Luba and Harry Weinroth papers

Luba Weinroth (born Luba Kerschenblat) is the daughter of Moishe and Mana (née Silberstein, later Muriel) Kerschenblat. She was born on July 30 1932 in Warsaw, Poland. Moishe was a tailor, and Mana was a seamstress. They met at work and continued to work at the same company until the start of the war. Luba's grandmother, Freida Silberstein, lived with them and helped care for Luba. Following the German invasion of Poland, Moishe Kerschenblat fled east fearing he would be arrested by the Germans. He returned after a few weeks to move his family out of Warsaw. Mana was initially reluctant to move, but as conditions worsened she agreed, and the family went to Białystok, Poland. Moishe registered the family with the Russians to move into the Soviet interior to be farther from the Germans. The Russians put them on a train, and after a few weeks they arrived in Nizhnii Tagil, Siberia. Moishe and Mana had to perform hard labor, but Luba was allowed to attend school. Her grandmother became ill and remained at home. The family received meager food rations, but Moishe managed to barter his tailoring skills for extra bread. However he became determined to find a way for the family to leave. After six months, the family received some papers and smuggled themselves out on a night time train. The Kerschenblats arrived in Moscow, but they were not allowed to stay for very long. After a short time, they received permission to travel to Saratov, Russia. They remained there for little over a year during which time Luba’s grandmother passed away from a prolonged illness. In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Moishe decided to relocate the family once again to be farther from the Germans. They went to Jalalabat (Jalal-Abad, Kyrgyzstan) where they lived in a clay hut. Moishe worked in a factory which stuffed cotton into bags for transport and eventually became a foreman. After the war, the Kerschenblats returned to Poland. They spent two weeks in Kraków before moving to Łódź, where Mana gave birth to a second daughter, Frieda, named in memory of her mother. In 1946 they moved to the Schlachtensee displaced persons camp in Berlin, where Luba studied Hebrew, German and English. When it closed, they moved to the Feldafing camp near Munich. Luba enrolled in an ORT vocational school to learn a trade. She received her diploma after completing classes making women's lingerie. She also met Chaim Wajnrot, a survivor of approximately 19 camps. In 1951, the Kerschenblats immigrated to the United States aboard the American military ship the General Stewart and settled in Brooklyn, New York.

Chaim (Chamek) Wajnrot (later Harry Weinroth, 1925-2018) was the son of Leizor and Sala Rachia (née Wilczyk) Wajnrot. Chaim was born on February 20, 1925 in Sosnowiec, Poland where his father was watchmaker and jeweler. There were six children in the family: Sofi, Chaim, Srulek, Alek, Josel and Frieda. After the start of the war in 1939, all of the watchmakers including Chaim's father were arrested and deported to Niederkirchen, Germany. Chaim was instead deported to a labor camp in Kochanowice to work on construction of the Autobahn. Around spring 1940 Chaim and the other prisoners were transferred to a labor camp in Brande-Hörnerkirchen to continue road construction. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 Chaim was sent to the Gross Masselwitz concentration camp. The prisoners were given inoculations for infectious diseases and an Organization Todt armband. 351 Jewish prisoners were sent by train to the Soviet Union. The prisoners lived on the train and worked to reconfigure railroad tracks to make them compatable for German trains. In April 1942 Chaim was sent back to Germany to Annaberg-Buchholz. While there he was able to communicate with his family for the last time. A month later Chaim was transferred to the Markstädt labor camp where he worked building wells. He was then transferred to the Fünfteichen subcamp of Gross-Rosen, evacuated to Gross-Rosen, and then sent on a death march to Buchenwald in March 1945 as the Red Army advanced on the camp. From there he was transferred to the Bisingen and Schömberg subcamps of Natzweiler-Struthof and then finally the Allach subcamp of Dachau where he was liberated by the United States Army in April 1945. After liberation, Chaim went to the Feldafing displaced persons camp near Munich to recover. He believed no one in his family survived but was reunited with his sister Sofi (later Glucksman, b. December 10, 1923). She survived Auschwitz, but the rest of the family perished in the Holocaust. Chaim apprenticed himself to a watchmaker in Munich and learned the trade. The watchmaker was very kind to him and treated him like a member of his family. While living in Feldafing, Chaim met fellow survivor Luba Kerschenblat and they began dating. Chaim, now Harry, immigrated to the United States in 1949. He settled in Stamford, Connecticut and established his own watch repair business. After Luba and her family immigrated to New York in 1951, she and Harry reconnected. They married the following year and went on to have three children: Larry, Ruth, and Seth.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Luba Weinroth

Donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2018 by Luba Weinroth.