Testimony of Yosef Fireman, son of Esther & Zalman and brother of the missing twins

My parents, Esther and Zalman Fireman immigrated to this country in 1936 from the city of Łódź, Poland, and settled in Tel Aviv. They worked in Łódź in the textile industry, and when they arrived here they opened a fish stall in Ha'Aliyah Market.

In 1941, my mother gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, in the Mazeh Hospital in Tel Aviv. The twins were born after my two older siblings. I was born in 1942 and have a twin sister as well. My parents bore two sets of fraternal twins naturally. My eldest brother and my twin sister have now passed away, as well as my mother and father.

The twins that were born before us, in 1941, were hospitalized for two weeks due to their low birthweight. My mother was with them the entire time, but when two weeks passed, she went to pick them up from the hospital and was told that they had died. My parents were not shown bodies, nor were they given a death certificate or a burial site. They simply left without being given any explanation or supporting documents. I assume that my parents never gave the twins names because they wanted to wait until the boy’s Brit (circumcision), which was to take place after the discharge from hospital.

When we were little, our parents never spoke about it at home, but once our older siblings grew up, they did speak with my twin sister and I about it and told us that Mom and Dad had twins who disappeared, a boy and a girl. My eldest brother, his memory be blessed, would always mention this dream that he had, a kind of a wish, to walk in the street and spot someone who looked like him, who looked like us - and maybe find the missing twins that way.

I’m already elderly, but my children are well familiar with the story of the twins’ disappearance … their aunt and uncle they never got to meet.

These days, now that I’ve already lost my wife after her five-years' battle with cancer, I want to start searching for some kind of connective thread within the community of Łódź immigrants who are still in Tel Aviv. Maybe one of them remembers, or has heard of them, or knows something.