Mrs. Goldsztajn

This is Mrs. Goldsztajn. She was the sister of I.L.Peretz, the famous Yiddish writer. I am not sure what her first name was. It could have been Hessa. She was a remarkable women.  She was the one to raise my sister-in-law Eleonora Epstein. The picture was taken in Zamosc in the 1930s. I don’t know who took this photo. 

My sister-in-law’s name was Eleonora. That was the name on her birth certificate. Her family also came from Zamosc. Eleonora was a communist activist. This sister-in-law was raised by the sister of Isaac Leib Peretz, who was like a grandmother to her. Eleonora Epstein’s real grandmother died young. A friend of the family – I.L. Peretz’s sister – Mrs. Goldsztajn took over that role. 

I can’t say much about that family, but this grandmother was an exceptional woman. When the Jewish militiamen came to get her to deport her to a death camp, probably the camp in Belzec, she didn’t go with them. She simply told them she wouldn’t go. So they shot her right away. 

She had two sons. One was in the Soviet Union, and that’s where he died, and the second one was here, in Poland. He was an engineer. He had two daughters. Their mother was a doctor. Two charming girls. They were living next to us in Zamosc. Both were captured by those Jewish traitors, when their mother and father were not at home. And they both died.