Arie Sagi photograph collection

Arie Sagi’s mother, Rachel Roza Weksler, was born in October 1917 in Swiéciany. Lithuania. She was one of six siblings. Roza’s older brother, Hirsz Zvi Weksler, was married to Fanny and had two daughters. In June 1941, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Hirsz and Roza fled Swiéciany. They both joined a partisan unit in the nearby forest, and Roza met her future husband, Mordechai Sergowicz, who was originally from Yody (?), Russia. Hirsz Weksler’s wife and two daughters were murdered in Swiéciany. Roza and Hirsz’s brother, Jakub Weksler, (b. 1913) who was a well-known tailor in Swiéciany, was married to Batia (Basia) Wiskonska (Wojszkunska), and they had a son, Samuel, who was born around 1938. When the Germans established a ghetto in Swiéciany, Batia and Jakub found a Lithuanian family who agreed to hide Samuel. Unfortunately the family, who had agreed to hide Samuel Weksler, changed their mind and brought the boy back to the ghetto but did not return the valuables, a samovar and a scale, given to them by Batia and Jakub. Batia gave birth to her second son on February 28, 1943. A few weeks later, Batia and Jakub met Emilia and Piotr Waszkinel and begged them to take their newborn baby boy. Batia, Jakub, and Samuel Weksler were probably murdered in the ghetto in Vilnius (Wilno), Lithuania. After liberation Roza and Mordechai Sergowicz settled in Chernivtsi (Czernowitz), Ukraine, where their son, Arie, was born on February 24, 1946. In 1956 they moved to Poland, and two years later, after reuniting with Hirsz Zvi, they immigrated to Israel. Arie served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the elite paratrooper unit and later studied at the university.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The photographs were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2004 by Arie Sagi.