Avraham Welbel, son of Moshe Yechezkel Ha'Cohen, was married to Yocheved ("Yacha") Zatz. They resided in Lunna in the middle of the nineteenth century. They had three sons and two daughters, born in Lunna: Yaakov (b. 1882), Yosel (b. 1886), Nachum-Moshe (b. 1890), Ester ("Etel", b. 1897), and Rivka (b. 1898). Avraham and Yocheved Welbel both died on the night of 27 Adar, 1926; they suffocated from gas emitted from a heating stove in their home. Their granddaughter Miriam (Welbel) Rutenberg recalls that it was decided by the family that the first one to be buried would be Avraham Welbel and then his wife Yocheved, as the custom of leading a couple to the "Chuppah" (wedding canopy). Avraham and Yocheved Welbel were buried in Lunna cemetery. A picture of the headstone of Avraham Welbel is available.

The Children of Avraham and Yocheved Welbel
1. Yaakov Welbel (b.1882) married Elka, daughter of Simcha and Henie-Leah Arkin. Elka (Arkin) was born in Lunna in 1886; Elka's siblings were all born in Lunna: Dvorah (Arkin) Abin (b. 1883), Zisl (b. 1884), Eliezer (b. 1885), Necha (Arkin) Zlotoyabko (b. 1888), and Abraham (b. 1891).
Yaakov Welbel was a grain merchant and one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Lunna. Yaakov and Elka Welbel had three daughters: Rachel (b. 1905), Miriam (b. 1910), and Liza (b. 1914). Miriam left Lunna and settled in Eretz Israel in 1932; she married Mordechai Rutenberg. Liza left for Eretz Israel in 1935 and married Yehoshua Shwetz. Miriam and Liza have families in Israel. The oldest sister, Rachel, remained in Lunna, and in 1928 married Mordechai ("Motke") Kuperfenig. Elka (Arkin) Welbel died in 1938 and was buried in Lunna cemetery. Yaakov Welbel, Rachel (Welbel), and her husband Motke Kuperfenig perished in the Holocaust.

2. Yosel Welbel (b.1886) married Leah Galperin from Mosty. Yosel was a butcher and his wife functioned as a supplier of meat and other products. Yosel and Leah had three daughters, born in Lunna: Tzipora (Feigel) (b. 1914), a seamstress; Rochel (b. 1916), married Yehoshua Furman; and Sarah (b. 1918). Yosel died in Lunna in 1937. His wife and daughters perished in the Holocaust.

3. Nachum-Moshe (b. 1890) married Shayne Shibowski from Mosty. Nochum was producer of diary products. He closed his dairy sometime between 1930 and 1935 and later he was the owner of a mill. They had three sons and two daughters born in Lunna: Yitzchak, Eliezer (Leon, b. 1916), Aaron (b. 1926), Feigel, and Rachel. Yitzchak died in Lunna in 1940. Nachum-Moshe, his wife Shayne, and their daughters Feigel and Rachel, perished in the Holocaust. Their sons Eliezer and Aaron survived the Holocaust, moved to America and had families in there.

4. Ester ("Etel" Welbel) (b. 1897) married Yehoshua-Ovsey (b. 1896), son of Shalom and Yocheved Eisenshmidt. They had three sons: Eliezer ("Laizer", b. 1921), Abraham (b. 1925), and Yaakov (b. 1927). Ester and Yehoshua Eisenshmidt, their sons Abraham and Yaakov, perished in the Holocaust. Eliezer survived the Holocaust. After the war he married Yehudit Dafner from Sosnowicz and in 1946 they came to Eretz Israel. They have family in Israel.

5. Rivka Welbel (b. 1898) left Lunna in 1913 and went to stay with her relatives in the United States. She married Gordon and they had family in the States.

From the Collection of Miriam Rutenberg and Liza Shwetz (Yaakov Welbel's Daughters)

Eisenshmidt Family

From the Collection of Eliezer Eisenshmidt

Below is a letter sent by Eliezer Eisenshmidt to his cousin Miriam (Welbel) Rutenberg, dated Dec. 12, 1945, and the Miriam's spontaneous response which she did not send to Eliezer but was written for herself and was kept in one of her folders. The letter and the response are published in the booklet "Our Miriam is 90 years old" (in Hebrew, Oct. 2000).

Letter (written in Yiddish) sent by Eliezer Eisenshmidt from Bitom, Poland, to his cousin Miriam (Welbel) Rutenberg in Eretz Israel

Bitom, Dec. 12. 1945
My dear cousin Miriam,
…It is hard to describe how happy I was to receive your letter dated Oct. 20, 1945. My dear cousin, you can imagine that it is not so easy and it can take several months to write about all that. Our parents were murdered on the first of Tevet, 1942 in the Auschwitz extermination camp. Your father, my parents and all our relatives were taken together. On that day they were all murdered in the gas chamber and their bodies were burnt in the crematoria. Rachel and Motke [Miriam's sister and her husband] arrived a little later to Auschwitz. Rachel perished on the 17th of Adar, 1943. Motke stayed in the camp for quite a long time and died in the summer of 1944.
My father, my mother and Yaakov [Eliezer's youngest brother] were murdered immediately upon arrival to the Auschwitz camp. Abraham [Eliezer's second brother] stayed in the camp 6 weeks and he then died from blood-poisoning.
The fate of Uncle Nochum-Moshe's family and of Uncle Yosef's family was the same. They perished together with all the Jews of Lunna.

You have asked how such a miracle happened to me — I myself do not understand it. I suppose it is just a matter of fate. I believe that when we meet, I will tell you about it in more detail.
Miriam — I don't need anything. I am working and earning enough for myself and for my wife. Now, I would like to tell you that three months ago I got married to Yehudit from Sosnowicz.
Please pass on my regards to Liza and her husband…
…
Your faithful cousin,
Eliezer

The Spontaneous Response of Miriam Rutenberg to Eliezer's Letter
I have received Eliezer's letter.
I read it and felt paralyzed. I could not cry. I don't know why — is there nothing anymore to cry about? The dates at when father, Rachel and Motke and other relatives were sent to the gas chambers are indicated in this letter. My head weighs hard on me as if it were filled with lead. My mind and thought are hardly working. Father, with his energy, consistently taking the initiative and having so much wisdom — there was nothing hard for him and he did everything for his family as well as for other people. Father was taken in a crowded freight carriage with no air to breath. Father was pushed into the gas chamber and asphyxiated, and then his body was burned in the crematorium and his ashes spread in the wind.

Rachel, Oh my sister Rachel. We loved you so much for your kindness and your good heart, your good nature. They made you work in hard labor and only after they exploited you beyond your power, they sent you to the gas chamber. They certainly cut your hair, your long hair in order to make mattress for a cursed German woman, and you still did not believe but hoped that maybe water would flow from the shower and not poison. Your eyes must have become bigger from fear and shyness while you were rushing around within the chamber when the gas began to suffocate you. You ran naked from corner to corner since it looked as if in the other corner there was more air to breathe. Oh, what a terrible sight.

And you Motke, we always praised you for being an active man, full of energy, who knows how to manage any situation. You too, didn't you catch their fraud but believed that they would take you to work and would feed you with bread? One and a half years they exploited you and when you could not bring them anymore profit, they sent you to the gas chamber.

God of vengeance, avenge! Avenge the vengeance of our parents, of the brothers and the sisters, the children and the babies! Avenge the vengeance of your people!

Translated into English by Ruth Marcus

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