In memory of Ester FALIK nee LANDESMAN ( ca 1879 - 1915)

In the summer of 2014 my friend Liat and I travelled across Galicja in the footsteps of Liat's family. Most of her close family members were murdered in Holocaust, but at the time we knew that Liat's greatgrandfather Moses LANDESMAN had died some time after her grandmother Lea LANDESMAN was born in Sieniawa in 1879. We even looked for his grave in Sieniawa, without success. There too, most graves have no family name, and we did not know the name of Moses LANDESMAN's father, nor his deathdate.



Liat had been told that her grandmother Lea was an orphan when she married her grandfather Josef BLATT.

We had found that Moses LANDESMAN was married to Dwora Dwojra nee KRESS, but even now in 2015 we have not succeeded in locating Lea's birthrecord  from Sienawa in 1879.

When Lea gave birth to her firstborn son in 1909, two things happened:
1. She named her son Moses in honor of her deceased father, following Ashkenazic tradition.
2. She gave birth to Moses in Lubaczow, despite the fact that she originally came from Sieniawa and that she in 1909 lived in Breslau, Germany - now Wroclaw, Poland. Lubaczow is far away from Breslau!

My theory has been that Lea must have had a sister in Lubaczow and that she had travelled all the way to Lubaczow to stay at her sister's home. Perhaps Lea's mother, a widow, lived at the home of this sister?

Now, through the documentation of the cemetery in Lubaczow, I have found the following : 

On July 11th 1915 Ester FALIK died in Lubaczow at the age of 36. This could mean she was born in 1879, the same year as Lea.

Ester FALIK was married to Abraham FALIK and she was the daughter of Moses and Dwojra LANDESMAN.

Liat's father grew up in Breslau with a relative around the age of his brother Moses. He talked about her as Mina FALK, but it seems more and more likely that her name was Mina FALIK, and that she had been brought from Lubaczow to Breslau after the death of her mother in 1915. Could this indicate that she was the only child in the marriage of Abraham and Ester FALIK?

Here is a photo taken in Breslau on Pesach 1920 of  four of the five BLATT children, with Mina FALK / FALIK to the far left.

I have not located Ester's gravestone in the cemetery, and it might be there was no stone, considering the circumstances.  76 persons died in Lubaczow in July 1915, three or four on July 11th 1915.

If there is/was a stone, the text in Hebrew would be

אסתר בת משה

נפטרה כ"ט תמוז תרע"ה  או א' אב תרע"ה

Mina Falik/Falk married a man named Martin, family name unknown, in the 1930's, and the two were murdered in the Holocaust.

Mina and her husband Martin

ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.

My theory is plausible, but is it right? Could it even be that Ester and Lea were twins? 

Perhaps the answer can be found in the archives in  Wroclaw, if  Mina FALK is registered there as Mina FALIK, born in Lubaczow, the daughter of Abraham FALIK and Ester FALIK nee LANDESMAN.

With an exact birthdate for Mina, we may perhaps discover Mina's married name as a Holocaust victim.