Not to Forget

Not just another Holocaust story, from Aish.com:

Leah Kaufman’s story of unfathomable horror and courage remained locked in memory’s vault for half a century, until her granddaughter started asking her questions.

Tisha b’Av, 1492, was the final day for compliance with the edict of the Spanish expulsion. Although it was a day of national mourning, the rabbis of that generation declared, “Take up your instruments.” Thus the Jewish community marched out of their host country with the musicians at the lead. Not only did the Rabbis want to infuse the refugees with hope, they also wanted to remind them that there is only one place in the world worthy of tears being shed when we must leave there. That place is Jerusalem.
The inner command to “take up our instruments”– to begin again with renewed hope — has been the mandate of the Jew throughout exile. In recent history the most moving and remarkable examples of this have been the survivors of the Holocaust. Having faced death so many times, having endured unspeakable physical tortures and difficulties, the liberated survivor needed a different kind of courage: the courage to face his tragic experiences and move on to rebuild his life.
Mrs. Leah Kaufman epitomizes such bravery on all fronts. Laden with nightmares of unimaginable personal horrors and losses, Mrs. Kaufman arrived in Canada, orphaned and penniless. She succeeded in rebuilding her life, becoming the proud mother of three sons, an outstanding educator, and an active member of the Jewish community. As for the past, it was locked in memory’s vault, for half a century unseen and unmentioned.
There it would have remained perhaps forever had not the urgent need to speak out arisen. Lest the world forget and be bereft of its memories, Mrs. Kaufman bravely unlocked hers. Speaking not just for herself but for the hundreds of thousands whose voices were silenced, she relived the pain of Transnistria, a place whose horrors have long since gone untold because it left its survivors mute.
Although Mrs. Kaufman speaks to us all, it was as a mother and grandmother that she first began telling future generations about a past that must never be forgotten.
* * *
One afternoon in Montreal, as Mrs. Leah Kaufman stood at her kitchen sink preparing supper, her four-year-old son ran into the house, sobbing. “Mommy, Mommy,” he cried, “do you know what happened to children in the Holocaust?” He put his arms around his mother and buried his face in her apron. Suddenly, his older brother, Seth, who had been in another room doing homework, ran out, grabbed him by the shoulders, and dragged him into their bedroom.
“David,” he shouted, in a voice far more adult than his six years, “never, ever talk to Mommy about the war or about Nazis!”
Their mother held onto the kitchen counter unable to move. A memory flashed through her mind. It had happened a year ago, when she was in a local bookstore with Seth. There on a display counter they had encountered an oversized book with a big bold title: Transnistria. Seth had tugged at her hand, saying, “Mommy, isn’t that where you were? Don’t you want to buy the book?” She had hastily pulled him out of the store. Once outside, she bent down and looked deep into his eyes, which reflected confusion, and said, “I don’t want to know. I just don’t want to know.”
She would speak only one language when it came to the Holocaust: the language of silence.
Now, as she stood at the sink with the midafternoon sunlight slanting through the kitchen windows and the red geraniums blossoming in their white flower boxes, Mrs. Kaufman forced herself to pick up the vegetable peeler and continue her preparations for supper. Before her marriage, she had made the decision not to burden her children with her suffering. She wanted to raise them as normal, Canadian children. She would speak only one language when it came to the Holocaust: the language of silence.
* * *
Years passed since the scene in the kitchen. The boys grew, married, and raised families of their own. Pesach, 1991, found the Kaufmans at the home of Seth, now a doctor and leader in a Jewish community. A new generation of Jews was being raised, a delight to both parents and grandparents.
In the midst of the family gathering, Talia, then only eight, suddenly went over to her grandmother and said, “Bubbie, please come sit with me.” Mrs. Kaufman willingly sat down on the couch next to the little granddaughter she loved so much. She was completely unprepared, though, for Talia’s next words.
“Bubbie, please tell me what happened to you when you were a child.”
“Just a minute, Talia,” came the somewhat nervous reply, “and I’ll come right back to sit with you.” Mrs. Kaufman went over to her son and asked in hushed tones, “What should I do? Talia wants to know.”
“Mommy,” said her son, his expression suddenly serious, “please don’t repeat the mistake you made with me. Tell her. Use your own judgement. I trust you.”
Mrs. Kaufman went to sit on the couch, took her granddaughter’s hand, and began her story.
“You know, Talia, we can’t always understand how God runs His world. There are many things that happened to me that are very sad. But look — here we are sitting together and I want you to know that for whatever His reasons, God was always making incredible miracles for me and for many other people. He became our partner to help us in every way.
“My mother, your great-grandmother, was a midwife and healer. She helped anyone who came to her, Jew and non-Jew alike. When I was little, I would often be awakened by a loud banging on the window — Boom! Boom! — and shouts of, ‘Domna Bracha, come quickly! We need you to deliver a baby!’ My mother also knew what to do if someone was sick. She knew about herbs and special little cups to put on the skin and leeches to pull out the diseased blood from the body. She learned from her mother, my grandmother, who was also a healer.
“Anyway, I remember that one night when I was just about your age there was a banging on the window. This time, though, it wasn’t an urgent call for my mother to help. No, it was to warn us to flee because the next day soldiers would be arriving. My mother woke me and my brothers and sisters and dressed us in layer after layer of clothing. When we left the house and made our way to the road, we saw many other families. They were all running away.
“We went to another city and took shelter in an empty house. We stayed there for a few days and prepared for Shabbos. On Shabbos, as we were sitting around the table with the wooden shutters closed, we suddenly heard a loud pounding on the shutters and the door. My mother and father told us to run and hide. My brothers and sisters and I obeyed.
“Soldiers burst in through the front door. They saw all the plates at the table and the leader shouted, ‘Where is everybody!’
“My parents said nothing.
“Then he threatened, ‘If they don’t come out, we will shoot you.’
“My parents called us back into the room. The soldiers lined up all seven children one by one behind each other, with the tallest standing in the back and the smallest in the front. This was so that they could shoot all of us at once using only one bullet. We said good-bye to each other. They picked up their rifles and were about to pull the trigger when suddenly their leader shouted, ‘Put down your guns!’
“‘Why?’
“This woman brought me into the world and saved my life many times. I can’t kill her. Let’s go.”
“‘Put down your guns!’ he repeated in a booming voice. To this day, I can hear the boom of his voice inside my head. Then, in a much softer tone, the leader said, ‘I can’t kill her. This woman brought me into the world and saved my life many times. I can’t kill her. Let’s go.’
“That’s the first time I was saved. But that was only the beginning of many difficult and terrible times. The Rumanian soldiers were brutal to the Jews and they forced us to walk in the freezing winter from place to place. We had to sleep in haystacks and on the frozen ground. Many people became sick and died just from the cold.
“One of the next places we stopped was right near a bakery. The delicious smell of the freshly baked bread made our hunger pains even worse. Small as I was, I was always a fighter. I said to myself, ‘There must be some way we can help ourselves.’ Everyone else was lying down but I was sitting up watching the door of the bakery. I saw a little girl go out of the bakery and I called to her in Rumanian. She was shocked. She had probably never talked to a Jewish child before. But she was curious, like most children, so she came over to me and said, ‘What do you want?’
“I said, ‘How old are you?’ It turned out she was my age. ‘Where are you going?’ I asked her.
“‘To school,’ she replied.
“‘Do you like school?’
“‘I hate it — because I’m not smart.’
“‘What grade are you in?’ I asked.
“She told me and I told her to bring me her books. She did. I took one look at what she was learning and said to myself, I’m going to be her tutor! I said to her, ‘Don’t go to school today. Sit with me and I’ll help you. Tomorrow you’ll know everything.’
“She sat with me and I helped her. Then she went into her house and told her mother. Her mother was so pleased that she sent out a loaf of bread. As long as we stayed there, we had bread everyday.
“My mother very much wanted us to have a chicken for Shabbos and she had an idea of how we could get one. We had all had pierced ears from the time we were young. We were four sisters and my mother so there were five pairs of gold earrings. As we were marching, the Rumanians stood on the sidelines trading things. My mother traded all our earrings for a chicken. She sent me with it to the shochet. When I brought it home, she plucked the feathers and opened it. The liver didn’t look quiet right to her, so she sent me back to the shochet who looked at the liver and told me it wasn’t kosher.
“By this time we were very hungry, but my mother said, ‘Kinderlach, mir turren dos nisht essen — My children, we are forbidden to eat this.’
“My mother and my brothers and sisters never lived to eat chicken again.
“The weather was getting colder and colder and we were being forced to march again. I was always on the lookout for ways to survive. As we walked, I watched the faces of the Rumanian soldiers. I saw that the one who was holding onto the horse leading the wagon didn’t have such a cruel face. I went up to him and said, ‘What is it to you if I die?’
“He looked at me and said, ‘What do you want little girl?’
“I said, ‘I want to live. Let me sit in your wagon.’
“He bent down, picked me up, wrapped me in blankets, and lifted me up onto the wagon. And that is how I survived the march. From time to time my older brother would come to check up on me and bring me news from the family and little things to eat.
“Depending on where we stopped, I sometimes slept in haystacks, hidden deep under the hay. Because of my fair skin and blonde hair, and also because I spoke Russian, I would often run away and find a Russian family in the woods. I would tell them, ‘I’m a Russian child who lost her family and I’m very hungry,’ and they would give me crusts of bread. Sometimes they would take me into their fields to let me dig up a few potatoes. Whatever it was, though, was never enough to quiet the hunger pains.
“The Ukrainian children were very, very cruel. They had a game when they caught a Jewish child. They would say, ‘Jew, say kookooroisa.’ In their language that means corn. To say it, you have to know how to roll the ‘r’ properly. Baruch Hashem I passed that test many times.
“One by one my brothers and sisters died. Finally, one cold and bitter day, my mother also died, and I was left on my own.”
“One by one my brothers and sisters died. My mother and I were left alone, until finally, one cold and bitter day, she too, died, and I was left on my own.
“I decided to try to make my way to Mogilav where I hoped to find relatives. I walked for months, all alone, fending for myself. One day I came upon a little cafe owned by a woman. I asked her for some food, which she promised to give me if I would be willing to wash dishes in return. I agreed, and she sent me to the pump in the yard with the dirty dishes. I did the best I could, and brought the dishes inside. She said, ‘Do the other side.’ And she sent me back. That’s how I got my lesson in how to wash dishes! Once she realized that I could be trusted she let me help her every day.
“One day, she came to me and said, ‘How would you like to come home and sleep in my house?’ That was an unbelievable offer! I replied without hesitation, ‘I would like that very much!’
“The first night I was there I had a very frightening dream and I screamed in my sleep in Yiddish. The woman woke me up and said, ‘Lydia’ — that’s what I called myself because Lydia was close to Leah — ‘why did you scream that way in a language I couldn’t understand?’
“I told her the truth, that I was Jewish, and she said, ‘Your secret is safe with me. Just don’t tell another soul.’ From that day on, I was always with her.
“One day, a group of German soldiers came into the restaurant and after they ate, ransacked the place, breaking dishes and smashing furniture. The owner was hysterical and I was terrified. When we had calmed down, I said to her, ‘Madame Bakouska, they were planning it!’
“She asked me, ‘How do you know?’
“I told her, ‘I understood what they said to each other. They didn’t want to pay, so they planned the whole thing.’
“She started laughing so hard I thought she had lost her mind. I asked her, ‘What’s wrong?’
“She hugged and kissed me and said, ‘Lydia, you will never have to worry again. You will be my child.’ We made a secret signal between us so that I could tell her whenever I overheard the Germans planning to do damage. She would then cross the street and bring back an equal number of Ukrainian soldiers. When the Germans saw the soldiers, they would pay their bill and leave. Her business prospered and my situation was a good one.
“Suddenly, things changed. On the corner, next to the cafe, was a drug store. One day the druggist stumbled into the cafe drunk and said, ‘You’re doing well because she’s a Jew’ — he pointed to me — ‘and she understands what they’re saying.’ From that day on we were on the alert. But what happened next was much worse than I ever expected.
When the Jewish kapos found out I was a Jewish child, they kidnapped me and put me on a train bound for the Piciora concentration camp.
“One day two Jewish Kapos came into the restaurant. They were working for the enemy. When they found out I was a Jewish child, they kidnapped me and put me on a train bound for the Piciora concentration camp. I was in shock! How could fellow Jews do that to me?
“When I arrived at the camp I went into the barracks and took stock of the situation. I decided then and there that I had to escape. Everyone there looked near death. It was no place for me. I walked outside and looked around. Near the main gate was a little bush. I lay down near the bush. I was watching the guard and the guard was watching me. After a few days under the bush, a moment came when the gates were open and the eyes of the guard were on other things. I picked myself up and walked straight out. I said to myself, ‘If you survive, you must remember this day.’
“Then I started my journey all over again, back to the town of the cafe and eventually, after the war, to Canada.”
* * *
Mrs. Kaufman had been holding Talia’s hand with both of her own. She looked at her granddaughter’s face and could see the questions and the sadness in her eyes.
“Talia, I’m going to tell you one more thing, and then it’s enough for this visit, okay?” Tali nodded her head as her grandmother continued.
“After the war, when I was liberated, I became an apprentice to a dressmaker. But it turned out she wasn’t interested in teaching me anything about a needle and thread. What she really needed was someone to stand in line for food and provisions because we were under the Russian occupation.
“One day, when I was in the backyard beating the dust out of a carpet, a man came up to me and said, ‘Are you Leah?’ “‘Yes,’ I answered.
“‘I’m your brother!’
“He took me away from that house and helped me get into an orphanage that was in the brand-new wing of a hospital complex. It was a special place for children who were staying in Bucharest, waiting to go by boat to Eretz Yisrael. We waited there a few months. The very night before I was scheduled to leave for Israel, I had severe stomach pains. The doctors discovered that my appendix had burst. I was taken to the hospital in a coma. It was one of the miracles God did for me that the orphanage was located in a wing of the hospital so they were able to get me there so quickly. The chief surgeon, though, said I was beyond surgery. But an orthopedic surgeon who was present said, ‘You have given up on her. I would like a try,’ and he operated on me. Remember, this was in the days before they had penicillin. Even today, God forbid, a burst appendix is very dangerous.
“Well, this doctor put tubes inside to drain out the infection, and although I was in a coma for a whole month, I recovered. But Talia, I want you to know that the ship that left for Eretz Yisrael never made it there. It was struck by a torpedo. To this day, no one knows who did it, whether the Russians, the Germans or the British. But because I was very, very sick, I wasn’t on that ship. My burst appendix saved my life!
“So you see, Talia,” Mrs. Kaufman concluded, “everything I was given, was given to me for a purpose. My gift of speaking many languages, my ability to quickly read people’s faces and understand them, even my illness — all were part of the miracles that God did to save me.”
Mrs. Kaufman rose from the couch and Talia ran off to play. For the rest of the day, Mrs. Kaufman kept asking herself, “Did I do the right thing? Did I tell her too much?” She kept a close watch on her granddaughter and the next day, had her answer when Talia came over to her and said, “Bubbie, I have to talk to you.”
“Okay, honey. Here I am. What do you want to say?”
“Bubbie,” Talia began, “the day you die, it’s gonna rain very hard.” She spoke emphatically, her face serious.
“Talia, why is it going to rain so hard?”
“Because all the angels God had sent to be your partners till now are going to cry so hard because they won’t be able to watch over you anymore.”
This story appears in “A Mother’s Favorite Stories,” by Sheina Medwed, Artscroll Publishers

Rose that Never Bloomed

This newly released Holocaust diary is not yet translated to English, but here’s a touching summary:

by Leah Abramowitz
A recently published Holocaust diary that wavers between hope and despair.

Sixty-two years is a long time to wait to publicize the dramatic, tragic death of one’s beloved sister. Yet Edith Jakobs Samuel couldn’t bring herself to do so until her own 80th birthday, when she published Rose Jakobs’ 132-page diary, written throughout the war years in Dutch. (The diary has been subsequently translated into Hebrew and an English version is in the works.)
The book, entitled The Rose That Never Blossomed, describes how their father, Aaron Jakobs, a German Jewish businessman, had the fortitude to move to Holland with his wife and four children in l938 before the war broke out. Unfortunately the Nazi regime quickly caught up with them, and Germany captured Holland shortly thereafter.
Jakobs found hiding places for his family in several villages, but the six members were not always together. Rose, the eldest daughter, and her twin brother, Martin, spent some time alone under terrible circumstances, in constant danger of being reported to the authorities by their hosts seduced by the monetary reward for handing over Jews. She started writing her diary in August 1942 as a means of coping and to describe how much she missed her other family members.
On September 30, 1942, the then l7-year-old teenager writes: “I wish I could write everything in this diary, what I really feel and think. Right now the only thing I will write is that for someone who is not used to being locked up, it is very, very difficult to be dependent on others.” Rose had been a fun-loving, active student in Amsterdam. She had many friends, and excelled in sewing, handicrafts and many other fields. The family members were very close, but the two sisters, Rose and Edith (who was 15 at the time they went into hiding), were inseparable. There was also a younger brother, Berti, aged eight.
The diary is an emotional report of a young woman who wavered between despair and hope; who had to stay in closed quarters, without making any noise and without knowing anything about her loved ones. She longed passionately to be free.
The Jakobs were reunited only in November l943 when Aaron found quarters with a farmer in the village of Beek for all six of them. “I finally came to stay with papa and mama,” she writes happily on November 2, l943. “They received me with so much love and happiness.”
“What is terrible is that last night almost all the Jews that we knew, except for 23 families, were rounded up and herded into trains like cattle.”
By then the tides of the war were changing. In some of her entries we learn how Rose and her family lived in hopes of an Allied invasion, but were often thrown into despondence as the Germans rallied and continued their search for Jews, even as they fought a war on two fronts. On November 18, 1942 she wrote: “We have to stay in bed today, the whole day, because downstairs they have company. But I do not think that this is the worst. What is terrible is that last night almost all the Jews that we knew, except for 23 families, were rounded up and herded into trains like cattle.”
The conditions of their confinement were most difficult. They couldn’t go out, they were dependent on their hosts for food and water, and sometimes had to go without for two or three days at a time. To pass the time Rose would teach Edith what she remembered from her schooling, and Edith in turn, would teach her little brother geography, history and arithmetic. Their parents tried also to keep their spirits up, but they were themselves under great pressure. Like the well known diary of Anne Frank, we get glimpses of the tension and minor flare ups that are caused when people live in close proximity with nothing to do over a long period.
At one time the daughter of the farmer who put them up gave birth to a son. During the period that a nurse came for the birth and to care for the newborn, the Jakobs couldn’t walk around upstairs in the attic or talk. They couldn’t use the bathroom and they had nothing to eat for four days. Nevertheless Rose confided in Edith, “We have to be happy with what we have. We must appreciate that we’re alive and together.”
The longed for day finally came. On September l7, l944 American soldiers from the Second Airborne Division parachuted by the hundreds into the area of northern Holland where they were hiding. “Our younger brother cried, ‘Angels are dropping out of the sky to save us’.” Heavy fighting broke out in their village. There was house to house fighting between the Germans and the Americans. The house where the Jakobs were hiding was bombarded and the farmer’s family fled. They, too, left and entered the cellar of a nearby house that was empty. But there was no food.
Edith Samuel describes their family’s situation. “We had no papers. We were all pale as ghosts. My sister and I decided to leave our hiding place and help some of the American soldiers who were wounded. Their field clinic was right across the street. We were also very hungry.” The Americans were happy to have the two sisters’ help. One of the Jewish soldiers even informed them that September 27th was Yom Kippur. They had lost all track of time.
Then tragedy struck. “On October 2nd, l944, as we were crossing the street to the clinic, a shell fell right in front of us. I couldn’t find Rose at first. She was thrown a few meters away. I ran over to her and saw she was badly wounded. An American army doctor said sadly, ‘I’m afraid it’s too late!’ It didn’t make sense to me. To be in hiding for over two years and then when we were about to be liberated, to die!”
Edith sat next to her sister all night long, saying Shema Yisrael and any other prayer that she could remember, but Rose never opened her eyes.
Edith sat next to her sister all night long, saying Shema Yisrael and any other prayer that she could remember, but Rose never opened her eyes.
Her parents never recovered from the ordeal and the terrible loss of their eldest daughter. “My mother turned into a zombie, and I had to take care of her just as the war was finally ending,” says Edith. Rose was l9 years old when she died, and Edith was l7. In her entry on May 3, l944, Rose had apparently been in one of her low moods as she wrote, “Today is my birthday. For my birthday I wish for a bomb, because I do not think there will be peace. I feel like crying.”
Rose was buried in the forest next to the village of Beek. The family later organized a memorial service and reburied her in the Jewish cemetery in Nijmegen. Edith married Benny Samuel in 1949 and had seven children, the oldest of whom is named Shoshana (Rose). In l969 the whole Samuel family moved to Israel where they all live today. Martin stayed in Holland where he raised a family, and Berti, the younger brother, moved to California and also has a wife and children.
“I knew that Rose’s diary would be of interest to many other people, but it took me 62 years to actually publicize it,” says Edith. The book was read widely in Holland, and the Museum of Liberation in Neebegan asked to do an exhibit based on Rose’s story and diary. Edith and her brothers agreed. The opening was held in October this year. Many members of her family from all over the world attended, including Berti, some of Edith’s children, and the offspring of the farmer who put them up in Beek, including the baby whose birth put them in to quarantine for four days. They have maintained contact with them all these years.
“It was very emotional for me,” says Edith, mentioning the panels and blown up pictures of her sister that she saw at the tastefully arranged exhibit.
Rose flowers again, albeit fleetingly, after 62 years.
Published: Sunday, December 31, 2006

Holocaust Video

Here’s a link to an interesting video about the Holocaust. It’s short and didn’t take too long to load.

http://www.aish.com/societyWork/salomonSays/
Poland_Video_Log_4_The_Best_Job_in_Majdanek.asp

Concentration Camp

Here’s an interesting link to a movie from Aish.com. It loads quickly and plays smoothly, even on my dial-up.

http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp

Beaus

The picture with the story below reminds me of this picture of my great-grandfather Robert Emory Hutton and his bride-to-be Anna Laurie Carpenter Hutton in their courting days. They kept the horse, Old John, until he died. (Rev. 7-28-06)
Just think, what if someone tried to take their land like the Nazi’s did the Jew’s land–or the people who are still trying to wipe the nation of Israel off the planet. We’ve been blessed in America. We need to support God’s chosen people.

Horse and Cart

Here’s the picture that goes with the story.

Roots the Nazis tried to Destroy

by Rabbi Ephraim Shore
A pilgrimage to discover my family’s roots that the Nazis tried to destroy.

I was 12 when I first noticed the photo. An elderly couple, she wore a kerchief, he a long beard. They sat in the front seat of an open wagon pulled by a large horse. Thatched cottages of an ancient looking shtetl (town) loomed in the background.
“Wow, Grandpa!” I asked earnestly. “How did you get this great photo from Fiddler on the Roof?”
To my astonishment he replied, “Those are my parents. In my hometown of Staszow (pronounced Stashov) in Poland.”
I learned then that my mother’s grandparents, together with her aunts and uncle and their 22 children who I had barely heard of before, were murdered in the Holocaust. Yet growing up in the comforts of Canada, details about the war, my relatives and Staszow remained as distant as the scene in the photo.
That all changed last month, when I was invited to participate in an Aish HaTorah Faculty visit to Poland. Meant to help us integrate more fully the reality of that tragedy — and the potential tragedies if we fail to take the necessary action against our enemies of today — 60 of us were to set out to visit the death camps and the ghettoes. I decided that if I would already be in Poland, perhaps I should include a visit to the old shtetl. But what remained of Jewish life there? Was there a way to learn where my family lived? Where to even start?
Google.
Searching for “Jewish Staszow” (after 10 attempts at other spellings), I discovered an article by a man named Jack Goldfarb, who had made a similar pilgrimage to Staszow and helped restore the old Jewish cemetery. Searching further, I clicked on a blog by a Danny Miller. Suddenly there appeared on my screen a picture of my great-great-uncle, Itcha Meyer Korolnek! Danny is his great-grandson, now a screenwriter in LA. He reminisced in his blog about the stories he’d heard from Itcha Meyer about life in Staszow. This led me to info from a 1932 Staszow Town Registry, which contained my great-grandparents’ home address!
Another Google hunt led me to the marriage records of my great-grandparents. (Many of these records are thanks to the Mormon Church’s efforts to document and posthumously baptize the Jews of Europe!) Leibish Unger and Esther Goldkind married in 1888. Esther gave birth to eight children, including my grandfather and his twin in 1903. Four children emigrated to Toronto in the 1920s, and the rest remained behind, in part because of their fear of a “less Jewish” environment abroad.
I learned about the remaining “Jewish sites” to be seen, tracked down a local English-speaking guide, and transportation. Everything was complete!
A few weeks ago, on a Thursday morning, my twin brother, Raphael, and I were picked up by a young Polish driver. I was feeling the drama and the excitement: the first return of our family since November 8, 1942, when the Jews of Staszow were driven from their homes and delivered to death at the Belzec concentration camp.
History of the Town
Jews had lived in Staszow since the 1400s. In 1610, the Christian ruler of the area, looking for a pretext to exile the Jews from his province, orchestrated a blood libel. They accused a local Jew of killing a Christian child to use his blood for Pesach matzah, the unlucky man was executed and the remaining Jews deported. Their possessions were confiscated and used to build the dominating church tower, which stands till today over Staszow. Invited to return by a subsequent ruler, Jews began to flourish there.
Like many other shtetls, by the time of World War II, Staszow was 60 percent Jewish, and on the whole enjoyed a rich Jewish life amongst their non-Jewish neighbors. (Except for the occasional small pogrom of course, like one in 1932.) They had a huge central synagogue, a Jewish inn, kosher butchers, mikvahs, a Jewish hospital and two yeshivot.
When the Germans conquered Poland in 1939, all that changed. Their quiet life was shattered. For two years my family lived a period of relative calm, but anxious worry. “Thank God we’re well and we’re coming along as best we can,” my great-aunt wrote in May 1941. “If things will be quiet then it will be good. In the home everything is in the best order, you shouldn’t worry about anything.”
We are so worried. We are so nervous.
Perhaps more honestly, my grandfather received this note on the back of a photo from another aunt: “We are so worried, and we don’t know what will be in the future. We are so nervous. Please answer soon.”
That was the last the family was heard from.
With the help of archives I found at the New York Public Library website, I succeeded in piecing together the last months of my 32 relatives. On December 30, 1941,the uneasy quiet was broken. Staszow woke up to posters in the streets announcing that no Jew could leave the town. Transgressors would be shot. From that fateful day, their end was sealed and the disastrous campaign against them mounted quickly. On January 6, the “Fur Action” was announced: Jews were obliged to hand over all fur garments. Failure to comply punishable by death. Several Jews, not yet fully aware of the Nazi methods, were found in possession of furs and were shot.
On January 15, no Jewish business could operate except under the supervision of a German or Pole. The next few months saw regular incidents of mass robbery, beatings and occasional lynchings. By Passover, the last for the Jews of Staszow, they began hearing of the extermination actions in other shtetls around Poland. A 19-year-old girl tried to escape to the forests but was caught and shot. The holiday passed in great trepidation.
On June 15, the Ghetto Decree was announced. The 5,000 Jews of Staszow were forced to move into two small sections of the town, and their last meager means of making a living were cut off. A 6 p.m. curfew kept my family and the others crowded in strange homes in the worst sanitary conditions, 10-15 packed in a room. Another 2,000 people from neighboring villages were added to this pile of misery.
Mayor Suchan took every advantage to extort, terrorize and torment the Jews without relent. In August, a Jew was shot for baking bread, another for slaughtering a cow and four women for preparing a piece of leather.
The Jews desperately sold any last remaining belongings not already pilfered, for pennies. Homes, though, could not be sold. The Poles knew it was only a matter of time until they would be theirs: “A free new home for every family.”
Polish peasants brought large sacks to gather the Jewish spoils.
By November 7, the Jews were well aware of their impending doom. A survivor wrote, “Maybe it is the last Shabbat, God forbid, of the fine and extensive Jewish community of Staszow. One does not wish to believe that the angel of death is already preparing to take our innocent souls. Everybody runs to see his near and dear ones, to console the dejected, to plan means of escape, and also to say goodbye to one another. We want to be together during our last moments.”
That night, the community was ordered to prepare a feast for 150 members of the roving Nazi “resettlement” unit which was making its way from town to town. In anticipation, peasants from the vicinity had already gathered with large sacks to gather the spoils, impatiently asking “Hasn’t it started yet?”
On the mournful dawn of November 8, 1942, the Jews were ordered to appear in the Market Square by 8 a.m. From there, 5,000 abandoned souls were marched off forever. Before they even left town, 189 had been murdered in the streets.
Running for the Bus
All this information generated intense feelings about my return to the shtetl of my ancestors. On one hand, it was the place drenched with the blood of my family. On the other, it was where they had lived, worked, laughed, celebrated births, marriages, bar mitzvahs, Shabbat and holidays, for so many generations.
When I told our driver the purpose of our visit, he hesitantly asked: “Had we heard whether Poles participated in the Holocaust in any way?” We were dumbstruck, not finding words to answer. Finally, we shared with him the common knowledge that Poles were considered by survivors to have been complicit with the Germans.
He said that growing up in Poland, where every student must visit Auschwitz and studying the Holocaust is mandatory, the Polish role in the fate of the Jews has been erased! As a hotel employee, he had once heard a lecture in sensitivity training (Jews are the number one tourist group to the country) where he was told that Poles were active participants, but was wondering if it was really true.
“In Staszow,” I responded, “1,000 Jews found shelter in hidden bunkers and barns to avoid the final deportation. Of those, 900 were turned in by their neighbors.”
Not 15 minutes passed, when he received a first hand illustration. As we drove toward Staszow, we decided to stop at the burnt-out synagogue in the town of Krasnik. The taxi pulled over to ask directions from an old lady standing by the road. When she heard the word “synagogue,” she glanced quickly at us in the back seat, grabbed her bags, and raced away from us at granny-lightning speed.
Stunned, I turned to our driver and said, “Looks like she doesn’t like Jews much.”
Equally shocked, he replied, “No, I think she was just running for a bus.” (There was no bus.)
A middle-aged woman yelled at us, “Go away!”
After finding and visiting the synagogue, we exited to the sight of a middle-aged woman in the back of a car, yelling something to our driver over and over. We asked what she was saying. Reluctantly, our driver confessed, “She’s saying ‘Go away!'” We had just encountered more hatred in the first hour off our tour bus, than in our entire lives in Canada! (Later, he cautioned us, that the word “Zyd,” meaning Jew, “is not a nice word to use.”)
With trepidation, we finally closed in on Staszow, now a picturesque village of 18,000. Zero Jews. We met our guide, Simon, in the Market Square, a large quaint open area surrounded by shops. As I stepped out of the car, my kippah proudly flashing on the top of my head (I decided not to wear a baseball hat — I wanted to let the villagers know that we’re still here), people all around stopped in their tracks and stared. For minutes.
From this spot 64 years ago, my great grandparents and their offspring had been led to their deaths in an act of hysterical evil that today’s pastoral scene belied.
Raised in Staszow, Simon quickly pointed out that most of these stores were once owned by Jews. We decided to begin with the site of the synagogue. Once home to 5,000 congregants, it had been torn down (“because it was not being used”) and replaced by an efficient-looking green office building. A small plaque noted the significance of the site.
Strolling back to Simon’s car, under the watchful eyes of what felt like everyone in Staszow (“We don’t get a lot of visitors here”, Simon suggested helpfully), he pointed to a section of the sidewalk. “Once, after a snowfall, the whole sidewalk was covered with snow except for one spot. Someone noticed, and deduced there must be a Jewish family hiding in a secret basement below. The Nazis were called in and the family taken away.”
As we circled the square in Simon’s car, he shared with us what he had heard from his aunt, who lived through the war. “The day the Germans entered the town, the first thing they did was grab a rabbi. They tied him by his hands to one of their cars, and dragged him round and round this square until he died.”
Next stop was the local history museum, located nondescriptly in the basement of a Communist-era block apartment building. We expected it to be devoted to the memory of the 60 percent of the community which had been obliterated. We were someone surprised to discover the first room full of Staszow’s famous sabers, and photos of prize Arabian horses. The next large room wasn’t more relevant either, but moving through it, we were guided to a closet-sized alcove: the memorial to 5,000 Jews. A few photos, a map of the ghetto, and a couple of cheap menorahs filled most of the “Jewish wing.”
The prize possession, though, was a Torah scroll from the old synagogue. As we studied it, we were abruptly joined by an older ruddy-faced gentleman with a large smile who began to speak to us rapidly in Polish. He was Simon’s uncle — apparently tipped off to the presence of Jewish visitors — who had personally handcrafted the glass and wood case that housed the Torah. He assured us that they were aware of the scroll’s holiness, and had washed their hands before handling it. He recounted how the Torah had been rescued from the burning synagogue by a 9-year-old boy.
I, Survivor
We headed off to our next destination: the family home. What would we find? The same old home? (Many still existed throughout the town.) Something familiar from the photo which started this odyssey? At the corner of the street, an ancient-looking grey wood structure stood, with a couple of derelicts at the door. This was the old Jewish bathhouse — mikveh, no doubt — which was now occupied by “low income residents.”
At last we found the address. We were disappointed to see that it was a newish home, but nevertheless we were overcome with feelings of nostalgia. In the back, an aged barn and garden gave us a taste of what it might have been like. Across the road we excitedly spotted a place that looked right out of the pictures of the shtetl, complete with old wooden wagon and live chickens! I pulled out my camera, when suddenly an old woman began to scream and headed toward us from the coop. (We had been warned that Poles often react this way to foreigners, suspecting that they’re Jews coming to reclaim lost property.) Simon calmed her down, but by that time several other neighbors had emerged from their homes to witness the excitement. We entered into a pleasant conversation with the next door neighbors, who weren’t quite old enough to be worried about their property.
After the requisite photo shoot, we continued through the picturesque, impossibly quiet streets, until we came upon a massive tower and impressive Medieval church. This, then, was the “Blood Libel” tower built from plunder of the first exile of Staszow’s Jews in 1610.
Every tombstone had been smashed.
Before taking leave of Staszow we had one final stop, the cemetery where Jews had been buried for six centuries. Every tombstone had been smashed. One more recent tombstone brought the tears to our eyes. It read, “Here lie the remains of two people, one a teenager, one in his 40s, whose remains were found in the year 2000 in a basement bunker. Assumed to be Jews who had hidden during the war, they were re-interred here.”
On the road out of Staszow, a road filled with blood and tears that will eternally cry out from the earth, Simon filled in the final details of our family’s last day on earth. “All the non-Jews were instructed to bring every wagon and horse to the Market Square. At 10 a.m. the miserable procession began to move out of town. They were marched on this road for five miles until they reached the town of Niszen. Here, a mass grave was dug and 740 victims were slaughtered. The rest continued another 10 miles until they reached the train station. They were packed in, 100 to a cattle car, and shipped off to Belzec for extermination.”
Life expectancy: four hours.
The Jewish community of Staszow was no more. I don’t look at that picture of my great grandparents and their wagon the same way anymore. They are now a conscious part of me. I am their memory. I am their survivor.
Published: Sunday, July 23, 2006