Abrasza Feldman collection

The collection related to the life of Abrasza Feldman during the time of the Holocaust and includes certificates, letters, photographs, and medical reports. Abraham Feldman (born Abrasza, 1918-1965) was born in Odessa, Russia on March 22, 1918. He was the son of Rubin and Wera Feldman and had one sister Luisa (b. 1921 or 1922). In 1921 the Feldman family settled in Lodz, Poland. Rubin managed a shoe store on 9 Napiorkowska Street in Lodz. Abraham attended textile industry gymnasium (“Szkola Przemyslowa”) and graduated in 1937. On April 30, 1940 the German authorities sealed the ghetto in Lodz, located in the northern section of town, and 164,000 Jews were forced into the ghetto. The Feldman family was deported from the Lodz ghetto to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on August 24, 1944. Rubin, Wera and Lusia were probably murdered upon their arrival. Abraham was transferred to Kaufering concentration camp, a sub camp of Dachau, on August 26, 1944. He was a forced laborer in the Messerschmitt A/G factory in Augsburg, near Munich, Germany. In September 1944 Abraham was transferred to Lager X, in January 1945 to Lager II, and in March 1945 to Lager IV which in December 1944 was put under quarantine because of a typhus epidemic. The United States Army liberated the Kaufering concentration camp on April 27, 1944, Abraham was 27 years old. He was immediately admitted to a military hospital and stayed under medical care for approximately one year. At that time Abraham changed his place of birth to Pabianice, Poland so that he would not to be forced to repatriate to the USSR. In May 1947 he returned to Poland and after a few years changed his first name to Adam. In the late 1950s Abraham made efforts to receive reparations from the Germans, but to no avail. Abraham met and married Dorota Halina Trzcinska and had two sons. He taught in the same technical school that he graduated from in 1937. In 1965, at the age of 47, Abraham took his own life.