Tobiasz Stefan Hurwicz (1887-1949) was one of Max‘s sons, therefore Adek and Helenka‘s brother.

Ari Kolbar (born in 1946 in Dzierżoniów, Poland), who emigrated from Poland to Israel in 1957, wrote me in an email:

As you know, our grandparents lived in Warsaw in Graniczna Street 10 and 11, just before the war. My mother* just got married, so they might have lived with my mother’s parents, Stefan and Helena.

When the war broke out, they probably moved to Białystok, as my father was born there and his whole family lived there. I’m not sure how long they lived there. I know that your grandparents moved there too.

(In another email, Ari said: Stefan with wife Helena/Hela/Chaja Minc and my parents, Malwina and Izaak and his brother, Israel, left Warsaw when war broke and moved to Białystok where my father comes from, where all his family lived and perished in the Shoah.)

At some point my parents moved east to Ufa, a city in the Kawkaz mountains, where both my parents and Helena worked in a hospital. it must have been before 1941, as my brother Max was born at that year there. I don’t know what Stefan was doing there at that time.

In 1945/6 they came back to Poland and settled down in Dzierzoniow, probably because they were not allowed to return to Warsaw. All Jews returning from Russia were instructed to settle down there in houses of expelled Germans. I was born there in 46 and Roza-Varda a year later.

In ’49 we all were, for sure, back in Warsaw, as Stefan died that year, in a hospital in Warsaw. I have his death certificate.

But I was twice in two cemeteries in Warsaw and could not locate his grave. Very strange. There is no recording of his grave in Okopowa cemetery and in the other one – Brudna – there is no office at all.

The manager in Okopowa told me that there was a lot of chaos with recordings at that time…… perhaps something would show up in the future as they try to make more order with the graves registrations.

* Malwina Hurwicz (1910-1978)