Chaim Melamed (1925-2011) was born on March 10, 1925, in Zelechow, Poland. He was one of seven children of Mendel and Chana Melamed. His siblings were: Fajga Frymet (Fruma, b. February 5, 1916); Rachel (b. circa 1920); Sura (later Sara Lipka, b. October 12, 1922); Chumele (b. circa 1930); Isuchor (b. 1929); and Izrael (b. January 5, 1932). The Melameds were a very religious orthodox Jewish family, and they moved to Łódź, Poland in spring 1933 before Passover. Chaim disassociated from his family’s observance. He attended the Aleksander Yeshiva for a week in 1938 before returning home, and one day that year he went to hear Zev Jabotinsky speak.
Two weeks after the invasion of Poland in September 1938, Chaim’s sisters, Rachel and Chumele, and his brother Isuchor, returned to Zelechow to live with their grandparents. All of them, including their paternal grandparents and maternal grandmother were killed in the town synagogue. Chaim and his remaining family members entered the Łódź ghetto in December 1939. Mendel Melamed and Chaim’s sister, Fajga, died while they were living in the ghetto. Chaim had a job peeling potatoes in the ghetto kitchen. He was then put to work building streetcar lines where he worked for a German named Meyer. In August 1941, Sara was married in the ghetto to Peretz Lipka. In August 1944, Chaim; his mother, Chana; his sister, Sara; and his brother, Izrael were deported to Birkenau concentration camp. It was there that Chaim was separated from his family.
Chaim remained at Birkenau for only five or six days before he was one of 1,025 people selected to be sent to the Stecken forced labor camp. From there he was sent to Ahlem forced labor camp where he shared a bunk with Jack Tramiel, Moniek (Mickey) Millberger, and Abe Stern. Chaim was then sent on a death march to Bergen-Belsen where he was liberated on April 15, 1945. He weighed only 86 pounds and was sick for the next six to seven weeks with typhus. Peretz Lipka arrived at Bergen-Belsen on a British truck looking for Ahlem and found Chaim. Peretz survived in Ahlem along with his father and four brothers.
Chaim was brought to Heiderhorst for recovery. From there he went to Finnhorst, outside Hannover, Germany, where he met Maryla Krause, a fellow survivor from Łódź, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen. Eighty to ninety survivors began living together and rebuilding their lives. They had weekly Oneg Shabbat dinners. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) assisted them, and the group moved to Marburg, Germany. On March 24, 1946, Chaim and Maryla were married in Marburg castle. Their daughter, Helena, was born in 1947. The family left Germany in 1949 and arrived in Boston, Massachusetts. The Jewish community in Boston helped make arrangement for the couple to move to Savannah, Georgia, where they lived until moving to Florida in 1982. He eventually moved back to Savannah, Georgia. Chaim wrote Yiddish poetry and also wrote a family haggadah. Maryla Melamed died on February 2, 2005 in Florida. Chaim Melamed died on February 12, 2011 in Savanah, Georgia.
