Alerhand and Drelick Family

Mordechai Leibel Drelich lived with his family on the outskirts of Sosnowiec, Poland. He had two sisters - Regina (who survived the Holocaust and moved to Israel) and Paula (who survived the Holocaust and moved to Canada). Mordechai and his sisters all survived the Holocaust.

Gittel and Matthis Alerhand lived in Chelm Poland before the Holocaust. Chelm is a city in the Lublin district of Poland. The community is considered one of the oldest in Poland. In 1939, Chelm had 15,00 Jewish residents, about half of the total population of the city. The Alerhands had three children. They had a daughter named Hinda who was born in 1914. They had a son named Moishe born in 1916, and a daughter named Chaika born in 1919

Before the war, Hinda married a man named Leibel. Leibel and Hinda had a baby shortly before the war. When war started to break out Gittel and Matthis’s three children decided to escape Poland by foot and walk to Siberia. Moishe was in the Polish army at the time and decided to take his two sisters to Siberia.

Enroute to Siberia, Hinda’s baby daughter passed away. Moishe, her brother had to bury the baby along the way to Siberia. Sadly, Hinda’s husband became sick with typhus along the way, and Moishe had to bury him as well. In Siberia, Moishe worked as an apprentice and Hinda did mending work. Hinda and Moishe were only able to attend school until seventh grade. Chaika was able to attend school through high school. Shortly, after they left, Jews were being executed in the town center.

Miraculoulsy the whole family survived.

The three siblings- Hinda, Moishe and Chaika, survived and made their way to Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan, Moishe met Cila, while they were both peddling goods on the streets. Eventually they got married. The Red Army had confiscated Cila’s familiy home and she went into hiding in Kazakhstan with her brother. Her brother sadly, died at age two. Cila was 15 when the war broke out. Cila’s father was a shoe maker and his name was Aaron Resnick, Her mother’s name was Faige Leah Resnick.

At the end of the war all of the siblings traveled to Germany to Feldafing Displaced Persons camp. Hinda wanted to go back to Chelm. While traveling on the train, she met Mordechai Leibel Drelich. Enroute to Chelm, they saw Jews who were being attacked, and they got scared, so they turned around and traveled back to Feldafing Displaced Persons camp.

In Feldafing, Chaika married Stasick and had two sons. Stsick died very young. Chaika immigrated to israel eventually came to America in 1959
Hinda and Mordechai left Germany and moved to Sweden. They had two children in Sweden.

Moishe and Cila stayed in Feldafing until 1951 when they came to America. They owned a store on the lower east side. They eventually brought Hinda and Max to United States. Max had a shoe business on Duane street.

In the 1990’s, in Chelm Poland, pictures were recently found in the wall of a friend’s house. Apparently, in the 1990’s a photographer had hid them in the wall and a woman who was redoing her house, opened the wall and found them. A group traveling from Israel was on a trip and this woman gave the pictures to them. These pictures were posted in an Israeli newspaper and a cousin saw the pictures and she immediately recognized the family.