The prayer book was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2009 by Linda Anselmo on behalf of the Estate of Kalman and Pauline Barakan.
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Prayer book owned by Jewish Holocaust survivors who fled Poland in 1968 because of persecution. After Germany invaded Russian occupied Poland in June 1941, Kalman Barakan, a 30 year old lawyer in Bialystok was relocated into a Jewish ghetto. He escaped in 1943 and lived in hiding, constantly on the move. In August, the ghetto was destroyed; Kalman’s entire family was murdered in a death camp. In July 1944, the Soviet Army liberated the area. Kalman was forced into army service until the end of the war in May 1945. He repatriated to Łódź, Poland, and married Pauline Pajes in 1949. Pauline survived the destruction of the Grodno ghetto and lived for 2 years in hiding. They left Poland in September 1968, deprived of their citizenship and apartment for lack of Communist Party participation. They lived, stateless, in Rome, until they were admitted as refugees to the US on January 21, 1969.
Prayer book