Testimonies of Holocaust witnesses

While searching the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute, I found the testimony of Leon (Leib) Epstein, the uncle of the still living Polaniecki brothers. (Polaniecki family, parents and four sons, fled from Brzesko to the Soviet Union at the...

This is the second part of the testimony of Joseph Polaniecki recorded in march 2021. - Was your family chasidic? -  We were orthodox Jews, we were not hasidic. My grandfather had a beard, but my father was emancipated because...

In February and March 2021, I participated in several on-line meetings with Joseph Polaniecki.  Father of Mr Polaniecki, Abraham Alter Polaniecki, born in Tarnów in 1892, was the son of Jonas Polaniecki and Chaja nee Luftig. He married Freidel (Frieda)...

On August 13, 2021, Dov Landau shared memories of his bar mitzvah, which took place in Brzesko in the summer of 1941. Bar mitzvah (from Hebrew בר מצוה, "son of the commandment") is a Jewish religious ceremony which marks a...

The Jewish Müntz family (their name was also spelled as Minz) lived in Brzesko, Jadowniki and Nowy Wiśnicz. Mrs Anna Brzyska researched the history of Berisch Minz's sons born in Jadowniki. The younger brother was Gerszon Szmuel Minz (born 1876),...

"I had such a friend at school, Cyla Krauter. She was so beautiful, with long light curly hair. She came from a very orthodox house, even the housekeeper was Jewish. Her father had a bookstore and a printing house. I...

„It was already 1942, I saw it with my own eyes. I was looking through the window when SS led 17 Jews down the street. Klinger family was among them. Father of that family had been already shot that day....

- Do you remember that wedding in Brzesko in 1935? Wedding of rabbi Teitelbaum’s son? - No, I don’t, I studied in the university in Kraków back then. - That wedding took place in 1935. This rabbi (Mr Landau shows...