Copyright Holder: Mr. Vladimir Lewin
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Vladimir Lewin was born on 29 April 1922 in Pinsk, Poland (Pinsk, Belarus) to Lazar (1891-1967) and Judyta (née Minkowicz, d. 1942). He had one sister, Deborah (d. 1942). After the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Vladimir fled Pinsk. He first went to Ukraine where he enrolled in a coal mining school, but left soon after and went to Uzbekistan to join the Polish army under Władysław Anders’ command (Anders’ Army), but was rejected for being Jewish. He then ended up in Siberia in a labor battalion in early 1943 where he worked in a coalmine in Kopeisk, but soon deserted his post. Vladimir made his way to Chelyabinsk where he contracted typhoid and malaria. He was then conscripted into the Red Army and sent to the 1st Ukrainian Front where he was wounded in January 1944. After his recovery he was transferred to the Polish People’s Army. They arrived in Lublin, Poland in July 1944 and Vladimir remained there for the duration of the war. He was reunited with his father in Lublin. Lazar survived the Holocaust in Negin, Ukraine, but his mother, sister, and grandmother Rykel Lewin were all murdered in Pinsk in October 1942. Lazar later immigrated to the United States. After Vladimir finished his military service in 1946, he moved to Warsaw where he became a reporter for the Jewish press agency. He immigrated to the United States in 1970.
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The collection is arranged as a single series.
Documents and photographs related to the Holocaust-era experiences of Vladimir Lewin and his family, originally from Pinsk, Poland (Pinsk, Belarus). Material related to Vladimir consists of identification cards including his Titolo di Viaggio per Stranieri used in 1970 when he left Poland via Italy to immigrate to the United States; military papers including Vladimir’s discharge papers and booklets commemorating medals he earned with the Soviet and Polish armies; and a testimony statement by Vladimir related to a restitution claim from the German government. Documents related to Vladimir’s father Lazar Lewin include identification papers, a Soviet bond, a copy of a report on the destruction of the Pinsk ghetto, post-war Soviet legal documents returning property to Lazar, a portfolio cover used to store the reparations documents, a 1946 handwritten testimonial statement in Yiddish, and a typed copy of a letter from Lazar written to his wife Judyta’s sisters in Israel in 1945. Photographs consist of pre-war family photographs including the Lewin family and Vladimir with his classmates. Additionally, there is a copy of a Meldekarte für Juden for Srul Szyja Kołnierzyk found by Lazar in the Warsaw ghetto around 1946. The Meldekarte has a personal inscription in Yiddish that expresses his doubts that he will survive or ever see his family again. Accompanying the copy is a letter to Vladimir and his wife Elizabeth from Vad Vashem acknowledging their donation of the original in 1992.
Vladimir Lewin papers