Martin and Barbara Mayden honor Marcus, Lena Weiss, and Jacob Sperling, who all lived in Lubaczow. Lena Weiss grew up on a farm and moved into the city when she was eighteen. There, she married Marcus Sperling, who was a wholesale distributor of sugar and matches. He was a prominent man in the city, and was able to provide a good livelihood for his family. The couple had three children, Esther, Liesl, and Jacob. Their lives all changed drastically when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. Marcus, Lena Weiss, and Jacob Sperling were all forced to live in the Jewish ghetto; Esther never saw these three family members again after she left the ghetto during a brief and dangerous visit around 1941. When she came to see her family, her mother dropped to the floor, and asked her why she had come home, stating that “there is a fire burning here, they’re killing us.” Her family urged her to run away, and she did so the next day. Esther survived the Holocaust, and started a new life in the United States after the war. She later found out that her father had been shot by a Ukrainian, and her mother and family spent a part of the war hiding in the forest. She and her family survived until two weeks before liberation, but they were shot when they were discovered by the police.
The Nashville Holocaust Memorial