Polish Soldiers

Held by

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

Level

item

Extent

Photograph : Printed, handwritten : black, white

Scope & content

b&w. Outdoors. Photograph of Nathan Cytryn and his company of reserve Polish army cadets. Nathan (Nusyn) Cytryn was born on December 5th, 1929, in G?owaczów, Poland. His father, Ychak-Mayer Cytryn (1879-1953), was a businessman representing a company producing carbonated cylinders in Warsaw. His mother was Deborah Cytryn. The family moved to Radom and went afterwards to Lublin where Helena, Nathan's sister, was born in 1914. Nathan had two other younger siblings, Yanek/Jacob (b.1906) and Milton (1900-1975). In 1920, Nathan finished his gimnazjum but could not go to university due to the Polish-Soviet War. He then went to Warsaw to study in the faculty of law. Enlisted in 1923, Nathan was promoted to officer in the Polish army in 1929. He married to Salomea (nee Kaziemierska), born in W?oc?awek, Poland in 1902 to Mosze and Helena Kazimierski. Together they had a son, Jakob (Yaakov, Yasio, Janek), born on March 15th, 1929. In the 1930s, when Nathan's parents and siblings immigrated to Canada, he and his wife decided to stay in Poland with her family. In 1939, Nathan was mobilized to fight against the invasion of Poland, leading to his arrest by the Nazis. From 1939 to 1945, Nathan was imprisoned at the Oflag VII POW camp. At the end of 1939, Salomea, her parents and Yasho were deported to the Warsaw ghetto. For three years, their only means of communication were letters, which allowed the couple to share their feelings and describe their living conditions. Salomea shared the difficulties she and her family encountered in the ghetto. For her, the hardest thing to face was loneliness. Nathan sent her his portrait to help keep their spirits up and to comfort them in these uncertain times. The letters between Salomea and Nathan came to an abrupt stop in 1942. On July 14, 1942, Nathan received a letter from Salomea wishing him a happy birthday and hoped to celebrate the 'upcoming birthdays with joy' together. This is the last letter he received from his wife. Salomea and Yasho are believed to have been deported to the Treblinka killing center in August 1942, during the Grossaktion (the Great Aktion). Part of Operation Reinhard, the action was carried out from July 22 to September 21, 1942, to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto and deport and murder its inhabitants. Nathan remained imprisoned until the Liberation in 1945 and was transferred to the DP camp in Engelstadt. After learning that his wife and son had been murdered, Nathan decided to join in 1947 members of his family who settled before the war in Canada. He began a new life in Montreal and met Sarah Schacter, whom he married in 1948.

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Genre / form

graphic material

Harvested

2026-10-17T20:12:41Z · source datestamp n/a · cjhn

Digital objects at the source

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