Yudlov 2304 Haggadah Lublin 1905

The physical existence of this book today tells a remarkable story of timing and survival.

Born in Rypin in 1907 to Menahem and Hana Pesia Grossman, Eliyahu Eliezer Grossman (who owned this Haggadah as witnessed today by his personal stamp) grew up in a vibrant Jewish community near the German border. In 1931, he married Judith Lichtenstein. Probably anticipating the rising instability in Europe, Eliyahu Eliezer, his parents, and his immediate siblings made the life-saving decision to leave Poland, immigrating to Mandate Palestine during the interwar pioneer waves.

Because they successfully left, Eliyahu Eliezer and his immediate household survived the Holocaust. They settled in Afula, Jerusalem, and central Israel, establishing a new generation that included their daughter, Sara Vakshtok, and the extended Grossman and Sorek family branches.

Tragically, the extended Grossman family who remained behind in Poland did not escape. Wartime Nazi census lists from occupied Rypin explicitly document family members—such as Abram and Chaskiel Grossman—trapped under occupation on ul. Rynkowa (Market Street) before the community was violently liquidated to regional ghettos and extermination camps like Treblinka.

While the centuries-old Jewish community of Rypin was entirely erased by 1939, this 1904 Lublin Haggadah survived because it was packed into the luggage of the escaping Grossman family. Kept safe through the decades in British Mandate Palestine and the early years of the State of Israel, it stands today as a profound material witness to a family’s history, a town that was lost, and a lineage that endured.