︎

Building a Family in the USA



Bert lived for almost 70 more years after arriving in the US in 1949, and with his wife Esther had 5 children and six grandchildren. Here you can see some selected photos of Bert with his family, immediate and extended.
Bert pictured in Atlanta, where his uncle Tobias Geffen was Rabbi from 1910 until his death in 1960. Here with (L-R) Anna Geffen, her son Rabbi David Geffen, her husband Louis Geffen (son of R. Tobias), and Bert's eldest daughter Andrea. Photo dated November 3, 1998. Bert with his cousin and fellow Holocaust survivor Dov Levin, visiting the grave of Riva Gutman (written here in Hebrew as רבקה גוטמן) in Israel where she is buried. Photo dated June 6, 1989. Bert with his cousin Dov Levin. After escaping from the Kovno ghetto, he joined "Death to the Conquerors," a militant partisan detachment operating in the forests around Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania, working to liberate ghettos and sabotage Nazi machinations. After Soviet liberation, he made the trip from Vilna to Bari, Italy (an arduous journey which included crossing the Alps on foot) eventually settling in Tel Aviv, Israel. Dov went on to become a soldier, serving as a Patrol Commander and in the intelligence corps with the IDF for multiple wars, and later a professor at Hebrew University, where he had a decades-long career researching and writing about the memory of the murdered communities, the history of the Holocaust and Holocaust denial in the Baltic states, particularly Latvia and Lithuania. Bert with his wife Esther and daughter-in-law (and co-author of "On the Run") Bev Lewyn, at a surprise part for Esther's birthday thrown at Bev (and her husband Marc)'s home. September 1, 1995. Esther and Bert with their second-youngest grandchild, Rachel Lewyn, attending a family event at her Jewish day school. Photo dated February 27, 2003.