Sosna-Trzcinka family. Collection

Leib alias Leon Sosna was born in Dzyzow or Dzygow, the Russian empire, on 27 July 1888 as the son of Jankiel Sosna and Ita Gleizer. On 31 October 1913 he married Basia Krylszner or Kryczman, born in Szaprtowka, Poland, on 18 March 1893. Together they had five children: Baruch (born on 23 January 1915 in Lodz, Poland), Raca who was called Rosa (born on 1 November 1917 in Lodz, Poland), Motel or Mordechai who was called Max (born on 12 February 1921 in Lodz, Poland), Sara (born on 10 May 1923 in Lodz, Poland) and Ita (born on 8 January 1925 in Kalisz, Poland). On 22 November 1926 Basia sadly passed away. Leib then religiously married Liba Trzcinka. Leib Sosna immigrated to Belgium on 12 September 1928. He settled at Rue du Grand Vinâve 27 in Jemeppe-sur-Meuse and was employed at the Ougrée-Marihaye steel and charcoal factory. When his wife Liba and his sons Baruch and Motel joined him in Belgium on 7 February 1929, the family moved to Rue Saint-Marguerite 130 in Liège. Not much later they relocated to Rue Dothée 20 in Liège, where Liba gave birth to a son named Tobias on 2 February 1930. Three weeks after Tobias was born, the Sosna family moved to Lange Kievitstraat 131 in Antwerp. Daughter Sara joined her father and stepmother there in 1933, and daughters Ita and Raca in 1934. On 10 November 1936 they moved again, this time to Van der Meydenstraat 8 in Borgerhout. Leib worked as a market vendor, Baruch and Motel as furriers, and Rosa as a seamstress in the workshop of Zalman Russek. Youngest son Tobias attended the religious Jewish Tachkemoni school. When Nazi Germany invaded Belgium on 10 May 1940 the Sosna family still lived at Van der Meydenstraat. Leib obeyed the anti-Jewish decrees and registered his family in the Jewish municipal register at the end of 1940. On 14 November 1941 Leib, Liba and their son Tobias moved to Brussels, while the five elder Sosna children remained at Van der Meydenstraat. Oldest son Baruch became the head of the household and registered himself and his siblings as members of the Association of Jews in Belgium on 31 March 1942. On 5 August 1942, Baruch and Motel were claimed by the Belgian Arbeidsambt (national work bureau) and were sent to Northern France to work as slave labourers on the Atlantic Wall. The operation was supervised by the German enterprise Organisation Todt. A day before their departure Motel married his fiancée Pesa Iglinski (born on 16 July 1921 in Wloclawek, Poland). The Sosna brothers were sent to the labour camp Camiers near the French coast where they worked for Todt subcontractor H. Micka. On 31 October 1942 they were deported from Northern France to Auschwitz-Birkenau via transport XVI. Upon arrival on 3 November 1942 both were selected for forced labour. Motel received tattoo number 72827, Baruch number 72828. However, both were murdered. Ten days after Baruch and Motel were sent to France the German Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst, with the assistance of the Antwerp police corps and Flemish collaborators, organized a raid. The Sosna family home at Van der Meydenstraat was within the raid perimeter and Sara and Ita were arrested, together with their half-brother Tobias and Motel’s wife Pesa Iglinski. Rosa Sosna was staying at a friend’s place at the time and thus avoided being arrested. Sara, Ita, Tobias and Pesa were taken to the Dossin barracks where their name was added to the deportation list of transport IV. The train left the Dossin barracks on 20 August 1942 and arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 22 August 1942. None of them survived. Leib and Liba Sosna were arrested under unknown circumstances. They were registered at the Dossin barracks on 15 July 1944 and were registered on the deportation list of transport XXVI. The train left Mechelen on 31 July 1944 and arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 2 August 1944. Both were murdered. The sole survivor of the Sosna family was daughter Rosa who went into hiding in Saint-Gilles, Brussels, taking on the false identity of Marie Louise Dufour. After the war she looked for her deported loved ones for years, only to realise they had all been killed. After the war, Rosa immigrated to the State of Israel, where she married Moshe Edelbaum and started a family. Rosa Sosna-Edelbaum passed away at the age of 85 in 2003.

In 2010 Nizan Edelbaum, grandson of Rosa Sosna-Edelbaum, kindly provided the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, predecessor of Kazerne Dossin, with copies of these items from his family archive.

Nizan Edelbaum, 2010