Rachel (Goodman Bendalin) Lipson was born on April 18, 1910 in Shaudina, Lithuania to Jacob and Chana (Goodman) Bendalin. She lived on and helped run her parents’ farm. She had four brothers and two sisters. Rachel met Sundel Lipson, and they were married in 1931. Sundel and Rachel moved to Kovno, where they had two children, Moshe and Mina.
Despite pleadings from Rachel’s brothers and sisters to move to the United States when the Nazis began persecuting the Jews in Lithuania, Sundel and Rachel stayed in Kovno. They were eventually moved to the ghetto. Rachel’s parents were murdered by the Nazis in 1941, and Sundel’s parents were murdered in 1941 and 1942. On July 9, 1944, Moshe and Mina were taken away by the Nazis and were never seen again. Rachel was transported, along with her sister-in-law, Chana, and her two children, to Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig, Poland. Sundel and his brother, Lazar, were taken to Dachau. Lazar and Chana’s two children died of starvation in 1944.
Sundel and Rachel, Lazar and Chana were liberated in March 1945. Although hearing that Sundel had died in Dachau, Rachel paid a black marketer to obtain forged identity papers and searched for Sundel. After months of searching for each other, Rachel and Sundel were reunited in Feldafing, Germany. Their son Myer was born in 1946 in a displaced persons camp, and their daughter Mima was born in 1948. In 1949, with their remaining money and the help of Rachel’s relatives in El Paso, Texas, including Joe H. Goodman, the family moved to El Paso.
After Sundel’s death in 1960, Rachel took over his business, Sun Dry Goods, Co. She passed away in El Paso on December 9, 1984.
Connecting Stories: Sundel Lipson