This is the symbolic tombstone of the families Kaferman, Krasucki, Margulies, Richter and Roter in the Jewish Cementery in Warsaw.
My mother's and my father’s entire families were killed during War World II. They were all in the Warsaw ghetto.
I’ve never found out whether they died in the ghetto or were murdered in Treblinka extermination camp.
My grandfather Naum alias Nikodem Krasucki was a descendant of the first Rabbi of Warsaw, whose beautiful tomb still stands in the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw.
That ancestor of my grandfather - Rabbi Shlomo Szlajman (Zalman) Lipszyc, who was born in 1765 in Poznan and died in 1839 in Warsaw - served as a rabbi in Warsaw from 1819.
He was the first Rabbi of Warsaw, as it was only then that a rabbi for the entire city of Warsaw was appointed.
At that time, the city became capital of the Congress Kingdom, following the demise of the Duchy of Warsaw and the final defeat of Napoleon.
My great-great-great-grandfather is the author of the well-known book 'Chemdat Shlomo' which has seen several re-editions, most recently in Israel in 1961.
The memory of Rabbi Lipszyc was very much alive in the family. He was a man of patriotic, pro-Polish convictions - which was a source of pride for the family.
Thus, the Krasuckis have been a family of writers for generations.
It was a family of Jewish intellectuals, people who traditionally concerned themselves with religious inquiry and philosophy.
I must say, however, that they weren't Orthodox in their outlook.
On my mother's side of the family there had never been a single Orthodox Jew. They were representatives of the Jewish Enlightenment.
