The Pupko and Liebermann Families

There were many Pupko families in Lida. One of these Pupko families dates back to Yehoshua Dov Pupko, who was alive ca 1800. He had three sons: Zelig, Moshe, and Yitzchak. Some of Zelig’s descendants owned the Pupko Brewery in Lida. Fanya Pupko belongs to this branch. Moshe made aliyyah and was buried on the Mount of Olives in 1896. Yitzchak’s descendants were in various aspects of timber business in the Lida area.

Fanya Pupko was the daughter of Kallman Pupko and Rebekka Kaplan. There is only one K. Pupko in the 1929 directory; he had a grocery store on Suwalska. This might be Kallman.  

Fanya had four sisters: Frida, Leah, Gita and Dora, and two brothers, Abraham and Boris. Fanya and Dora made aliyyah, and are the only members of the immediate family to survive the Holocaust. There are Pages of Testimony at Yad Vashem for Kallmann and Rebekka,  Abraham, his wife Shaynka, and two children, Leah/Liza, her husband Boris Shapiro, and their two children. Frida, her husband Meilach Trotsky and their daughter Gitel also perished in the Holocaust. No one seems to know what happened to Boris and Gita. 

Fanya had several Pupko uncles who are also mentioned in the letters. The oldest was Zelig, who was married to Sarah Bluma. Their son Abraham and his wife Teibe/Tanya/Tatiana nee Shapiro were Holocaust victims, as was their younger son Zelig. The next son was Hirsh, (Abraham's brother) who married Lea/Liza Veil/Voich/Vitz . They and their two sons Zelig and Israel were also murdered. The third son was Wolf/Ze'ev, who also made aliyyah. He submitted 25 Pages of Testimony for relatives, which are a major source of information. These three brothers had a sister Frida, married Molchadski, later Moll, who  survived,a nd also contributed 31 Pages of Testimony, some for the same relatives as Ze'ev.

The second child in the family was Kalman.

The third child, and second uncle,  in the family, Fanya & Dora's uncle Chaim Abba, emigrated to Mexico, as did his family.

The fourth in the family was Shimson, married to Chaia/Chana Niankovski. Both of them were Holocaust victims, as were their three children, Frida Kawenski, Natan, and Yehuda.

The youngest in the family was uncle Lev/Lyova, who married Chana Tsigelnitski. They and their children Frida, Idda, and Aharon were all murdered in the Holocaust.

Fanya Pupko married Manfred Liebermann in Palestine. Reuven Poupko learned this about the family: He learned agriculture in Mikveh Yisrael and grew orchards in Petach Tikva. His father, Aharon, was a rabbi in Berlin and Raanana. Together with R’ Berman he established a Mizrachi teachers’ seminary in 1924, which is now called “Michlelet Efrata,” and is located in Talpiot. I inquired about Aharon Liebermann at the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, but they had no information.  

Dora Pupko married Yitzchak Hannenfeld in Palestine.

Some of the letters in the collection were to Olia, who had a brother Robert. Their father had business interests in Warsaw. This family is most likely the family of merchant Aizik Yosef Zajczyk / Zeichik (born 1870) and his teacher wife Dvora or Dora. A cousin, Yocheved Peterzeil, submitted Pages of Testimony for the entire family. Azik's parents were  Mordechai and Yocheved, from Mcislaw. Their son Robert, born 1905 was also murdered, as was Ola Polachek, born 1910, a nursery school teacher and wife of Moshe Polachek, who is Meishel, the author of the letters to Olia. He does not appear in the Yad Vashem Database. We don't know if Fanya and Olia were friends, or if they were somehow related. Tragically, Olia Zajczyk returned to Lida from Palestine to marry Meishel.  Also mentioned in the letters is Aizik Zajczyk's brother Gustaw/Gershon (born 1874).  He lived in Warsaw, with his wife Fani/Fruma. Both were Holocaust victims, as was their son Shimon, whose wife was Natalia nee Hokhsinger.Yet another of Mordechai and Yocheved's sons,  Marek/Mordechai (born 1880), was also a Holocaust victim. His wife was Cecilia, and their son Josef (born 1915) was also a Holocaust victim. Their Pages of Testimony were submitted by a niece, Miriam Eshkoli.

The Liebermann & related families

Joseph Plaut (one of the few full names that emerges from the German letters) submitted Pages of Testimony to Yad Vashem , as did  Ruth Norden (another full name from the letters)  - in 1999. There are Helfer-side Pages of Testimony from a submitter not mentioned in the letters.

The following information emerges: 

Hilde, mentioned in the letters, is probably Hilde Helfer (Plaut's PoT has been translated Halper) married to Benno, born 1910, son of Max and Rosina Helfer. Max Helfer was born in Brody, resided in Hamburg, and was murdered in the Holocaust, as was his wife.  Hilde Helfer was the daughter of Joseph Kugelmann and Betty nee Plaut, for both of whom there are Pages of Testimony as well. Betty was the daughter of Moses Plaut and Bertha nee Goldschmidt (which is probably where the James Goldschmidt family comes in - see let114.htm)  

A posting on Jewishgen yielded the information (thank you Frank Hochfeld) that Martin Norden (Ruth's husband) was an Orthodox Rabbi who eventually had a congregation in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada.

Just what the connection is to the Liebermanns remains unclear.