BEKI RECONNECTS WITH ANCESTORS

September 21, 2021, by Brian Slattery- "It’s an old photograph, of three people walking hand in hand in hand down the street. All of them are in mid-stride. All of them are looking straight at the camera. One is in a suit, one in a dress, one in a military uniform. They have a story to tell, and what a story it is. “Abraham (1920-2010) Chana (1926-2020) and Fiszel (1910-1986) Tugentman were the only survivors of their family after WW II,” writes Ghislane Palumbo on an accompanying note. The Tugentmans had lived in Warsaw before the war began. They fled to Russian-occupied Bialystock in 1939. The brothers were drafted into the Russian army. When the Nazis occupied the city they sent Chana to a work camp; everyone else was killed. “After the war my uncles Abraham and Fiszel checked with the Joint in Warsaw to see who in their family had been listed as survivors, and they found my mother Chana working as a seamstress in Lodz, Poland. They all had married by 1946 and wanted to leave Europe, so they went and signed up through the Joint Distribution Committee, which sent them to the displaced persons camp in Heideheim, Germany. I believe the picture was taken in Munich on their way to the DP camp. In that picture my uncles still had their Russian Post-War boots, and my mother wore a new coat my father had made for her...” Click HERE to comment and read full article,

Click HERE to read the full article and to comment.