Herman Storick, an American descendant of Polish Jews who worked to save the Jewish cemetery in his ancestral village in northern Poland, has died, aged 94. He lived for many years in Larchmont, NY, and had recently moved to Georgia.

In this guest post,  Krzysztof Bielawski, one of the foremost researchers on Jewish cemeteries in Poland, remembers Storick and his work in an obituary. (We also post an interview he carried out with Storick in 2016, about his roots and keeping memory alive.)

Herman Storick z”l 1929-2024

By Krzysztof Bielawski

On March 14, 2024, Herman Storick passed away – the man who saved the history of the Jews from Jeleniewo from oblivion.

Herman Storick was born June 26, 1929 in New York. He was a descendant of Rejzel Michałowska, who in 1912 emigrated to the United States from Jeleniewo – a small shtetl in the Suwałki region of northern Poland.

“As a child, my mother fired up my imagination with stories about Jeleniewo. I heard about an uncle, his wife and five children who decided not to emigrate, but to stay and continue traditional life in the countryside,” Storick said years later. “My aunt Malka Michałowska left Jeleniewo for the United States before World War I as a young woman. She worked hard and, despite her modest income, was able to bring her younger sister Chana. Then they invited the youngest sister, 16-year-old Rejzel Michałowska, my mother.”

In 1989, Herman Storick, who ran a travel agency, together with his wife Cecilia and son Adam, visited Jeleniewo for the first time. In the village he came across a devastated and overgrown Jewish cemetery. Finding the gravestones was almost a miracle.

Storick decided that the cemetery would be tidied up. In the following years, the Storick family financed cleaning works and the construction of a stone wall. In 1992, a monument designed by Cecilia Storick commemorating the Jews of Jeleniewo was unveiled.

At the cemetery there is a container for leaflets about the history of the cemetery with a list of preserved tombstones. Until the end of his life, Herman Storick paid for a cemetery caretaker. He was supported by parish priest Władysław Podeszwik, the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage, and the Nissenbaum Family Foundation.

Today, the cemetery in Jeleniewo is one of the best-kept Jewish cemeteries in the Suwałki region. There are about 30 tombstones, the oldest of which date back to the end of the 18th century. In addition to the church built in 1878, the cemetery is the main attraction for visitors to Jeleniewo.

Thanks to the efforts of Herman Storick, in cooperation with the “Pogranicze” Center and the late Jan Jagielski from the Jewish Historical Institute, a brochure on the history of Jews in Jeleniewo was published.

The last time Herman visited his mother’s shtetl was in 2016. He was welcomed by several dozen residents and the priest. Together they prayed for the Jews from Jeleniewo – those buried in the cemetery and those murdered in ghettos in the Lublin region.

In recent years, Herman’s health did not allow him to travel. However, he constantly thought about Jeleniewo and often called his friends in Poland.

May his soul be bound up in the bond of life!

NOTE: This obituary originally appeared in Polish on the web site jewish.pl

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Watch an oral history interview with Storick carried out by Bielawski in 2016: