Tonight marks Holocaust Remembrance Day, so I thought I'd recount the little I know about the closest relative I know of who was murdered, my great-grandmother's sister, Chana Basia (Anna) (Tetenbaum) Bogusz. Chana Basia was the daughter of Hersk (Gersk, Herschel) Tetenbaum and Ester Malka Rubensztejn Tetenbaum of Szczuczyn, Poland. (Ester's brother joined the Russian army and moved to Finland, and one of his descendants has created a remarkable family genealogy website.)

The Tetenbaums were a reasonably prominent and well-to-do family in town, with many rabbis in the family. Hersk and Ester Malka had ten children. The first eight were "blue babies" and died in childbirth. The ninth was my great-grandmother, Hinda Meita. The tenth was Chana Basia, who was born in January 1880. According to what my grandmother told me, the delivery didn't go well, and Chana Basia's life was in danger. Ester Malka prayed aloud to God, and asked God to take her instead of her baby. And that's what God did.

Hersk got remarried to a woman named Zelda Jozefson, who was very kind to her step-daughters, and had seven more children with her. After he died in 1903, Zelda and her children gradually left for America, where the sons opened a successful Fortunoff's-type store (my father remembers his cousin going there for her wedding needs). Zelda's brother married my great-grandmother. He died in 1905, and Hinda Meita and her five daughters gradually emigrated to the U.S.

Meanwhile, Chana Basia married a man named Mosko (Max) Bogusz in 1900, and eventually moved with him to Braunschweig, Germany. They had two daughters, Sara Zalka (Sonja) Szpektor and Estera Malka (Esther) Pressburger. Chana Basia and Moszk were deported and murdered in Treblinka circa 1942.