Collection

Montreal Holocaust Museum

Description Level

Item

Material Type

graphic material

Physical Description

Photograph : Paper : photograph : b&w ; Ht: 8.8 cm x W: 12 cm

Other Title Information

Documentary Artifact

Date

1947

Physical Condition

Good

Notes

b&w, indoor scene. People standing behind table, people holding flags commemorating the Bund. 1947 Bund written in big letters on the back wall. Narrative: Israel (Ignacy) Falk was born on 4 February 1904 in Warsaw, Poland. He was the son of a tailor and began to work for a living at age 14. He lacked formal education but secured a job as a bookkeeper in a print shop. Eventually he earned enough to support a wife and child. Shortly after deportations began in 1942 his parents, siblings, and their families had been taken to the Treblinka gas chambers. In September, Falk was put on a train to Treblinka, but was able to pull off the window bars and jump from the train. He returned to the ghetto. In March 1943 he arranged for his wife and 11-year-old son, Michael, to escape. They spent the remainder of the war hiding with a Polish friend. Falk remained in the ghetto to aid the resistance with smuggling in weapons and bomb supplies. On 19 April 1943, Falk and the remaining Jews made a stand when the SS came to deport them. They held off the Nazis for several weeks until the ghetto was torched. Falk was one of the few survivors. He was captured and sent to Budzyn. Four two years he endured four different concentration camps. The last was Schindler's Factory in Brunlitz in 1945. That same year Russian troops liberated the area and Falk was able to return to his family in France. They emigrated to Canada in 1949 on the SS Samaria. At some point after the war he remarried (as the result of the death or divorce of his first wife (?)). He was an activist in the Labour Movement. During the National Convention of the Labour Committee at the Chelsea Hotel, Atlantic City, NY, in 1947 Mr. Falk was one of the key speakers. He was a strong speaker regarding the Holocaust, but he didn't talk about Schindler much until after watching 'Schindler's List' with his family. Israel died in Montreal on 13 December 1996.

Accession No.

2011X.122.09

Name Access

Falk, Lilian

Places

Wroclaw, Breslau, Poland, Europe

Archival / Genealogical

Archival Descriptions

Repository

Montreal Holocaust Museum

Less detail