THE HERSH SEGAL COLLECTION

THE HERSH SEGAL COLLECTION  

Very few Jewish children survived the holocaust (approx. 11%). During the formative years of their lives these children witnessed and experienced the horrors of the war and these decisive experiences followed them like shadow in the years that followed. While they went through rehabilitation in children's homes and educational facilities, some of those rehabilitating them (Teachers, instructors, most of them survivors themselves) encouraged the children to share their story. Hence throughout 1945 - 1949 a large body of child holocaust survivor's testimonies was recorded. Hersh segal was one such teacher at the orphanages in Bacau and Gura Humorului, Romania, who encouraged his pupils to write about their experiences during the war. The students were all survivors of the deportation to Transnistria, a region in Ukraine, where due to the harsh conditions of cold, hunger and disease only few survived and many had been orphaned. Hersh Segal was born on 8 December 1905 in Novi Strilyshcha (Austro - Hungarian empire at the time, now Ukraine). At the Outset of WWI his family fled to Praha (Prague), where they lived as refugees until 1917. They then travelled to Chernivtsi, Ukraine. In 1925 Segal completed his mathematics and physics studies. After his military service, he returned to Chernivtsi, where he worked as a school teacher until 1941. In 1946 he moved to Bacau, Romania, where he worked as a mathematics professor until his immigration to Israel in 1962 where he continued to teach until his death in 1973.  

THE HERSH SEGAL COLLECTION