Abraham Yehuda Slowes (1913-2000) was born on April 24, 1913 in Grajewo, Russia. His father, Dr. Moshe Dow Slowes was born in Shmerinka, near Brzesc in Byelorussia in 1872 and was an Odessa educated dentist. His mother, Dr. Malka Jezierska Slowes, was born in Suwalki, Russia in 1886 and studied dentistry in Warsaw. Abraham Slowes had three siblings: Dina Beila (b. 1908), Salomon (b. 1909), and Róża Shoshana (b. 1917). In 1914 the Slowes family moved to Vilna and settled on 30 Wielka Street. Moshe became the head of the School of Dentistry in Vilna. They had a traditional Jewish home and spoke mainly Yiddish and Russian.
Abraham graduated from the Jewish Technical High School in Vilna and left Vilna for Palestine at the age of 16 in 1930. He arrived in Haifa and enrolled as an engineering student at the Technion in Haifa. He graduated in 1934 and started to work as an engineer at the Naharaim power station. Abraham Slowes returned to Vilna in 1937 for a short visit, which was the last time he saw his parents and his two sisters.
Abraham Slowes made endless efforts to secure safe passage of the members of his immediate family to Palestine. Unfortunately those efforts did not bring the desired result and Dr. Malka Jezierska Slowes; Dina Beila Slowes Rubinowicz; her husband, Miron Rubinowicz; their son, Elchanan Rubinowicz; Róża Slowes Braitbard and her husband, Dr. Szymon Braitbard with their daughter, Esther, were killed in Ponary near Vilna, probably in the fall of 1941 or 1942. His father, Dr. Moshe Dow Slowes, was probably deported to the Klooga concentration camp in Estonia and perished there.
Salomon, Abraham’s older brother, was taken prisoner of war by the Soviets in 1939 and endured three years in Soviet POW camps. He joined the Polish Anders’ Army and served as a physician in the Red Cross Hospital in Teheran and later in Iraq, Palestine, North Africa, and Italy. He was awarded several medals for his military service. He was officially demobilized from the Polish military forces in 1947 and settled in Tel-Aviv.
Abraham served in the Israeli Army and after the establishment of the State of Israel he opened his own engineering office. In 1949 Abraham married Simone Weil, daughter of chief Rabbi of Basel, Switzerland. They had three children: Malka, Dina, and Moshe Dow.
