George Nosal’s mother was Bayla (nee Chaja) Nosal, who was born in Gombin in 1888 and murdered at Chelmno in 1942; may her memory be for a blessing. George was born in 1922 in Kutno. He is a spritely 99-year-old and a marvelous storyteller and historian, whose dramatic life spans the tragic years of the 20th century. I had the great pleasure of spending a weekend with him in Toronto, chatting for hours, looking at old photos of Gombiners, and recording his stories. George is one of the remaining Gombiners who can tell us about life in our shtetl during the prewar period. Click here to read the full story in B’nai Gombin, March 2010, an issue that also records the story of Dr. Dziewczepolski (pronounced: Jeff-je-polski).
Click here to watch an interview of George Nosal in Cleveland from 2019, where he recounts some of his remarkable life, escaping Poland during the Nazi invasion, surviving the Russian internment, joining the British army, and eventually returning to Gombin after the war.
This photo is frame 304 from the 1937 Rafel film of Gombin. The young man in the center group is George Nosal at ~15 years of age. The woman to his left is Miriam (Manya) Segal (nee Chaja); she is the sister of George’s mother, and mother of Zev Chaja (later Zev Chay in Israel).