Ester Yotvat collection

Collection of photographs relating to the family of Jakub Weiss and Salomea Sara Feiler Weiss and their two children, Josef, b. 1926, and Ernestyna Nusia, b. 1930 (donor). The Weiss family lived in Lvov, Poland at 20 Kochanowskiego Street. Jakub Weiss died in June 1939 and in September 1939 Sala’s family came from German occupied Poland. They were deported by the Soviets in June 1940. In June 1941 Nusia went to summer camp in Zaleszczyki and when Germans invaded USSR, all the children were evacuated to Siberia. Nusia was in an orphanage for four years. In May 1945 Nusia wrote home and she received and answer from a former baby-nurse Kasia, that Jozef left family album with her and that she is moving to Poland. Upon Nusia’s arrival in Lvov she started to realize what happened to the Jews. She was just 15 years old. The group of orphans was taken through the initiative of Rabbi Kahane, to orphanage in Bielsko. The train travelled through Krakow, where Nusia found a cousin, who told her about the killing of her mother by Ukrainians and Jozek, who fled to Przemysl, but was killed by Poles there. After 6 months in Bielsko, the group reached a village Selvino in Italy and were in care of Moshe Zeiri from Givat Brenner. The group spent almost a year in Selvino and in February 1947 they boarded a ship Chaim Arlozoroff, which was intercepted by the British and the children were taken to a camp in Cyprus. Only in September 1947 they were allowed to come to Eretz Israel. Includes New Year wishes and an envelope sent by donor’s father in 1936.