Sales-Sperling
Efrat Sales, 3rd generation, at Candle Lighting ceremony, the Annual Memorial Gathering 2019:
Efrat’s grandfather, Shimon Sperling-Sales z”, a carpenter, was born in Drohobycz. At the
outbreak of the war, he served in the Polish army. After the Soviet occupation he returned to
Drohobycz. When the Nazis occupied the town, he was transferred to the ghetto and from there
to a forced labor camp where he worked as an electrician. Towards the end of the war, when
the red army was approaching, Shimon was able to find a hiding place and thus saved himself
when the Germans liquidated the camp.
After the liberation Shimon joined the Red Army to fight the Nazis. When he returned to
Drohobycz after the war, he discovered that his entire family perished: His father Joseph and
sisters Elka, Mina and Rosa were murdered in Treblinka. His mother Dvora, his sister Shifra and
his brother Moshe were murdered in the Bronica forest. His sister Lippa was murdered by
Ukrainians.
The ship “Kneset Israel” on which Shimon sailed to Israel was captured by the British and the
passengers transferred to a detention camp on Cyprus. In 1948 Shimon finally arrived in Israel.
He fought and was wounded in the War of Independence. After the war, Shimon married Rivka
z”l and worked as an electrician in El-Al. Joseph, Shimon’s and Rivka’s son, managed the
imaging center at the Wolfson hospital. Joseph and his wife Tilda have two children Nir and
Efrat, a Public Health Ph.D. candidate in the Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva.
