At the Ghetto fighters house archive website https://www.gfh.org.il/eng/Archive there is a photo signed as “Szymon Kleinberger and his sister working in the family’s bakery in Brzesko before the war“.
Data from Yad Vashem, Arolsen archives and Brzesko vital records allowed to recreate at least part of this family’s history.
Naftali Kleinberger, son of Pinkas Kleinberger and Lieba Wermouth, was born in Tymbark in 1880. In 1904 he married Ester Gutter from Chrzanów, daughter of Samuel and Reisel Gutter. The family settled in Brzesko, where Naftali became a baker. They had 6 daughters and a son: Chaja (1906), Chana (1907), Lea (1908), Fradla (1910), Szymon (1911), Rachel (1914) and Nechuma (1916).
Before the war, three older sisters got married in Brzesko: Chaje married Jakob Koenigsbuch; Chana – Dawid Kleinman, and Lea – Leiser Zuckerbrod.
Parents Naftali and Ester, their daughters Chaja, Chana, Lea and Rachel and their families were murdered in the Holocaust.
Szymon survived several concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and after the war he found one of his sisters in the German city of Gelsenkirchen. I don’t know what happened to one other sister. I also don’t know which of the sisters is in this photo.
The 1930s. They are all still alive. Maybe they are preparing for Lea’s wedding – she got married in Brzesko on February 28, 1937 in the presence of Rabbi Moses Lipschitz. Maybe they got married in the main Brzesko synagogue? – Its renovation was completed in the mid-1930s… We only have this photo left. Another Brzesko family saved from oblivion. May their memory be an eternal blessing.
© Anna Brzyska, 2022