The Freunds of Satu Mare
Sender and Chana Freund, Reb Chaim, and the family textile firm
Babi’s father, Nachman Alexander — Sender, Sándor — Freund, was born on 24 September 1893 at Kurima, a village near Bardejov in today’s Slovakia, where his mother’s family, the Sterns, lived. The Kurima register names his parents as “Freund Chaim, of Máramarossziget” and “Stern Chaja, of Kurima”; the same register holds his brothers and sisters Leitza (1883), Yehoshua (1885), Lázár (1885, died 1888), Anschel (1888) and Yitzchak (1891). Later children — Yosef, Tuvia (1898), Moshe Aryeh (1903) and Bernát (1909) — were born after the family settled in Satu Mare.
In Satu Mare the family built the textile firm “Freund Chaim fiai” — Chaim Freund & Sons — a wholesale house founded in 1898 that added a textile factory in 1934; the town’s yizkor book calls it the largest in Transylvania. Sender was a partner and, from its founding at the end of 1933, on the board of Textila Ardeleană SA. He was also a leader of the Orthodox kehilla of Satmar: elected vice-president in January 1934, acting president in 1939 and president in 1940. In May 1944 he gave Isser Handler money to build a hiding place, in which his son Yehoshua later hid; Sender himself survived in hiding. After the war he led the re-formed community until he died in Bucharest on 15 Cheshvan 5708 (29 October 1947), aged 54. He is buried in the Orthodox cemetery of Satu Mare.
Sender married Chana (Janka) Braun of Kisvárda. They had eight children: Nachman (1922), Feiga (who died in 1927, aged two), Yehoshua (1927), Asher Yaakov, Shmuel (Pilu), Moshe Aryeh, Chaya — Babi — (1931) and Yitzchak. Chana and the three youngest boys, Asher Yaakov (17), Moshe Aryeh (14) and Yitzchak (10), perished at Auschwitz on 27 May 1944; the family keeps their yahrzeit on 11 Sivan. Nachman settled in Israel, married his cousin Rachel, daughter of R’ Yosef Freund, and died in 1982; Yehoshua (Shea) and Shmuel (Pilu) lived in Brooklyn.
Sender’s father, Chaim Freund, was born in Sighet in November 1863, the son of R’ Moshe Aryeh Freund, rosh hakahal of Sighet. In Satu Mare he became treasurer (1921) and then vice-president (1923, 1925, 1927) of the Orthodox community and, in practice, its leader: in August 1928 he conducted the election that brought R’ Yoel Teitelbaum to Satmar as its Rav, and his signature heads the letter of appointment. He emigrated to Jerusalem at the end of 1939, helped found the Satmar community there, and died on 6 Nisan 5710 (24 March 1950); he is buried at the Sheikh Badr cemetery. His first wife, Chaya, daughter of Shmuel Stern of Kurima, died in Satu Mare on 28 October 1926. That the Kurima “Chaim Freund of Sighet” is this Reb Chaim is graded Likely: the yizkor book names Reb Chaim’s sons as Yitzchak, Yehoshua, Anschel, Sender, Yosef and Tuvia — the same sons — his wife’s stone matches, and at Babi’s funeral a grandson of her brother called her “the last surviving grandchild of Reb Chaim Freund”.
Of Sender’s brothers, Yitzchak died in Satu Mare in 1932; his widow Dina and four of their children perished in 1944. Yehoshua, a textile wholesaler in Nyíregyháza, perished at Auschwitz with his wife Devorah and their daughter Rachel in June 1944, and Anschel, a textile factory owner in Satu Mare, with his wife Margit on 4 June 1944. Yosef and Tuvia, partners in the firm, survived and are buried on Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem.
The Freund family
- R’ Moshe Aryeh Freund of Sighet (d. 1902) × Chane Malke née Katz
- Reb Chaim Freund, 1863–1950 × Chaya née Stern (d. 1926) — Likely
- Leitza, b. 1883
- Yehoshua, 1885–1944 × Devorah Lefkowitz
- Lázár, 1885–1888
- Anschel, 1888–1944 × Margit Paskesz
- Yitzchak, c.1891–1932 × Dina
- Sender, 1893–1947 × Chana Braun
- Nachman, Feiga, Yehoshua, Asher Yaakov, Shmuel, Moshe Aryeh, Chaya — Babi, Yitzchak
- Yosef, 1895/96–1962
- Tuvia Gedalia, 1898–1977
- Moshe Aryeh, b. 1903
- Bernát, 1909–1918