A Decades-Old Photo Lost During
The Holocaust Returns to Owner’s
Granddaughter
BY DR. NURIT ISRAELI
Photos courtesy of Dr. Nurit Israeli
The approaching Holocaust Memorial
Day (Yom Hashoah) brings back a
memory which still leaves me puzzled:
Was the totally unanticipated event which I
am going to describe simply a chance occurrence,
or did it stem from some deeper origin
beyond my comprehension?
My mother, Rachel Bar-Or (nee Rebhun),
was born in Sanok (south-eastern
Poland) at the beginning of WWI.
Her mother believed it would be
the last war. It was not. My mother
gave birth to me, her only child, in
the midst of WWII. She too anticipated
a war-free world at the end
of the war. She was wrong.
A few years before my mother
died, I traveled to Poland, where
both my parents were born, with
my husband and children. In
Sanok, we arranged a meeting with
the retired director of the Sanok
museum, an elderly soft-spoken
Polish man who had lived in
Sanok all his life. He came with
a stack of old files, prepared to
tell us about the place where my
mother grew up (she left Sanok in
1937, just before WWII, and emigrated
to what was then Palestine
to study at Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. Relatives who stayed
behind perished).
At one point, the elderly man
took out an envelope with a few
photographs. He became emotional
when he told us that these were
photos he found dumped onto the
town’s streets during the war—photos
believed to be of people sent
to concentration camps never to
return.
I could not believe my eyes when
one of the first photos he pulled
out was a large photo of my mother
taken on the day of her high school
graduation, signed by her. On the
back of the photo were her name,
date of birth, and the year she graduated:
1933.
“This is my mother,” I told the man using
my very limited Polish vocabulary. “She did
not die. She is alive. I am her daughter, and
these are her grandchildren,” I said pointing
at my children.
With tears in his eyes, the kindhearted
man handed the photo to my daughter,
“This photo is yours,” he said to her, “I just
kept it for you all these years.” We hugged
him, expressing our deepest gratitude, before
parting ways.
Coincidence or fate? I still ponder.
The newly discovered photo, dated 1933
Millet Israeli with her grandmother’s high school
graduation photo
An emotional meeting with the retired director of the Sanok museum
April 2018 ¢ NORTH SHORE TOWERS COURIER 13