Holocaust survivor Tauba Gimpel, who was featured on j.’s April 21, 2006 cover, died Tuesday, Aug. 1. The San Francisco resident was 85.
Tauba Lisner was born in Lask, Poland, on Sept. 2, 1920. Her father was a grain dealer, and her family was quite religious. She had several siblings.
Education was important to her parents, so the girls attended Hebrew school. Gimpel’s daughter, Miriam Gimpel Mazliach of Fremont, said that her mother spoke eight languages.
Gimpel was a young woman when the war broke out. She lived in the Lodz ghetto before she was transferred to Auschwitz. She was there approximately four years, and her daughter said she was close to being exterminated at the time she was liberated.
She and her sister Rachela were the only people in their family to survive.
In a displaced persons camp in Germany, Gimpel obtained a Hebrew teacher’s certificate as well as a seamstress certificate.
She also met another survivor, David Gimpel, and they married in July of 1948. He had some family members in Israel, so they soon left for the fledgling state. A few years later they moved to Montreal. After a few years there, Gimpel wanted to reconnect with her sister, Rachela Gelbart, who had moved to the Bay Area, so they moved to San Francisco in 1965.
The family belonged to Congregation Chevre Thilim. Gimpel was one of the congregation’s most active members, according to its spiritual leader, Rabbi Shlomo Zarchi, who said that in his time there, she rarely missed a Shabbat.
Her husband died in 1970, and Gimpel needed to find a job. She went to work at See’s Candies, “where she found a second home for 28 years,” said Mazliach, adding that when foreign tourists came into the store, “they were constantly amazed that the woman behind the candy counter could answer them in their own language.”
Gimpel’s daughter said that she made donations to numerous Jewish charities — she couldn’t say no to anyone who asked, even if it was just a small amount.
“Her greatest joy later was the birth of my son, her only grandchild,” said Mazliach.
Zarchi said that she also served as a sort of adopted grandmother for many of the synagogue’s young couples without family nearby.
“A lot of the young people in the shul felt very close to her,” he said.
Zarchi said she distinguished herself by always speaking Hebrew to him.
Zarchi added that despite the fact that Gimpel carried a lot of sadness with her, she still “had tremendous faith and longing for the Judaism of her youth. She was never bitter.”
In addition to her daughter Miriam, Gimpel is survived by another daughter, Ruth Gimpel of San Bruno, and one grandson. Donations can be made to the Holocaust Center of Northern California, 121 Steuart St., Suite 10, SF, CA 94105.