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Arie's father had a textile factory in Michalowa ,a small village near Bialystok. His mother died when he was nine.His father remarried a year later with Sara Efron. During his childhood , Arie learned in the Hebrew Gymnasium in Bialystok , and was active in the "Beitar" zionist youth movement. He had a bigger brother, Mordechai , who immigrated to Palestine and served as an officer in the British mandatory police, until in 1938 he was murdered by Arabs in a bus near Lydda. In 1939, the Russians invaded Poland and came to Michalowa. A year later they confiscated the family-house and the factory. Arie's father died in 1940, and Arie moved to his Grandmother's house in the village. All that time, and until June 1941, he was permitted to work in the factory , now owned by the Communists. On June 20 1941 , only two days before the German army arrived in his home-town , Arie was arrested by the Russians . Together with his step-mother Sara and 18 other Jews from Michalowa he was deported to a labor-camp in Siberia.(All remaining Jews of Michalowa, including his Grandmother and two aunts, were deported by the nazis and found their death in Treblinka). They traveled by train to Novosibirsk, and from there by ship up North to Kargasok, and finally to a Kolchoz named Sosnovka, where Arie had to work hard in the fields in order to survive. In November 1941, a treaty was signed between Russia and the Polish government in exile, thus Arie and his step-mother were permitted to leave to Kargasok, where he stayed till 1943 working as an accountant. In 1943 they moved again to inner Russia , where they stayed till February 1946. After the war was over, they went back to Poland by train, and found refuge in Upper Silezia.From there Arie crossed the border illegally to Chechoslovakia, to Vienna , and later to Linz, where he joined the "Bricha" organization. At the age of 32 , in Austria, Arie met and married Hanna. |
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As he studied in Bialistock, Arie first lived in an appartment that belonged to his father,
with a nanny. Later, Arie and his brother Mordechai moved to live with Sheine (her husband David was already in Argentina) and her two children - Sara and Herschel. |
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MICHALOWO: Michalowo--Niezbudka USComm. no. POCE000119 Michalowo, also called Niezbudka (Russian), is located in Bialystok, Poland (23.36 longitude, 53.02 latitude), and is 50km from Bialystok. The town's population is between 1,000 and 5,000 people. No Jews live here. The cemetery is located in western part of town, by the road to Zednie. A town official is:, Urzad Gminy, Bialostocka 11, Michalowo, Tel:18-90-76. Regional interest is:, Wojewodzki Konserwator Zabytkow, ul. Dojlidy Fabryczne 23, Bialystok, Tel:41-23-32. The earliest known Jewish community in town existed at the beginning of the 19th century. The Jewish population as of the census in 1937 was 732. The Jewish cemetery was established at the beginning of the 19th century. Some noteworthy individuals who lived in this Jewish community were Rabbi Natan Nate Kamchi and Rabbi Saul Margolis. The last known Jewish burial was in 1941. _____________________________________________________________ House address of the Lasnick family in Michalowo: ul. Zwirki i Wigury 12 |
| Hanna met Arie Lasnick in 1946 , in Austria , when both of them worked within the "Bricha" organization , smuggling Jewish refugees from the camps in Europe to Palestine. |
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Hanna and Arie immigrated from Austria, onboard the "Champolion", in 1951. They lived in Ramat-Gan for a short while , then moved to Haifa. |