This section explores the two branches of the Salit family that remained in Lithuania when Melach, Annie (Grandma) and Jack came to England. Grandma had two siblings: Tuvye who lived with his fmaily in Vilna, and Sorretel who lived with her family (the Lancmans) in Kovno. These two places are now known at Vilnius and Kaunas.
In the 1990s Gittel Jackson (Jack Salit's daughter) contacted the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland to try and trace members of the family who might have survived the holocaust.
She received the following reply (thanks to Steve Noble and Charlie Noble for their help in forwarding this). Please note: a lot more information has emerged since this communication from the 1990s but it remains an interesting piece of information in its own right.
“I am pleased to report that we have much information regarding Salits from Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania). First and most importantly, it appears not to be the case that no Salits survived. In the registry of Polish Jewish survivors that was compiled by the Central Committee of the Jews in Poland during the years 1945 to 1947, we have several Salits listed, most of them from Vilna.”
The letter gives information about several Salits. The most relevant information as far as we can ascertain is about Emilia Salit-Aleksandrowicz (nee Salit), daughter of Tobiasz (Tuvye) and Rozia, born in Vilna on 24th April 1903. Her pre-war address was 4 Teatralna Street in Vilna. She was in Vilna until 1942 and then in the Stutthof concentration camp until liberation in 1945. She registered with the Jewish comittee in Bydgoszcz by January 1946 with a hospital address (she is a physician) and then registered again in Gliwice on 8th September 1947. By that time, she was employed at the State Cancer Institute (Panstwowy Instytut Przeciwrakowy) in Gliwice. Her home address was ul. Choroby 6/1 Gliwice.
There seem to be various links here with the family. First, the Salit-Davidson family tree shows that Anna Davidovitch, Melach Salit and Jack Salit - all of who came to the UK - had a sister, Sorettel, and a brother, Tevye. For full information about Tevye (Tuvye) see the Davnob page Tuvye Salit and his family. For information about Sorettel see the Davnob page Tsodik and Sorretel Lantsman.
The family in England kept contact with Sorettel’s children (she married Tsodik Landsman) until the war but there was no information about them afterwards. There doesn’t seem to have been any contact with Tevye’s children before the war. But shortly after the war contact was briefly made with a daughter of Tevye who was a doctor - but then contact was lost again. It would seem likely that this was the same person listed above.
We have no idea whether or not we have any family links with the other Salits listed. If we have then they must be very distant cousins. We list them below (reg: is the date that they registered with local Jewish committees after the war). (The first names are the parental names given - they weren’t themselves registered).
Calel and Hiena
Abram b:1913 reg: Warsaw 1945 m: Malka (nee Zylber)
Rojza b: 1945 reg: Lodz
Marja b:1915 reg: Breslau 1946
Gita b: 1919 reg: Lodz 1946
Szmul and Marta
Chawa b: 1903 reg: Lodz 1946 living with Hania(?)
Benjamin and Henia
Hania b: 1936 living with Chawa(?)
Majer and Masza (probably Salet - nee Rywa)
Ida b: 1934 reg: Lodz 1946
Majer b: 1919 reg: Lodz 1946
Morduch b: 1922 reg: Lodz: 1946
Abram and Sara (nee Szatz)
Jakub b: 1901 reg: Warsaw 1945
Mojsze and Chana
Sara reg: Lodz