Nathan Weiselman was born on April 26, 1914 in Radom, Poland. He was forced into the Radom ghetto in early 1940. He was then transported to Lublin, Poland and then to Cieszanow labor camp. Nathan was deported to Majdanek, one of the six notorious death camps in Poland.
Nathan escaped from Majdanek into the Polish countryside but sneaked back into a German camp where he thought he might have a better chance of survival. But he was returned to Majdanek a second time. In the fall of 1940, he escaped again- this time fleeing into the forests in the east. He surrendered to the Russians and was taken to Lwow, Poland then to Starobielsk, Russia and ultimately to Vorkuta, Russia in a region so far north that he lived alongside the “Russian Eskimos.” Nathan was detained there from 1941 until his release in the fall of 1944. He lived in Stavropol Caucasus, Russia until the war ended. He returned briefly to Radom in 1945, then to a displaced persons camp in Salzburg, Austria, where he met Lola (Lea) Zegen, who became his wife in 1948.
After Salzburg, Nathan and Lea moved to a displaced persons camp in Bari, Italy, where their son, David, was born. They were able to immigrate to the United States in 1951. Nathan was first employed as a tailor at the Popular Dry Goods Company in downtown El Paso, but, in 1953, they moved to Las Cruces to open their own tailor shop. He then opened a larger store, Nathan’s Men’s Wear and Tailors, in the early 1960s. He and Lea managed the business until they retired in 1983. They moved to California in 2006 to be near their son. Nathan died on April 28, 2008.
Connecting Stories: Lea Weiselman