By Tasha Ackerman
I met with Brooke Rich, a history teacher from St. Joseph Missouri, on a Zoom call in late April 2024. She signed on to the call from her classroom in the United States, while I was in the Youth Village where I teach English in Israel. Brooke and I are both teachers from the Midwest region of the US, so it already felt like we had a lot in common. Yet, as we began speaking, it became clear that these commonalities went deeper. We both feel a draw towards Judaism and for the perseverance of Jewish stories. I was raised with Jewish traditions, but Brooke has no Jewish family that she knows of. However, her husband, Alex Rich has Jewish ancestors. In the past year, Brooke followed her instincts and discovered a family history that taught her about Jewish perseverance when her journey to preserve history became personal.
Last summer, Brooke attended “The Power of Place European Educator Tour,” with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. The trip was designed for teachers from the Midwest region of the United States to visit and learn about countries in Europe that were impacted by the Holocaust. While Brooke briefly learned about the Holocaust in history classes, being in these places forced Brooke to confront history: by being in these physical locations, she could understand the suffering that these people endured. The trip inspired her to dig into the Jewish side of her husband’s genealogy and has since been on a journey to understand how these stories are also woven into her family’s DNA.
On her trip, Brooke visited sites such as concentration camps, museums, and community spaces. As she walked through Auschwitz-Birkenau, where unimaginable atrocities occurred against the Jewish people, Brooke felt inspired to learn more: she wanted to know these stories. She knew her husband, Alex, had Jewish family and wondered about their past. As she walked through concentration camps across Europe, she felt a drive to discover her family’s story once she arrived back home. She wanted to be able to one day share it with her young daughter, Caylee.
Brooke began mapping Alex’s family tree and has since narrowed her research on the Feldman line, making it her mission to find out as much information as possible on his Jewish ancestors whose roots traced back to Europe. She started by asking questions with relatives and doing her research on her own. Then, just three months ago, she connected with a distant cousin, whom Brooke described as a pro on genealogy. He was able to help fill many of the gaps that she had encountered on her family tree, and there were also pieces to the puzzle that she had discovered and that he could add to his research. He told her that the family came from the Drohiczyn. From there, Brooke was really able to begin connecting the dots.
Alex’s great-great-grandmother Esther was from Drohiczyn, a town in the present-day Brest region of Belarus. She moved to the United States with her husband David Friedman long before the Nazi invasion. Her family settled in St. Joseph, Missouri, where their family has continued to reside for generations. When Brooke started asking about this family history, Alex’s relatives believed that most of the family members left behind had perished in the Holocaust. Yet, as Brooke researched this family history more closely, she learned about Esther’s nephew, Yankel, who was just seven years old and living in Drohiczyn at the time of the Nazi invasion. She learned that Yankel had not only managed to survive the war, but that he is still alive and living in Israel.
Brooke first was able to connect with Anat Feldman, Yankel Feldman’s daughter. She currently resides in Canada and speaks English. In what Brooke assumed would be just a first, introductory phone call, Anat surprised her by sharing her father’s survival story. Brooke rapidly took notes, hoping to document the whole testimony. At first, Anat started by sharing details about her father’s family, but as Brooke shared anecdotes about herself and her family, the two became more comfortable with each other, creating a safe space for Anat to tell the story and for the two of them to be emotional with one another.
Esther Feldman’s parents, Chaya and Maier Yudel had ten children. One passed away as a child, and of the remaining nine children that were alive as WW2 broke out, seven had already left Drohiczyn and resettled in America or the British Mandate of Palestine. Two children remained in Drohiczyn: Esther’s brother Lieb and sister Bashka. Lieb and his wife Liba had two children, Yankel and Dubka. All of the family members lived in a house on a farm. When the Nazis first arrived in Drohizcyn, the family felt that they were treated decently because it seemed to them that they were mostly after communists. However, when the Gestapo replaced the soldiers, they imposed draconian measures. The family’s cows were confiscated and additional taxes were forced upon them. Yankel’s father, Leib, was sent to a work camp in Radastow, Poland. Yet, the family maintained a traditional Jewish household by continuing to celebrate holidays and keeping traditions such as eating challah, which Yankel still remembers of his childhood.
In 1942, two ghettos were created in Drohiczyn by surrounding the neighbourhoods with barbed wire. One ghetto was for skilled workers, and the other was for those that Nazis deemed as “useless” Jews. First, a local policeman arrived to mark the Feldman house with a yellow Star of David. Then the next day, Yankel recalled that the Germans returned and knocked on their door. They were let in, and all of the family members instinctively knew to remain quiet. They were ordered to join all of the Jews confined to the ghetto in the town square, where they were to be sorted between the two ghettos. As Chaya was wheelchair-bound, she remained in the house with Maier Yudel. Maier Yudel asked permission to pray, and the soldier permitted him to put on a tallit and say a prayer for the family. This is the last memory anyone in the family has of Maier Yudel and Chaya.
Once in the town square, the Jews were split between the two ghettos. As Yankel was just a child, he was sent towards the “useless” camp. His aunt, Bashka, knew something was not right, so she grabbed him and found bushes to hide in all night. However, in the morning they were caught by a local policeman. Bashka and the policeman locked eyes, acknowledging a mutual understanding that they had caught each other doing something that they were not supposed to do: Bashka was hiding, and the policeman was stealing possessions from the evacuated homes of Jews. So, rather than report Bashka, he sent them to the ghetto where they were reunited with Yankel’s mother, Liba Feldman and baby sister, Dubka Feldman. Yankel learned that his grandparents, Chaya and Maier Yudel had been removed from their home, brought to the town square, and sent on a truck for extermination.
As Anat Feldman, Yankel’s daughter told Brooke this story over the phone, at this point in the story they were both in tears, crying both for the pain experienced by their shared family, those who would not be saved. They cried for Bashka, who put her own life at risk to save Yankel. The experience for Brooke to learn this history over a phone call was unlike any history she had studied before. It’s striking, that someone who has committed a career to teaching others about history, that this history Brooke was now learning was unwritten.
Yankel and Aunt Bashka moved to Radostova, the village near the labour camp where his father had been sent. During this time, the ghetto where his mother and sister remained was eliminated. The women and children, including Liba and Dubka, were brought to a mass grave where they were shot and killed. In Radostova, Yankel was sent to the same labour camp where his father was to chop wood and send timber up the river. However, as the river started to freeze with the changing season, the need for their labour diminished. When they saw Nazi tanks coming into town in November 1942, those in the labour camp knew that their only chance for survival would be to escape to the forest.
Anat paused before continuing to tell the story, so Brooke could tell that the next part would be challenging. Lieb and Yankel went running into the woods. Yankel remembers the chaos, there was a lot of snow, panic, and the sound of gunshots. Yankel and his father Lieb ran, but at seven years old, eventually, Yankel could not keep up. His father hoisted up his son and continued running. Despite being weak from the labour camp, he managed to carry Yankel as they continued to run into the forest. However, he was ultimately shot and killed by Nazis as he ran with his child in his arms. With the motivation of his father’s last words urging him to keep running, Yankel persisted and continued into the forest, now alone.
Brooke describes the phone call as silencing here, just the sound of heavy breathing between her and Anat. Brooke describes, “I have wanted to hear this story for years and know what happened to them but now that I am actually hearing it with my own ears from his daughter I just want to scream, cry, and yell all at the same time.” However, Anat begins speaking and the story continues. She explains how her father carried guilt for this his entire life, blaming himself for his father’s death. Over the years, more details have come out as he has retold the story. He has shared in schools, businesses, and Zikaron BaSalons, which are intimate settings where survivors share their testimonies of the Shoah.
Yankel would spend the next several years amongst partisan groups in the forest, and eventually end up in an orphanage until he was eighteen and drafted into the Russian military. Anat described her father’s spirit and personality as his greatest strengths, which allowed him to make friends wherever he went. He had been able to hide how alone he was, being the sole survivor in his family. Yankel knew that he had family in America and Israel, though making contact with them was another challenge. Before entering into the army, Yankel wrote to a Jewish publication that made its way to Jewish communities around the world. Someone who resided in Buenos Aires, who was also from Drohizcyn, got a hold of the newspaper. He knew Yankel’s family and contacted Yankel’s uncle Joseph who lived in Chicago, USA.
When Joseph discovered that Yankel was alive, he wanted to meet him. However, at the time, communication between the United States and USSR was very difficult. The KGB was aware that a phone call was arranged between Joseph and Yankel, in which Yankel confirmed his identity as Joseph’s nephew. In 1960 Joseph and Yankel met in Sochi, Russia. The meeting was emotional, and Joseph informed Yankel that he had family in the United States and Israel who wanted Yankel to join them. In 1974, now with a wife and two children, Yankel moved to Israel.
For Brooke, the opportunity to meet with Anat and learn Yankel’s story was beyond what she had believed to be possible through her genealogical research. As a history teacher, she’s very familiar with historical texts, but by speaking with Anat, she was able to learn history from a personal perspective. In their phone call, Brooke shared with Anat how her family had begun learning about their Jewish heritage, such as making challah for the first time over Hannukah. After a few conversations together, Anat asked Brooke if she would like to meet with her father. They arranged a Zoom call: Brooke in the United States, Yankel in Israel, and Anat in Canada to translate.
In Anat’s earlier conversations with Brooke, she shared about her father’s passion for music. He had begun playing the accordion while living in the orphanage, and through his life continued to play instruments. He became a music teacher, and even continued to teach music to children in Israel after his retirement. When Anat, Yankel, and Brooke met over Zoom, Yankel played the piano for everyone. Brooke explained that as Yankel played the piano, she cried the entire time. She was unable to believe everything that happened to him and his family, and how all of the experiences in their lives brought them to this moment of connection. By speaking to Yankel, face-to-face, this unbelievable story became real.
Brooke’s daughter Caylee is the same age as Yankel’s granddaughter, so the children were also met over Zoom. Even though they do not speak the same language, they could connect through toys and movement. Caylee asks her mom about Yankel’s granddaughter frequently. In March 2024 when Iran launched over 300 missiles towards Israel, Brooke and her daughter prayed for the safety of Yankel, his children, and grandchildren.
Since learning this story, Brooke has been inspired to preserve this history and share it with others. First, she sat down with Alex’s family and shared the true story of what had happened to their ancestors. She made a presentation with photos and a narrative explaining Yankel’s Holocaust story. She has spoken with a local news station in St Joseph and recently was interviewed on a podcast, ‘Coffee with Bearded Bad Dad’. When she learned about The Together Plan’s Brest Memorial Campaign, she felt inspired. Reflecting on her experience in Europe, Brooke explained how memorials matter. “Standing there and having a place to remember those who were killed, it changed my life. And I think it changes most people.”
The Brest Memorial will be in the same region where her family’s ancestors were brutally murdered. She hopes the memorial can inspire others to learn about this history and provide a space to take her daughter one day to retell the story and remember what happened to their family. Brooke reflected, “I believe there is power in a place to go.”
As I write this article on Yom Hashoah. Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, it seems unbelievable that there are people who do know the history of the Holocaust and the impact it has had on the Jewish community. Yet, in places like St. Joseph, Missouri, where there is a Jewish population of less than 100, this history isn’t as easy to find unless you are looking for it. St. Joseph used to have three synagogues, all of which have closed, though there are plans for a new synagogue. Brooke explained, “The Jewish population is so small that I’ve just become really obsessed with keeping it alive.”
When Temple Adath Joseph closed this past year, Brooke stepped into action, saving as much Judaica as she could. She went to the synagogue and saw Stars of David and Torahs that were planned to be thrown away. The synagogue had housed a Torah that had been sent from London after the Holocaust, which even had burnt pages that served as a reminder of the war. The Jewish population in St. Joseph was sad to see these items go, but there was not enough space or funding to keep everything. The Torah was sent back to London. Brooke was devastated about knowing that St. Joseph had lost this historical artefact. Brooke preserved as much of the Judaica as she could by donating items to a Jewish cemetery in St. Joseph.
Preserving artefacts and creating memorials helps to keep the stories that form our history alive. They serve as a reminder of Jewish persistence. In Brooke’s presentation of the Feldman family, she reflects on the mass grave where thousands of Jews were killed in Drohicyn. Soviet records suggest over 3800 Jews were murdered in a mass grave that now is only marked with a small white fence. In the presentation, Brook explains: “Without that fence, without that marker, we would have no idea that my husband’s blood along with thousands of others is buried in that mass grave. They were murdered just for who they were and just because they were Jewish.”
Brooke’s journey of discovery shows the significance of these markers, of these reminders of history. In Germany, for example, civilians today are confronted with the history of the Holocaust. Memoralized concentration camps such as Dachau remain that were built aside still active towns. Yet, in Belarus and across Europe, there are so many unmarked sites. Sharing Yankel’s story and crowdfunding for The Together Plan’s Brest Memorial Campaign allows Brooke to preserve the story, share it with others, and contribute to a space for others to reflect on the past.
https://sztetl.org.pl/en/node/1509/99-history/137257-history-of-community
https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories/killing-site/14627309-Drohiczyn-Cemetery