Joel Poremba Family Photos

Gustava and Joseph Poremba with their five children, Sala, Nathan, Fela, Esta and Tala, in Wieliczka, Poland in 1931. Only the two youngest, Nathan and Fela, survived the Holocaust.

A German soldier took this photo of Jews being persecuted and mocked in the main square of Wieliczka, on September 12, 1939, the same day that Nathan's father, Joseph Poremba, was one of 32 Jewish men brought to the square and driven to a nearby forest to be executed (photo courtesy Tomasz Wisniewski, Ph.D., Wisniewski Coll. www.bagnowka.pl; and http://www.belzec.eu/media/files/pages/278/wieliczka_ang.pdf).

Nathan Poremba in 1946 in Brussels, at the age of 16.

Nathan and Irene Poremba in 1966 in California.

Joel, at his bar mitzvah with his father, spent years trying to get his father to tell him how he managed to survive as a young boy, alone.

Nathan and Irene Poremba with their family, Alan, Joel, Sari, Gabi and Noah.

Gabi and Noah Poremba did not know until they read their father's book of the heroic resourcefulness that helped their grandfather survive the Holocaust.

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