Arieh Mayer - My Connection to Przemysl

My name is Arieh Mayer. I was born Israel and had no connection to Poland or Przemysl until the death of my mother, who passed away 23 years ago. Among the letters and photos she left me was a picture of a five or six year old girl holding a ball. On the back of the photo was written To my daughter Cilli (my mother’s name) here is your sister Dvora, Przemysl. It seemed very strange to me because I knew that my grandfather Chaim Glaser, who got divorced from my grandmother in the early twenties, lived in Vienna had only three children: my mother and her two brothers.

From what was written on the photo I guessed that after his divorce he moved to Przemysl got married again and had this daughter. From this moment I begun to try to find out what happened to the both of them, after I learned that the last time my family heard of them was in 1939.

During my research which started about fifteen years ago I found out that my grandfather, a shoemaker, married Rachla Stolzberg in 1926 and a year later they had a daughter - Dvora. The Przemysl archives confirmed all of this when I received from them the marriage certificate and the birth certificate of Dvora. I found a relative of Rachla who told me that she passed away a few years after her marriage that my grandfather's financial situation became so bad that he was forced to put Dvora in an orphanage. That was all I found out. People from all over the world tried to help me find out what became of Dvora, but with no success.

One of them was Rozia Felner, whose address I got from Dr. Hartman. I used to send her money and parcels of Israeli food every Rosh Hashanah and Pesach. She always thanked me in Polish and added a few Hebrew words she remembered from the days she went to a Jewish school in Przemysl. This year she didn’t response, now I know why.


I would appreciate getting any information anyone can give me about my grandfather and his daughter.

בברכה מאריה מאיר
Arieh Mayer
Haifa, Israel
meir1935@netvision.net.il