Meyer Abramczyk, dead at 88 in 2013, was born in 1926 in Poland.
Abramczyk was a Holocaust survivor. A 2007 post written by his children states: “In 1940, our father was told by the SS that all the young men would be going to another town to ‘work’ for only 6 months and would return to their families after. This was the last time that our father saw his family. He was taken to a work camp in Poznan at the age of 13. In the beginning, he was able to correspond with his family, but over time communication dwindled. He was moved to several camps and ended up at Furstengruber-Auschwitz until the end of the war, at which time he was in the Auschwitz death march from January 1945 to May 1945, which took him to Lubeck Bay in Germany, where he boarded the Cap Arcona falsely believing, from the Nazis, that he was on his way to freedom. The Cap Arcona was a cruise ship that was used by the Nazis to transport military personal. However, the Germans were actually planning to let this boat drift into the harbour, at which time they would then detonate the explosives that were placed on board. British Intelligence believed that this boat was carrying German military personnel and started bombing the boat before the Germans took the opportunity to detonate the bombs. Of the 10,000 prisoners aboard, only 250 survived.”
Abramczyk moved to Israel after the Second World War and served in its military from 1948 to 1952.
The post by his children states: “After many unsuccessful years of searching for his family, our father eventually came to Canada. Here, he married Edith Krepel, and together they started their own family. They have 3 children and 6 grandchildren. Each child is named after a member of his family whom he lost in the Holocaust. Our father came to Toronto in 1952 where he worked for another Belchatower, Sam and Hinda Lipman, as a butcher. Our father was a butcher for over 50 years and just retired at the age of 80!”
