Silvia's box of Getter photos

About a month ago, I got an email from a woman in Miami who found this blog by searching the name Muni Getter.

Chaya and Muni

That name is quite meaningful in my family. Muni Getter married my grandfather Emil Silbermann’s sister Chaya (see this post) in Przemysl ~1925 then moved to France where they had Florine ~1928. In 1941, they managed to hide the 13-yr old in a convent in Grenoble before they were rounded up by the Nazis and shipped to Auschwitz. Chaya was murdered on arrival while Muni became slave labor and somehow survived. In ’45 he came back to France and after searching for a year, found his daughter in Paris. My grandfather bought them passage to NYC and Muni and Florine lived with my mom and family. Chaya has always been a family tragedy and mystery.

Florine, Dorothy (my mom), and Fannie (my GM)

The path that led the woman who found me, Silvia, is rather amazing.

30 years ago, when she lived in NYC, she found a box of old photos in a trash can on the street in front of the brownstone she lived in. She said it looked like an apartment had been cleaned out, perhaps because someone died.  Curious, she took them home then forgot about them. They followed her to storage when she moved to Miami.  A month ago, bored in COVID lockdown, she remembered the box, dug it out of storage, and found the name Muni Getter on the back of a photo. 

She sent me scans (I now have all the photos) a few of which were of my mother, grandmother, and grandfather. There was even a book of matches from my parents wedding in 1953 – all in a box in the garbage 30 years ago!

I think the photos belonged to Muni’s 2^nd wife, Paulette (Perla). There are many of her (previously unknown) first husband Salomon, Muni and his family,  dozens of pix of Chaya and Florine in France, some of my grandparents and mom, and a bunch of still unidentified people. There is a lot of Yiddish script I need to get translated to piece all this together.

Paulette and Saloman

Among the photos are several sent presumably to Paulette from the French concentration camp at Beaune la Rolande. Group photos of inmates, passed by censors, and a hand drawn card from Solomon to Paulette that is heartbreaking. 

The other interesting thing is that many of the earlier photos of all the people were taken in Przemysl. Obviously, I know the Chaya was from there and that Muni and his family lived there (the Getter/Turkeltaub were originally from Czortkow). Paulette and Salomon seem to be from Przemysl too, but I don’t know their family names, yet. I’ve found several of the people in the deportation records from France. I also don’t know how Paulette survived or if she and Muni knew each other pre-war, which is likely. 

You can see all the scans here.

A million thanks to Silvia and Tim for saving this trove of family treasures. I'll be posting more of the photos soon.