The history of the Flatau family in Płock dates back to the times of the Duchy of Warsaw, when Joachim (Nochem) Judas, a merchant from the Grand Duchy of Poznań, came to Płock from the town of Gołancz. In the Jewish civil registry documents of […]
On December 27 1868 Edward Flatau, one of the greatest Polish doctors and the most prominent scholars, was born in Płock. Edward was the son of banker Ludwik Flatau and Anna nee Heyman. In 1886 he graduated from Płock Secondary School with a gold medal […]
Lejzor Brygart was born on March 13, 1893, he was the son of Szlama (1842-1911) and Iska nee Fibus (1855-1918). Szlama Brygart was a butcher by profession. Lejzor had a younger brother – Dawid (born in 1894). In 1913, Lejzor Brygart married Dwojra Ides Bomzon (born in 1889; daughter of Izrael Abram and Enta nee Szrajber). They had four children: daughters Ruchla (Rushka; 1916-Holocaust), Iska (Irka; 1919-Holocaust) and Chanka (1927-Holocaust) and son Szmyl Szlojma (Sam; 1920-2015 in the USA).
In 1919, Lejzor and Dwojra Ides bought a property at 20 Kwiatka Street in Płock and were its owners until the outbreak of war. At 20 Kwiatka Street in the interwar period there was a shop with kitchen utensils of Hersz Szejnwald, a watchmaker’s shop of Moszek Klajnfeld, a cloth shop of Lejb German, and a leather store of Arje Kossobudzki. Dawid Kryszek traded in crops at this address, and Lajzer Gabes offered glass-making services. According to data from 1931, 141 people lived there, including Basia Brombergier, Icek Lejb German, Dawid Makower, Abram Wajnsztok, Icek Majer Ejlenberg, Dawid Pencherek, Abram Majlech Bresler, Dawid Kryszek, Ryfka Ogórka, Hersz Gabes, Abram Rozenberg, Abram Chaim Albert, Szyja Dziedzic, Moszek Abram Einfeld, Abram Moszek.
Lejzor and Dwojra Ides Brygart were also the owners of a colonial goods store and a bakery in Płock. One could buy candies there, holiday gingerbread, and chulent on Saturdays. Their business was located at Kwiatka 28.
Only Sam Brygart survived World War II and the Holocaust. After returning to Płock, he found employment in a confectionery and bakery cooperative. He married Frymeta Menche (1922-2016), the daughter of the merchant Chaim and Sura née Gutman from Gąbin. Sam and Frymeta emigrated to the USA.
A good story is how my parents came to the United States, Boston to be exact.
Dwojra Ides Bomzon, had a half sister Chena Chaja (born in 1877), daughter of Enta Szrajber from her first marriage with Abram Frydman, who came from the town of Stężyca. In the late 1800s, Chana Chaja Frydman married Icek Chaim Keller. Chana (we know of her as Helen) died in 1911. She and her husband had 3 children, the oldest being Herman Joseph Keller (followed by Eugenia/Gertrude, and Matthew). Icek Chaim Keller (we know of him as Harry) remarried Ester Rotman. There were 2 children born of this marriage in Płock (daughters Teresa and Mildred) . The Keller/Rotman family emigrated to Boston in 1912 and 1913. A 3rd child was born in the United States (a son, Paul).
Herman Keller visited Płock in 1935. He ordered a headstone for his mother Chana Chaja Frydman Keller, and for his stepmother’s mother. He of course visited the family and his grandmother Jenta/Enta Szrajber Frydman Bomzon, who had him promise to come back with his oldest son, Norton Keller. Herman and Norton came to Płock in 1937 to dedicate the headstones, to visit with family and continue to the 1937 Paris World’s Fair and family in England. A film was made during this trip. Herman was a wealthy man and he had a movie camera. My father was 17 at the time of this visit and my father learned Herman’s address. In the film we can see my father interacting with Herman.
When the war ended, an American soldier wrote a letter to Herman on behalf of my father. Herman and his wife Sonia sponsored my parents, who were displaced persons, and Sam and Frymeta emigrated in 1949 from Kaufbueren. And voila, I was born in Boston August 26, 1951.
Herman sent my father to a school to learn to be a baker, figuring that my father knew something about it as Lejzor was a sugar baker. My father then worked as a baker in Boston and my mother worked in a sewing factory, snipping threads.
In 1952 my parents moved to Chicago, where my mother had cousins, Morris and Esther Borenstein. First my father had a bakery (Albany Bakery) with a partner, another refugee from Płock by the name of Lisser, and his wife Fela. My sister Leslie was born June 19,1954. Eventually the partners sold the store and my father purchased Fireside Bakery.This was about 1-1/2 blocks from the Borensteins and we moved to that neighborhood. Winters in Chicago are very difficult (it is called the Windy City for good reason) and my mother especially found the weather very difficult. My father sold the store and January 30, 1964 we left Chicago (in a blizzard) and headed west to California.
We stayed at the home of my father’s best childhood friend, Moniek Zielonka (Michael Zelon) and his wife Cesia (Charlotte) for about 2 weeks and found an apartment of our own. My father worked as a baker for a short time. Then he and another Polish (not from Płock, I don’t think so) refugee, Manfred (Fred) Saltzman, bought a liquor market in El Porto, California (now part of Manhattan Beach, California). In the early 1970s, Fred retired and that store was sold. My father bought another liquor market that was already called Sam’s Liquor, in Lakewood, California, so he didn’t have to buy a new sign. Unfortunately, my father was a “victim of a violent crime” in the late 1970s because of that store and he lost vision in his left eye.
My father sold Sam’s Liquor in 1985, when he was 65. He immediately began walking at the beach every day, going to the gym, taking care of the house since my mother was still working and being an involved grandfather to my son Evan David McMurry (from my 1st marriage, June 27, 1982) and my sister’s children as they came along (Zachary Brygart Ellison, July 29, 1986 and twins Travis Buckner Ellison and Rebecca Rose Ellison, born February 13, 1989). We called father’s car “Papa’s Taxi”.
He and my mother, who had retired in 1988 or 1989, lived a quiet, peaceful life. Sadly my mother began developing dementia (as did her sister) in her mid-80s. At least that is when we began to notice it. And my father developed hairy-cell leukemia in his early 90s, which later progressed to Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It was his choice not to treat it and June 15, 2015 he went into hospice care, at home. The last few days were horrific as he spiraled into post-traumatic stress syndrome and was reliving the war. We had to keep him sedated to keep him safe. Sam died around 8:30 am August 5, 2015. He was intent on living until he was 95, and he did, plus 1 month and 1 day. Frymeta never could remember that he had died (after 72 years of marriage). She lived 6 months and 10 days longer, until around 6 am February 15, 2016.
Sandra Brygart Rodriguez
Estera Golde-Stróżecka – freethinker, activist for women’s rights, journalist, political and cultural-educational activist, doctor, was born on August 1, 1872 in Płock, as the daughter of Beniamin and Liba Ruchla nee Goldsztejn. Her father was a well-known merchant, industrialist and philanthrope. After graduating from the […]
The records reveal that Bomzon family have lived in Płock from the beginning of the 19th century. My paternal great-grandfather, Izrael Abram Bomzon (1861-1913) was one of the six children of Dawid Szlama Bomzon (1826-1904) and Ruchla Łaja Bomzon née Liberman (1830-?) and a gingerbread […]
Stanisław (Salomon) Posner was born on November 21, 1868 as the son of Leon and Matylda née Bornstein. His father was one of the proponents of the assimilation, many of his articles were printed in Warsaw’s “Jutrzenka”. Stanisław Posner’s sister was Malwina Garfein-Garska – writer and publicist, author of Gromnice (1907) and Opowieść o duszy polskiej (1912). Stanisław’s great-grandfather – Salomon Markus Posner (1770-1848) – a merchant and philanthropist from Finland, as a young man settled in Warsaw, where he became a salt trader and soon reached a considerable fortune. Thanks to it, in 1817 he was able to buy land in Kuchary Żydowskie, where he moved with his family and, in 1823, founded one of the first textile factories in the Kingdom of Poland.
Stanisław Posner was an outstanding lawyer – theoretician. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at the Imperial University of Warsaw. Already as a student, since 1891, he wrote articles for “Gazeta Sądowa Warszawska”. In 1893, he was awarded a gold medal for a contest study titled Szkoła historyczna prawa w Niemczech (The historic legal education in Germany). He continued his studies in the years 1893-1895 at the Faculty of Law of the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. After returning to Poland, he was involved in research and journalism. In 1900 he published his work entitled Prawo a życie, which was awarded at the “Gazeta Sądowa” competition, and three years later, a famous study Nad otchłanią (Over the abyss). In this work, he aimed to prove that human trafficking is not fiction, he cited in detail the court hearings of two trials in Bytom and Piotrków, in which the accused admitted that they were involved in deporting women to brothels in South America. At the time, such trials were exceptional. His creative achievements include dozens of articles in the pages of “Przegląd Tygodniowy”, “Prawda”, “Ogniwo”, “Themis Polska”, “Wiedza”, “Książka”, “Czasopismo prawnicze i ekonomiczne”, “Przegląd Filozoficzny”, “Przegląd Polityczny”, „Wielka Encyklopedia Ilustrowana”. Posner was the author of numerous books and brochures in Polish, French and German from various fields of legal and social sciences. Among his many works, worth mentioning are: Domy ludowe w Belgii (Workers’ Houses in Belgium; in which he deals with workers’ cooperatives), Drogi samopomocy społecznej (Means of social self-help; where we can find essays on, among others, Franciszek Tarczyński and buttonery in the town of Sochocin) or the work Dlaczego jestem socjalistką? (Why am I a socialist?), published in 1921. As Feliks Perl wrote, Stanisław Posner was a socialist in the name of respect for man, in the name of creating conditions for man to fulfill his human potential.
During World War I, Stanisław Posner was in exile in Western Europe. At the time, he worked with extraordinary effort for the cause of Poland’s independence. He gained the opinion of a reliable informant, a noble politician, a great patriot, and at the same time a modern European. Posner wrote about Poland for numerous French magazines, gave lectures, held private meetings with influential people. At the same time, he organized Poles in France, preparing them for future activities in independent Poland. He was the initiator and creator of the Adam Mickiewicz People’s University in Paris, which was founded in 1916. Together with Józefa Franciszka Joteyko and Maria Grzegorzewska, he organized the Polish Teaching League – an institution that set itself the task of collecting for the country’s needs materials in the field of education and teaching methods, as well as promoting the Polish independence movement. From Paris, under his own name or a pseudonym of Rajmund Kucharski, he wrote numerous letters to Polish magazines published in Russia by Polish emigrants.
In 1922, Stanisław Posner was elected from the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) list in the Kielce Province to the Senate of the Republic of Poland. He worked in the Legal, Foreign and Military Affairs Committee. In 1928 he again became a senator from the PPS state list, he was then entrusted with the dignity of the Senate Deputy Marshal. For both terms he was the vice president of the club of the Association of Polish Socialist Parliament Members and the president of the socialist faction in the Senate. He spoke many times in the most important debates. His parliamentary speeches testifying to his deep knowledge of law and multilateral erudition have earned him the status of an eminent parliamentarian. Collected in the book Pięć lat pracy w Senacie Rzeczypospolitej 1922–1927 (Five Years of Work in the Senate of the Republic of Poland 1922–1927), they were published in 1928 by Księgarnia Robotnicza.
Stanisław Posner’s great contribution was Poland’s ratification of the ban on night work and the admission of children under the age of 14 to industrial work, recognized at the First International Labor Conference in Washington in 1919. He was also one of the authors of the Geneva Declaration of 1924, in which children’s rights were first listed, and one of the founders and vice-chairman of the League for the Defense of Human and Citizen Rights. He was one of the founders and a board member of the Polish Association of the League of Nations. He actively worked in the Interparliamentary Union – an international organization founded in 1889, the goal of which was to protect peace and fuel positive democratic change through political dialogue and actions. Finally, he worked for young people in a institution dear to his heart, which was established in 1922 – the State Institute of Special Education, under the guidance of professor Maria Grzegorzewska – creator of special education in Poland.
Let’s remember, wrote Posner, that it is happiness to love people. You have to respect them, not hate them and despise them. You need to bind people together, not divide them and grind their relationships to dust. You need to establish social connectivity, instead of opening craters of hatred and selfishness…
Stanisław Posner died on May 8, 1930. He was buried in the Evangelical-Augsburg cemetery in Warsaw.
The Nobiscum Foundation has devoted an exhibition to Stanisław Posner, which was prepared last year and presented so far at the Department No. 7 of the Władysław Broniewski Library in Płock, during the 5th January Uprising Run in Kuchary Żydowskie, in the Municipal Culture Centre in Płońsk during this year’s Jewish Culture Festival in the city of Ben Gurion and the Municipal Culture Centre in Sochocin.
Bibliography:
Perl F., Stanisław Posner, Cracow, 1927
Stanisław Posner. Wspomnienie [in:] “Gazeta Sądowa Warszawska” nr 20 z 19 maja 1930 r.
Świdwiński St., Wspomnienia pośmiertne. Senator Stanisław Posner [:] “Ogniwo: organ informacyjny i sprawozdawczy Związku Zawodowego Nauczycielstwa Polskich Szkół Średnich i Biuletyn Zarządu Głównego Z.Z.N.P.S.Ś.”, nr 5 (maj 1930)
websites:
Rudold (Chaim Rubin) Oberfeld was born on November 14, 1859, as the son of Jakow and Ruchla née Nejmark. His wife was Franciszka née Bernsztejn. Oberfeld was a graduate of the Governorate Junior High School in Płock and legal studies at the University of Warsaw. […]
In 1870, the successors of Ojzer Lewita bought from the Town Hall of Płock for 1000 rubles in silver a square bordering from the south with Misjonarska street, from the west with prison buildings, from the north and east with the garden and property of […]
Maurycy Fajans (1827-1897) – a merchant and industrialist, was the son of Herman, a merchant from Sieradz, and Leontyna nee Kon. His brother was a well-known Warsaw photographer and owner of a lithographic and photographic studio Maksymilian Fajans (1825-1890).
Maurycy Fajans was a representative of a Vistula river steamboat company in Włocławek, which belonged to Count Andrzej Zamoyski, then (from 1864) its director. In 1871, after the closing of the company, he purchased some ships, including the “Płock” steamboat. He was also the owner of the Steamboat Workshop in Solec. As we read in the article titled “Jubileusz żeglugi parowej na Wiśle” (“Vistula steamboat jubilee”) in “Tygodnik Ilustrowany” (No. 26 of 1908):
The new buyer had the luckiest hand of all current steamboat owners on the queen of our rivers. Introducing an effective administration, gradually increasing the number of ships, Fajans became wealthy very quickly. Thanks to his lucky hand, he also became the first to establish a successful steamboat business on the Vistula River. In 1884 Fajans continued the previously interrupted shipbuilding business in domestic factories, which he was the manager of. These workshops were improved in such a way that even military orders could be fulfilled. And finally, the first improved steamboats “Kraków” and “Wawel” were produced in the Fajans factory a few years ago, with covered cabins and electric lighting on board. It was a serious step forward in improving the aesthetics of existing steamboats on the Vistula.
Maurycy Fajans was also a business judge (since 1875), a member of the Warsaw Stock Exchange Committee (in the years 1888-1894) and a member of the board of the Warsaw Jewish community. He collaborated with the Płock merchant Ludwik Flatau in the field of grain trade. He was also a member of the Waterworks Construction Association in Płock (next to Zelewek Chessyn, Adolf Weisblatt, Krzysztof Doze and Gustaw Bergson), which was established in 1894, and co-owner of the real estate in Płock marked with mortgage number 515 on the bank of the Vistula.
Bibliography:
Przedpełski J., Stefański J., Żydzi płoccy w dziejach miasta, Płock, 2012
The mikvah, which existed even before the construction of the beautiful building, which is now the seat of the Art Gallery of Płock. The tenement house in which the Society for the Care of Jewish Children and the Shelter for Homeless Jewish Children was located. […]
