Suzanne Weiss collection

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 

Suzanne Weiss was born in Paris in 1941 to Aaron Itzkovitch and Fajga Berliner. Berliner had been born in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland, but moved to France in 1935. Weiss survived in hiding during the war but lost her mother to Auschwitz and her father to bomb injuries. She was brought to the United States in 1950 by her adoptive parents and befriended Jonas and Nadzia Lewy, who were also from Piotrków Trybunalski. She discovered that Nadzia Lewy was her mother’s sister, and years later she learned that her uncle Jonas Lewy was accused of Holocaust era atrocities by survivors of the Piotrków Trybunalski ghetto. Jonas Lewy (1911-1980), a native of Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland, worked as a furrier in that city until the German invasion and occupation of Poland. He joined the Jewish police in the ghetto of Piotrków Trybunalski and befriended a German police officer whom he assisted in the round up and deportation of Jews from the ghetto until Lewy was deported to Buchenwald in 1944. After liberation he was tried for atrocities by a British tribunal at Bergen-Belsen but not convicted. Lewy and his family immigrated to the United States in 1950 and settled in New York, where survivors from Piotrków Trybunalski identified Lewy. He was tried again by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1953, found guilty, and ordered to be deported. He appealed, and although his conviction was not removed, he was spared deportation and lived the remainder of his life in New York. 

Suzanne Weiss collection 

boxes 2 

The Suzanne Weiss collection consists of Jonas Lewy’s death certificate; photocopies of photographs of Jonas and Nadzia Lewy; printed materials including articles about Jonas Lewy and Piotrków Trybunalski written by Suzanne Weiss; research materials comprised of copies of archival documents from the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, obtained by Weiss through the Freedom of Information Act, concerning deportation hearings for Jonas Lewy; and survivor accounts comprised of interviews of Piotrków Trybunalski survivors conducted by Weiss and a memoir by Charles Kotowsky. 

The Suzanne Weiss collection is arranged as four series: I. Jonas and Nadzia Lewy materials, 1994, II. Printed materials, 1994-1998, III. Research materials, approximately 1994, and IV. Survivor accounts, 1980-1997