This is an excerpt from the obituary for Anschel Warschau that was published in The Sheboygan Press on June 15, 2013:
Anschel Warschau, age 93, of Sheboygan, died peacefully Thursday morning, June 13, 2013.He was born March 3, 1920, in Lodz, Poland to Pincus and Blima Warschau. He attended schools in his hometown, where his father was a baker and he was a baker's helper. After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, they created a Ghetto in Lodz under their control. Being 19, street-smart and resourceful, Anschel sought any work he could to feed himself and his family. When he was sent to Strogen, a labor camp near Danzig, in May 1942, his family had been disbursed, one not knowing where the other had been sent. From July 1942 to October 1944, he was in the Kowno Labor Camp, Roja Labor Camp, Gavesen Labor Camp, Metenes Concentration Camp in Riga, Latvia, Kaiserwald Concentration Camp, Latvia, Stutthof Concentration Camp in Stutthof, and Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Germany. In October 1944, he was in Troeglitz Concentration Camp in Germany, until he was sent to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia in April of 1945, from which he was liberated in May 1945. Anschel traveled a bit throughout Europe. Eventually he made his way home to Lodz looking and hoping for any family or friends. He had lost his parents, two brothers and two sisters. Ultimately he found himself in a displaced persons camp in Feldafing, Germany where he worked as a policeman. It was there that he met Fela Jakubowicz and they were married on May 10, 1946. The couple, along with their daughter, Martha, immigrated to the United States and settled in Sheboygan in 1951.
Anschel was employed at Hayssen Mfg Co., until his retirement in 1985. Anschel wholeheartedly supported his wife, Fela's mission to educate others about their story of the Holocaust. He, too, felt passionately that his life's experiences should hold a place in history, and that people should know the truth of what happened. If asked, he would provide stories and details of the horrors he felt no one could ever believe. He was interviewed in the late 1970's for oral history documentation, and years later for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation. On October 2, 2011, the Mead Public Library celebrated the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the Fela and Anschel Warschau Room created as the home of Sheboygan's Jewish Holocaust Collection. The Room opening celebration was held on September 16, 2001.
Anschel was a faithful member of Congregation Beth El. Following Fela's death it was important for him to maintain his relationship with the Synagogue to continue the traditions that connected them to their faith and community.
He was a regular mall walker, where he met and made many friends over the years.
