Some time after we departed Bologoye the train was bombed. We scattered around, and at that moment we all forgot about Grandfather Meir. He stayed in the carriage. It became dark like at nighttime, and there was a lot of smoke in the air. I grabbed my younger brother Simon’s hand and was holding his hands, so that he didn’t get lost. My father was running toward us and he was bleeding. He said a shell had exploded near him. Another man was killed, and my father was slightly wounded. My father went on looking for the others. I didn’t know where to go. The bombing didn’t stop and I was scared. My brother and I were standing by the wall of a building.
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Displaying 21661 - 21690 of 50826 results
Yankl Dovid Dudakas
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I must note that the process was well organized, and at larger railway stations the refugees were provided with soup or cooked cereals, or at least, we could get some boiling water. We tried to stay together, which made it easier to endure the hardships. We were supporting each other, each of us responsible for one or another thing. Grandfather Meir fell ill. It was the result of having had to walk quite a distance and the nervous tension. When the train stopped at stations, my father got off to bargain things for food.
So we reached Bologoye, a large railway junction [350 km west of Moscow], Russia, where my father left the horses with the collective farm [13] obtaining a letter of confirmation for getting them back after the war. Unfortunately, this certificate got lost, and now I have no proof that I was in the evacuation. In Bologoye we caught a train to go farther. The adults decided to go to Nizhniy Novgorod where my grandfather had good friends from the times of World War I.
I was born in the small Lithuanian town of Jonava [80 km from Vilnius]. There were only three parallel streets and lanes mostly inhabited by Jews in this town on the banks of the Neris and Vilija Rivers. Most Jews were poor, as a rule, and in their majority they were craftsmen. They were shoemakers, glass cutters, coopers making huge barrels, copper craftsmen making bowls for jam and nice lamps, and blacksmiths. There was even a Kuznechnyi Lane in the town, the name of which in Russian means ‘lane of blacksmiths.’ The Jewish intelligentsia was represented by a few doctors, a notary and an attorney. However, the most important business in Jonava, which made its residents well known all over Lithuania, was furniture production. There were highly skilled cabinet makers and joiners in Jonava. They made solid and beautiful furniture. They worked in private shops scattered all over the town. There was a small furniture factory in Jonava, too. By the mid-1930s it expanded its production capacities to become a rather solid enterprise. There were Jewish, Russian and Lithuanian workers in the factory.
Emilia Ratz
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In 1946 we heard about an agreement according to which former Polish citizens were allowed to return to Poland.
Since I was sixth month pregnant and had worked for the Polish-Soviet Society, we, along with some Polish farmers who had been deported to Siberia, were among the first to return to Poland. They wanted us to be there in time for the harvest. We were transported to Poland in cattle-trucks, some of which had buckets that served as toilets. That was in April 1946; our destination was Warsaw.
Since I was sixth month pregnant and had worked for the Polish-Soviet Society, we, along with some Polish farmers who had been deported to Siberia, were among the first to return to Poland. They wanted us to be there in time for the harvest. We were transported to Poland in cattle-trucks, some of which had buckets that served as toilets. That was in April 1946; our destination was Warsaw.
My husband’s sister had been to several concentration camps. I think she was in Plaszow, near Cracow, first. She was deported along with her mother who was killed in Plaszow. That was the camp where Amon Goeth 15 was commander and saved Oskar Schindler’s 16 Jews. One of my husband’s cousins was saved by Oskar Schindler and she can be seen in one of the last sequences of the film ‘Schindler’s List’ 17. This cousin and a friend of my husband’s, who were saved thanks to Schindler, helped him a lot after the war.
n 1947 I went to Warsaw. Everyone tried to talk me out of it, but I went nonetheless. The street where I used to live had been situated in the center of the Warsaw Ghetto, but all that was left was a wasteland. I had lived on that street for 17 years, but I almost got lost. The only thing that saved me was a church, which had stood opposite our house. That church had survived and I could use it as an aid to orientation. There was debris everywhere because during the Ghetto Uprising in 1943 all houses had been destroyed by flame-throwers. The houses that they later built there were built on a fundament of debris. And of course, there were no documents left.
When my son turned one, I started to work as chief engineer in a cannery. I was a young, 25-year-old woman and the rest of the employees were men. It was hard in the beginning. All the masters were older than me and not particularly happy that I, a young woman, should be their boss. When I started work there, the director of the factory said to me politely, ‘You’re a smart young woman. Why do you want to wrestle with all these …’ He used a pretty dirty word! About six weeks later I invited all my colleagues to a pub – I would never set foot into a pub like this today – for beer and vodka. After that they respected me. Not even three diplomas would have been able to do what that beer and vodka did.
This factory had been in Jewish ownership before the war. The family survived in Brazil. I didn’t walk around with a sign saying ‘I’m Jewish’, but my name is Jewish and Poles simply know when they are dealing with a Jew; they are very strong anti-Semites. They told me non-stop about how they had helped the Jewish owners of the factory with wrapping gold to send it to Brazil. They really got on my nerves! I would have preferred if they had told me that they had beaten them. This currying of favor really annoyed me. However, I wasn’t harassed for being a Jew. I think at that time they trusted Jews in Poland because they hadn’t collaborated with the Germans.
We considered the Kielce Pogrom 19 a ‘slip’. We thought it was ‘yesterday’s people’ who had done that. Cracow was a cultural center, a former capital of Poland. Many intellectuals lived there. In any case I wouldn’t say that there was a particular atmosphere for pogroms there. However, there was pressure from above, to assimilate, to adopt Polish surnames, but they only issued the documents in 1947 or 48. They summoned us to the militia and said we should change our name, Ratz, to something like Raczynski or Rakowski. Upon that my husband said, ‘The only thing left of my family is my name, and I won’t change it!’ Most Jews in Poland did change their Jewish surnames though.
Once a man called me on a business matter in Poland. First we talked business on the phone but then he started to tell me Jewish jokes. They weren’t bad and I did chuckle a bit, but I also told him, ‘You know, I’m not sure if you should tell someone whose father’s name was Israel, such an awful lot of such jokes in such a short time.’ He was completely shocked and uttered, ‘I’m really sorry. If your surname had been Rakoschka or Ratschenski or something like that, I would have guessed that you might be Jewish. But with a name like Ratz…!
My husband was transferred to Warsaw in 1949 to work in a car factory. He was the head of a Polish group of engineers and they sent him to Italy for a half-year training at FIAT. Later my son Alexander and I also moved to Warsaw. My daughter, Margarete, was born in Warsaw on 19th May 1952. I got a position as an expert with the State Planning Commission. I would have preferred to work in a factory but they said they also needed good people with the Planning Commission, so I stayed there until they fired me in 1968.
After the Six-Day-War 20 in Israel, an anti-Semitic mood began to spread in Poland. It wasn’t public yet, but it was noticeable. A few people even dared to shout at meetings. But no one dared to say that the Jews should get out of Poland.
One day my boss summoned me to his office. He had always valued me highly but nonetheless he said that I couldn’t keep my position because my husband had a sister in Israel and they therefore couldn’t trust me any more. I would get an equivalent position though, he said. I didn’t, so I went to see the head boss because I thought he was an intelligent and politically correct person. In reality, he was a hopeless scaredy-cat though.
I finally got a job as technical advisor in a bank. There was probably some kind of instruction that wanted to make Jews feel that they weren’t welcome in Poland by paying those who had been fired from their previous jobs lower salaries. I can’t prove that though because at the place I worked, I still made good money in comparison to others. My husband had kept his position but as early as 1956, during the first anti-Semitic wave in Poland, he wanted to leave the country. Many people left back then. But then the situation became more relaxed and, at age 50, we had to admit, that we were wrong.
I finally got a job as technical advisor in a bank. There was probably some kind of instruction that wanted to make Jews feel that they weren’t welcome in Poland by paying those who had been fired from their previous jobs lower salaries. I can’t prove that though because at the place I worked, I still made good money in comparison to others. My husband had kept his position but as early as 1956, during the first anti-Semitic wave in Poland, he wanted to leave the country. Many people left back then. But then the situation became more relaxed and, at age 50, we had to admit, that we were wrong.
Two weeks after he had settled in Vienna, my husband found a job as an engineer with a company that went bankrupt a year later. He was unemployed for half a year until he found a job with the German Festo company. Originally, that company manufactured equipment for timber processing and pneumatic systems; later it was pneumatic systems and steering for machines. My husband was responsible for the market in the GDR. He traveled to fairs, made good money and was valued by his company.
My daughter isn’t religious and neither are her children.
My daughter didn’t have it easy in Vienna. She had reached puberty, missed her mother, had difficulties with the German language and therefore problems in school. Now she is an interpreter in the Polish and Russian language.
My oldest grandson, Martin, decided to have his circumcision at the age of 17 and became a Jew. His mother fulfilled his wishes and they also celebrated all the religious holidays at home. He was studying at Business University in Vienna for half a year, and Pesach was around that time. He wanted us to celebrate seder eve together. It was a catastrophe because none of us had any idea about it. He said he would take care of everything but then, at the last moment, he had to do something at university and was late. I had a Haggadah for children, and I was the ‘chief rabbi’. I don’t know if Martin still celebrates religious holidays; he’s very busy with the development of his company.
Martin lives in Stockholm. He started to work right after his diploma, with a Swedish company that sells know-how to language schools. Jakob studied medicine and did his doctorate in May. Benjamin, the youngest, did his final exams this spring and wants to study law.
Martin lives in Stockholm. He started to work right after his diploma, with a Swedish company that sells know-how to language schools. Jakob studied medicine and did his doctorate in May. Benjamin, the youngest, did his final exams this spring and wants to study law.
People are surprised to hear that I don’t know a single word of Yiddish. I do understand a few words, but I’ve never used the language. There are no more Jews in Poland, but there’s a wonderful Yiddish theatre in Warsaw that has fantastic actors; they aren’t Jewish though. Because I know German, I understand almost everything in Yiddish.
I’ve never been religious; even back in Poland our friends were rather assimilated Jews. We never denied that we were Jews but we never practiced religion either. Sometimes I went to the temple in Vienna, when I was invited to a bar mitzvah or a concert, but I never prayed there.
When I went to Israel for the first time, I admired simply everything I saw there. I wasn’t superficially interested in the political side of things. Hedy and her family were there and my husband had a great many acquaintances in Israel. We saw a lot of places, including Eilat, which back then was still being constructed. I had a student colleague who was a building contractor and had an airplane and he flew us to Eilat. The country fascinated me and of course there were many discussions and some people tried to convince us to move to Israel. But I don’t know the language and since I’m a culturally orientated person, language is very important to me, and I would be somewhat of an illiterate person in Israel. There were quite a few interesting people, such as friends from my childhood, a director and a musician, with whom I was in touch.
I went to Israel for the third time in 1998. My friends, though they become less and less, decided to stay there; actually they don’t have a choice anymore. They are disappointed with the politics of the government. Some have children in America. A former student colleague of mine has a son in Israel who is a chemist and another one in America, who is a professor of economics. The son in Israel says, ‘ I was born here, my daughter was born here, this is my country.’ Many say that but still they aren’t happy with the whole politics and history of the country.
I went to Israel for the third time in 1998. My friends, though they become less and less, decided to stay there; actually they don’t have a choice anymore. They are disappointed with the politics of the government. Some have children in America. A former student colleague of mine has a son in Israel who is a chemist and another one in America, who is a professor of economics. The son in Israel says, ‘ I was born here, my daughter was born here, this is my country.’ Many say that but still they aren’t happy with the whole politics and history of the country.
Today I live in Vienna and have lady-friends here: most of them are Jewish but there are also a few atheists. I go to the theater, exhibitions, concerts a lot and I also like hiking. My daughter lives in Vienna and so do my two granddaughters. I visit my son in Sweden every summer and usually stay for a month.
My father’s whole family lived in Warsaw, in a house that belonged to my grandfather. My grandparents lived in the house facing the street while the other two families belonging to our family each had a two-bedroom apartment without bathroom in the annex forming the rear of the house. We had a bath-tub in the kitchen. During the day we used it as a table by putting a table-top on top of it. We had running water and electricity, but there was no garden. We didn’t have any pets either. We lived very modestly.
The house facing the street had three of four stories and in the rear there was a wing on both the left and the right side. The main house consisted of about 15 apartments, in which mostly Jewish families lived. The janitor, however, wasn’t Jewish.
The house facing the street had three of four stories and in the rear there was a wing on both the left and the right side. The main house consisted of about 15 apartments, in which mostly Jewish families lived. The janitor, however, wasn’t Jewish.
My grandfather owned a soap factory which was housed in the cellar of the rear building. It consisted of three rooms: the office, the packing-table room and the boiler-room. There was a huge boiler in which the soap was produced as well as a machine for pressing and shaping the soap. By the way, my grandfather also manufactured toothpaste. It was called Milodont, after his daughter Mila. I think there was coconut oil, perfume and soapsuds in the boiler. There were up to four workers there; they were probably Jewish. My father didn’t have a shop of his own, he sold the products to shops and private people, and, before Christian holidays also to market stalls. The factory was closed on Jewish holidays.
The family mainly gathered at his place for meals on the high holidays. Anytime I saw my grandfather, he wore a black suit. He also always wore a kippah. In my memories, he was a tall and chubby man. He said the prayers and led the dinner. I remember a large table, at which all family members had their meals, and of course, there was also a cook. I don’t remember if there were any other servants.
On Sabbath my mother baked challot and lit the candles. My father, who was a heavy smoker, didn’t smoke on Sabbath. I remember that we had potato pancake on Chanukkah and hamantashen on Purim. I didn’t fast on Yom Kippur, but after people ended their fast there was always a lot of food; I don’t recall what exactly. On Sukkot we built huts [sukkah] in the yard and ate in there. There was a Chassidic family living in the house and they performed dances on all the holidays.
Aunt Felicia didn’t survive the Warsaw Ghetto 1, whereas Mieczyslav managed to flee from the ghetto. He got hold of some ,Aryan papers’, went to Southern Russia with the Todt 2 organization and joined the Polish army in exile [see Anders’ Army] 3 there in 1943. He marched into Poland with the Polish army in 1945, became a journalist and worked for a newspaper.
Friederike’s husband also had to join the army in 1939 and he either died on the frontlines or in some camp in Russia. But his younger brother survived. When I visited a friend in London after the war, she told me that she was friends with a certain Stützer and that he was the brother of my cousin Friederike’s husband. Friederike died in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Rosa and her child were killed during the Holocaust.
In 1888 Narewka had approximately 860 residents, 780 of which were Jews. In 1908 they built the Hajnowka-Wolkowysk railway line running through Narewka. This little village wasn’t destroyed in World War II. In the interwar period the village had industrial companies, a turpentine factory, Hackiel’s glassworks and a windmill.
Of course the Jewish life was wiped out in Narewka after World War II, I’m sure that not a single Jew remained in town. There was no synagogue and no Jewish cemetery giving evidence that Jews had lived there before the Holocaust.
Of course the Jewish life was wiped out in Narewka after World War II, I’m sure that not a single Jew remained in town. There was no synagogue and no Jewish cemetery giving evidence that Jews had lived there before the Holocaust.