Leon Kornhauser
(1898-1939)
Rivka "Regina" Firster
(1899-1932)
Janek "Jack" Kornhauser
(1924-1990)

 

Family Links

Spouses/Children:
1. Anya "Ann" Kagan

Janek "Jack" Kornhauser 1 2

  • Born: 22 May 1924, Wieliczka, Malopolskie, Poland 3
  • Marriage (1): Anya "Ann" Kagan
  • Died: 22 Aug 1990, Burlington, Middlesex, Massachusetts, USA at age 66 4
  • Buried: New Tifereth Israel of Everett Cemetery, Everett, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA 4

  General Notes:


Jack Kornhauser*



I was born in Wieliczka, Poland in 1924 to Leon (b.1898 d.1939) and Rivka (b.1899 d.1932).

The Holocaust began for me on September 14, 1939, when I was fifteen years old. On that day a Nazi SS officer arrived at my home, led by a Polish man of my village. They took my father and thirty-one other Jewish men away on a truck, telling them that they would work on a farm. When I went to look for them, I found that all of the men had been taken to the woods outside of the town and shot. My father had a bullet through his neck. I closed his eyes and heard him take his last breath, then buried him.

I tried hard to work to support my six younger brothers and sisters and stepmother. However, I was soon sent to a forced labor camp and endured the rest of the war years in seven forced labor and concentration camps \endash Prustkow, Plashow (twice), Zablocie, Mauthausen, Shtager, Guzen. I was near death many times.

I was liberated on May 5, 1945 at the age of twenty-one. I was six feet tall and weighed less than eighty pounds. My brothers and sisters did not survive the war. I was never able to determine exactly how they died.

After the war I met and married Anya Kagan, another survivor. We have two sons and four grandchildren.


Janek married Anya "Ann" Kagan, daughter of Yakov Jacob Kagan and Perla "Pearl" Shapiro. (Anya "Ann" Kagan was born on 20 Aug 1925 in Ostróg, Warminsko-Mazurskie, Poland,5 died on 12 Nov 2008 and was buried in New Tifereth Israel of Everett Cemetery, Everett, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA 4.)


Sources


1 Laurie Medrek.

2 Free Access: USC Shoah Foundation, Holocaust – Jewish Survivor Interviews.

3 U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 - ancestry.com.

4 Find A Grave (http://www.findagrave.com/).

5 Free Access: USC Shoah Foundation, Holocaust – Jewish Survivor Interviews.


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