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ADELSON FAMILY
Welcome
to the ADELSON family page. The
ADELSON family, headed by David ADELSON and Zlota GORDON ADELSON had nine
children. As far as we know, the first four, Minnie (1892-1980), Louis
(1893-1967), Schmeil (abt. 1897-1924) and Esther (1898-1996) were born in
Nemajuni, Lithuania while the rest of the children, Bashe (abt 1911-1945),
Israel (abt 1900 - 1956), Reuven (1907-1975),
BenZion (abt 1923 - 1941) and Meyer were born in Butrimantz.
David was a glazier while Zlota
kept a traditional Jewish home.
For
many years, the family lived under the threat of pogroms and constantly
feared for their safety. During one of the pogroms, Zlota hid her
young daughter Esther in the cold stove for protection.
Knowing
that the holidays were coming and that the family was making their own liquor for the
holidays, Esther would climb up
to the attic to try some of the "forbidden" fermenting fruit.
This time, she was climbing down the ladder, a little tispy, and
noticed blood running down her leg. She thought she was dying!
She was being punished by G-d for drinking the forbidden brandy.
Esther went running to her mother to tell her she was dying and Zlota
informed her that she had begun to menstruate. But Esther never
touched the brandy again.
Over
the years, most of the children left for other countries: Minnie, Louis
and Esther went to America, Schmeil, a Zionist, went to London, England and joined the
Royal Fusiliers (the Jewish Brigade) and fought in Palestine, and after he finished serving, to America.
Bashe
and Israel went to Mexico in 1928, and Reuven went to Israel in 1939.
On their journey to Mexico, Bashe and Israel received a letter
from their mother that their father, David, had died and had passed along their
inheritance. Bashe was kind enough to forward the money to Esther in
America. The siblings settled in Guadalajara after a brief stay in Mexico
City. Bashe eventually married
Gregorio Dietz, a Jewish Cuban citizen originally from Russia, after having met him on board the ship to Mexico. In 1930 they had a son named David.
Then
came The War.
According
to a holocaust timeline developed by the NAAF Project (www.neveragain.org);
"October
2, 1941: Yom Kippur; The killings continue... Butrimonys, 976 Jews
murdered in front of Lithuanian crowds seated on benches for "a good
view." The
Jagr report, noting the accomplishments of the
Einsatzkommando 3,
lists the following:
9.9.41 Butrimonys 67 Jews, 370 Jewesses,
303 Jewish children,
740 [total]
The "Victims List"
in
the Yizkor book "If I forget Thee...the destruction of the shtetl
Butrimantz" by Riva Losansky, contains
the names of those that were murdered in the town, including the following:
"ADELSON, Zlota in Butrimantz. Her son BenZion in Alyta."
This
confirms why Esther had stopped receiving letters from her mother
soon after the war began. She had gone to different organizations to try
to find out what happened, but without success.
Sometime
after the war ended, Riva Losansky returned to Butrimantz and retrieved many of the
pictures that were left behind. The pictures were then in the hands of the locals who had
acquired the houses of the Jews that had left or perished. Reproduced in her book
were pictures of BenZion and Reuven Adelson that are shown at the top of
this page in the family composite. Those were the only pictures and
information that we had of them until Yad Vashem posted on the Internet its Pages of Testimony in November, 2005. Within hours of it being posted, we found that Reuven had submitted the Pages from Israel in 1955. He had left Lithuania in 1939 and went to a kibbutz in Israel. Unfortunately he was never able to locate his siblings although he knew in which countries they lived.
After reading Riva's book,
Zlota's granddaughter, Shirley Zeisler, wrote to Riva in 2001 and received
a response from her sister, Tsila, because Riva was ill at the time.
Undated and written in Yiddish, it reads as follows:
"
To Mrs. Shirley Zeisler,
We received your letter. My sister, Riva Bogomolny, is ill and is in the
hospital. you are being answered by her sister, Tsila Shenker. My
knowledge of English is weak; I barely understand it. Thus I am writing in
Yiddish.
Your friend [she meant grandmother] Zlate Adelson and her family, like all the other
unfortunate Jews, did not know their fate when they were rounded up and
chased to the shootings.
The bandits would come at night. They know that everyone owned something
which they could take with them, so they used to chase them out at night.
There were no laws against the orgy on the Jews. Some were buried dead,
some were buried alive. Nobody was concerned with burying them properly.
We remained alive due to the great chaos as they were driving the last
ones to the mass graves. We stayed to the side. Our great fortune was also
tragic. They were looking to shoot until the very last person.
Hungry, naked and without anything we wandered about in the cold and rain.
There were few who would take us in. It's difficult to write about
everything and also to comprehend such inhuman suffering. Very few
survived - weak and sick form such a life. Our life is a tragic fate.
We once lived in the same house in Butrimantz. My grandfather, Itzchak
Yehuda Itzkowitz, lived in the same house with Zlate's family. I don't
know whether we were friends or close neighbors. I remember your family as
a small child. We lived in the same house.
I ask you whether you can help us in some way - with products or with
various things. Perhaps money would be the best. We would be very
grateful.
Our pensions are small; medicine is very expensive. In this country Jews
are the second class; in work, the last ones.
Please excuse my writing. Be healthy and have nachas from
your family.
[signed]
Tslia Shenker
If
there are mistakes in my writing it's because I write seldom and have
already forgotten."
Tsila
died in 2001.
Afterwards
- A New Beginning - And A Message From Above
For
a little less than a year beginning in 2001, a search had begun in earnest
in Guadalajara, Mexico for David Dietz, the son of Bashe Adelson Dietz. As
first cousins, David Dietz and Shirley Zeisler had once met in the mid
1950s in Brooklyn, NY. Eventually they lost contact, although Shirley had
kept David's old address in her phone book.
On
February 7, 2002, as Shirley had only literally seconds-before completed
lighting the Yahrzeit candle for her mother Esther, Shirley's daughter
Bonnie received an email from a man who claimed that his cousin is
the spouse of David's daughter Bertha. Bonnie asked the gentleman to
contact his cousin and to ask David to call them.
Several
days went by without a call. After emailing the gentleman again, Bonnie
and Shirley obtained Bertha's phone number in Guadalajara. Upon
successfully and happily contacting Bertha in Mexico (and after almost 50
years), in speaking with her long-lost cousin David, he mentioned that coincidentally, he
too had just finished lighting the Yahrzeit candle for his uncle, Israel,
Esther and Bashe's brother.
The
sister and brother, Esther and Israel, conspired to let us know they are together and
looking in upon us in appreciation and agreement.
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