Enlarge

Manny and Lenore Chulew, 1968

Holocaust survivor Manny Chulew and wife Lenore in Jerusalem, Israel. View the original source document: WHI 56472

Manny Chulew was a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust who settled in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after World War II.

Mendel (Manny) Chulew was born on January 5, 1924, in Rymanow, Poland. Its pre-war population was more than 90 percent Jewish. Manny was the son of a small business owner. As war approached in September 1939, Manny's family fled east into Russian-occupied Poland to escape persecution. Late in 1940, Soviet authorities shipped the Chulews' to work camps in Siberia along with over 50,000 other Polish Jewish refugees.

When the Germans attacked on Russia in June 1941, the Siberian refugees were released. The Chulew family made their way to Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, where they lived until 1946. On their return trip to Poland, Manny's mother died in Lublin. They continued their journey only to find that every Jew in their city had been killed. The family reached a displaced persons camp at Steyr, Austria, and spent nearly five years in various camps before immigrating to New York in December 1951.

Manny's uncle convinced the family to join him in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the summer of 1952. Within a month of their arrival, the family opened Chulew Furniture. In 1960 they acquired Barr Furniture, which they operated for the next several decades. Manny became a well-known member of the Kenosha business community and married Lenore Shain of Chicago in 1956. The couple had two daughters.

Manny Chulew, Oral History Interview

Manny's Testimony

Listen to Manny Chulew tell his story to the Wisconsin Historical Society interviewer.

Learn More

Oral Histories: Wisconsin Survivors of the Holocaust

Hear the stories of 22 Holocaust Survivors and two American witnesses interviewed between 1974 and 1981.