An Archive for a Family of Holocaust Survivors

Delivering my grandpa's archive to YIVO

Hello from NYC!

This building is where YIVO, the Center for Jewish Research, is located.

I traveled across the county to deliver some of the contents of the box I’ve been writing about here, including my great-grandfather’s last manuscript, scribbled on scraps of paper in the Lvov Ghetto, a death camp he did not survive.

The collection contains all of his professional archive, including hundreds of photographs of my grandparents’ families from before WWII, of those who were left inside the refugee camps, and images of them as they built new lives in the US and Chile

My grandfather and his sister rescued hundreds of photographs, carried them across borders and oceans, and none of us knew about them until I started going through this box. It was such a huge relief to get them to a place that could properly care for them.

It was fun to watch the archivists being excited.

Here, my dad sees photographs of his grandparents and their siblings for the first time in his life.

All of his grandparents were murdered by the Nazis, along with five of their siblings, and at least thirty-seven other close relatives.

Thank you to YIVO for honoring my family’s legacy. And to my cousins Lauren and John Sullivan and all the Sullivan/Pelzinskis (!!) and my pals Justin Fouranno, Lya Yanne for making what would have been a stressful week much more fun!

In this photo, are my grandpa and his sister before the war.

My cousin Gerardo and my Great-Aunt Masha in the refugee camp, 1946. Masha survived a firing squad that killed her parents, grandparents, and younger siblings. Her mother’s body covered her, and she lived alone in the woods from ages 10 - 13.

This was taken shortly after my grandma and grandpa found her and brought her to the refugee camp, where her sister Frida, Gerardo’s mother, took her in and raised her as her own.