Kling family

The Ghetto Fighters House Archive in Israel https://www.gfh.org.il/eng/Archive has got 4 photos of Lea Kling, a Holocaust survivor from Brzesko, who was in a DP camp in Italy after the war.

Several hours of searching in various archives resulted in finding many materials about this family, including several photos.
Ruchel Rozenzweig, born in Brzesko in 1879, daughter of Jozef Springer and Sara Rozenzweig, married in 1901 Samuel Minz, son of Jozef Minz and Lipka Korngold. They had two children, Scheindel (1901) and Marjem (1902). But in 1903, 26 year-old Samuel Minz died of typhoid fever leaving a pregnant wife. Chaim Szmuel was born 4 months after his father’s death.

In 1906, the widow of Samuel Minz married Abraham Leib Kling, a Radłów-born butcher. The spouses had 8 children, including Lea Kling from photos kept in the Israeli archives.

The fate of this large family was as tragic as that of most Polish Jews. Of the 11 children born to Ruchel nee Rozenzweig, two daughters died in their infancy, five children were murdered in the Holocaust. I don’t know anything about the fate of one son, and three children managed to survive the war. Here’s what I could find:

Children of Ruchel nee Rozenzwejg from her first marriage to Samuel Minz:
• Scheindel, 1901 – died in 1902.
• Marjem, 1902 – in 1923 married Efroim Pancer from Brzesko; she was murdered together with her husband and two children: Sabina (Sarah, 1924) and Samuel (1931).

• Chaim Szmuel, 1904.

Children of Ruchel nee Rozenzweig from the second marriage to Abraham Leib Kling:

• Chana, 1907 – in 1930 married Markus Simche Regent from Kraków; murdered in the Krakow ghetto together with her daughter Sarah.

• Syma Lieba, 1909 – in 1932 she married Chaim Mingelgrin/Zollfrist from Brzesko. In 1935, the spouses emigrated to Palestine together with their daughter Malka; due to that that escaped the Holocaust.
• Sara, 1910 – died in 1912.
• Jentel Pessel, 1912 – in 1940 she lived together with parents and sister Ryfka in Kraków at Przemyska, 4. In August 1940 all of them were ordered to leave Kraków for Brzesko. In August 1941, already in Brzesko she married Chaim Joel Schmerz from Podgórze; they were together in the Bresko ghetto, both murdered.

• Chaja, 1913 – married an Hebrew teacher Isaak Majer Kapler from Brzesko; both were murdered.

• Jakob Moses, 1915. In 1942, when in Brzesko ghetto, he married Sussel Basler; survived the war.
• Laje (Lea), 1918 – survived the Holocaust, married Dov Sergee-Weber; for several years after the war she was in DP camps in Europe; later she emigrated to Israel.
• Ryfka, 1920 – seamstress, married Hirsch Gelberger/ Ausenberg in Brzesko on November 10, 1942, already after the liquidation of the Brzesko ghetto, when about 200 Jews were left in the city to clean the area of the ghetto. It was the last Jewish marriage in Brzesko during the war. The fiancés were married by Chaskel Blonder “in place of Rabbi Chaim Teitelbaum”, who had already been murdered. Most likely they were transported in December 1942 to Tarnów, and from there to Auschwitz. Ryfka was murdered, her husband survived the war.

Ruchel Kling died in the Brzesko ghetto on April 17, 1941; her husband Abraham Leib perished in 1942. Matzevot of both spouses have survived at the Brzesko Jewish cemetery. The daughter of Lea Kling, Mrs Rachel Kigel who now lives in Israel, told me that the tombstone on the grave of Abraham Leib was erected after the war by his only surviving son Jakob.

Here lies
Mrs Rachel Kling
Daughter of our teacher Yossef
Died on the seventh (day)
of Pesach, the year 5701 [ April 17, 1941]
An important, modest woman
Her hands she spread out to the poor and she raised
Her sons in the honest way
May her soul be bound in the bundle of life
Wife of Mr Leibush Kling
(translation from Hebrew by Yossi Elran)

Here lies

Arie Leib Kling

Son of Mr Mordechai of blessed memory

Died in the year 1942

May his soul be bound in the bundle of life

” I keep seeing their faces …”
May the memory of all Holocaust victims be an eternal blessing.

© Anna Brzyska, 2022, 2023.