Joseph Feingold died

We were sad to hear from New York that Joseph Feingold, the last living witness of the Kielce pogrom, died on April 16, 2020 at the age of 97. Until 1939 he lived in Kielce. Here he graduated from Jan Śniadecki high school. When World war II broke out, he went to Lviv with his father, from where they were taken to Siberia to a labor camp. On July 4, 1946, he returned to Kielce to look for other family members. “It was Thursday, an incredibly beautiful day,” he recalled years later. He was seriously wounded during the pogrom. In 1948 he went to the USA. He graduated from Columbia University and founded his own architectural company in which he worked until 2010. A few years ago he became the hero of a documentary film entitled “Joe’s Violin”, nominated for an Oscar. The film is about the unusual friendship between Feingold and a 12-year-old student from Bronx. Feingold gave the girl his 70-year-old violin, which he had bought in Germany before leaving for America.