Seated in the bottom row from L: facing the camera Sara and to her right, Malka.
Second row from L, holding Sara, is grandmother Leah, next to her is grandfather Naftali.
Top row, second from L above Leah is Chaya. The other people are other relatives.
Szpiegel Family
Naftali Yisrael and Leah Breindel Szpiegel
As told by Neil Yaros, son of Malka Spiegel:
Naftali Yisrael Szpiegel, son of Tzvi Hirsch Szpiegel, lived in Ostrowiec. Naftali married Leah Breindel Rosenthal and had 3 daughters: Chaya, Malka and Sara.
Naftali worked in the steel business, and had a franchise for Swiss steel used in the construction and farm equipment businesses. The business was located on Legionow Street #18 near the home on Legionow #14. [Street numbers and names changed over the years. The street is now called Czysta and the building no longer exists]
Due to his work, as the years of Holocaust advanced, he was able to pay for the support and hiding of Chaya and Malka through the assistance of a local Polish judge (with whom the family kept contact even through the mid 1950’s). His daughter Sara was too young to join them.
Unfortunately, Naftali perished in Auschwitz around the time of the liberation; Leah and Sara were murdered in Treblinka. Chaya and Malka survived the war, with the help of the Aryan papers their father helped to provide.
On March 19, 1945, after Ostrowiec was already liberated, while Malka was returning by train from Warsaw, Chaya Szpiegel was at the apartment of her friend Faiga Krongold, along with some other Ostrowiec Holocaust survivors. On that day, a horrific murder took place by the hands of ex-Home Army (A.K) Poles; Chaya and three of her friends were murdered. Malka, the lone survivor of the Szpiegel family, was devastated.
Malka Szpiegel standing next to the matzeivah of her murdered sister Chaya Szpiegel.
The same matzeivah damaged
several months later.