Thursday, December 12, 2013

Ancestor Deep Dive: Avrohom Beitch

My great grandfather was Avraham Beitch (also spelled Bajcz in Polish).  He was born around 1885 in the small village of Huben, near what is how Horochiv, Volhynia, Ukraine (then Horochow, Poland) to Tzvi Hirsch and Ronia (nee Lazovnik) Beitch but grew up in Horochow (when it was the Russian Empire).  He had one sister Etia, who died of typhus during the First World War.
Avraham Beitch, About 1932

He married Batsheva Fine in September 1918 in Lutsk, Volhynia, Ukraine (then Luck, Poland).  By 1922 they were living in Horochow, where my grandmother Sonia/Sara was born.  She was followed by Malia (accent on the first syllable) and Hershel, who lived for only one year.


Avraham did not have an education, so he supported his family by buying and selling things.  He would spend the week on the road, traveling to villages to buy things, and then he would sell them back in the city of Horochow.  He was home with his family for Shabbos (Jewish Sabbath) but seldom during the week.

The entire family, including Avraham's mother Ronia, lived in a one-room rented home in Horochow.  Avraham saved money to buy materials to build his family a home.  He had bought much of the material (including lumber, cement, and brick), but then rumors started about a potential war in the area.  He stored the material with a family friend in the country, and the family went to live with his father-in-law Moshe Dovid Fine in the village of Shklyn around 1936.

The family lived there until 1941 when the Germans took over the area (from the Russians who had taken over from Poland in 1939).  Avraham and his family went sent to live in the Ghetto in Senkevychivka, not far from Shklyn.  Life in the ghetto was hard with 10 people living in the same room--Avraham and Batsheva; their daughters Sonia and Malia; Avraham's father Moshe Dovid; Batsheva's sisters Baila and Sara; Sara's husband Yosef Wollich, children Cheike and Moshe, and granddaughter Devorah.

The family lived there until October of 1942 (details of which can be read in my grandmother's autobiography) when the ghetto was liquidated.  Among those killed on October 14, 1942, was Avraham Beitch.

1 comment:

  1. i have sent you an email through facebook. My late ex-husband's family was from Poland, last name Bajcz. My husband's father, Baruch, was born in Luck, Poland in 1901. More info is in the email on facebook. Karen

    ReplyDelete