Telegram

Held by

Montreal Holocaust Museum via Canadian Jewish Heritage Network (incl. Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives)

Dates

December 25, 1949 (indexed as 1949)

Level

item

Extent

Telegram : Paper : Printed, Typed : Ink : Beige, Blue, Yellow, Black ; Ht: 16,5 cm x W: 21,25 cm

Scope & content

1 page, single-sided. Top quarter of page is blue, 'A Social Telegram via Canadian Pacific' printed in yellow letters with image of a woman in formal dress on left and a bouquet of roses on right, also both in yellow. Document is a telegram from the Gingerhut [likely an error, should read Fingerhut] family to Mr. and Mrs. Abramovitz, congratulating them on their wedding. Narrative: Bella (Beila, Bela) Herling and Mayer (Majer, Meyer, Meir) Abramovitch (Abramovitz, Abramowicz, Abramowitz) were the parents of the donor, Toby Herscovitch. Bella was born in Suchedniów, Poland on September 25, 1925, the youngest of a family of ten children. Her parents and five siblings were murdered in the Holocaust. Bella and three of her sisters survived the war working as slave labourers in an ammunitions factory in Skarzysko-Kamienna. They were liberated by Russian troops on January 16, 1945, and made their way to the Feldafing Displaced Persons Camp, where they reunited with a brother who had survived Auschwitz. Bella volunteered for nursing training by a Jewish refugee agency, and worked as a nurse in the camp from 1946 to 1948. In 1948, she joined her sister Paula in Toronto, where she worked as a nurse's aide and married Mayer, a fellow survivor who she had known from Feldafing. Born November 10, 1914 in Vilna (Vilnius), he was the sole survivor of a family of six children. He lived in the Vilna ghetto and worked in a factory making window panes for German barracks; he was later sent to a labour camp in Tallin, Estonia, and then to Stutthof concentration camp. In the final days of the war, he escaped from a subsequent transfer to Dachau concentration camp and was liberated. He spent three months sick in a hospital and ended up in Feldafing, where he was active in the "Amchu" or "AMCHO" theater group, part of the Jewish Labour Committee. He lived for a year in France, and immigrated to Canada in May, 1949. Bella and Mayer moved to Montreal in 1950 and opened a fabric store. Mayer passed away in 2001, and Bella in 2014.

Location

No place found in this description yet.

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Genre / form

textual record

In the picture

DocumentEnvelopeFlowerLetterheadPostmarkPrintedRailway CompanyStampTelegramTypewrittenWeddingWomanTagged automatically by a vision model; may contain mistakes.

Text in the image

A Social TelegramviaCANADIAN PACIFICCD 1 SBW. D. NEIL, General Manager of Communications, Montreal"The filing time shown in the date line is STANDARD TIME at place of origin. Time of receipt is STANDARD TIME at place of destination."RNAHO 91949 DEC 25 PM 12 52FD MONTREAL QUE 25 1229PMR AND MRS ABRAMOVITZRADOMER HALL 210 BEVERLEY ST TORONTO DEL 7 PM DATECONGRATULATIONS AND BEST WISHES FOR A VERY HAPPY FUTUREFAMILY GINGERHUTCD 1 58Read automatically; may contain mistakes.

Language

English

Harvested

2026-10-19T03:21:16Z · source datestamp n/a · andornot

Digital objects at the source

• imageOpen original at source ↗2014_10_05.jpg