. Unfortunately, they died in Treblinka, with spouses and children. Their names were given to many of our children and the children of the other eight brothers, so they remain alive in our memory. Some of the children even resemble their namesakes.

• Yehoshua (Shiale) - born  c. 1915 was married to Perla from Opatow . Their children were Hilusz, Moshe, Ester (Estiu)
• Mindla -born  c. 1917 was married to Abush (Minzberg)  . Their children were Yechiel and Yehoshua

Yehoshua had a plant for manufacturing brushes, in nearby Apt (Opatow). He made brushes for all the departing                      brothers, with their names inscribed under the bristles.  I have one of the brushes, inscribed with the initials AB.