Yankela Chossid, born in Yurburg in 1917, was one of 11 children of Lazar Chossid, a builder in Yurburg. As teenager in Yurburg, Yankela worked at the Commerce Bank as an assistant to the bank president Shmerel Bernstein. When he immigrated to the United States in 1937, he became Jack Cossid. He joined a brother in Chicago, where he settled. Jack joined the US Army during World War II, became an interpreter due to his extensive knowledge of European languages; Jack is fluent in German, Lithuanian, Yiddish, English and some Russian. During the war he worked with prisoners of war in South Dakota and Rockford Illinois. After the war Jack ran a successful dry cleaning business in Chicago until his retirement in 1987. Jack and his wife Linda have two daughters and four grand daughters.
Of the eleven children in Jack's family, only five survived the war; one sister survived the concentration camps. Six of his siblings and his parents were murdered in Yurburg by the Lithuanians under the encouragement of the Nazis in the summer of 1941. Among the six were a younger sister and a set of twin brothers.