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WEB
EXHIBIT - THREADS OF MEMORY |
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Solomon
Mandel listen
to his personal story 
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Day
of Remembrance |
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| I
am Solomon Mandel. I was born on July 28, 1926 to Berta &
Joel Mandel in the town of Bukacrowce, in south eastern Poland.
It was a small town. We had two synagogues and a Talmud torah.
We had two rabbis whose names were Rabbi Shwarz & Rabbi
Singer, and we had two shochtin for slaughtering kosher meats
and poultry. Their names were Joel Nagelberg and his son, Shimon
Nagelberg. They all perished. The only survivor is a grandson
of Joel Nagelbert. |
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| I
was going to a chaider for my Jewish education and to a Polish
school for my Polish education until 1939, when the Second World
War started. The Germans occupied the northern part of Poland
and the Russians occupied the other half. For the Jewish people
it was not bad – the only thing the communists stopped
was Jewish education. It was not until June and July of 1941
that the Germans occupied us. The trouble started for the Jewish
people in 1941. That summer the Germans, with the help of the
Ukrainians, created the ghetto. On Yom Kippur the first action
was made and the Jewish people were sent to the crematoriums.
Three weeks later, the second action was made and the town was
declared “Judenfrei.” Whoever remained alive from
the Jewish population had to move to a different Rohatyn, and
from there to a concentration camp. I was not there too long
when I planned to escape. It worked for me. I went back to my
town and I got connected to the Partisians. My father somehow
came to town illegally and I joined him. We were together until
the Liberation in 1944. In July I went to the Allied Army for
one reason, to take revenge. In the end of 1945 I was discharged,
and I needed to go into the Polish army, but I did not want
to go. So in the summer of 1946 I escaped from Poland to Germany,
where I was in a DP camp until 1949. |
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| I
came to the USA on June 16, 1949 by boat. The name of the boat
was General Heincelman. In the United States I started to work
as a butcher. On December10, 1950, I got married to the best
woman in the world, and shortly, we raised a family. In 1952
our son Leonard was born and on January 13, 1954 our daughter
Barbara was born. The children got married and gave us three
granddaughters. In 1975, my father passed away at 77 of old
age. We live right now with my family. |
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| In
1992 I retired from the meat business. I had five by-pass surgeries
on my heart in 1995, and thank god, I am still around to give
you my life story. |
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