OBITUARIES
OF BLESSED MEMORY

P

erel (Paula) Schulkind could be 
the heroine of a novel — a coura-
geous and resourceful woman who 
survived the Holocaust and became the 
matriarch of a large and loving family. Her 
indomitable optimism and generous spirit 
touched the lives of all who knew her.
Perel, the mother of Rebbetzin Chaya 
Sarah Silberberg of Bais Chabad Torah 
Center in West Bloomfield, passed away on 
July 13, 2022, at her daughter Freidy’s New 
York home in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, sur-
rounded by loved ones. She was 98. 
Perel was born in 1923 in Krakow, 
Poland, the oldest child of Eliyahu and 
Simcha (Fraida) Stern. While she and her 
siblings attended Jewish schools and sum-
mer camps, they learned the importance 
of helping others from their father, who 
risked his life to bring food and clothing to 
those in need amid the growing waves of 
antisemitism in German-controlled Poland.
When she was 17, the Nazis forced 
Perel and her family to leave their home 
in Krakow and go to another part of 
Poland where they were forced to wear 
yellow armbands. Her resourceful mind 
and non-Jewish features — blond hair 
and blue eyes — enabled her to evade the 
Nazis and travel to the town of Wisznicze, 
where she sent for the rest of her family.
The safe haven proved only tempo-
rary as the Nazis gained more power in 
Poland. Perel and her family were in a 
state of constant panic, running from one 
place to the next to avoid capture. In the 
town of Bochnia, they lived in an attic 
and slept five in a bed until the Germans 
came searching for her brother, and it was 
time to flee again.
Eventually they were captured by the 
Nazis, and Perel’s sister Faigel was killed 
that day along with 700 other Jewish 
teens. Perel was taken to Auschwitz, 
where she suffered for two years, sub-
sisting on bits of bread and watery soup. 
At night she slept on a board shared by 
several girls.
Every day as she performed her job of 

filling grenades with powder, 
she watched the Nazis take 
groups of people away to be 
murdered, never knowing if 
her turn was coming. Despite 
her meager rations, she shared what lit-
tle she had to save others who were sick 
or starving, including a young woman 
named Edja.
When the Nazis evacuated Auschwitz 
to evade the approaching Russian army, 
Perel was part of the infamous “Death 
March” to Germany, where 15,000 Jews 
died. She survived the deadly journey, 
together with a nightgown she had “pur-
chased” in exchange for bread. Deathly ill 
in the camp at Neustadt-Glewe, she went 
to the infirmary and she saw the women 
lying there naked in bed. She returned to 
her barrack to retrieve that nightgown to 
preserve her remaining dignity. During 
that small window of time, the Nazis shot 
all the patients in the infirmary. That 
nightgown saved her life.
After the war ended, she went to 
Krakow with Edja, who gave her the 
means to leave Poland. Perel’s entire 

family had died during the Holocaust, 
with the exception of her uncle by mar-
riage, Yaakov Kopel Schulkind, whose 
wife and children had been killed by the 
Nazis, her cousin Itche Schacter (and a 
few others). Together the three of them 
traveled to a displaced persons camp in 
Germany, where she and Schulkind were 
married. In 1949, the couple finally left 
“accursed Germany” and moved to the 
United States. They made their home 
in Brooklyn, N.Y., where they lived in 
Williamsburg for 12 years before settling 
in Borough Park.

NEW GENERATIONS
Although grateful for surviving the war and 
being able to start a new life, their hearts 
were filled with sorrow over the brutal 
loss of their families. Their pain ultimately 
began to ease with the birth of their two 
daughters, Chaya Sarah and Fraidy, named 
after the couple’s respective mothers.
The couple’s happiness continued to 
increase as their daughters married and 
had children of their own. Perel’s great-
est source of joy was her ever-growing 
extended family of in-laws, cousins, 
grandchildren, great-grandchildren and 
great-great-grandchildren, who lovingly 
called her “Bobby,” the Polish/Yiddish 
word for grandma.
“She would often say in Yiddish, ‘one 
may not complain,’ and she lived up to 
that motto,” said her grandson, Rabbi 
Shneur Silberberg of Bais Chabad Torah 
Center. “Bobby did not allow her dark, 
painful past to paint the world she chose 
to create for herself.”
Instead of bemoaning the past, Perel 
turned her experiences into life lessons 
for her family. Receiving help from the 
young woman whose life she had saved 
by sharing her bread was a reminder to 
share what you have with others who 
need it more. To demonstrate the power 
of an encouraging word when someone 
feels hopeless, she would recount the 
time a stranger stopped her from ending 

A Life of Horror and Hope

RONELLE GREIR CONTRIBUTING WRITER

56 | AUGUST 4 • 2022 

Perel Schulkind

