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| Fani Shimanski Pruzan: A Thankful and Generous Donor |
Fani Shimanski Pruzan was a quiet woman who was devoted to her friends and family. She was born in 1922 in Vilna, a city in the newly independent Poland. Fani was blessed with a good education, loving parents and a beautiful voice. She attended the Stefan Batory College, a school noted for its progressive admission policies including admitting Jewish students to study with Christians. Fani studied liberal arts, especially music, which helped Fani overcome many difficulties throughout her life.
Vilna, at the time Fani grew up, was considered a center of Jewish intellectual and artistic achievement. Fani was one of the few survivors of the almost total destruction of her world that began when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. Aside from her mother, she never saw another member of her family after she and her mother ran from the city. She took refuge with a farmer who, at great risk to his own family, hid Fani. She worked long hours in the fields, learned Catholic prayers and frequently changed locations when suspicious neighbors threatened to tell the Germans that she was a Jew in order to collect a reward.
Freedom came to Poland in 1945. That year she met and married Charles Shimanski, a Jewish partisan, who hid in the woods near Vilna and fought the Nazis with other Polish freedom fighters. In 1949 the family moved to St. Louis and opened a grocery store. They joined a synagogue, Temple Israel, where she always sang in the choir. Cantor Linda Blumenthal states: "When Fani sang, she went to a special place and brought others along. There was rarely a dry eye in the auditorium when Fani sang her favorite song, My Yiddish Mama."
Fani was devoted to her husband and to their son. Charles died in 1970. In recent years Fani sought to find out about family members who were lost in the Holocaust. Opening the door to that part of a survivor's life is always painful however Fani did contact the American Red Cross Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center to find out if any of her relatives had somehow survived those days in Vilna when she and her mother had run for their lives. The Center was opened the in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1990, after the release of a large cache of original Nazi documents by the former Soviet Union. Large numbers of survivors contact the Center for help. According to Benjamin Meed, President of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, there are 80,000 Holocaust survivors in the United States.
The American Red Cross is unique in its mission to use archives located throughout the world to trace missing loved ones. The Center helps inquirers in several significant ways. For Jewish people, the date of a person's death holds deep significance, for it is on the anniversary of the loved ones death that the survivor lights a memorial candle and says a special prayer for mourners. Even information about which concentration camp or ghetto a loved one was taken to and when is enough to provide great solace.
There are the miraculous instances when the Red Cross helps a survivor find a sister, brother, mother, cousin, aunt, uncle or child alive after half a century. For the more than 600 families brought together by the Center, this information is priceless.
Unfortunately, Fani was not able to find a living relative, but she appreciated the help the American Red Cross Holocaust Tracing Center did provide. She wanted to thank the Red Cross for the help it offered to her. Fani chose to create an estate plan that gave a significant portion of her assets to her synagogue, the Jewish Community Center, the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center and the American Red Cross. May her memory always be a blessing.
You also may want to make it easy and convenient to have a bequest included in your will. The language below shows how a bequest can very easily be included in your will.
You might find it helpful to select the "print" button on the top of your screen and print this page. You may feel free to give this page to your attorney. If he or she has any questions, please have them contact Steve Rosenblum at phone number 314-516-2785 or e-mail us at rosenblum@stlzoo.org.
Example bequest language - Please feel free to change the numbers or percentages as you desire.
1. Bequest of cash
"I bequeath the sum of $10,000 to Leave a Legacy® St. Louis of St. Louis, MO."
2. Bequest of a percent of the estate
"I devise and bequeath 20% of the remainder and residue of property owned at my death, whether real or personal, and wherever located to Leave a Legacy® St. Louis, St. Louis, MO."
3. Contingent Bequest
"If my brother John Doe survives me, I devise and bequeath 20% of the remainder and residue of property owned at my death, whether real or personal, and wherever located to John Doe. If John Doe does not survive me, then I devise and bequeath 20% of my residuary estate, whether real or personal property and wherever located to Leave a Legacy® St. Louis, St. Louis, MO."
You may print a Bequest tri-fold brochure. Voice of a Legacy or Will Your Will be Known.
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