The Shwartzman Family

Following my conversations with one of the Holocaust survivors from Lodz community, I decided to send you the family tree of my mother, of blessed memory – the Shwartzman Family.

Following the Holocaust Memorial Day and after reading newspapers regarding organizations of Holocaust survivors, which bring together children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Though my parents did not visit concentration camps, they had suffered tremendously in the USSR. It is true that the soviets did not abuse them like the Nazis in the ghettoes and the concentration camps, though as they were in Russia from 1940 to 1946, their stay both in the labor camps at Ural and in soviet Asia was not at all easy, one may even say – hard. They survived because they were young and vigorous, and did everything they can to stay alive and return home, only to find everything in ruin. They tried to live in Lodz from 1946 to 1951, only to discover that communist Poland was not sympathetic of Jews that came back from Russia. When my parents heard of the "Kielce Cemetery Massacre" and various other atrocities, they decided to immigrate to Israel, where they had discovered the community of Polish Jews that had succeeded to escape from the Nazi grasp on time.

Let it be noted that the Polish Jews were very supportive of and helpful to the immigrants: neighbors, kindergartners, salesmen at the market and all other residents of the Tel-Aviv Neighborhood.

The photograph from my parents' home in Lodz depicts a girl, which is me – Esther Rubinstein (Boaz), with my mother beside me.

Family Tree of the Schwartzman Family from Lodz

Israel Schwartzman, father of Shmuel Schwartzman, who is the father of Avraham Yitzhak Schwartzman, who married Tauba Schwartzman at the end of the nineteen hundreds.
The couple had arrived to the Lodz Ghetto, from where they were transferred to Auschwitz, where they were killed together with their young son Mordechai (Motke).
Tauba Schwartzman:
The mother: Sarah Liba – a young widow.
The brother: Avraham Turkewitz – left to New-York after his service in World War I, where he married Mino and lived in the Bronx, New-York.
And these are the offspring of Avraham Yitzhak and Tauba Schwartzman:
Shmuel Uziel (passed away at the age of 80) fled to the USSR, returned to Lodz in 1946 with his wife Sarah, who is still alive.
They left to New-York with their two sons, who were born in the camps of the displaced persons in Germany. Their third son was already born in New-York. They had the privilege of enjoying grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Perka Frieda BoazBoaz had passed away at the age of 62. She married Avraham Schwartzman who escaped from Zagfesch, and met Perka on-route to the USSR. He was with her and with her two brothers Shmuel and Israel, who were in turn sent to the  Ural in 1943, and where ultimately permitted to leave the labor camps at Ural and where driven by trains to Kazakhstan. I, Esther, was born in 1944 in the township of Dzembol on the Uzbek border. In 1946 they returned to Lodz and in 1951 had immigrated to Israel.

1. My brother was born in Israel, Rabbi David Boaz, who is still alive. He married Hannah-Liba, who was born in Manchester and was a daughter to parents who managed to flee on time from Bratislava to Britain. My parents, my brother and sister-in-law had the privilege of enjoying sons and grandchildren and her parents - great grandchildren.
2. In Israel I had attended 1st grade in Petach Tikva, while 2nd to 12th grade I studied in Tel-Aviv. I married Ehud Rubinstein, who is still alive, the son of Liba Sheinberg, a native of Lodz, who had the privilege of immigrating to Israel with Mr. Shenkar - founder of Lodzia, with approx 20 more girls - natives of Lodz, after marrying Yitzhak Schwartzman (of blessed memory) a native of Tel-Aviv.
3.  His father is Yakov Rubinstein (of blessed memory), a native of Grodno, which was at the time under the rule of the Russian empire. Yakov managed to reach Ottoman Israel as an orphaned child, and his mother's brother, who was of the founders of Ekron (Mazkeret Batya) lived in Mazkeret Batya and was the Gabai at the synagogue. He had the privilege of witnessing the establishment of the State of Israel and the birth of his grandson – my husband, who as a child would visit his granddad every summer.
4. My husband and I bore a son, Avraham Avishai, who was educated in Holon, was a combat medic in the IDF, studied at Bar-Ilan and married Na'ama, a native of Moshav Zafria, near Lod. He currently lives in Petach-Tikva.

Yair Schwartzman (died at the age of 80) had married Nusha, a native of Auschvitz. He fled with her to the USSR, lived in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), where they bore their daughter Sarah-Liba, who is still alive. They returned to Lodz in 1946, where they met my parents. En-route to Israel they bore two sons, who are still alive, and their daughter and youngest son, who are still alive, were born in Israel. They had the privilege of enjoying grandchildren and great grand children.
Mala (Malka) (died at age 80) had married Hans Hauser, a native of Vienna, who arrived to Sweden after the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s. Mala was in Lodz Ghetto and was taken with her parents to Auschwitz, from where they were transferred to Bergen-Belsen together with her sister Gita, who is still alive, and her cousin Marisha, a native of Lodz, who is still alive. They stayed in Bergen-Belsen until 1945 with many more Jewish girls and women, where they underwent hard labor. By 1946 she was already very skinny and weak, and she was sent with her sister Gita and hundreds more feeble Jewish girls to the hospital in Sweden, where they stayed and recuperated, and ultimately acquired a profession. Mala met up with Hans and eventually married him. They bore two sons, and they had the privilege of enjoying grandchildren.