William Herskovic papers

William Herskovic (1914‐2006) was born in Fišar (near Vrbnica, in what was then Hungary and is now Slovakia) and moved to Antwerp, Belgium, in 1929. He worked as a portrait photographer until his business was confiscated in 1942. He attempted to flee Europe with his wife, Esther, and their daughters, Katie and Germaine, but they were caught in Angoulême, France, and deported via Drancy on convoy 32. In Kędzierzyn‐Koźle, Poland, Herskovic was removed from the train. His wife and daughters were murdered at Auschwitz while Herskovic was sent to the Peiskretscham labor camp, an Auschwitz sub‐camp. He escaped in December 1942, returned to Belgium, and alerted the Judenrat and the Belgian resistance about the deportations and labor camps. He survived the remainder of the war under an assumed identity. After the war he married Mirele (Mireille, Maria) Maschkivitzan Anielewicz (b. 1923), the sister of his late wife and widow of Ezryl Anielewicz (1921‐1945), who had survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald but perished in June 1945. The couple had three daughters in Belgium, immigrated to the United States in 1957, and settled in Los Angeles, where they established a photography business in Westwood. The William Herskovic papers include two postcards written by Ezryl Anielewicz at the Jawischowitz concentration camp to his wife Mirele in Belgium, a photocopy of an attestation confirming William Herskovic’s report of his escape from the Peiskretscham labor camp, Suzanne Herskovic Ponder’s account of her father’s escape from Peiskretscham, and a requisition order confiscating Herskovic’s photography studio.