BS”D 14 Sivan 5781 Dawid Alter Kurzmann was born in Rzeszow on 25 May 1865. In Kraków he was a trader and a philanthropist. He came to this city in 1887 and lived in Kazimierz on ul. Mostowa 10. After the expulsion in 1941 he was forced to live near Plac Zgody 16 (today’s Plac Bohaterów Getta). He was connected to the chassidic movement and with the Reb Aron house of prayer on ul. Józefa 33. At the same time he was active in the Agudat (“Agudat Israel” , an international political party among Orthodox Jews) and was the vice-president of its Kraków branch. He was active also in the Jewish Community, where he was a council member and responsible for religious matters. Starting already a few years before the…

BS”D 12 Sivan 5781 Gizela Reicher-Thon, may she rest in peace, was born on 23 May 1904. She was a researcher of literature, called the mother of Polish Comparative Literature. In 1914 she finished her general schooling and then studied in private girls’ secondary school. In 1922 she passed her school exam and then read Polish and English philology, linguistic and philosophy in the Jagiellonian University. She defended her doctoral thesis in 1927 while still a student. After that, she worked as a teacher in a Secondary School and in a Jewish charity called Central for the Associations for Orphan Care. In 1933 her doctoral thesis was published. What happened to her in the Second World War is unknown. Photograph from National Archives in Kraków. Translation Dr D Cohen

BS”D 9 Sivan 5781 Architect Ferdynand Liebling, may he rest in peace, was born on 20 May 1877 in Kraków. He graduated from the Industrial School in the same city, which he attended from 1892 to 1896. In the academic year 1903/04 he worked as an assistant in the construction department in the school he had attended. His most famous works include the buildings on ul. Starowiślna 32 (shown below from Wikimedia Commons), Wielopole 9, Dietla 25 and 27, the restructuring of the Jewish hospital on Skawinska 8, Kordeckiego 3 and 5, the restructuring of the Tempel Synagogue and the house of mutual support on ul. Szpitalna 24 and together with Jozua Oberleder the building on Stanisława 12. He was murdered by Germans on 1942, may the name of the…

BS”D 8 Sivan 5781 Maksymilian Rose, son of Eliasz, was born on 19 May 1883 in Przemysl. He was a neurologist, a neuroanatomist and a psychiatrist. He was a professor of neurology and psychiatry in the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius. He finished medical school with distinction in the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He practised in many European hospitals. During 1911-12 he was an Assistant in the cantonal ward for the mentally ill in Rheinau in Switzerland. Starting on 1912 he worked in the neurology lab in the department of descriptive anatomy of the Jagiellonian University. During the First World War he was a battalion doctor in the Polish Legions and then he directed the neuropsychiatric ward of the military hospitals in Przemysl and Kraków. He also had his own…