I have a note here, a piece of newspaper, which is a notification about the death of my daughter and my sister’s family. It is just a scrap of paper, but it states clearly that the Yanovichi borough council received a letter from me and sent a reply to it: ‘Your relatives, Raisa Sigalevich, her husband Sigalevich, their younger son, your daughter Ada and Ada’s grandmother, your husband’s mother, Chaya-Isya, were executed by the Fascists on 10th September 1941. Lev Sigalevich is alive, he is a Red Army officer.’ He is the only relative of my husband who survived. I keep this note. I received this letter, a reply to my inquiry, from the Yanovichi borough council chairman. The letter is written in legible handwriting. They even wrote: ‘We grieve about the death of your family.’ The letter was written on a piece of newspaper and sealed up in the form of a soldier’s triangle. Looks like they didn’t even have a clean piece of paper, because this happened right after the liberation of Yanovichi from the Germans.
Letter to Blyuma Perlstein about the death of her family
Share
Photos from this interviewee
Centropa Collection acquired by USHMM
The Centropa archive has been acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
USHMM will soon offer a Special Collections page for Centropa.
Academics please note: USHMM can provide you with original language word-for-word transcripts and high resolution photographs. All publications should be credited: "From the Centropa Collection at the United States Memorial Museum in Washington, DC". Please contact collection [at] centropa.org.