NEGER Family & Wertenteil Family

Shoah Survivor Summaries

List compiled by Nina Talbot (April, 2016)

(related to the NEGER Family & friend of the WERTENTEIL Family)

Moishe Neger - 1913-1990 - son of Mendel and Breindl Neger, who both perished in the Nazi invasion, along with 5 of their daughters. Moishe was in the Polish Army at the outbreak of WWII. He was stationed outside of Dynów, joined the Partisans and then was picked up by the Russian Army, and fought the Germans.

After the war, he lived in the Polish city of Chojnów, where he met a Polish woman Chana. They married and had 3 children. The family immigrated to Israel in 1957. Their two sons were pilots in the Israeli Army, and their daughter was a paratrooper.

Dora Neger -1919- 1964 - daughter of Menashe Neger escaped with her cousin, Hersch Meilech Neger and his family, with the help of local farmers. She and the family were eventually picked up by the Nazis and taken to a labor camp.

Dora and the family arrived in New York in 1951. Dora was sponsored by my grandmother Bella to come to the U.S. in 1951. Dora stayed briefly with my grandmother’s family in the Bronx. She attended the Dynówer Society meetings, where she was introduced to the man she eventually married. She and her husband had a son, Michael. Dora was murdered in her Long Island home in 1964.

Mila Neger- 1914- 1988 - Mila survived the Warsaw Ghetto, and immigrated with her husband David Lubochinski to Israel in 1946. Her two daughters perished in the ghetto.

Chaim Neger- 1924- 1975 – Chaim escaped Dynów, hid in the forest, was picked up by the Russian Army. The Nazis shot him in the leg. Chaim played dead until they left the area. He dug a hole in the snow and stayed there for three days. He woke up in a hospital. Chaim always limped after that.

His wife, Dina, walked 600 miles after the war to find Chaim. They reunited, and had their first child, Avraham in a D.P. camp. They came to New York in 1951. Chaim became very successful in the meat industry in New Jersey.

Sam Neger- 1930- 2006 – Sam was my great uncle, my grandmother Bella’s brother. He was the youngest of five children from Avraham Neger’s second wife. Sam was 9 years old when the Nazis invaded Dynów in 1939. His father paid a neighbor farmer with tobacco to hide Sam for a year and a half. (continued)

Eventually, Sam Neger was found and brought to Buchenwald. After the camp was liberated, he was in a displaced camp, and then was sponsored to come to New York in 1947. He took an offer for housing and employment in Duluth, Minnesota, where he married and began to rebuild his life.

Faiga Neger -1909-1995. Faiga and her sister Frymt Neger ran from Dynów when the Nazis invaded. Faiga met her husband in Russia. Their mother Baila Neger, who couldn’t escape because she had a broken leg, gave her daughters some jewels to keep for survival. After the war, they went back to Dynów to look for family, but did not find any survivors. After the war, the two sisters and their husbands went to Israel and began their families.

Frymt Neger -1918- (See above with her sister Feiga) As of 2015, Frymt was still alive, living in a nursing home in Haifa.

Hersch- Meilech Neger - 1902-1993 (and his wife Leja 1901-1974, and 4 children: Feiga b.1929, Markus 1931-2001, Leib 1934-2013 & Luba 1936-2006) Hersch Meilech Neger with his wife and 4 young children were helped to escape Dynów when the Nazis invaded in 1939, via a network of local farmers whom Hersch did business with, who hid the family under dark of night by cart to neighboring villages to try & get the family out of danger. Eventually, they were picked up by the Nazis and taken to a labor camp. The family arrived in New York in 1951.

WERTENTEIL Family (survivors from Dynów)

A Summary of their Story [as told to me by Jack & Betzalel Wertenteil]

Wertenteil Family- Duvid Wertenteil, and 6 of his 7 children: Chanchu, Elimelech, Yisroel, Betzalel, Ettel, Leib, escaped by raft across the San River to the Russian occupied partition of Poland, when the Nazis invaded Dynów. Duvid’s wife Tila, died of throat cancer two weeks before the invasion. The eldest son Jack, had already emigrated to New York, where he was drafted, and sent back to Europe to serve in the U.S. Army.

The family was picked up and transported by a combination of railroad and raft thousands of miles away to Irkutsk in Siberia, where they worked in a labor camp.

Father and 5 of his 6 children survived- Elimelech died in the labor camp after he tried bringing food to his brother, Yisrael, who was imprisoned for trying to get extra food.

Toward the end of the war, the family made their way back to a displaced persons camp in Germany, and ultimately to the United States.

The Wertenteil family trajectory, beginning when the family fled Dynów until their arrival in New York, spanned a period of ten years; 1939-1949.