16 | AUGUST 25 • 2022 

From my longtime family research, I know 
the Allweisses I’m more closely related to 
came from the shtetl (village) of Jaslany (pro-
nounced “yawsh-LAH-nee”) in southeastern 
Poland. The area was part of Galicia in the 
former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Jaslany, 
in Mielec County, is located near the Wistula 
River, between Krakow and Rzesow. Before 
my first visit to Jaslany in 1985, I counted 
57 relatives on my family tree, most of them 
deceased, who were born there. My dad and 
I stopped by his village in 2006 and 2007.

MY DAD’S YOUTH
Oral histories that Zygie and Sol recorded 
— in 1987 and 1993, respectively — are 
part of a collection of survivor inter-
views housed at The Zekelman Holocaust 
Center in Farmington Hills. Transcripts 
are available online. The brothers spoke 
of their Jaslany-born father, Jacob (Yakov 
Leib) Allweiss, who was a horse and cattle 
trader. Their mother, the former Esther 
Heller, was a homemaker. They met in her 
hometown of Nisko, Poland. Sol described 
his parents as “pious Jews” and “highly 
respected.”
The couple’s children attended public 
schools in addition to being homeschooled 
in Hebrew and Jewish subjects. Students 
in the village took their lessons in the 

Allweiss home, where a 
traveling maggid stayed 
periodically with the 
large family. 
In the village of 
approximately 1,600 
residents, including 
400 Jews, antisemitism 
was part of everyday 
life; Zygie recalled there 
were “some violent beat-
ings.” A vivid memory for 
each about Fishel, the sibling just 
older than Sol, was when a horse kicked 
Fishel in the head. My Uncle Sol named 
his youngest son Phil for Fishel.
After Germany attacked the Republic 
of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Jacob and his 
older sons, Tarnow-based dentist Loeser, 
Mendel and Fishel, headed for presumed 
safety in the east. Initially, Jaslany residents 
thought their women and children were 
safe to remain. A kindly neighbor took in 
Esther and the children when the Allweiss 
home, among many others, was burned to 
the ground.
Jacob returned to the area to check on 
his wife, daughters, and Sol and Zygie. On 
D-Day, June 6, 1944, Volksdeutsch (eth-
nic Germans living in Poland) ambushed 
the three Allweiss males in a field. They 
were joyously but apparently too openly 
celebrating the Allied forces’ landing in 
Normandy. The two boys got away that 
day, but Zygie learned decades later from 
another Shoah survivor that Jacob was 
captured, tortured and killed.
The three older Allweiss sons, includ-
ing Fishel, were never accounted for. My 
sister Janice, named for her Aunt Genya, 
said she always believed that “someday we 
would discover someone from my dad’s 
family survived … Now, it’s a miracle 
come true, and I’m so happy.” 
Some of us now feel there’s a chance that 
one or both of the oldest brothers might 
have survived, too. But where did you go, 
Mendel and Loeser?

ZYGIE, SOL SURVIVE
My dad, Zygie, was 12 and Sol nearly 14 
when the war started. I’m very familiar with 
my dad’s wartime history and have written 

articles about him. He told 
me that after seeking refuge 
in an uncle’s house in Mielec, 
Zygie and other young Jews 
were taken by truck each morning 
to build latrines for Nazi officers. He and 
Sol later passed themselves off as gentiles 
to work as farmhands in nearby villages. 
Running out of options, they asked to enter 
the Biesiatka labor camp near Mielec and 
reunited there with their mother and three 
youngest sisters. The inmates broke up con-
crete to build a primitive road, which Dad 
pointed out to me on our 2006 visit to the 
camp.
 Their mother died of “fleck fever,
” a form 
of typhus, and was buried at the camp; their 
three youngest sisters were shot. On March 
7, 1943, Zygie lowered himself off the truck 
taking about 80 people from the camp to a 
mass execution site in the woods. He later 
reunited unexpectedly with Sol who had 
escaped earlier and hid in a barn’s hayloft.
Polish Christians Maciej and Zofia 
Dudzik (honored by Yad Vashem in 2007 
as “Righteous Among the Nations”) hid 
Zygie and Sol on their farm for 14 months, 
at great risk to their own family. Afterward, 
the brothers found kitchen jobs in the city of 
Lvov, Poland, now part of Ukraine.
Sol and Zygie enlisted in the Russian 
Army, serving in different places. Zygie 
later was transferred to a reorganized Polish 
Army. He fell into a coma after a strong blast 
at the Odre River in Germany. Zygie awak-
ened in a hospital in August 1945, months 
after the war ended. 
The brothers ended up joining a few 
surviving first cousins in Foehrenwald 
Displaced Persons camp in Germany. 
In 1947, with U.S. assistance, Zygie and 
Sol sailed to New York with first cousins 
Zygmunt and Sara Muhlbauer. It was a 
special “orphans transport” aboard the SS 
Marine Flasher.

BELOW: From left are Michael, Arkady and Faina, 
children of Fishel Alvais (Allweiss), who died in 
their early 60s. Arkady left two sons, Gershon and 
Alexander Alvais, and Faina had a daughter, Irina 
“Ira” Kuravsky. Fishel’s grandchildren, born in 
Belarus, live today in Israel. 

Klara and Fishel Alvais

Zygie and 
Irma Allweiss 
on their 
wedding day

Fishel Alvais 
(Allweiss) 
worked as a 
watchmaker. 

OUR COMMUNITY
ON THE COVER

continued from page 14