The Wolf Lewkowicz Collection

Between 1922 and 1939, Wolf Lewkowicz, of Konskie, Lodz and Opoczno, Poland, engaged in a lengthy and intimate correspondence in Yiddish with Sol J. Zissman, his deceased sister's son, who was born in Konskie, Poland, and who had immigrated to the United States as an 11-year old boy prior to World War I. When the correspondence began, Wolf was 36 years old; he and his wife, Malke, and their three children lived in Lodz. At that time, Sol was 20, unmarried, and living in Chicago. After his mother's death in 1920 and his father's remarriage in 1921, Sol had left home and had opened a second hand furniture store.

Because of his affection for his uncle, Sol retained most, if not all, of the letters he received from Wolf. There are more than 175 such letters. Many of them deal with confidential, personal and family matters. Some of them contain detailed information respecting the economic situation that faced ordinary Jews during this difficult period in Poland's history. There are also occasional references to anti-Semitism in Poland. Woven through all the letters, however, is the graphic account of a desperate struggle to achieve economic dignity by a bright, articulate and insightful Polish Jew who, because of his lack of success as a breadwinner, judged himself a failure as a husband and as a father.

The situation in which we find Wolf as the correspondence opens in 1922 is precarious and, tragically, the letters reflect a steady deterioration in his circumstances throughout the rest of his life. His last letter to Sol, Letter 178, is dated in August, 1939, immediately before the outbreak of World War II. Soon after the war began, Wolf and his then two surviving children, Regina and Yosef, moved from Lodz to Opoczno where they lived for the next three years with Wolf's sister and brother-in-law, Esther and Lazer Chmielnicki, and their family. On September 22, 1942, most of the Jews in Opoczno, including Wolf and Regina, were forcibly taken by cattle car from Opoczno to their deaths in Treblinka. Wolf was 56 years old at his death.

Letter 179, written by two of his nephews in 1945 from what was then Palestine, contains a brief description of Wolf's final, tortured days. One of those nephews, Aaron Chmielnicki Carmi, was among the final group of Jews, including Wolf's son, Yosef, sent on the last transport from Opoczno to Treblinka on January 5, 1943. Aaron made a successful escape from the cattle car carrying the closest members of his family to their deaths, found his way to Warsaw and is one of a handful of Jewish Fighters' Organization members who survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. He has elaborated upon Wolf's final days and his own experiences in subsequent letters and more detailed writings that are not included in this Collection.

The Yiddish letters which make up the main body of this Collection constitute the only remaining tangible evidence of the life of Wolf Lewkowicz. It is the hope of the collateral members of his family who cherish his memory that The Wolf Lewkowicz Collection, consisting of (1) copies of the aforesaid Yiddish letters, (2) the English translations and certain other English-language material, and (3) audiotapes of the original Yiddish letters read by Sol J. Zissman, will prove to be of interest to scholars in the future and that, in this way, it will serve as a perpetual monument to his memory. A complete set of The Wolf Lewkowicz Collection has been placed with the Harvard College Library and with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

July, 1995
Revised: August, 1997

This web page (http://web.mit.edu/maz/wolf/) is maintained by Marc Zissman (email: maz@mit.edu).

You may wish to view photographs of Wolf Lewkowicz (37k) with his wife and children (taken 23 October 1936), Sol and Esther Zissman (110k) on their wedding day (15 February 1925) and Marshall, Esther and Sol Zissman (55k) in the 1980s.

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

1936

1937

1938

1939

1945