Nasze 
TuAktualności
W Melbourne zmarła Urszula Flikier z domu Biszkowicz
Zmarła Urszula Flikier z domu
Biszkowicz. Uczennica Gimnazjum Druskina. Zapewne wielu z was widziało film "Nieoczywista wnuczka
rabina". Urszula była kobietą niezwykłą, z charakterem o silnej osobowości.
Wspomnienie o Urszuli przesłała jej córka prof. Helena Forgasz, Skorzystajcie z deep translatora albo translatora google, aby przetłumaczyć ten komunikat.
Death of Ursula Flicker (Biszkowicz) Helen Forgasz (daughter)
Ursula Flicker (Biszkowicz) was born on October 27, 1926. She died peacefully in Melbourne, Australia on August 20, 2024 (aged 97).
Ursula and her family were Jewish residents of Bialystok until 1941. Ursula’s parents were Aron and Helena Biszkowicz. Until the Soviet occupation of Bialystok, her father was prominent in the textile industry.
Ursula’s paternal grandparents were Rabbi Chaim Nachman Biszkowicz (Crown Rabbi of Bialystok and member of the Beth Din) and Fajga Biszkowicz. Ursula had one sister, Jara (Jarechka) Biszkowicz.
Ursula has written and been interviewed about her life in Bialystok before World War II (e.g., https://youtu.be/gw2fRZDv1mQ). She always spoke of a very happy and carefree childhood. For her schooling, she attended the Druskin Gymnasium. She was a high achieving student and also excelled in gymnastics.
Life under Soviet occupation from 1939-1941 was difficult for everyone who lived in Bialystok. Ursula’s father surrendered his business to the Soviets. The family was also evicted from their apartment at 7 Nowy Świat, and went to live in the Rabbi’s apartment. Aron and Helena found work which enabled them to feed and support their two daughters.
On June 20 1941 (two days before Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, began) their lives took a turn for the worse. Ursula’s parents and grandparents were arrested by the NKVD and exiled to Siberia as “enemies of the people” – her father as a capitalist, and the Rabbi as a man of religion. At the time of their arrest, Ursula’s sister, Jarechka, was at a school camp in Augustow that was run by the Soviet Young Pioneers movement. Pleading with the Soviet authorities that Jarechka was not with the family as they boarded the train to Siberia proved fruitless. They were never to see Jarechka again.
The train journey to Bijsk (in the Altai Krai region of Siberia) took 25 days. The family spent a short time on a kolkhoz as slave labourers. As Polish citizens, they were “liberated” when the Soviet Union switched sides and joined the Allies in the fight against the Nazis. This allowed them to live the same tough lives as other citizens of Bijsk. At the end of World War II, only Ursula and her mother had survived life in Siberia.
As they were Polish citizens they were repatriated to Poland in 1946. On return to Bialystok they found that not a single member of the extended Biszkowicz family had survived the Nazis. They learnt that Jarechka had returned to Bialystok from the school camp and had stayed with relatives until they all ended up in the Bialystok ghetto. It was assumed that Jarechka perished at Treblinka following the liquidation of the ghetto.
Ursula and her mother decided that they had to leave Poland. There was nothing for them there. They heard that Helena’s sister, Mika, had been saved from Auschwitz by Count Bernadotte and was living in Sweden. They travelled to Stockholm where they lived and worked for 18 months. Mika remarried and moved with her new husband to Canada. Ursula and her mother went to Warsaw and applied to immigrate as refugees to Australia – they had been sponsored by a family friend who had escaped Bialystok prior to the war. They arrived in Melbourne, Australia in March 1948. They were met, welcomed, housed, cared for, and assisted to find work and lodgings by the Bialystoker Centre in Melbourne, an organisation that had been set up in the late 1920s by expatriate Jews from Bialystok who had left to seek a better life in Australia. In 1949 Ursula married my father, Felix Flicker, who was also from Bialystok. I was born in 1951.
Ursula believed strongly that she had contributed to Jarechka’s death. Among her writings, I found the following:
For years and years, I have suffered from… the thought that perhaps… my own character drove her to her death. It was her persistence and insistence to allow her to go on a camp 80 km away from Bialystok and away from my ‘bossiness’ that drove my parents to consent and grant her the wish to be away from her ‘controlling’ sister.
For the rest of her life, Ursula was tormented by the guilt of having contributed to the death of her sister. She became obsessed to find out the exact details of where, when, and how her sister had died. In the early 1980s, Ursula became the founding archivist at what is now known as the Melbourne Holocaust Museum (MHM) (see https://mhm.org.au/). For 25 years, she collected and archived materials from Holocaust survivors who lived in Melbourne. She conducted research and was in regular correspondence with Yad Vashem, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and a range of other organisations gathering evidence of Nazi atrocities. Whenever new lists of names of those who had been exterminated came to light, she carefully scrutinised them in search of her sister’s name. Jarechka’s name did not appear on any list. Until the day she died, she never found out the exact circumstances of her sister’s death.
For Ursula’s 25 years of dedicated, voluntary work for the MHM, she was awarded an Order of Australia Medal (OAM), and the archives at the MHM were named after her – the Ursula Flicker Archival Collection. [See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTsfQvv6Qk]
Reunited with her family and sister in the next world, may Ursula Flicker’s dear soul rest in eternal peace.
Trailer poniżej - film w całosci mozna zobaczyć w MIEJSCU.
https://youtu.be/gw2fRZDv1mQ
Wspomnienie o Urszuli przesłała jej córka prof. Helena Forgasz, Skorzystajcie z deep translatora albo translatora google, aby przetłumaczyć ten komunikat.
Death of Ursula Flicker (Biszkowicz) Helen Forgasz (daughter)
Ursula Flicker (Biszkowicz) was born on October 27, 1926. She died peacefully in Melbourne, Australia on August 20, 2024 (aged 97).
Ursula and her family were Jewish residents of Bialystok until 1941. Ursula’s parents were Aron and Helena Biszkowicz. Until the Soviet occupation of Bialystok, her father was prominent in the textile industry.
Ursula’s paternal grandparents were Rabbi Chaim Nachman Biszkowicz (Crown Rabbi of Bialystok and member of the Beth Din) and Fajga Biszkowicz. Ursula had one sister, Jara (Jarechka) Biszkowicz.
Ursula has written and been interviewed about her life in Bialystok before World War II (e.g., https://youtu.be/gw2fRZDv1mQ). She always spoke of a very happy and carefree childhood. For her schooling, she attended the Druskin Gymnasium. She was a high achieving student and also excelled in gymnastics.
Life under Soviet occupation from 1939-1941 was difficult for everyone who lived in Bialystok. Ursula’s father surrendered his business to the Soviets. The family was also evicted from their apartment at 7 Nowy Świat, and went to live in the Rabbi’s apartment. Aron and Helena found work which enabled them to feed and support their two daughters.
On June 20 1941 (two days before Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, began) their lives took a turn for the worse. Ursula’s parents and grandparents were arrested by the NKVD and exiled to Siberia as “enemies of the people” – her father as a capitalist, and the Rabbi as a man of religion. At the time of their arrest, Ursula’s sister, Jarechka, was at a school camp in Augustow that was run by the Soviet Young Pioneers movement. Pleading with the Soviet authorities that Jarechka was not with the family as they boarded the train to Siberia proved fruitless. They were never to see Jarechka again.
The train journey to Bijsk (in the Altai Krai region of Siberia) took 25 days. The family spent a short time on a kolkhoz as slave labourers. As Polish citizens, they were “liberated” when the Soviet Union switched sides and joined the Allies in the fight against the Nazis. This allowed them to live the same tough lives as other citizens of Bijsk. At the end of World War II, only Ursula and her mother had survived life in Siberia.
As they were Polish citizens they were repatriated to Poland in 1946. On return to Bialystok they found that not a single member of the extended Biszkowicz family had survived the Nazis. They learnt that Jarechka had returned to Bialystok from the school camp and had stayed with relatives until they all ended up in the Bialystok ghetto. It was assumed that Jarechka perished at Treblinka following the liquidation of the ghetto.
Ursula and her mother decided that they had to leave Poland. There was nothing for them there. They heard that Helena’s sister, Mika, had been saved from Auschwitz by Count Bernadotte and was living in Sweden. They travelled to Stockholm where they lived and worked for 18 months. Mika remarried and moved with her new husband to Canada. Ursula and her mother went to Warsaw and applied to immigrate as refugees to Australia – they had been sponsored by a family friend who had escaped Bialystok prior to the war. They arrived in Melbourne, Australia in March 1948. They were met, welcomed, housed, cared for, and assisted to find work and lodgings by the Bialystoker Centre in Melbourne, an organisation that had been set up in the late 1920s by expatriate Jews from Bialystok who had left to seek a better life in Australia. In 1949 Ursula married my father, Felix Flicker, who was also from Bialystok. I was born in 1951.
Ursula believed strongly that she had contributed to Jarechka’s death. Among her writings, I found the following:
For years and years, I have suffered from… the thought that perhaps… my own character drove her to her death. It was her persistence and insistence to allow her to go on a camp 80 km away from Bialystok and away from my ‘bossiness’ that drove my parents to consent and grant her the wish to be away from her ‘controlling’ sister.
For the rest of her life, Ursula was tormented by the guilt of having contributed to the death of her sister. She became obsessed to find out the exact details of where, when, and how her sister had died. In the early 1980s, Ursula became the founding archivist at what is now known as the Melbourne Holocaust Museum (MHM) (see https://mhm.org.au/). For 25 years, she collected and archived materials from Holocaust survivors who lived in Melbourne. She conducted research and was in regular correspondence with Yad Vashem, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and a range of other organisations gathering evidence of Nazi atrocities. Whenever new lists of names of those who had been exterminated came to light, she carefully scrutinised them in search of her sister’s name. Jarechka’s name did not appear on any list. Until the day she died, she never found out the exact circumstances of her sister’s death.
For Ursula’s 25 years of dedicated, voluntary work for the MHM, she was awarded an Order of Australia Medal (OAM), and the archives at the MHM were named after her – the Ursula Flicker Archival Collection. [See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTsfQvv6Qk]
Reunited with her family and sister in the next world, may Ursula Flicker’s dear soul rest in eternal peace.
Trailer poniżej - film w całosci mozna zobaczyć w MIEJSCU.
https://youtu.be/gw2fRZDv1mQ
2024-09-12 14:18:55
