Bomstein z Łukowa

This is a picture of me and my brother Abram Sznejser working at one of the cobbler’s workshops in my home city Lukow. It was taken after my father’s death in 1932, because then both of us were forced to quit school and start to work. Before I started to work as a cobbler, I got some education. I went to elementary school, but only until my dad died, then that was the end of it. I couldn’t go to school any more because I had to go out to work. And after that I only attended evening classes. I?m the first from right on this photo. I could be 14 or 15 at that time. Shortly afterwards I went to work to Warsaw, as a cobbler too. The owner of this workshop was a Jew called Mojsze Onikman, and that old woman sitting second from left is his mother. First from left is my brother Abram, who survived the Holocaust like me inside the Soviet Union. After the war Abram lived with me for a while in Legnica, and then he emigrated to Israel. Right in the centre of the photo is our co-worker named Lajbele Bomstein. That Lajbele was denounced to the Germans by his own father! Lajbele met a girl somewhere; she was escaping and hiding from the Germans. Lajbele found a Pole and hid the girl with him, threatening to kill him if anything happened to the girl. Later on he hid there too, and some other people as well. His father found out where he was and split on them all. They killed the whole family and all the people hiding there. A father split on his own son!