United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Klara Chaya Bressler was born on April 18, 1940, daughter of Josef Bressler (b. January 20, 1911) and Chana König Bressler (b. August 2, 1908). Chana’s brother, Majer Max, immigrated to the United States before the war. After the German invasion and forcing the Nadworna Jews into the ghetto, Chana obtained Ukrainian birth certificate for the name Anna Chopta from her maid, in return for her house. In June 1942, after Chana and her sister Giza knew that their parents and siblings were murdered, they escaped together with little Klara to Lublin. They met Josef Bressler who was with a partisan group in nearby forest. He arranged for a Polish couple, Karolina and Stanislaw Klimek, to take Klara in. Chana and Giza volunteered for forced labor in Germany as Ukrainian and Polish women. In 1946 Chana returned to the village to reunite with her daughter. Chana found out that her husband Josef was killed in the area. Naturally Klara regarded the Klimeks as her parents. After a few weeks Chana took her daughter to Germany. She managed to locate her older brother in the States. In January 1949 they immigrated to the United States to be with her brother. In 1940 Chaim Nieswiecki was mobilized by the Soviet Army. His wife, Elka Bitenska was murdered by Germans in Baranowicze in September 1942. He repatriated to Poland in 1957 and two years later he immigrated to Israel. Soon after he married Chana Bressler.
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Contains letters, photographs, and other documents related to the König and Bressler family from Pasieczna and Nadwórna, Poland; includes two letters, one written by Chana, searching for her brother Max and the other recommendation letter from US officer, dated June 24, 1946. Also includes documents and photographs; related to Chaim Nieswiecki (donor’s step-father), who was born in Baranowicze, Poland (now Baranavichy, Belarus) on March 23, 1911, including letters written by the Koenigl family in Pasieczna and Nadworna to their son and brother Max in the USA 1933-1938; false documents issued for the name of Anna Chopta, which Chana Koenigl Bressler purchased from Ukrainian woman in exchange for her house and a plot of land in Nadworna, Poland; documents relating to establishing the death of Josef Bressler, Chana’s first husband, her divorce from her second husband and marriage to Chaim Nieswiecki, in Haifa, Israel in 1959; and photographs depicting Chaya Klara Bressler with her mother, Chana Anna Koenigl Bressler in Germany in 1947.
Konig and Bressler families collection