Malkiel and Benjamin Burstein

Below is the story of Malkiel and Benjamin Burstein and their family who perished in the Holocaust. Malkiel is the maternal great grandfather of Mendel and Ami Kushner.

Benjamin lost his wife and child in the Holocaust and was the only survivor in his family. Their sister Toba and her husband, Moshe Kleinman, and their two children also died. Their mother Sarah died either in the ghetto or concentration camps, but we don’t have any papers indicating what happened to her. Malkiel escaped Poland and survived the pogroms and fighting in the war for the US Army. He was in Normandy on the second day of D-Day.

Abraham Burstein came to the US in the late 1800’s but wasn’t able to build a life there as a religiously observant Jew, so he returned to Łomża, Poland where he married his wife Sarah Sabotka. They had three children: Benjamin (b. 1906), Malkiel Tzvi (b. 1912), and Toba (b. unknown). The family was very poor and Abraham died around 1925. Sarah was left to support the family and made money by operating a community oven where people would bring their cholent on Shabbat and she would bake matzah for Passover.

Because of the pogroms and his impoverished life in Poland, upon growing up Malkiel decided to join a Zionist youth group that trained young Jewish adults in Bialystok to work the land and become farmers on kibbutzim in Palestine. Malkiel tried to convince his family to join him in Palestine but it wasn’t a risk they were willing to take, so in 1929 he made aliyah on his own (on the night of his brother Benjamin’s wedding). Malkiel’s intention was to settle in Palestine and build a life free from antisemitism. He lived in Palestine from 1929 - 1938.

Back in Łomża, in 1929 Benjamin and his new wife Rachel Leah Kochak had one child, Mordechai. Rachel Leah was a well known seamstress and Benjamin was employed in various odd jobs, delivering water, as a carpenter, and as a coach driver.

During World War II, the town of Łomża was almost totally destroyed. When the war started on September 28, 1939 Łomża was handed over to the Red Army and Benjamin was forced into military service, leaving his wife and child behind. In June 1941, while Benjamin was still serving in the Red Army, the Nazis occupied Łomża, and imposed a ghetto in August. On August 16th inmates were assembled to be tallied, and people who were named as collaborators were taken to the forest to be killed. From June to September 1941, 3,500 Jews were murdered in the nearby woods. No record of Malkiel’s mother Sarah exists; she was either killed in the ghetto or died because of the harsh conditions. In November 1942, the ghetto was liquidated and the remaining Jews were shipped to a camp in Zambrow, where some were murdered and others were shipped to Auschwitz.

Very little information survives about Malkiel’s sister Toba. We know only that she was married and had two children, all of whom perished in the Holocaust.

We know that Benjamin’s wife and son Rachel Leah and Mordechai survived the ghetto, and were taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau (most likely when the ghetto closed in November, 1942). Rachel Leah was expecting another child. She miscarried on her way to the concentration camps. Rachel Leah died in 1943 in Auschwitz. Mordechai was murdered in Auschwitz but the date of his death is unknown.

After the war, Benjamin was released from military service and returned to Łomża to discover that his entire family was gone. We believe that a neighbor told the Germans that they were Jewish and gave them up. In November 1942, Benjamin was transferred to Auschwitz where he remained until January, 1943. From January, 1943 until April, 1945 he was in Buchenwald-Dachau, when the camp was liberated. From July to August, 1945 he recuperated in the Feldafing Hospital 20 miles southwest of Munich. After recovering his health he remained in Feldafing, where he worked and tried to make a living from August, 1945 until July, 1949. We believe, based on the timeline, that he knew his brother Malkiel was living somewhere in the United States.

Having left Palestine in 1928 and moved to the United States, Malkiel had married a woman named Sara Osdoba. They settled in the Catskills, in Hurleyville, NY.

Following the war, Sara would check newspapers for survivors’ names and one day she saw Benjamin listed. Sara contacted the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to bring Benjamin to the US and reunite him with his brother. The JDC brought Benjamin to America and set him up in Newburgh, NY, not far from his brother Malkiel,where Benjamin worked in a pocketbook factory for almost ten years. He would ride the bus to Hurleyville and visit his brother and family often during that time.

Over the years Malkiel and Sara had three children, Deborah (b. 1947), Arthur (b.1950) and Jacob (b.1954).

Benjamin never remarried but he was able to build a modest life for himself, living in upstate NY and later on, in Miami. He bought a small bungalow colony in Hurleyville, which was all Holocaust survivors and their families. This enabled him to build a community for himself and be close to his brother. These families would return to the bungalow colony in the summertime and look forward to seeing Benny, as he was called.

During his time in the Catskills, Benjamin didn’t share much about his experiences in the concentration camps, ast was difficult for him to talk about it, but he would sometimes share small parts of his life with his nieces and nephews.