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Postcards
from Home
Hear daughter Annette talk about her father as a child,
and the Rabbi in Jedwabne
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Photo title:
Young Aaron Burak
Family surnames:
BURAK (BURACK); DREJARSKA; DREJARSKI
DRILLICH
Place of residence: JEDWABNE
Date of photograph: cir early 1920s
Holocaust: Aaron was already in the United States before World
War II began.
Aaron was the youngest of the six children of Sheina Gitel and
Aron Burack. He was named after his father, which seems to
indicate that his father passed away while his wife was with
child.
Aaron (Avraham Aharon) was the third of the Burak children to
emigrate. He left Poland in 1921, and after a stop in England,
boarded a ship that would take him to the port of Boston,
Massachusetts. He subsequently moved to Brooklyn, New
York, married Celia nee Drillich, and helped raise one boy and
three girls.
He once talked to his children about his life in Jedwabne:"The bombs were
falling to the left, so we all ran to the right. Then the bombs started to fall
to the right, so we ran to the left. One day the city was in was Poland; the
next day it was Russia…"—Aaron
His mother urged that he leave the country for
his own safety. When he was only fourteen, he submitted a request to leave. After two
months, when he hadn’t heard anything, he submitted a second request, this time
stating that he was sixteen. The police chief had him brought to the police station.
Waving both applications in front of him, he said, "How old are you, you little
Jew &@$%?" Aaron thought he was in trouble, but he was eventually given
permission to leave.
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