Aaron Elster

Early Life

Aaron Elster is the son of Chaim Sruel and Cywia (Szczerb) Elster. He was born September 15, 1931 in Sokolow Podlaski, Poland, where his parents owned a butcher shop that catered primarily to Poles. Aaron had two sisters, Sura (Sara) Rivka and Ita Jospa (Irene Budkowski).

Ghettoization and Hiding

After the German occupation the Elsters were forced into the local ghetto. In September 1942 the ghetto was surrounded in preparation for its final liquidation. Earlier, Aaron’s parents hid his sister, Ita (Irene), with a Polish couple named Hipolit and Franceska Gorski. The rest of the family hid with neighbors behind a double wall in the attic of their apartment building. When their hiding place was discovered, all the Jews were assembled in the marketplace to await deportation. In the chaos, Aaron’s father urged him to escape and find the Gorski family. Aaron crawled away from the scene through a gutter, ran into an empty house and hid overnight. The next day, he escaped from the empty ghetto and ran to a nearby farm where he met a group of escaped Jews. They told him that his mother was alive and had been assigned to a labor brigade that was sorting and packing Jewish belongings to send to Germany. Aaron found his mother, and she hid him during the day while she was at work. Aaron and his mother spent the next several weeks running from farm to farm seeking food and shelter. When it became too cold to continue, Aaron’s mother gave him some jewelry and told him to try to find the Gorskis. He ultimately found them, but they were reluctant to take him in for fear he would endanger their lives and that of his sister. They told him he could stay for only a few days, but Aaron hid in their attic for two years until the end of the war. 

Liberation and Later Years

Aaron and Irene survived, but his mother was betrayed by a Polish farmer and shot just four months before liberation. Aaron’s father and sister Sara were killed in Treblinka. After the liberation, Aaron remained in Poland for six months before going to Germany. He lived in the Fürth and Neu Freimann Displaced Persons camps for two years and then sailed to the US in June 1947 on board the SS Marine Marlin. He was educated in Chicago and served in the armed forces in Korea. He married Jacki and had two children. Aaron died in April 2018.