David Tennenbaum

David Tennenbaum, age 91, of Islandia, New York passed away on Monday, July 25, 2022, after battling dementia. David was born March 31, 1931, in Lvov, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine). David was a holocaust survivor, who went into hiding with his mother, Fanny during the war. In August 1942 his family was sent to the Lwow (Kleparow) ghetto on the outskirts of Lvov. A few months later, David and his mother Fanny escaped from the ghetto. A Ukrainian professor who was a friend of the family assisted her escape and found them a temporary hiding place at the

home of an Ethnic German in Lvov. After a month, the professor secured false papers for David and his mother and found them a long-term hiding place in the village of Zimna Woda. They stayed in the home of an elderly retired schoolteacher, Mrs. Sokolinska. They were fortunate because shortly afterwards their first hiding place was raided and everyone there was arrested.

To hide from the Nazis, David grew his hair long, and took on the identity of a girl, Teresa Marja Wieczorkowska. As part of this identity, he pretended to have a learning disability. This was done to avoid having to take the required examination to attend school, where authorities could have discovered his true identity. Jozef, David’s father disappeared sometime in the spring of 1943, presumably deported to the Janowska concentration camp. In September 1944, David and his mother were liberated by the Soviets. Subsequently, they moved to Krakow, living in a Jewish children's home for the next two years. With the help of relatives in the US, David and his mother were able to obtain transit visas and moved to Paris waiting to come to America. Credit to “The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust” by Martin Gilbert

In March 1951, David and his mother finally departed for New York on the SS De Grasse. They lived in a tiny apartment in Manhattan with a bathtub in the kitchen. David worked and attended the City College of New York and obtained both Mechanical and Electrical Engineering degrees. He was later hired by Grumman Aerospace, working on the Apollo Lunar Module, and the F-14 Tomcat. In June 1959, David married Evelyn Tennenbaum and had two children, Jeffrey and Renee, moving to Long Island in 1965. He later divorced and lived with his partner Linda Becan, helping to raise Linda’s daughter Dakota as his own.

David was the original old grumpy man with a heart of gold. He was always there to help people and never gave up on them. He had a wicked sense of humor. He loved his days at the beach, camping trips with the family, his never-ending chili bowls, and the occasional shot of Jim Beam. He also loved to drive, although most of us would buckle up anytime we were in the car with him for good measure.

David once said that “every day, anything after World War II, was a gift from God”. For our family every day that we got to spend with him was a gift, and one that we will always be thankful for. Love you dad.

The family requests those who wish to express sympathy to consider making a donation to either the U.S. Holocaust Museum at https://www.ushmm.org/, or to the Alzheimer’s Association at https://alz.org. For anyone who would like to listen to an interview with David about his time during the holocaust, you can watch here: https://vhaonline.usc.edu/phone/Search/Testimony/22207 Thank you!