*HOLOCAUST TRIGGER WARNING*

***HOLOCAUST TRIGGER WARNING***

Ofer's wife Ilil works at Yad Veshem, which is the Israeli national Holocaust museum. She is a researcher who specializes in photographs and film of people and places during the Holocaust. Knowing that I found some information about my family history when I was doing research back in 2014 to help me find Yehuda, she decided that this visit was the time that our family should finally officially submit what Yad Vashem calls "testimony" about our family members who were murdered during the Holocaust.

You may recall that the cousin with whom I was closest, Yehuda, died in 2024 and I was unable to come here to see him before he died or go to his funeral because of the conflict following the 10/7/23 attacks. This is a fact that brings me great pain. His children Sharon and Ofer now have his belongings, which include a lot of family photos Yehuda put in albums. From these photos, and the information he wrote about them in the albums, plus a lot of research I've done with Ilil's help over the past two days, I now have this information:

In the first photo below, the photograph circled in red is my grandfather. His name was Gedalie Benjamin Weiser. He came to the USA from Poland in the early 1930's. The photograph circled in blue is Yehuda‘s father Isaac (Yitzhak), who came to Palestine in the early 1930's; he was my grandfather’s brother (therefore Isaac was Ofer's grandfather). The two photographs that are not circled are the other two brothers who came to Palestine with Isaac; their names were Asher (Anczel was his given Polish name) and Dov (Berische was his given Polish name). Circled in green are my grandfather‘s brother -- my great uncle -- Moses Isaac or Moshe Yitzhak, and their sister - my great aunt -- Chaia. Moshe Yitzhak and Chaia were both murdered by the Nazis in Poland. Chaia was murdered along with her husband and infant son. We found the following information only from the dedication page of a book Asher wrote and published here in Israel-Palestine, and we only just found this after my cousin Sharon found this book in Yehuda's bookcase after he died: Chaia's husband's name was Shmuel (Samuel) Kahane, and I can't remember her infant son's name at this moment but I will put it here when I go to Ofer's apartment and look at the information they have.

Along with them, their mother -- my great grandmother -- was murdered or perhaps died of typhus in a ghetto/concentration camp (that story is below). My great gandmother's name was Machle Weiser (neé Meth). Her large photo where she is alone, is below. Her husband, my great grandfather, named Judah Weiser, is in the large photo of the older man with the beard. He was evidently a salt merchant and either died or killed himself after WWI when the currency plummeted and most of his wealth disappeared. The other photo below, of three women: from left to right are my great aunt Chaia, my great grandmother Machle in the middle, and on the right is Moses Isaac’s wife, we don’t know her name yet. All three of them were murdered by the Nazis. In Poland. That photo was taken in their small rural "hamlet" in Poland (it's now actually in Ukraine) called Gologory, its in the Galicia region.

Two days ago, I did a lot of research and searching and found this information, which makes my heart ache and my stomach heavy as iron:

"On December 1, 1942, the Germans established an enclosed ghetto in Zloczow, in which they confined the surviving Jews from the town itself, as well as those Jews brought in from surrounding villages, such as Gologory, and Sasow. Herman Zeigler recalled that announcements were posted on the walls in Sasow, ordering the Jews to move to Zloczow within one week. The Jewish workers incarcerated in the Sasow Labour Camp were excluded, but all their family members were transferred.

All told, there were approximately 4,000 Jews confined in the Zloczow ghetto, which was located on Mickiewicz Street and Targowa Street. It was enclosed using barbed wire as well as, existing house walls. There was only one gate, which was guarded by Ukrainian police. The severe overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions soon led to a typhus epidemic. Subsequently, the typhus epidemic served as the grounds for liquidating the ghetto. Some sources indicate that the head of the Judenrat, Dr. Sigmunt Majblum, refused to sign a document declaring that the ghetto was being liquidated because of the typhus epidemic, and he was murdered. The Deputy Kreishauptmann Gerhard von Jordan, apparently played a sinister role in the destruction of the ghetto. He claimed to have ordered the liquidation in a document he signed using the fictitious title, 'Politruk -SS.'

A German Security Police detachment, accompanied also by members of the Jewish Order Service from Lemberg, as well as members from the local Gendarmerie and Ukrainian police, promptly liquidated the ghetto in an 'Aktion' that was carried out on April 3 -4, 1943. In total some 3,500 Jews were shot near the village of Jelechowice. Many Jews had prepared bunkers and hiding places within the ghetto to avoid the manhunts and shootings continued for several weeks afterwards, as German and Ukrainian forces continued to search for those Jews in hiding."

(https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/.../zloczow...)

I have also added a photo from two days ago of me and Ofer, because I feel the need to balance the photos of my murdered relatives to say "survival is the best revenge" and "hey, muthafuckas, WE ARE STILL HERE!"

This is very upsetting information -- we knew little pieces of this -- and it's really difficult to know this now. I could really use your kind words, affirmations that you see me, and anything compassionate and loving you have to say. Right now, with such an emotional and powerful time here in Israel-Palestine, I welcome emotional support from afar, from those of you able to give it. Thank you, dear ones.