Raphael Nissenbaum

Raphael Nissenbaum was born July 25, 1927 in Ostrowiec Poland. His parents were Moshe and Shprintza Nisenbaum. He, his mother, and all his sisters Regina, Brandla/Bronia and Nesia survived the Holocaust.

In 1942, he and his family were hiding in a cellare but were later caught. He witnessed his father’s murder when they were caught, but the rest of the family were released to the ghetto in Ostroweic. Later, he was deported later to laborcamps including  Buna, Auschwitz, and was liberated in 1945.

Not knowing that any family survived, Raphael went with a trusted elder survivor Alfred Kains to Antwerp, and Brussels Belgium where he began working as a watchmaker and learning jewelery and diamond trading by the Kains family. In 1952, he learned his mother and 3 sisters survived and were living in Israel.

After Belgium, he moved to the United States and Canada and passed away in Toronto on July 17, 2017 (Tammuz 23) .