Gorodiscas family papers

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 

Gorodiscas family papers 

folder 1 

Consists of Bencelis Gorodiscas's passport from Lithuania, issued in 1921; the"livret de famill" family book documenting Bencelis's marriage to Malka Mendrzycka (originally of Warsaw) and the births of their children, Marguerite in 1933 and Gilbert in 1944. Also includes a certificate of liberation issued to Bencelis Gorodiscas from the Gurs internment camp in April 1943 and a bill for their immigration to the United States in 1961. 

Bencelis Gorodiscas was born in 1889 in Kovno, Lithuania. In 1926, he married Malka Mendrzycka and the couple settled in Paris, where Bencelis was a butcher in the Marais neighborhood. In 1933, their daughter, Marguerite, was born. Soon after the war broke out, the family moved to Saint-Saturnin, where they found a room and stayed until the end of the war. In 1942, Bencelis was arrested and sent to Gurs, where he spent a year. In April 1943, he was released and returned to Saint-Saturnin, but never slept at home, fearing his family would get caught in another arrest. In March 1944, the Gorodiscases welcomed a son, Gilbert. In 1945, they returned to Paris. Marguerite immigrated to the United States in 1952 and her parents followed in 1961.