Israel Falk after liberation

Held by

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

Dates

1945 (indexed as 1945)

Level

item

Extent

Photograph : Paper ; Ht: 2 1/8 in. x W: 1 3/4 in.

Scope & content

b&w, portrait of Israel Falk in suit and bow tie. Narrative: Israel (Ignacy) Falk was born on 4 February 1904 in Warsaw, Poland. He was the son of a tailor and began to work for a living at age 14. He lacked formal education but secured a job as a bookkeeper in a print shop. Eventually he earned enough to support a wife and child. Shortly after deportations began in 1942 his parents, siblings, and their families had been taken to the Treblinka gas chambers. In September, Falk was put on a train to Treblinka, but was able to pull off the window bars and jump from the train. He returned to the ghetto. In March 1943 he arranged for his wife and 11-year-old son, Michael, to escape. They spent the remainder of the war hiding with a Polish friend. Falk remained in the ghetto to aid the resistance with smuggling in weapons and bomb supplies. On 19 April 1943, Falk and the remaining Jews made a stand when the SS came to deport them. They held off the Nazis for several weeks until the ghetto was torched. Falk was one of the few survivors. He was captured and sent to Budzyn. Four two years he endured four different concentration camps. The last was Schindler's Factory in Brunlitz in 1945. That same year Russian troops liberated the area and Falk was able to return to his family in France. They emigrated to Canada in 1949 on the SS Samaria. At some point after the war he remarried (as the result of the death or divorce of his first wife (?)). He was an activist in the Labour Movement. During the National Convention of the Labour Committee at the Chelsea Hotel, Atlantic City, NY, in 1947 Mr. Falk was one of the key speakers. He wasa strong speaker regarding the Holocaust, but he didn't talk about Schindler much until after watching 'Schindler's List' with his family. Israel died in Montreal on 13 December 1996.

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Genre / form

graphic material

In the picture

ManPortraitStudio PortraitSuitTagged automatically by a vision model; may contain mistakes.

Text in the image

cjhn.caRead automatically; may contain mistakes.

Harvested

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

Digital objects at the source

• imageOpen original at source ↗2011X-122-21a.jpg
• imageOpen original at source ↗2011X-122-21b.jpg