30th Anniversary Guardians Commemorative Book - Book - Page 101
MEMORIALIZING
THOSE LOST
I came from a pious
family in the little
town of Wąchock,
Poland. Every Friday,
as a young boy, I delivered food my
mother prepared for Shabbos to some
poor old people. If someone was left
behind at synagogue, my father took
him to our home for a meal. Even after
the war started and things were not
so good, we shared whatever we had.
That was our tradition—tzedakah.
That all ended on September 20, 1942,
when the Germans assembled all the
Jews in the Town Square. I was only
17 years old but was selected to help
clean out all the Jewish houses in the
town, then collect and bury the dead
in a mass grave. Three days later, my
brother and I were sent to our first
camp, Starachowice. From that day,
until April 23, 1945, I was enslaved.
My father, mother, and sister were
not so lucky, as they, along with
nearly all of the other Jews in
Wąchock, were rounded up and
deported to Treblinka, where they
were murdered in the gas chambers
on October 24, 1942. In October 1943,
when my brother became too sick
with typhus to work, he was killed.
After that I was alone, sent on a path
from camp to camp: Auschwitz.
Birkenau. Buna. Buchenwald.
Holzheim. Buchenwald again.
I was liberated by the Americans in
the small town of Wetterfeld, where
the Germans had abandoned us after
a brutal death march. I heard planes,
then tanks, and finally people yelling,
‘We’re free! We’re free!’ I came to New
York with nothing. My first job was as
a mechanic’s helper making 80 cents
an hour. I later opened a mechanic
business and eventually owned a
factory, but I always remembered our
family’s tradition of tzedakah.
Children, adults, and the world need
to learn this history; we must keep
it alive so it doesn’t happen again.
That’s why I wanted to support the
United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum. Most importantly, I want
to make sure that my father, Shmuel
Moshe Feferman; my mother, Basia
Chana Feferman (Zelinger); my
sister, Leah Brandel Feferman;
and my brother, Efraim Pinchas
Feferman, are never forgotten.”
SAFEGUARDING TRUTH FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS l 99
