Friedberg family papers

Maurice Friedberg (1929-2014) was born Maurycy Friedberg on December 3, 1929 in Rzeszów, Poland to Izak (Isaac, 1902-1992) and Ida (née Jam, b. 1903) Friedberg. Ida’s father, Josef Jam, owned a lumberyard in Rzeszów, and Izak was a lumber merchant from Jarosław. Ida and Izak settled in Jarosław and raised Maurice and his brother Szymon (Simon, 1932-1982). Following the Battle of Przemyśl in September 1939, the Germans forced Polish Jews, including the Freidberg family, across the San River into the Soviet zone, and the family headed for Tarnopol (Ternopil) where Ida’s sister lived. In the spring of 1940, the Friedbergs were transported to the Soviet interior, interned in a labor camp in Sverdlovsk, and assigned to lumber procurement barracks. At the same time Ida's father, Josef, two brothers, Efraim and Aron, and brother-in-law, also named Josef Jam, were sent to Irkutsk. During this period Ida's father died of malnutrition, Efraim wandered away after becoming mentally unstable, and her brother-in-law also perished. The following year, the Soviet Union granted amnesty to the Polish refugees imprisoned in Soviet labor camps, and the Friedbergs moved to Dzhambul (now Taraz), Kazakhstan, where they remained for the rest of the war. Maurice and Simon attended school, and Maurice celebrated his bar mitzvah. After the war, the Friedbergs made their way to Kraków and were reunited with Aron Jam. They learned that Ida's mother and four sisters had perished in the Holocaust, as had her brother, Chaim Dov, who had been publicly hanged in Rzeszów in September 1939. The family relocated to Paris in the summer of 1946 to await their visas to immigrate to the United States. Izak, Ida, and Simon left for New York in February 1948, and Maurice followed in December 1948. Aron Jam immigrated to Israel. Maurice became an American citizen in 1954 and earned a doctorate in Slavic languages.