From the daughter of Leon Mendelsohn,
the granddaughter of Dawid and Rywka Mendelsohn:
"My father’s grandparents were Eli [Judko Eliasz] and Liba
Mendelsohn of Zamość.
The Mendelsohns were a relatively well-to-do family of
merchants. Eli and Luba had seven children – two sons and five
daughters, five of whom lived in Zamość with their own families.
My grandfather Dawid was born in Zamość in 1889. He married
Rywka Heryng, the daughter of the town’s ‘shochet’ Mordko Heryng
and Pesla, nee Brumer, in 1907. Their eldest son Icek was born
in 1908. Their daughter, Hinda Malka [Hania] was born in 1912,
and Leon, my father, in 1915.
Hania married Jakub Rozenperl of Warsaw, and by 1939 the couple
was living in Warsaw. Both apparently perished in Treblinka. The
only correspondence from them which I was able to find, was a
photograph they sent to the family in Zamość, dated April 12th,
1941.
Most of the members of the extended Zamość Mendelsohn family who
had remained in Zamość, traveled eastwards with the retreating
Russian army in 1940 – as did most of the remaining Jews from
Zamość - stopping first in Lwow, and later continuing into the
Soviet Union. A number of the young men – including my father
Leon and his cousin Ben Mendelsohn – enlisted in the Polish
regiment of the Russian army, which in 1944 participated in the
liberation of Lublin." |
