Moishe Felman

Born: Unknown 1926, Sokolow Podlaski, Poland

Thirteen-year-old Moishe Felman was just about to begin a new year of school when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. Moishe's town of Sokolow Podlaski was bombed as troops entered the town. They set fire to the main synagogue and confiscated the grain business Moishe's parents ran.

Over the next two years, Jewish families like Moishe's had to live with more and more restrictions. They had to wear a Jewish star on their clothing. They had to move to an area called the ghetto, a part of the city where Jewish people were forced to live. In 1941, on Yom Kippur, one of the most important holy days of the Jewish year, the Germans began to round up people in the ghetto. Those who fought back or hid were shot. Moishe, his mother, and sister had to join their neighbors as all the Jewish people were crammed into the boxcar of a train. The train took them to the Treblinka extermination camp. Moishe was gassed to death there shortly after he arrived. He was 16 years old.