Online:
Visits:
Stories:
Profile image
Story Views

Now:
Last Hour:
Last 24 Hours:
Total:

Personal belongings of holocaust victims discovered in rooftop, given to only surviving family

Friday, January 9, 2015 9:01
% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.

(Before It's News)

24549E2900000578-2891431-image-a-57_1419956922547Descendants of a Jewish family who was killed at Auschwitz during the holocaust have been reunited with some of their family’s personal belongings which were hidden away before the family was hauled off to the concentration camp more than a half century ago.

While repairing a roof for his neighbor in Slovakia, Imrich Girasek discovered the personal effects, which included family photographs, documents, newspaper clippings, silverware and a piece of sheet music written by Samuel Gottschall.

Gottschall and his entire family were sent to Auschwitz in 1942 and all but one of the family members – Gottschall’s son, Benjamin – met their demise during that dark time. Benjamin was the family’s sole survivor of the holocaust, and moved to Australia, where he died of cancer in 1978. Benjamin’s family remained in Australia.

When Girasek discovered the items, he gave them to a museum and hoped that they could discover to whom they once belonged.

Eventually, the identities were discovered and the family was tracked down, all the way to another continent.

Eva Wittenburg, the daughter of Benjamin and granddaughter of Samuel Gottschall, said, “It was like getting a message from heaven – as if we were making contact with our grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins that we have never known, because they were all murdered at Auschwitz.”

“It means a lot to us,” Wittenburg added. “And it would have made my father very happy to know that the world has been told that there once was a good man named Samuel Gottschall who lived with his family in Presov and was killed during the war.”

It is estimated that over 2 million prisoners were killed at Auschwitz, about half of which were Jews. Altogether, an estimated 17 to 20 million people were killed during the holocaust, about 6 million of which were Jews.

See more photos here.

24549E3500000578-2891431-image-a-61_1419957012388 24549E5400000578-2891431-image-m-55_1419956848968 24549E5900000578-2891431-image-m-110_1419958123157 24549E4800000578-2901305-Manuscript_This_document_helped_the_museum_staff_identify_its_ow-m-25_1420683256500

[Daily Mail]

The post Personal belongings of holocaust victims discovered in rooftop, given to only surviving family appeared first on Guns.com.



Source: http://www.guns.com/2015/01/09/personal-belongings-of-holocaust-victims-discovered-in-rooftop-given-to-only-surviving-family/

Report abuse

Comments

Your Comments
Question   Razz  Sad   Evil  Exclaim  Smile  Redface  Biggrin  Surprised  Eek   Confused   Cool  LOL   Mad   Twisted  Rolleyes   Wink  Idea  Arrow  Neutral  Cry   Mr. Green

Top Stories
Recent Stories

Register

Newsletter

Email this story
Email this story

If you really want to ban this commenter, please write down the reason:

If you really want to disable all recommended stories, click on OK button. After that, you will be redirect to your options page.