Last sunday, the 12th day of the Hebrew month of Shvat, I observed the yahrzeit of my Zambrow family. This was that date that, in 1943, 72 years ago, my great grandmother Sheindl, my Zeidy’s mother, and three of his sisters and their families, were murdered by the Nazis.
At least I believe this was the date. The story that my mother and aunt told me was that, some time after the war, someone came to their home, after Shabbat, and extinguished any hope that my Zeidy’s family had survived the war when they reported that an eyewitness had seen them being taken to the gas chambers in Treblinka.
The Zambrow Yizkor book provides some information about the last days of the Jews of Zambrow. The Jews were first forced to live in a sealed ghetto where the Nazis confined them as well as other Jews from surrounding towns. A number of massacres (Aktions) took place during the fall of 1942. According to the Yizkor book, on Friday, January 16, 1943, the 10th day of the Hebrew month of Shvat, the surviving Jews were taken to Auschwitz. A survivor recalls that, when they got there,
“we begin to march. That is, those Zambrow Jews able to work, approximately a hundred in number. What the number of the women was, I do not know, but I gathered that it was much less. The remaining Jews of the Sacred Congregation of the Jews of Zambrow, were killed that same night in the gas chambers.”
At another point in the Yizkor book, there is a list that records the important dates in the history of Zambrow. The last of these entries, in translation, reads: “last journey of the last of the Zembrovers, Friday Night, burnt in the crematorium of Auschwitz” with the same dates, the 16th of January, 1943 and the 10th of Shvat.
The reader will notice two discrepancies between the Yizkor book and the information my family received: where they were killed (Auschwitz or Treblinka) and the exact date (the 10th or the 12th of Shvat). These are important facts, the truth of which I feel a need to establish.
The yahrzeit is a special date that marks the anniversary of a person’s death. To the mourner, it is a special date on which you connect with your soul of the departed. When observing a yahrzeit for a parent, the custom is to light a candle, recite kaddish, and (in a traditional synagogue) if a man, to lead the prayer service. Some people observe the day as a fast day, others have a custom to bring food for the community and to drink a l’chaim.
For the first time in my life, I sponsored a kiddush in shul (synagogue) in memory of my Zambrow relatives. I brought a picture of them and explained how I was related and why it was important for me to find out as much as I could about them. I told the assembled congregants that it was time for me to commemorate their memory in a public manner. I intend to make this an annual custom. I also lit a yarhzeit candle in their memory. May the memory of my great grandmother, Sheindl bat Avraham Yankl, Hinda bat Elchanan and Sheindl, Paiche bat Elchanan and Sheindl, Chana bat Elchanan and Sheindl, David ben ? (not sure of father’s name) and Paiche and Paiche’s other son whose name I do not know, never be forgotten.
