Izac Holcman papers

Izac Holcman was born in Warsaw, Poland on February 15, 1902 to Izrael and Lea Holcman (née Grynsztejn). He was the youngest of two boys, with an older brother named David (1898-). Izac graduated from a secondary school in Warsaw in 1917 and went on to take a course in bookkeeping - a profession he retained for much of his life.

At the age of 20, Izac joined the Polish Armed Forces as a member of the 8th Regiment of Field Artillery. He served for one year before moving to a reserve unit as a Corporal. In January of 1932, Izac married Felicja Baranowicz (1910-) and had a son named Jerzy on November 11, 1932. The family lived in Warsaw, where Izac worked with a women’s clothing manufacturing firm until 1939.

In 1939, just weeks before Germany invaded Poland, Izac mobilized in the First Regiment Artillery Defense against Air Forces. In October of that same year, Izac was taken as a prisoner of war by the Soviet Army in Wlodawa, Poland and was sent to the U.S.S.R. Izac lived in a camp until 1941, when he was given work as a bookkeeper until his release in 1944. After his liberation, Izac rejoined a Polish Armed Forces reserve unit and mobilized with the 2nd Reserve Regiment. Upon his return to Poland, he attempted to locate his wife and child but learned they had been sent to the Warsaw ghetto and then to an extermination camp. Despite contacting the International Tracing Centre, Izac never learned what became of his family.

In 1945 Izac moved to the Military Command Area in Łódź where he worked as a bookkeeper. He was discharged in 1946 as a First Sergeant and eventually made his way to Traunstein, Germany. There, he again worked as a bookkeeper in the resettlement office of the displaced persons camp located in the city. In July 1949, Izac immigrated to the Unites States sailing on the USS General C.C. Ballou and settled with cousins in Brooklyn, New York. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1955 and passed away in Bronx, New York at the age of 66.