Nettie and Morris Adelsberg

Morris and Nettie Adelsberg (née Zycer) were both born in the rural town of Krasnystaw, he in 1923 and she in 1925. There were few Jews in Krasnystaw, and Nettie often experienced antisemitism during her early years at public school. 

Krasnystaw was bombed and occupied by Nazi forces in 1939. Jews in Krasnystaw, including the Zycers, were forced into the Krasnystaw ghetto, which was not tightly sealed. Nettie’s father initially fled to Soviet-controlled territory in the East, but returned to the ghetto a few weeks later, where hunger was the norm. Nettie’s brother Shmul took risks to obtain extra food from neighboring Polish towns. Nettie worked as a maid for a Polish woman and her volksdeutsche (ethnically German) husband at a milling factory. This allowed her to avoid the liquidation of the ghetto, during which her brother and mother were deported and went missing. Her father escaped to the Soviet Union.

After the liquidation of the Krasnystaw ghetto, Nettie was on her own and hid on a farm. While in hiding, Nettie met Morris Adelsberg, whom she would later marry. After leaving the farm, Morris and Nettie attempted to hide in a deserted ghetto, with no luck. A friend whom they met took them to Rejowiec Ghetto. In Rejowiec, Nettie experienced terrible conditions and near-death experiences. When the ghetto was liquidated, Nettie was sent to Majdanek concentration camp.

In Majdanek, Netties injured her foot on a shard of glass after her shoes were stolen. She had to conceal the injury to avoid execution. She also had trouble getting to the front food lines. . She was only seventeen when she was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau. There she was tasked with picking vegetables in the surrounding fields. A year later, still alive, she was forced on a death march to Bergen-Belsen. Despite horrendous conditions in Bergen-Belsen, she was assigned to work in the kitchen, where she could steal extra food for survival. Bergen-Belsen was liberated by the British Army in April 1945. 

Meanwhile, Morris Adelsberg was liberated from Theresienstadt Concentration Camp. He found Nettie in Bergen-Belsen, which had been converted to a Displaced Persons camp. Nettie’s father, Herschel, joined them after returning from Russia in 1946. Herschel had remarried after learning that his wife had not survived. Nettie and Morris married, and welcomed their first child, Frieda, in Bergen-Belsen DP camp in 1946. They immigrated to the United States in 1949.

Nettie and Morris initially settled in Philadelphia and had a second child, David. They lived in Philadelphia until 1953, when they bought a small chicken farm in Vineland, New Jersey with a loan from the Jewish Agricultural Society. In 1963, Nettie and Morris sold the farm and moved to Detroit, Michigan, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Morris Adelsberg died April 21, 1995. Nettie Adelsberg died November 3, 2018.