Collection

Montreal Holocaust Museum

Description Level

Item

Material Type

textual record

Physical Description

Program : Paper : Printed : Ink : B&W ; Ht: 21,5 cm x W: 28 cm

Other Title Information

Documentary Artifact

Physical Condition

Good

Language

English

Yiddish

Notes

1 page, single-sided. Folded once vertically to create two distinct panels, then folded once horizontally and once vertically. Document is the program, most likely for a theatrical presentation. Left panel contains four advertisements, text mainly in English. Right panel is in Yiddish, contains information about the presentation with a numbered list, divided into 2 sections. Left side contains the names of the actors; Mayer Abramovitch appears four times. Narrative: Bella (Beila, Bela) Herling and Mayer (Majer, Meyer, Meir) Abramovitch (Abramovitz, Abramowicz, Abramowitz) were the parents of the donor, Toby Herscovitch. Bella was born in Suchedniów, Poland on September 25, 1925, the youngest of a family of ten children. Her parents and five siblings were murdered in the Holocaust. Bella and three of her sisters survived the war working as slave labourers in an ammunitions factory in Skarzysko-Kamienna. They were liberated by Russian troops on January 16, 1945, and made their way to the Feldafing Displaced Persons Camp, where they reunited with a brother who had survived Auschwitz. Bella volunteered for nursing training by a Jewish refugee agency, and worked as a nurse in the camp from 1946 to 1948. In 1948, she joined her sister Paula in Toronto, where she worked as a nurse's aide and married Mayer, a fellow survivor who she had known from Feldafing. Born November 10, 1914 in Vilna (Vilnius), he was the sole survivor of a family of six children. He lived in the Vilna ghetto and worked in a factory making window panes for German barracks; he was later sent to a labour camp in Tallin, Estonia, and then to Stutthof concentration camp. In the final days of the war, he escaped from a subsequent transfer to Dachau concentration camp and was liberated. He spent three months sick in a hospital and ended up in Feldafing, where he was active in the "Amchu" or "AMCHO" theater group, part of the Jewish Labour Committee. He lived for a year in France, and immigrated to Canada in May, 1949. Bella and Mayer moved to Montreal in 1950 and opened a fabric store. Mayer passed away in 2001, and Bella in 2014.

Accession No.

2014.10.30

Name Access

Herscovitch, Toby

Places

Montreal, Canada, North America

Archival / Genealogical

Archival Descriptions

Repository

Montreal Holocaust Museum

Less detail