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Sarah and Shlomo Szczepanski grew up in their mother's hometown of Novy Dwor, Poland, amidst Ester Hudis' family, the Silbermans [or Zilberman, and sometimes Silverman, or even Zylberman). Ester's parents were Ezra Silberman, who had a grocery store in Novy Dwor, and Pesah _____ from the town of Rasa (?). Ezra had a sister Ester and a brother Shmuel. Shmuel Silberman was a writer and was very religious; he worked for or was a magistrate. He was the only Jewish offical in Novy Dwor and kept track of all of the Jewish births, marriages and deaths. His wife's name was Yetta and they had two sons and a daughter also named Yetta who was a teacher [this would be Ester Hudis's first cousin]. [I have a note that Yetta was descended from a long line of Russian Rabbis named Gereh.]

Ezra and Pesah Silberman had seven children in addition to Ester Hudis. Avrum was the oldest. He emigrated to Paris and had nine children. [The family is memorialized here: Paris Shoah Memorial. Of the 14 Zilbermans named, 13 list year of death as 1942, and the other is 1944, per the site database.]

The other son's name was Barish. He had two children, Hava Gittel and Moshe, by his first wife Falka, and then married Pelka Tziril, who had a daughter Yenta by her first husband. Barish and Pelka had two children together, Nathan and Pesah, who both emigrated to Israel [these are Grandma Sarah's first cousins]. Barish and Pelka went to Israel to visit their children, but Pelka would not stay. In 1939 she returned to Poland to be with her daughter Yenta, was trapped there by the war and killed along with all of the Jews of Novy Dwor.

[A memorial volume Pinkas Novy Dvor was published in 1965 by former Novy Dwor Jews. Barish "Reb Berish" and Nathan Silberman were instrumental in creating a Novy Dvor community in Israel, and their pictures and those of other family members appear in the book. All but the introduction is in Yiddish; much has been translated, yet continues to be mysterious due to people having the same names, and individuals' names appearing with different spellings. The ancestor we know as Barish Silberman, is here Berish Zilberman, and signs his work Dov Berish First. He was the compiler and author of much of this information, as stated in the chapter Jews of the Former Nowy Dwor (pg. 446), probably with the aid of the records his uncle had kept as magistrate. Barish survived the war years, but was prematurely aged by the trauma of learning the fates of those who did not.]

Barish's branch of the family continued in Israel and later NYC.

This is what Grandma Sarah told me about the close extended family among whom she lived until age twenty. While the Citrons and Szczepanskis were based in Serock, the Silbermans lived in Nowy Dwor..

Sarah's mother, Ester Hudis, was the fourth of the six Silberman daughters.

The eldest daughter was Ezris Bracha (Brokhe) who was the first of the Silberman women to take up wig (sheytl) making. When Bracha married David M. Tikulsky (Tykulski, Tikulski, Tikolski) she went with him to live in Praga where his father kept a saloon. Ultimately, it continued to be Bracha who supported the family with her wig making, which she also taught to her sisters. Bracha and David had four children: Ezra and Chaya Sura who both died young, Hinde (Hindeleh), and Yankel. Yankel Tikulsky emigrated to Israel. [His sister Hinde Milman, her husband Asher and their two children were killed by the Nazis.]

Between Bracha and Ester came Haya and Leah. Leah married Bendet, and died during the birth of their one son Faval, who emigrated to California.

The youngest of the daughters was Leiba (Luba). When Leah died, Leiba was presuaded [forced?] to marry Bendet [I have a note that she was only 13 at the time] and they had two children: Matel who married Ruschia and lived in the town of Mlavo across the river from Novy Dwor [not sure if I have the correct town], and Hava Sara who married Aba _____ and had two sons, one of whom died young.

When Bendet died, Lieba married Yaakov Yigelka (Yankel) and had a daughter Leah. At some point Lieba lived in the town of Naszelks (Nashelsk).

The second Silberman daugher, Pearla, married Nathan Waksdrykier. Pearla Silberman and Nathan Waksdrykier had seven children: daughters Hanalah, Sarah and Anna, and four sons, Manya, Berish (b.1901), [Pinchos, b.1903]* and [Chil Majer, b. 1909]*. When Pearla died, these children were between the ages of 4 and 16.

Nathan Waksdrykier was a soap merchant and enjoyed much trade with the Polish army stationed in Novy Dwor. Nathan was born in Warsaw; his mother's maiden name was Tzivia (Sylvia) Katzenellenbogen. [This is an interesting name, associated with a line of Rabbis that originated in the town of the same name in Germany circa 1312, and subsequently became widely dispersed throughout Europe.] Tzivia had two sisters: Sarah who married Schiff, and Pearla who married Chanabrotsky (Chernobrotzki). Both women were hairdressers.

When Pearla died Ester Hudis, whose husband Yakov Aryeh had died in 1908, was reluctant to marry her brother-in-law, fearful of how he would treat her children, Sarah and Shlomo. However, Nathan was already much loved and respected by all of the family and the children. Tradition, family advice, and practicality won out, and Ester and Nathan married. In 1914 their son Faval (Felix) was born. [If these dates are correct, Pearla would have died in 1913, and Ester and Nathan married soon after. Given Nathan's dealing with the army, they would have knonw that war was coming.]

Nathan's daughter Sarah was a dressmaker; she and Ester's daughter Sarah (our grandmother, "Little Sarah") were "like twins." Nathan wanted Little Sarah, who worked for his aunt Pearla Chanabrotsky, to marry his son Berish. Berish instead married a distant cousin on his mother's side named Esther, who was also a hairdresser, and they had two daughters. They moved to Belgium, where Berish had a store until he was killed by the Nazis. His wife and daughters fled to Israel.

*[I have made an assumption that the Pinchos and Chil (Chiel) Majer Waksdrykiers who appear on the "Dossin barracks" transport lists, along with their families and "Berek" (whose wife "Estera" is named but not on the list herself) are the two brothers I had not had names for, and Berish, whose family escaped. Another Wakdrykier family appears here too, "Marjam Bajla" married to "Fajwal Gerecht." Both the Chil Majer and Gerecht couples were taken with young sons named Nathan.]

The Silberman and Waksdrykier families lived in Novy Dwor in relative comfort until WWI, although there was constant concern for the boys being conscripted into the Polish army. The Germans occupied this part of Poland from 1914 to 1918. At some point all women and children were moved from Novy Dwor and other outlying areas into Warsaw and increasingly crowded and oppressive conditions. Nathan eventually joined his family in Warsaw where he had more trouble making a living.

In about 1919 Sarah became sick with Asian flu and was close to death. As she related the story to me, Sarah's mother prayed to her own mother Pesah to protect Sarah, and Sarah had a dream of her grandmother coming to her bedside, after which she recovered. Sarah also attributes her recovery to the care of her mother and stepfather, who even broke the Sabbath to follow the doctor's orders. The next year, 1920, Nathan died of typhoid fever just two weeks after first taking ill.

Some months after Nathan's death, six year old Faval had a vision of his father's spirit wrestling the Polish soldiers on the threshold of the house. The older boys were sent away for the night and so missed the officers, who did indeed come to search the house that evening. In 1921 Sarah came to the U.S. alone. She was to have traveled with her brother Shlomo, but he was denied a visa.

Some of the stories above were written up as fiction for Ancestral Notes, see:
Faval's Vision
The Wig Makers
Critical Points

After 1939, Sarah had no more contact with those remaining in Poland. She learned of their fates later, as reported by her stepfather's nephew Hillish Chanabrotsky (Chernobrotzki). [I think this would be Nathan's cousin's son; I cannot find documentation for him under either spelling.] Hillish had fought with the Russians in WWII. He went to Warsaw after the war and learned that the family had been killed. Ester, Felix, the other Waksdrykier children and other of Ester's sisters' families are believed to have been gassed by Hitler's SS in the underground of Warsaw during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1944. These, however, who are listed among the Martyrs of Nowy Dwor, would have met some other horrific fate, likely well before that event: Esther Silverman, Shmuel Silverman (Ezra's brother and sister), Chaya and Luba (Ester Hudis' sisters).

Hillish was never the same. He moved to Israel and seven years later committed suicide.