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A Jewish teenager rides his bicycle along an unpaved road between the Seklutski Forest and the village of Eisiskes.

Photograph | Photograph Number: 43943
A Jewish teenager rides his bicycle along an unpaved road between the Seklutski Forest and the village of Eisiskes. Pictured is Pessah Cofnas. He survived the war by fleeing to the Soviet Union.

A Jewish teenager rides his bicycle along an unpaved road between the Seklutski Forest and the village of Eisiskes.

Pictured is Pessah Cofnas. He survived the war by fleeing to the Soviet Union.

Date
1938
Locale
Eisiskes, [Nowogrodek] Poland
Variant Locale
Eishyshok
Eshishuk
Eyshishkes
Ejszyszki
Eishishkes
Lithuania
Photo Designation
LIFE BEFORE THE HOLOCAUST: Yaffa Eliach Collection -- Families C
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of The Shtetl Foundation

About This Photograph

Biography
Pessah Cofnas is the son of Gedalia Cofnas and Fruml Cofnas. He and his father worked as skilled carpenters, and Fruml headed a circle of woman who gathered at her house on Saturday afternoons to organize charitable work for the town's poor. Gedalia was murdered in the September 1941 mass killing action. Pessah was an ardent Communist who used to leaflet for the party and even released pigeons with small red flags attached to their legs. He married Rivka Pruskin, and the two survived the war in Siberia. A relative, Nahum Hayyim Leib Cofnas was executed in the Soviet Union as a Trotskyite. Pessah's sister Rivka married Leibl Tenenbaum, a bus driver between Eisiskes and Vilna. They had three daughters Hayya Rochl, Fraidke, and Matle. Rivka, Leibl and their children also were murdered by the Germans in September 1941. After the war Pessah and his wife, Rivka returned from Siberia and made their way to the Beit Bialik DP Camp in Salzburg, Austria. There, Rivka gave birth first to a daughter and then to twins, Gail and Abe in 1950.

Keywords and Subjects

Administrative History

Artifact Photographer
Arnold Kramer

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
The Shtetl Foundation
Copyright: Agency Agreement
Provenance: Cofnas Family
Source Record ID: RN97-13
Published Source
There Once Was a World - Eliach, Yaffa - Little, Brown - p. 305
Restriction
NOT FOR RELEASE without the permission of the The Shtetl Foundation
 
Record last modified: 2004-05-10 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1129015