Sura and her family decided to stay in Poland rather than
emigrate to the United States like her brother Chona Jankiel had done,
and she, along with the rest of her family, presumably perished in the
Shoah. She had seven children, six pictured here. Mention has been
made of the family living in the shtetl of Pisk, though Sura was born
in the small shtetl of Gniazdowo, just a short distance from the town
of Sniadowo.
When a Gniazdowicz cousin, Chone Laibl
Pecynowicz (later Leon Pakin), was preparing for his own
emigration in late 1938, he asked Sura if she would like him to take one of her
children with him when he emigrated from Poland. She held out her hands and asked, "Which one of my fingers should I
cut off?" So she did not allow any of her children to go with him. She said that she felt safe where
she was and did not fear the pogroms because they were happening far away, in the bigger
cities.
Years later, in 1963, this cousin, who had immigrated to Australia, decided to take his wife
on a worldwide trip. He found Sura's brother Chone Jankiel in Brooklyn, New
York, whom he hadn't seen in nearly
fifty years back in the Sniadowo area. The meeting lasted the entire day, and
was an emotional one for all. |
