Son identifies mother in Holocaust-era pictures
More than 60 years after they were taken Ya'acov Schwartzman discovers his mother's pre-war life in Poland through lost photographs brought to light by Ynet's special Holocaust memorial project
"Dad, look on the internet. It's Grandma!" It wasn't a phone call Ya'acov Schwartzman was expecting from his daughter Irit on Monday afternoon but less than an hour later he found himself staring at his late mother's youthful face smiling at him from his computer screen.
The picture of Schwartzman's mother and many other young men and women were presented as part of a Ynet special project to commemorate this year's Holocaust Memorial Day - "Images of a Lost Community." After spending almost 60 years hidden carefully in the wall of an old house in the Polish village of Chelm the project shined a spotlight on 178 aged and yellow
ed photographs telling the story of the close-knit Jewish community that thrived there before the Holocaust.
Relatives of the family that hid the pictures were able to identify several of the people shown dancing and ice skating but the rest remained nameless, until yesterday.
Like many others Irit visited the Lost Community website and suddenly realized that one of the women was her paternal grandmother, who passed away 20 years ago.
The picture of Esther Rozen, from before the war.
After speaking to his daughter Schwartzman, who lives in Netanya and has three daughters and a grandson, also visited the site.
"And there I saw my mother, Esther, there is no doubt about it, it's definitely her."
Schwartzman rushed to contact his younger brother, who also confirmed that it was, indeed, their mother.
Ya'acov Shwartzman holding a picture of his mother (Photo: Ido Erez)
"My daughter, Ofra, looks just like her," said Schwartzman fondly.
The picture in question shows Esther with a young man, apparently dancing, in a room with tables covered with white tablecloths.
Schwartzman said he was very moved to see his mother at such a young age. He said he could not identify the young man in the picture. "My mother's maiden name was Esther Rozen. After marrying my father she became Schwartzman. She passed away two decades ago, died young at 67," he said.
Family dinner (Reproduction photo: Ido Erez)
The story of Schwartzman's parents is like that of many other broken and later mended Jewish families.
"My parents were both from Chelm," he said, "they knew each other before the war broke out. When it started there were rumors that the Germans were coming after the men, so my father escaped to Russia, to a place near Kazakhstan. Esther, my mother, also fled across the Russian border."
Schwartzman recalls that his father was married to a different woman back then. "His first wife and their two children, who were 10 and eight years old, remained in Chelm. They thought that the Germans were only after the men. While in Russia my father learned that they had all been taken to the Sobibor
concentration camp, where they perished."
"After the war ended my parents met again in Chelm, and married. I was born in Austria, in a transit camp, and named after my father's youngest son, who was murdered. In 1949, they managed to make it to Israel, where my little brother was born."
