Tag #106726 - Interview #88491 (Emanuel Elbinger)

Masses of people had no families, no homes, and wanted to immigrate to Palestine. Kibbutzim sprang up. There was this group from Przemyska Street, where there was a kibbutz too. They hired three taxis to get to Zakopane and across the border into Czechoslovakia. Was it illegal? I don’t know. Well, and they were stopped by a gang. It was 1946. They shot them all, 20-something people [Editor’s note: the murder took place on 3rd May 1946 near Nowy Sacz; the victims were 13 members of Gordonia, who were fleeing to Czechoslovakia. The perpetrators were never found]. There’s a common grave in the cemetery on Miodowa Street [Cracow’s only active Jewish cemetery; in WWII the Germans used some of the headstones as construction material; restored by the Joint in the 1950s]. I went to the funeral; I was nosy – there were scores of people there. I remember that Dr. Bieberstein [25] spoke, he appealed to the authorities, to the power of the Republic, for someone to take this in hand, for someone to try and stop what was going on. Three taxis full of young people killed. I didn’t know any of them, because they were older – young people, but old enough to want to set up a kibbutz in Palestine. They went together because they wanted to be together, and there you are. Never made it.