Sharing Our Incredible Story

Jackie Schwarz presenting the Lublin-Antwerp Project

Antwerp, Belgium was one of the major European ports to carry immigrants to America and Canada. The team from Grodzka Gate Theater NN contacted the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp, in 2016, after learning the city was a major European port connected to the immigration of Lublin Jews. The Red Star Line Museum recommended Jackie Schwarz, a genealogy researcher, to identify records of Jewish immigrants who came to Antwerp from Lublin in the late 1800s to 1930.

Tadeusz Przystojecki and photo of my great grandmother

Research revealed several hundred Lublin-born Jews living in Antwerp during that time. Many settled down and started working there. See Lublin-Antwerp Project.

Jackie discovered identification photos of my grandmother, great grandmother, great uncle and his wife. In addition, she found where they lived and worked in Antwerp, how long they stayed, when my great grandparents returned to Lublin and where my great uncle's family was eventually captured during the war. This information was combined with the research from the Grodzka Gate team and added to the Krymholc archives on their website.

Monika Malek from Polski Radio interviewed all of us

Additional research led Jackie to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center archives, where she found testimonials about my family submitted by my mother in 1990. Then, Jackie was able to connect with me and my brother.

I am grateful to Jackie, Tadeusz Przystojecki, Malgorzata Milkowska, Monika Tarajko and the Grodzka Gate research team for this extraordinary opportunity.

(The Lublin-Antwerp presentation during the reunion took place at the Royal Castle, in the Gallery of Paintings. The painting in the background is the monumental "Lublin Union" painted by Jan Matejko)