Pinchas Schumacher

Born: Unknown, Chelm, Poland

Pinchas Schumacher was Zayde, the Yiddish word for grandfather, to Estera Ajzen. He was patriarch of a Jewish family that lived in the city of Chelm, in eastern Poland. Before World War II, Jewish people made up more than half the population of Chelm. Throughout Europe, roughly nine million Jews lived in the countries that would be occupied by Germany during World War II.

This photograph captures a way of life that the Nazis tried to destroy. By the end of the war, two out of every three of Jewish people in Nazi-occupied countries would be dead. After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Estera Azjen and her family fled to the Soviet zone. In January 1940, they were deported to a labor camp in the most northern part of European Russia. They were released in April, 1941. Ester and her family moved to Gorky, where she met a Soviet Jewish soldier from the Ukraine. They were married and settled in Poland after the war, later moving to the U.S. in 1956.