Portrait of Aida Szewelewicz in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp.
Overview
- Caption
- Portrait of Aida Szewelewicz in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp.
- Date
-
1947
- Locale
- Bergen-Belsen, [Prussian Hanover; Lower Saxony] Germany
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Izak Sagi
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Izak Sagi
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Izak Sagi was born in the Bergen-Belsen displaced person’s camp on November 4, 1945 to Jadwiga ("Aida") Edzia Zasadzinksa (later Szewelewicz). Aida was born into a Catholic family in Koluszki, Poland on April 14, 1925. As a teenager, she was taken by the Nazis and forced to work as a domestic servant in a German home. Six months after the war's end, she made her way to Bergen-Belsen, where Izak was born. At the camp, Aida met and married Grisza Grigorij Szewelewicz (b. October 10, 1919 in Bialystock, Poland), who was a survivor of the Vitebsk labor camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald, Dora Mittelbau, and Bergen-Belsen. Aida and Grisza had a child, Szepsyl ("Shep," born September 23, 1946 in Bergen-Belsen), who was blind.
On March 22, 1948, Izak was sent to Israel to be adopted by Michel and Salin Bernay, who also had two biological children, Giora and [name unknown]. At the age of eleven, Izak learned that he was adopted and, not long after this, was contacted by his birth mother Aida. They met in Israel for his Bar Mitzvah, and maintained contact through the years. Izak learned his mother had tried to immigrate to Israel but her application was denied because she was not recognized as Jewish. She instead immigrated unaccompanied to Canada from the port of Bremerhaven on board the General Stewart on August 30, 1948. Izak was told that his biological father had died.
After Aida and Grisza’s relationship ended and Aida emigrated, Grisza emigrated unaccompanied from Cuxhaven to Canada on May 5, 1949. He was joined later by their son Shep, who emigrated from Bremerhaven on May 12, 1950 on board the USNS General Langfitt, accompanied by Grisza’s second wife, Margarete (nee Beeck) Szewelewicz. In Canada, Shep attended a boarding school for children with visual disabilities. He learned that Margarete was not his birth mother at the age of sixteen, but was told little about his biological mother. He changed his last name to Shell, married, had a family, and became a world class athlete, competing in the international para-Olympics. He learned of Isak’s existence in 2002, but did not know how to find him. His father, Grisza, died in 2008.
Isak did not learn of his brother's existence until 2013. Through the efforts of their families, the two brothers were reunited in Canada. Shep learned that Aida was still living in a nursing home in Montreal, and the three were able to reunite. Through DNA tests, Izak and Shep learned that they did not share the same birth father. Aida died in 2015, never having shared the identity of Izak’s birth father.
- Record last modified:
- 2018-06-15 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1184747
