Bucharest, Romania

Pepe Zielinski

My mother was born in 1910 in Romania. She met my father, Chaim Zielinski in an Austrian DP camp where they married (her first marriage) in 1947 or 1948. She was my father’s second wife (his first wife and their 7 children perished in the Shoah). My parents immigrated to the U.S. in December 1949. HIAS placed them in Lincoln, Nebraska, where they knew no one, but they made a life. I was born in 1952 when my father was 52 years old and my mother was nearly 42. She died when I was 6 years old and my father raised me to the best of his abilities. I know little about her family as we lost touch after her death. I have fleeting memories of her as a warm and loving woman. I hope I would have made her proud.