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EDEK’S STORY:
Edek was saved by a Christian family. He remembers being told now and then to hide inside a pillow(!) “because the Germans were coming”.
After the war he was found in the area of Sanok in southeast Poland by a Koordynacja activist.
He was brought to one of the children’s homes run by the Zionist organization Koordynacja in Poland - probably to Kaminitz - and it was noted on his Koordynacja card that his parents had died.
Later he was brought through Europe (Germany and France) to Eretz Israel.
He arrived aboard Providence in Haifa in the end of December 1947.
RESEARCH JOURNAL OCTOBER 2005
PHOTOS OF YOUNG EDEK
After the war Edek Szuflita was a Koordynacja child.
The photos of Edek, taken after the war, can be found at the website of Beth Lochamei Haghettaot http://www.gfh.org.il . Beth Lochamei Haghettaot has made available much of their archive concerning the Koordynacja children online. We publish these photos here with the permission of Yossi Shavit, the director of the archives at Beth Lochamei Haghettaot.
IS SZUFLITA A JEWISH FAMILY NAME?
After checking out Pages of Testimony, the Israeli telephone register, JewishGen’s Family Finder, JRI-Poland, Jewish passengers on Ellis Island, the conclusion seems to be that there are no Jewish families named Szuflita.
If you have information about any Jewish family with this name, please tell us.
SZUFLITA AS A NON JEWISH FAMILY NAME.
Checking Ellis Island (1892 – 1924) it turned out that those named Szuflita (12 listings, probably only ten individuals) were all Ruthenians (Ukrainians) and most of them came from two small places in south east Poland, near Pruchnik, south of Jaroslaw.
One place is called Kramarzowka and the other Tuliglowy.
Two possibilities:
- Szuflita is a fairly rare family name.
- Families named Szuflita come from this part of Galicia.
If this is true, it will be easier to find living descendants of the Szuflita family, and it will be easier to find the names of the family that saved Edek..
OUR EDWARD SZUFLITA
As we have already seen, at least during the war, this boy was called Edward Szuflita.
According to what he was been told be the Red Cross, his father’s name was Edward Szuflita.
If that is true, some possibilities are:
- His Jewish father had died before Edek was born and he was named after his dead father. We see this as less likely.
- His father Edward Szuflita was not Jewish and had married a Jewish girl named Malka. When their child was born in 1938 or 1939, they gave him the father’s given name.
In our opinion, it is more likely, that Szuflita is the name of the family that saved him.
Considering that Edek was not circumcised, had blond hair and blue eyes, he had a chance of passing as the son of a Christian family. The fact that he remembers he had to hid inside a pillow “because the Germans were coming” shows that the family who saved him were afraid the Germans should discover him.
OTHER PERSONS NAMED EDWARD SZUFLITA
Around 1894 Josef Szuflita was born in Kramarzowka. He was sixteen years old when he emigrated to the States. There he met and married a woman from Lomza and around 1918 their son Edward Szuflita was born in the States. Probably around 1922/1923, the young family went to visit relatives in Poland. They returned to the States in 1923.
In the American Social Security Death Index, out of twenty persons, three are named Edward Szuflita.
Edward W Szuflita was born in 1914 and died in 1988, probably in Buffalo, NY.
Edward Szuflita was born 1916 and died in 1973. File opened in Illinois.
Edward J Szuflita was born 1920 and died in 1995. He was a retired railroad worker.
He had been a “wrecking train engineer” who lived in Buffalo NY in
1954 when he was injured in a train accident.
Our hope is that the name Edward Szuflita will help Edek find the family that saved him.
SZUFLITA IN US TELEPHONE DIRECTORIES.
There are not more than ten or eleven listings of persons named Szuflita in the States.
We hope that some of these will be able to help us.
Perhaps they know about relatives back in Poland who saved a little boy during the war?
Perhaps they know about a Szuflita family who stayed in Sanok or in the Sanok area during the war?
Perhaps our Edek will one day find the names of those courageous people who saved him?
SZUFLITA
The next step in this search will be to look for SZUFLITA in the ITS Master Index and other resources at Yad Vashem.
RESEARCH JOURNAL JULY 2006
Lately we got an email from Magda Szuflita who will try to find out if any of her relatives know anything about a child being saved by the Szuflita family in southeast Poland.
RESEARCH JOURNAL NOVEMBER 2006
In one of the documents it says Edek was born in Krakow.. We would therefore like to ask for additional nformation about another person named SZUFLITA who was born in Krakow - namely Kasimir SZUFLITA. He was born May 7th 1910. He was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and got the number 19769. On August 28th 1940 he was transferred from Sachsenhausen to Dachau.
From Dachau he was transferred to Buchenwald.
He died in Buchenwald on October 1942.
Was he married? Did he have children? This information may be helpful.
Note: Use the comment box below if you have any information. Please add only relevant information for this profile . Your own search requests for other visitors to read, may be added to the message board.
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