Shlomowitz Family Memorial

Dr. Rose Shalom Halperin set up a memorial column for her deceased relatives:

"In January 1943, in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, my grandfather, three of my uncles and my aunt were all murdered.

My grandfather, Rafael Shlomowitz, was 45 years old at the time of his death. He was, I am told, a hard-working and devoted husband and father, who raised five of his six children by himself after his wife's illness and early death. Four of those six children were killed in Auschwitz along with him.

Efraim Dov, Asher, and Eli Shlomowitz--aged 20, 19, and 16 respectively, when they died in Auschwitz--were intelligent, hard working students and avid Zionists. My aunt, Bashe Leah, was 10 years old at her death, having lost her mother at the age of 2. I am told she had beautiful, sad, brown eyes and wrote beautiful poetry. I never knew her, or any of the other murdered members of my family.

Like many others who died in the death camps, my grandfather and his children had no proper burial. There is no grave where they can be remembered.

On the 45th anniversary of their deaths, on a cold, rainy January day in 1988, around thirty members of Beth El Synagogue stood in the cemetery to bury a fragment of a Torah scroll from Eastern Europe and to recite prayers in their memory. Rabbi Steven Sager suggested the ritual and presided over it.

May the souls of Rafael Shlomowitz and his children rest in peace."