One of the main principles in planning the new Holocaust History Museum was to weave individual accounts into the historical narrative, thus personalizing the story of the Holocaust. Over the years, Yad Vashem has undertaken an intensive collection of personal artifacts, resulting in the display of some 1,200 artifacts in the new Museum, alongside original documents, photographs and film clips.

In addition to collecting new artifacts and documenting their owners’ stories, the Museum also conducted background research on objects gathered by Yad Vashem since its establishment. Recent technological developments have allowed additional documentation—housed in other departments of Yad Vashem and elsewhere around the world—to be more easily accessed. The stories surrounding many of the collected artifacts have thus been expanded and, by renewing contact with the original donors and their families, further objects added to the collection.

Occasionally, these investigations led to unexpected developments, as in the following story—one that not only contributed significantly to the Museum’s exhibition, but also had significant personal ramifications:

A Family Connection
by Sarah Shor

In recent years, Yad Vashem received a number of artifacts from two separate women: Fanny Korman and Francine Levy. All the objects are associated with family members who perished during the war, among them a doll’s cradle made at the Beaune-la-Rolande transit camp; a postcard written and sent from a train bound for Auschwitz; personal letters; and family pictures. Background work carried out on the artifacts disclosed a connection between the two donors, resulting in the heartbreaking account of the Horonczyk family. Their story, told in the new Museum, represents the tragic fate of many Jewish immigrant families in France.

In 1926, widower Shimon Horonczyk emigrated with his five children—Ycek-Josef, Simcha, Chaja-Dwojra, Leah and Esther—from Lodz, Poland, to Paris. There they made a living by selling textile products. Ycek-Josef and the three girls married other Polish Jewish émigrés and settled down to live near their father.

When Germany invaded France in 1940, Shimon’s sons (Ycek-Josef and Simcha) and sons-in-law were drafted into the Foreign Legion. They were discharged following France’s surrender: the certificate of commendation issued to Shimon’s son-in-law Salomon Friedheim upon his discharge is exhibited in the Museum in the section describing the progress of the war in France, representing the stage at which many Jews living in France enlisted in the Foreign Legion.

In May 1941, however, the young men were imprisoned in transit camps in northern France: Ycek-Josef and his brothers-in-law Nissan Frenkel and Froim Korman in Beaune-la-Rolande; Simcha and his brother-in-law Salomon Friedheim in Pithiviers.

Believing they would eventually be sent home, the men found ways to occupy themselves, passing their time optimistically. Ignorant of their fate, and hopeful of an early release, they led an active cultural life, and even fabricated souvenirs, which they sent to their relatives in Paris. Two of these are exhibited in the Museum: a doll’s cradle sent by Ycek-Josef to his daughter Francine, and a letter opener made by Nissan Frenkel for his son Richard. Only Salomon Friedheim fled the camp. He collected his wife Leah and their son Raphael, and escaped to a village in the south of France. In 1943, the couple gave birth to twins—Nelly and Solange.

Meanwhile, the situation for the Jews remaining in Paris worsened. The Nazi regime’s required designation of businesses as “Aryan” is illustrated in the sign from the family store (which was transferred to “Aryan” hands), also displayed in the Museum. In mid-1942, Esther Frenkel and her two-year-old son Richard were sent to the Pithiviers camp. The family members still in Paris realized they were living on borrowed time, and dispersed. Chaja-Dwojra Korman sent her daughter Fanny to her sister Leah in the Vichy area, where they were hidden in a village until the war’s end. Chaja-Dwojra hid in Paris, as did her sister-in-law Paula, Ycek-Josef’s wife. Paula’s daughter Francine was hidden just outside Paris.

Exhibited next to the train carriage in the Museum is a heart-rending illustration of the family’s tragic end. In the summer of 1942, when Esther Frenkel was sent from Pithiviers via Drancy to Auschwitz-Birkenau she threw a postcard intended for her relatives in Paris from the train carriage. Brought to its destination by an unknown person, the postcard reads:

My dear family, Friday [date illegible]

I am on the train. I do not know what has become of my Richard. He is still in Pithiviers. Save my child, my innocent baby!!! He must be crying horribly. Our suffering is nothing. Save my Richard, my little darling. I can’t write. My heart, my Richard, my soul, are far away and no one is protecting my little two-year-old boy. To die, quickly, oh, my child! Give me back my Richard.

Esther

Richard was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau a number of weeks after his mother, where they were both murdered. His father Nissan Frenkel and uncles Ycek-Josef Horonczyk and Froim Korman were all deported in June 1942 from Beaune-la-Rolande to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they too met their death. Simcha Horonczyk was sent from the Pithiviers camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau in July 1942, and was also killed. The last to be deported, in February 1943, was the father of the family, Shimon Horonczyk; he was sent from Drancy to Sobibor, where he, too, was murdered.

Thus in the space of a few terrible years, the extended Horonczyk family went from adjusting well to life in France, with a thriving business and growing family, to destruction beyond their imagination. The end of the war found the family’s survivors broken and dispersed, with only the immediate family of Leah and Salomon Friedheim remaining intact. Chaja-Dwojra Korman and her sister-in-law Paula Horonczyk were widowed, while of the youngest generation only their two daughters and the three Friedheim children survived.

The Museum Division’s extensive investigation, however, meant that fortunately the story did not end there. Unaware that Francine (Horonczyk) Levy was living in Israel, contact between her and her cousins Fanny Korman and Nelly (Friedheim) Weinstock had ceased after the war. The reunification of three of the cousins—a direct result of the research conducted by Museum staff—was a special source of gratification for everyone involved.

The writer is an archivist and research assistant for the new Holocaust History Museum’s Artifacts Collection.
 

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