NEKHE BAKALTSHUK (NECHE BAKALCZUK)

NEKHE BAKALTSHUK (NECHE BAKALCZUK) (July 10, 1908-June 1953)

Born in Koltunian (Kaltinenai), Lithuania.  Her maiden name was Tabakhovitsh (Tabachowicz).  She studied in religious elementary school and graduated from the Vilna middle school and the Hebrew pedagogical course.  She worked as a teacher in Melnitsi (Galicia), Rozhishtshe (Volhynia), and Chelm (Poland).  In Chelm she married Berl Akselrod, a teacher and Labor Zionist leader (who died in the Kovno ghetto).  Her two children were murdered at Auschwitz.  She outlived the concentration camp years in the Stutthof camp, and after the war she came to Lodz.  In 1946 she left Poland.  She lived in the Bindermichl displaced persons camp in Austria, and there she married Meylekh Bakaltshuk.  She served as secretary of the historical commission and as editorial secretary of the periodical Oyfgang (Arise), edited in Linz by Meylekh Bakaltshuk, in which she published articles concerning education of the survivor children, camp issues, and work in connection with Holocaust documentation.  Following the proclamation of the state of Israel, she handed over (with her husband) a collection of documents to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.  From Israel she emigrated to South Africa.  In Johannesburg she contributed to Afrikaner yidishe tsaytung (African Jewish newspaper) and Dorem-afrika (South Africa).  She worked as a teacher in the Jewish school, and she passed away in Johannesburg.