Our Children Are Safe, Powder Your Nose

friday, october 28, 2022

Holocaust survivor, Joseph Erlichman was born on January 11, 1940 in Brussels Belgium. He was the grandson of Rabbi Efraim Majmin, who was the head rabbi of Warsaw, for years. During World War II, he was a liaison with American Jewry, and ended up within the Warsaw Ghetto. He ultimately perished in that role, as did most of his extended Erlichman/Majmin (aka Maimon) family. However, luckily, Efraim’s daughter Lena Erlichman (Joseph’s mom) survived, following liberation from Auschwitz. Unfortunately, Joseph’s father, the late Isaac Wolf Erlichman, who was also at Auschwitz, perished in the death march of 1945. Joseph had two sisters, Tina (12) and Anna (16), respectively, at the start of the invasion of Belgium. They, like Joseph’s parents, were born in Warsaw (father 1901; mother 1903) and escaped to Belgium with his parents, in hopes of evading German encroachment. When Joseph’s parents’ were arrested and transported to Auschwitz, his sisters took over caring for him and even managed to keep him safe for the remainder of the war. When the war ended, Ann met an American GI in Brussels and they married in the US some time later. They moved to Great Neck, N.Y. Joe’s sister Tina, visited with them a few years later and met an American Air Force pilot, whom she married. Six years after the war ended, Joseph and mother were granted a visa and came to America on the Queen Mary in 1951.

It is painful for Joseph to think about those times. After all, it has been over 80 years. In the past, Joseph has participated as a speaker in sponsored education programs at various high schools, colleges and seminars.