Ajlkichen and Fleichaker families papers

Roza Ajlkichen (later Rosie Ajlkichen Leibman) was born on 25 January 1933 in Opole, Poland to Kiwa Ajlkichen (b. 1895) and Tcharna Fayga Fleichaker (b. 1904). She had two sisters, Dora (1926-1942) and Ida (1930-1931), and one brother, François (later Efraim Ajlkichen, b. 1936). Kiwa was a tailor living in Brussels, Belgium when he met Tcharna, and after they married in 1925 they operated a clothing business there. After the Germans invaded Belgium in May 1940, the family fled by train to Auterive, Haute-Garonne, France with other refugees. They returned to Brussels in September 1940. In August 1942, Dora received a letter conscripting her to forced-labor in Germany. She was deported on 15 August 1942. Kiwa and Tcharna then briefly paid money to a family outside of Brussels to hide Roza and François, but they were mistreated and only remained there for two months. The family managed to stay hidden in their house, only leaving at night for food and supplies. By 1943, many of their neighbors had been deported. After several failed attempts to place Roza and François in safe houses, Tcharna arranged for them to go to a Christian orphanage in Longlier under the false identities of Rosa and François Demien. In the fall of 1943 the children were sent to the Château de Beloeil, a castle owned by the Prince of Ligne that was opened to orphaned children during the war. While she was there, she befriended Georges Bath, one of the counsellors there. She was baptized while in hiding, and he was her godfather. After Belgium was liberated in September 1944 Roza and François were reunited with their parents in Brussels. The family did not learn until after the war that Dora was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp where she perished. They immigrated to the United States in 1951 on the SS Île de France and settled in New York. François joined the United States Army and later immigrated to Israel. Roza married Jacques Leibman, who was also a hidden child in Belgium. The collection documents the Holocaust-era experiences of the Ajlkichen family of Brussels, Belgium, including the efforts of Kiwa Ajlkichen and his wife, Tcharna Fleichaker, to hide their children Roza and François, and the deportation of their daughter, Dora, in 1942 and her murder at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Documents include identification papers, a Polish passport, correspondence, a family book, a personal narrative describing Roza’s experiences, and material related to the family’s effort to learn the fate of Dora. Photographs include prewar family photographs of the Ajlkichen family in Brussels and the Fleichaker family in Poland; wartime photographs of Roza and François in hiding at the Château de Beloeil and of Georges Dath, one of the counsellors who cared for Roz and François at Beloeil; and post-war family photographs in Belgium.