A Treasure Trove of old Documents

Aryeh in Israel emailed me scans of documents passed down to him from his (great?) grandfather, Salomon Pinkas Ente. The name caught my eye as my grandfather's best friend in Przemysl post WWI was one Harry Ente. So far, there is no obvious link.

If anyone wants to see all of them as well as more detailed versions, I have posted them HERE.  Email me if you want to get in touch with Aryeh directly.

Passport Cover

Passport Page 1

Passport Page 3 - 4

Card & Yiddish Song

 

Letter and (Ukrainian?) Document

Work Record

Family Michalczyk?

Emailer Steve writes:

It's a fascinating blog, David.

I'm not Jewish, nor Polish, but in deciding to try and give my wife a 'family tree' as a surprise 50th birthday present next year I've been struck by all things Polish! I've even begun learning the language in the hope of a surprise visit next autumn.

I wondered whether you could ask on your blog if there are any Michalczyk's still living in or around Przemsyl?

My wife's father (Iwan Michalczyk) was born in Tarnawce, just outside Przemysl, but escaped to the UK during the war. All I know of him is that his father's name was Konstantego Michalczyk, that his mother died in childbirth (1918), and a stepmother died soon after in some sort of fire.

Thanks for any help you might generate, and keep up the good work with the blog.

Family Engel

Anyone know of family Engel? Have a spare bottle of Engel Galician Pinot 1895?

Hello David

It’s Roma Baran who gave me your name and email address.

I’m the son of Simon Engel, who was born in Przemysl on June 3rd 1916, son of Herz and Margulie Engel-Weinberger.

My father was studying in Belgium before the War, so he escaped and fought in the RAF. All his family was killed, except one brother, Ben, who survived the camps and then left for Belgium then Canada, then California. They are both dead now.

My father never told me a lot about his past and family. They were all born in Tarnow. What I know is that, from my grand-mother, they had vineyards, before WW I. During WW I, they left for Budapest, where my father is born. When they came back, they discover they had lost almost everything.

As many sons and grand-sons of « survivors » (even if he was not in camps), and more as a writer, I started late (too late) to inquire about this past. And I found very few.

Would you have any information about my family in Przemysl ?

best regards

Vincent Engel
www.vincent-engel.com

Moysey's Przemysl Photos

Moysey's Rybotycze Photos

Moses Rubinfeld of Rybotycze near Przemysl

Over the transom comes a wonderful letter (as received) and a link to a very nicely done website about Rybotycze, a small town about 15 miles southwest of Przemysl. The image below is of the town's synagogue, painted from an old black and white photo.

My name is Moysey Rubinfeld,born Rybotycze near Przemysl.

I'll visited very often Przemysl an help renowate the jewisz cemetery,work together with mr.Gletner. Erect a memorial for all jewish people who were perished by the nazis Al Kidush Haszem. Also I'll absolutly renowated the jewish cemetery in Rybotycze, lift up more thet hundred stones /matzejwes/, makes a a fense around the cemetery and build a memorial. If you will be interested I can send you pictures.

Also you can take alook at my internet site WWW.FORUM-RYBOTYCZE.pl

Best wiszhes

M.Rubinfeld

From his site:

Moses Rubinfeld

This is the text of the letter (in original spelling) sent to the participants of Polish-German-Israeli meeting of young people and the inhabitants of the Rybotycze place, 30 July 2007.

Honorable visitors, friends, compatriots!

I want to apologize very much, please forgive me I am not present here and I cannot meet with you. My age and health condition do not allow me to go on such journeys any more. But I was born here, in Poland, in Rybotycze, my first years, though very hard, I spent in a beautiful and never forgotten town-Cracow and everywhere I go, I always go from Rybotycze. Fragments of gauges from Rybotycze's synagogue saved by Tadeusz Kowalik, donated to Moses Rubinfeld, before emigration from Russia to the USA. They are now exhibited in the museum YAD VA SHEM in Jerusalem and in the Museum of Holocaust in Washington. In 1939 when I was returning from Cracow, because the war began, several of my peers stayed in Rybotycze, it was possible to talk to them about memories of our childhood, it was before 1955 - when I arrived after the war I was only by myself, there was only me. There is a simple poem: "Everything passes slowly, great luck and everything that hurts, everything passes as our destination wants and only one thing stays- the memory " Noemi Szac. I have been traveling throughout Poland for 60 years, by car, by train and it brings only the memory of these times, when by all those means Jews were transported only in one direction -the direction of their extinction. Strolling in Rybotycze, as the only Jew who has survived here, I used to go from one house to another asking just one question :" What happened here with my family, father, brothers, relatives and with all other Jews of this village. There was only one answer: we do not know anything, we did not see anything! For a person with the normal way of thinking answers like that can create a suspicion, whether all the people in such a place have both their hands and their conscience clean. Close your eyes and try to imagine how this small town looked like 60 years ago, where Poles lived next to Jews and Ukrainians - a colourful world where Polish, Yiddish and Ukrainian sounded. After all this, it is hard to imagine that in such place there were neighbours who helped Germans to murder innocent people - children, women, and eldery people. They burgled houses and synagogues, you can still find in their flats some rests of stolen things. Why am I mentioning this? By it, I want to emphasize that, as the president of Poland has said, the neighbours differed: some of them were arsonist and thieves, the others were saving human lives. Also barns differed, some were burnt with alive people inside, in the others people were saved. I have a very big experience when it comes to this issue. I remember when in Cracow on Shoemaker's Street and on the market at Wedel's, there were inscriptions:entrance - Jews and dogs not allowed. But I will also never forget it, when a Polish soldier saved my life in 1939. Escaping on foot from Cracow, at night, I hooked for a train, which was going on east, in the morning I found out that I arrived to Rzeszów, here two young soldierds took me to the Commander of military station, who did not want to hear my explanations and gave an order to shot me down as a German spy. While they were taking me to to the railway station, this soldier came, a former director of an army canteen, which was situated in Cracow, and with which our company had business. He stopped us and ordered to release me. And now, traveling from Cracow to Przemyśl via Rzeszów I am affraid of taking photos here as I do not want to be charged of being an American spy (a joke). I can remember the first time after the war when I went to Rybotycze, everybody was looking at me as at a kind of a hero from a fairy tale, some of them were even touching me with their hands, it was hard to belive that there is a Jew who had survived. Some of them were staring ame with displeasure, they were surely affraid that I came back for my heritage, for the square where my house had beensituated, for my land. But it was, and still is, something that I do not need. I just want to commemorate the memory of our parents, brothers, sisters, all Jews from our town who were innocently murdered and I have not been able to explain so far where they are buried, though, it seems to me that some people know it. Jewish cemetery on Polish land is a house of alive people, not the dead ones. (Szewach Weiss-a former ambassador of Israel in Poland) If we want our tombs to be respected somewhere in the world we have to respect these tombs which are situated on our land too. . /priest Bartminski-Krasiczyn/ I am still related this country, I have a citizen status of Poland, which surprises some of my acquaintances, but I was born here, lived here, I lost here all my relatives, a beautiful girl with whom I falled in love and who was murdered with her family. Sometimes I ask myself: why only I have survived when everybody else was murdered? But even now, after 60 years, I cannot answer this question, even though, during those 60 years I have managed with my wife to build a family - we have two daughters, two grandsons, they are independent and help each other. In 2000, I found a woman whose parents were from Rybotycze, her name was Rachel Salik, after her mother - Gans, it was her cousin with whom I was in love. The monument of her mother, who was killed in Auschwitz, is on the cemetery in Przemyśl. The girl died in April 2007 and was buried in Paris. I have been always looking for somebody, in August I managed to find, thanks to the Internet, my cousin in Paris, the daughter of my mother's brother, who had survived the war and lived in Paris, he died in 1990. Our meeteng, in September last year, was amazing. There met two people, two cousins, who knew about each other nothing. She has got a husband now, two children( a daughter who is married and has a child, and a son who is 28 now). They are all wealth but do not know anything about Rybotycze and they are not even interested in it. Rachel used to say that each of us should leave a trace, a memory of us. This trace will be a renovation of the cemetery in Rybotycze and a documentary film "The Lights of the House" and in which there is shown Rybotycze, a beautiful nature of the Carpaty mountains, fields and forests, streets with storks on pillars and roofs. The river Wiar, flowing from mountains and people living there. I am very pleased that so much has changed in Poland, new generations have grown up, they have a different way of thinking. Nowadays, one can meet young people from Israel, Germany and Poland in Rybotycze. My small town resemblances what it used to be, when there was a friendship between different nations. Let it be a begining of something new, something better. Finally, we understood that we are all children of one God, no matter what are the differences between us. We have to remember that a human being is not born to become a hero, but to become a good person. I get on realy well with my neighbours. The family of Mr. Jan Bakalus, his wife Magda and their children, they are all very good people. At first, it was we who were vistiting them, when our children were small, now they always wait for us. Everything what we managed to do here in Rybotycze and Przemyśl was partly because of Mr. Eugeniusz Bakalus's help. He was my plenipotentiary, spent a lot of time and effort on this project, also his wife helped a lot. Ending my memories, I would like to thank all the people who helped to renovate the cemetery in Rybotycze: the authorities of this province and city and the mayor of Przemyśl. Separate thanks for help to Mr. Z . Kopczakow head forester from Bircza and a forester from Rybotycze Mr. Z. Podgórny. I would also like to thank the organizers of this project and the participants of it.

Moses Rubinfeld

Family Knoll

I have been corresponding with Alexander Khochinskiy who runs the "BOHEMA" Art Gallery in Moscow. Alexander is trying to find out what became of his mother's Knoll family in Przemysl during the war. Here is his story:

My mother, nee Miriam Knoll, was born on 22 Feb. 1922 and had her childhood in the Polish town of Peremyshl. I have appended to this letter on the birth certificate of my mother, in which also listed the home address, home to her family - Grunevaldska 128. On the June 22, when the bombing began (in Przemysl), my mom was able to go to her grandmother's village near Lviv, which, in 1939, had become a Soviet city. When the Germans again came close, she and other refugees went to the east and reached Kiev, but , she went further - to Tashkent, where, until the end of the war, she worked at the hospital, saving the lives of wounded Soviet soldiers, among whom was my future father who had been seriously wounded at the front.

Thus, she survived, and once married, her name has become - Khochinskaya.

After the war, my mother looked for her relatives through the Red Cross. I have attached a reply from them.
I would like to know the fate of my mother's relatives - especially her father and mother - their names can be easy and correct found in the certificate of her birth.

Nearly ten years ago, I was able to visit the hometown of my mother - Peremyshl. I found the place where once stood the house of her family, from which no one survived, except for her, despite everything away in the USSR, where she not only preserved my life, but also gained a home, family, and children.

Of course the house of her family does not exist, but what was my astonishment when I saw that on my mother's ground is a House is built in 1980 - the Roman Catholic Church - GRUNWALDZKA KOSCIOL Matki Bożej Królowej Polski!


Then I was struck not merely by the existence of a temple on the land of my ancestors, but that the name of the church coincided with the name of my mother - Mary.

While in the past I had not thought about it, the influence of this magical coincidence convinces me that I have the legitimate right to claim my family's property - land belonging to me as heir to the rightful owners who perished during the Nazi occupation.

And now, I think that all the Jews of Poland should be paid compensation for property requisitioned during the Nazi, and later, and the communist regimes.


Sincerely yours,
Alexander Khochinskiy

If anyone has any information on Family Knoll, please email me and I will get you in touch with Alexander.

Busy Przemysl Weekend

Our friend Lukasz was kind enough to send some photos from a very busy weekend in Przemysl.

Here, Lukasz joins Michael Freund in front of the new commemorative plaque attached to the wall of the city's library - once the Scheinbach Synagogue.

Detail of the plaque donated by Michael. From his website:

Michael Freund is Founder and Chairman of Shavei Israel, which reaches out and assists "lost Jews" seeking to return to the Jewish people. He writes a syndicated column and feature stories for the Jerusalem Post. Previously, he served as Deputy Director of Communications & Policy Planning in the Israeli Prime Minister´s Office under former premier Benjamin Netanyahu. A native of New York, he holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia University and a BA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He has lived in Israel for the past decade.

During the ceremony Lukasz presented to the library a reprint of the Sefer Przemysl. On the eve of completing the translation of it's Hebrew part, the hope that it will be made available to English, Yiddish, and Hebrew speakers who happen to visit the former synagogue.


The weekend concluded with a piano concert performed by the Walachowski sisters. Their grandfather was Przemysl ghetto survivor.

(Photos by Adam Erd and Jacek Szwic.)

Fundamentally Freund: From JPost

Blog-friend Michael Freund's JPost column on Jewish-Polish heritage:

Preserving Poland's Jewish heritage

By MICHAEL FREUND

Nearly 80 years ago this week, more than 10,000 Jews from across Poland gathered in Lublin for what would prove to be one of their last major festive events prior to the Holocaust.

With representatives of the Polish government and armed forces in attendance, as well as prominent rabbis and hassidic rebbes, the yeshiva Chachmei Lublin was formally inaugurated on June 24-25, 1930.

The massive five-story structure, which had its own mikve, bakery and dormitories, was situated on three acres of land and was headed by the renowned Rabbi Meir Shapiro, the visionary who created the daf yomi program of daily Talmud study.

The Lublin yeshiva was one of the jewels of Polish Jewry's network of great talmudic academies. It attracted students from as far away as Argentina and Palestine, and its demanding curriculum was aimed at producing graduates of the highest intellectual, spiritual and moral caliber.

Just nine years later, however, the German invasion forced the yeshiva to close its doors, and the Nazis turned it into the local headquarters for their military police. After World War II it was taken over by the Polish state and used by a medical academy, before being returned to the Jewish community in 2003.

VISITING THE BUILDING, which was recently refurbished and now houses the offices and synagogue of Lublin's small yet vibrant Jewish community, I walked through its halls in a state of awe tinged with sadness. It was easy to imagine how the large and spacious corridors were once filled with students with volumes of the Talmud tucked under their arms, or to visualize the fervent swaying of young worshipers in the throes of daily prayers.

But the noise and bustle is long gone, replaced instead by an eerie and unsettling silence.

Most of the yeshiva's students were murdered in the Holocaust, a point made even more chilling by the small exhibition of photographs on the building's second floor. One taken at the yeshiva's opening shows crowds of men gathered around the entrance, taking part in the extraordinary ceremonies. Looking at the image, it is unnerving to realize that most of those in it were probably consumed by the flames less than a decade later.

Nonetheless, despite the heartrending past which the building evokes, it continues to play a vital role in educating young Jews. On my visit, I saw a group of some 75 Jewish high-school girls from France touring the building. Many stopped to recite psalms in front of the holy ark, while others listened intently as a rabbi explained Polish Jewry's glorious history.

Had I paid better attention in my own high-school French classes, I might have been able to follow his remarks more closely, but it was clear from the group's serious demeanor that the experience was leaving its mark on them.

THIS BRIEF ENCOUNTER encapsulated for me just why it is so crucial that more be done to preserve key historical Jewish sites throughout Poland, both to keep alive the legacy of the past and to educate and inspire future generations of Jews and non-Jews.

According to Monika Krawczyk, CEO of the Warsaw-based Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (www.fodz.pl), the country is home to more than 1,100 Jewish cemeteries, 200 former synagogues and numerous other sites.

Some of these have been remarkably refurbished, such as the yeshiva building in Lublin and the famous baroque-style synagogue in Lancut, but numerous others are in dire need of repair.

In other instances, many former synagogue buildings and important Jewish sites taken over by the authorities have been scoured of their Jewish past, with neither a plaque nor even a mention of the function they once served. This, of course, makes it far too easy for younger Poles to forget their country's history and the vital role that Jews once played there.

This can not be allowed to happen. We owe it to those who perished to do what we can to keep alive their memory and the memory of the communities in which they lived.

JUST THIS past week, on a visit to the southeastern city of Przemysl, I participated in a moving ceremony with precisely that aim. A memorial plaque in Polish, English and Hebrew was unveiled on the outside of a building that served as a synagogue for some of Przemysl's 20,000 Jews prior to the war, highlighting their contribution to the growth and development of the city.

At the ceremony, which was attended by Israel's new ambassador to Poland, Zvi Rav-Ner, as well as a representative of the US Consulate in Krakow, a member of the Polish parliament who hails from Przemysl told the crowd that he had not known about the extent of the Jewish presence in the area, or even that the building had been a shul.

And even though Jews constituted nearly 30% of the city's population before World War II, this modest little plaque constituted the first tangible and public reminder of their centuries-old presence. Hopefully, more such remembrances will follow.

Since an estimated 60-70% of Ashkenazi Jews trace their history back to Poland, this is an issue that touches on large swathes of Diaspora and Israeli Jewry.

There is a lot that can be done to correct the current situation, from pressing Polish authorities to return Jewish communal property to helping groups such as Krawczyk's foundation repair and restore various sites.

Either way, it is essential that we take action to right at least some of the wrongs done to our people. Obviously, we can't change the past. But we can - and must - do it justice.

The Central Powers Heavy Hitters

What a wonderful piece of history!

All of the leaders of the Central Powers - the Germans, Austro-Hungarians, and Turks - with the Kaiser front and center.

Bottom right, the dead bear is certainly a defeated Russia, expelled from Fort Przemysl by General Mackensen, and celebrated by a German and an Austrian soldier.

Thanks to Lukasz for sending it.

Anna, a young woman in the photo

More from Anna on Przemysl during the war:

Thank you for trying to help me to find the fate of my dentist Mr. Rosenblueth and his family.

I explain to you my friendly connection with him. He attended to my teeth for a number of years, as I needed correction as a little girl of eight. I and my parents were very grateful to him and later we became friends. Unfortunately, when the Germans bombed Przemysl on 7th Sept.1939 his house was hit and burned to the ground. He only managed to save his skeleton dentist chair which he transported to my parents at Dworskiego for safe keeping.

I email Anna and asked her three questions. First, "In the photo, which one are you?"

1. I am in the photo Anna Switalska in the first row second from the left between my friend Dziunia Gottdank and Maria Jurasz. (see below)

Next, I asked, "Are you Jewish?"

2. I am Polish but I had many Jewish friends.

And finally, "How did you and your family survive the war?"

3. This is a long story. When the war started I was 15 and still a pupil at the secondary school, Gimnazjum Kupieckie at Dworskiego 25. The Russians occupied half of Przemysl up to the river San. They evicted us from our flat and we had to live for 2 whole years in the cellars while they have enjoyed living in our flat including the kitchen. They re-named the school Molotow which I attended for further 2 years. When the Germans invaded Przemysl in June 1941, the Russian fled and we were able to get back into our flat. The Germans re-named the school Hoehere Handels Fachschule which I continued to attend until matriculation.

Then suddenly my father broke his leg. The Germans did not allow to send an ambulance for Poles, so it took 3 hours to wait for a passing cart to take him to hospital with an open wound. There was only one Ukrainian doctor and no penicillin. My father got gangrene and died at the age of 60.

After his death my mother's family in Vienna arranged for my mother and me to join them. As a foreigner (born in Poland) I had to clear the streets of Vienna after bombing in order to receive ration cards for food. When the war ended I could not believe that I am still alive. Through the British Cross in Vienna I managed to trace my brother who was missing for 6 years. He fought the Germans in the South (Tobruk, Monte Cassino etc.) with the Polish Army under Gen. Anders. My mother and I went immediately to Innsbruck and went to the Polish Red Cross. We paid 10 Dollars each to be taken by foot at night through the Alps (Brenner Pass) over the border to Italy to join my brother. We met in Verona and then went to Cingolli where he was stationed. After a month he brought the message from his Headquarters that all Poles cannot return to Poland because the Russians are still there and half of Poland in Russia, but Britain allowed them to come and live in England with their families.

We traveled to Britain and I am still living here, married with two grown up sons. My husband and I visited Przemysl once and I still have some friends there and am corresponding with them.

She concluded her note with a question back to me, and to all of this blog's readers:

By the way, who sent you the photograph? Are any of my Jewish colleagues and friends in the photo still alive?

Warm regards, Anna.

Did any of the young Jewish students in the photo survive the holocaust? I don't know.

More on the girl's school - and the Przemysl dentist -

I received an email from Anna Demby (nee Switalska,) one of the girls in this 1937 photo posted a while back:


She clears up a few missing pieces:

I am very grateful for your prompt reply. I note that you already have exactly the same photo of the girls school at Konarskiego in Przemysl. I therefore only would like to add that the missing name ".....Zofia" was Chraca Zofia and the name of the headmistress, sitting by Ela Liebich was Nowosielska, and the teacher's name sitting next to her was Hanula. We called her pani Hanulanka.

Then she asks:

Is it possible for you to find my dentist Mr. Rosenblueth who had a beautiful dental practice on the first floor in ulica Franciszkanska in Przemysl and who escaped Holocaust because he was hidden for a few years by his Polish servant. She used to come very often to my parents in ulica Dworskiego with his clothes etc. which my mother sold and gave the servant the money for Mr. Rosenblueth's upkeep.

Mr. Rosenblueth managed to send his wife and his child with other Polish women to Germany for hard labour. I am sure that he and his family must have survived the war but I do not know of their fate after the war, as after the death of my father my mother and I managed to leave Poland to Vienna. Maybe his daughter is still alive?

Does anyone remember the dentist?

Anna is now 85 years old, married and lives in England.

We will return!

Blog Readers -

Apologies to all of the readers of the Przemysl Blog. I have been sidelined by personal matters for the past few months and have not been able to contribute to this site. Now that all that is mostly behind me, I plan to return to regular posting after the July 4th weekend.

If in the meantime, or anytime, anyone wants to add their own lore to the blog, please email me directly and I will post it (if appropriate)

Please come back in July!

Warm regards

David Semmel

The DNA Shoah Project

Imaging being a survivor and not knowing who your parents were? Of if they were even alive. Or a surviving parent with no idea what became of your children. Now, there is a new effort underway to apply the power of genetic testing to the problem of the holocaust missing.

The DNA Shoah Project will collect the DNA of survivors and store it all in a database. Eventually, this information will be cross-checked against itself and other data looking for matches. One can easily imagine infants torn apart in the holocaust reuniting as in their golden years because of this technology.

The "holy grail" of this project is to collect DNA from the murdered. Frankly, I have no idea how the science to do that works, but I know that in this day and age, something as insignificant as a hair can positively identify on of the 6 million - and link them to one or more of the 6 billion who live today.

Here is the email I received:

Mr. Semmel, shalom - I found your wonderful Przemysl blog today via a link from Tracing the Tribe and I wanted to share our project with you.

The DNA Shoah Project is a non-profit, humanitarian effort at the University of Arizona aiming to reunite families disrupted by the Holocaust. We are building a database of genetic material from Shoah survivors and their immediate descendants in an attempt to match displaced relatives, provide wartime orphans and lost children with information about their biological families and eventually, when the database has reached sufficient size, assist in the identification of Holocaust-era victims whose remains continue to surface. The project contains an educational component as well, employing current science and technology to teach the Holocaust in our schools. There is no cost to participants.

The project’s cofounders include Syd Mandelbaum, a scientist with a background in genetics and the son of two Holocaust survivors, and Dr. Michael Hammer, a renowned research scientist at the University of Arizona who specializes in human population genetics.

The success of our work depends on the creation of as large a database as possible. We are actively seeking DNA samples from survivors and second- and third-generation family members and we are traveling extensively to promote the project. We hope to use this window of opportunity to gather as many DNA samples as we can from survivors and their descendants around the globe, thereby creating a genetic testimony and legacy for victims of the Holocaust.

I invite you to visit our web site for additional information and I encourage you to view the short video found there, as it provides an excellent introduction to the project.

I hope you will see fit to share this information with your readership. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions, or to request additional materials.

Sincerely,

Lynn Davis
Information Specialist
The DNA Shoah Project

toll-free: (866) 897-1150
www.dnashoah.org
info@dnashoah.org

Jewish identity in a digital age

"Jewish identity in a digital age", through Lukasz, Roma, me, and some people new to this blog, written by Britt Aharoni, Natalia Halec, Michelle Higgins, Natasha Marar and Shobhita Sharma, students in the MA Journalism Program at the University of Western Ontario, published at Rabble.ca

Jewish identity in a digital age
By Shobhita Sharma Natasha Marar Natalia Halec Michelle Higgins Britt Aharoni
| March 5, 2009

Lukasz Biedka is a psychologist, author and researcher of history and Jewish genealogy. He is also a contributor to the Jewish blog, Przemysl. For 15 years, he has been part of a team of psychotherapists who work with Holocaust survivors and the second generation in Poland.

He knows many stories of people who discovered their Jewish roots late in life. Usually, they came from mixed marriages or had survived the Holocaust as children, and were raised by Christian families. What stood out for him about Roma Baran's story, featured on the Przemysl blog, wasn't just the lifetime of secrecy.

"I never heard of such a story that someone was living in America, where both parents were Jewish and they did not identify themselves with the Jewish world. This was something special," he says.

Family secrecy is an issue that comes up often in his psychotherapy sessions with children and family members of Holocaust survivors. In Poland, it is typical for children to first learn of their Jewish roots at the age of 12 or 13, he says. That is when the children are considered mature enough to keep the secret from going outside of the family. That is when his mother told him.

"People are hiding here," he says. "The Jews are. They do not share their identity outside. And it's part of the problem that belongs to the survivors and the second-generation."

Biedka's mother discovered she was Jewish a year after the war ended, at the age of 14. She was born in Warsaw and survived the war in Siberia with her father. Her parents were both from Przemysl.

Biedka has become an expert on the Jewish from Przemysl -- collecting things like databases, memories, testimonies, documents and photos and connecting with people online to help piece together a shared history.

He's like a human database. Years of research has enabled him to associate the names of people and places and to recollect details and make connections.
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Soon after he met Baran on the Przemysl Blog, he realized that he knew a man who hid in the same place as her father during the Holocaust. He knew this man from testimonies he was collecting for research on the ghetto in Przemysl. He confirmed it with the man, now in his eighties and living in Israel. The man had known Roma's father during and after the war, and Biedka put Baran in touch with him so she could get to know another side of her father.

But Baran isn't the only one who has reconnected with her past because of Biedka. He says he's helped people trace their genealogy on several occasions, usually starting with the Internet.

"It's their access to the databases that are online," he says. "You can contact people all over the world who search for a certain place or a certain name. This is the power the Internet has, that one can associate the facts more quickly."

Jewish genealogy sites are an empire, he says.

Searching, he says, is a Jewish speciality, especially in countries like Poland, where much of the now fragmented Jewish population has few close relatives.

"It's not like American-Jewish families, with five generations living a normal life untouched by the (Holocaust)," he says. Jews here have no families, they have no grandparents, they have no cousins ... they are trying to rebuild the whole network. So the distant cousins from across the globe in Latin America, in Australia, become close relatives."

When someone is searching for her Jewish ancestors, especially from a culture of secrecy or in light of a recent discovery, it's more dramatic than just curiosity, says Biedka. It's searching for identity.

The bigger the mystery the larger the quest for meaning -- and it's a puzzle Roma's still working on. "I don't think we have an answer, not yet. We'll find it," says Biedka. "Every week we learn something new."

Discovering a Jewish past in the digital age

Roma Baran celebrated Christmas 60 times before she found out she was Jewish.

This August, Baran, 61, received an e-mail from a genealogist making references to her Jewish past, a past she was unaware of.

The e-mail struck her. She had been told as a child she had no extended family, let alone one that was Jewish. Her father had told her that her extended family had died during the war, and that non-Jewish Polish civilians who lived in the Warsaw ghetto were killed.

In reality, Baran had left Poland with her parents in 1949. They travelled around Europe under alias names, and lived in abandoned military barracks in Israel before immigrating to Montreal when Baran was four years old. Although she never considered herself a Christian, Baran had been enrolled in a Protestant school where her parents had registered her as an Episcopalian Anglican.

Baran, now living in New York City, flew to Montreal and showed her uncle Zygmunt the e-mail.

"My uncle told me first about my father, and that was the one I had had a couple of suspicions about. I said to him, 'But not my mother,' and there was a pause, and that pause was so pregnant, and he said, 'Yup, your mother too.' And in that moment I just knew it all; I knew 100 per cent that I was a Jew, and he was a Jew, and it all kind of happened in a second."

Baran was surprised not so much at being Jewish, but at the great lengths that her family took to conceal their Jewish identity. "My mother carefully went through our photographs and took out anything that had to do with all these relatives, or that had anything to do with Jews or Israel," she said.

With this new knowledge, Baran began scouring the Internet for information about her past. She used websites such as JewishGen and Jewish Research International Poland.

"The first thing I did is start putting kind of random things into the Internet. I've never done any genealogical research," said Baran. "I would enter names into the Internet in all their variants and different spellings, and see what I came up with. Like one of my grandfathers, as I knew him was Joseph Karas. His real name was Bernard Kluger, and I started finding out about the Kluger family."

On JewishGen, Baran used their Jewish Family Finder tool to find a third cousin. "[My cousin] and I have been corresponding ever since and she's working on a giant Kluger family tree. It goes back to the 12th century, so it was great to be able to plug my stuff into her family tree -- all done on the Internet."

Baran discovered that her extended family had changed their surnames during the war. They went back to using their Jewish names when they lived in Israel, but adopted Christian names when they moved to Canada.

Baran recalled a time when she used the Internet to find out information about an old photo. The picture featured her as a child with her parents on a boat. She stumbled upon www.shipsnostalgia.com, and posted the photo on their forums. "I immediately got [a lot of] responses, 'Boom boom boom boom boom,' and by two or three responses they'd identified it as this SS Kedmah, which was the first ship to actually fly the Israeli flag. I looked up the SS Kedmah, and I found a whole bunch of stuff on the Kedma."

Baran's online research also led her to find out her mother had grown up in the Polish city Przemysl. She soon discovered the Jewish genealogical blog www.przemysl.blogspot.com. The blog, created by David Semmel, aims to bring together descendents of the Jewish people who were driven out of Przemysl during World War II.

Semmel visited Przemysl with his grandparents as a child, and was interested in learning more about his family's roots there. A tech-savvy Semmel thought using the Internet to help other people with their genealogical research was an obvious choice.

After learning about Baran's story, Semmel began helping her. He devoted so much of the Przemysl blog to her story that in November, he created a separate blog for Baran to post about her discoveries.

"The Roma (story) was interesting mostly because it's a very compelling human story when someone makes a discovery of that gravity so late in life," said Semmel. "I'm proud to just be a small part of (her discoveries). It's a great story."

For Semmel, genealogy is interesting because it is more than just who is related to whom. "What were these people actually like and what were their lives like?" he questioned. "What motivated them, and were they like me, were they not like me, were their kids like my kids?"

"Occasionally I get to make first time contacts between people who didn't know they knew each other or that their parents knew each other -- I love doing it," he said.

Semmel's interest in genealogy stems from his own research about his family. As in Baran's case, the Internet was instrumental in bringing Semmel into contact with his past.

Four years ago, Semmel got an email from a woman called Janet Metzger, who said she stumbled upon his website and realized she has the same last name as Semmel's grandmother. She said she lived in Miami, but her family is from Peru. Metzger realized her grandfather, Jacob Metzger, was a brother to Semmel's grandmother.

"That's an Internet story, if there ever was one."

"My grandmother, Fanny, died without knowing whatever happened to her brother. Because of the Internet, some 20 years after her passing, I get this e-mail from the clear blue and that story completely unravels. Now I have this family that lives in Lima, Peru," he said.

"I'm grateful that something like the Internet exists, and that we can kind of keep alive something that would die otherwise. (The Internet is) an opportunity to relive and make people's lives more full and complete and have a better sense of history," said Semmel.

Through his blog, Semmel helps people doing genealogical research to re-establish a Jewish identity once lost or unknown, as in Baran's case.

Baran, like so many others, is discovering a shared sense of belonging through the Internet. She is not only reconnecting with her blood relations, but also with the larger Jewish community. Jews refer to this community as mishpochah.

"It's like a sort of greater family, you know more than your biological family," she said. "People have just been enormously generous with their time and helping, whether for translating stuff or making contacts for me or letting me look at documents. [I've] definitely met a lot of interesting people already, most of them not in person, but I hope to meet them."

In December Baran travelled to Israel to visit two cousins, to see the place where she lived, and for the first time, to enter her familyís names at the Yed Vashem memorial for victims of the Holocaust.

Jewish outreach and the Internet

Donna Halper has been teaching Americans about Judaism for years. But she didn't know her teachings would reach around the world, to the Congo. And it was all thanks to the Internet.

"It has just made things possible that wouldn't have been possible in any other time in history other than the era of the Internet," said Halper, who teaches communications at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Two years ago, Halper read an article written by her friend, a journalist at The Washington Post. The article detailed the problems people were facing in the war-torn Congo.

"I read this story and read about all these poor kids that have no school to go to and people in refugee camps and there was something about the story that just bothered me," she said.

She said told her friend she wanted to help.

Halper got in touch with Fidel Bafilemba Bienda, a 37-year-old translator for English-speaking journalists in the Congo. Bienda and Halper began exchanging e-mails, and Halper found herself helping Bienda with everything from finding a job with the International Rescue Committeee, to sending his daughter, Cindy, to school.

The communication did not stop there. After months of emailing back and forth, Bienda asked Halper a question a different kind of question.

He asked her what religion she practices. "I am Jewish," Halper replied.

Bienda, a non-practicing Christian, expressed how he had always wanted to know about Judaism, and because he didn't know any Jewish people in Congo, his desire to learn about the religion remained unfulfilled.

"The fact that he became interested in Judaism is very surprising to me. I thought he was just saying that because he felt grateful that I helped his family," said Halper.

It was then that she told Bienda about the Abayudaya, a Jewish community in Uganda.

Halper encouraged Bienda to get in touch with the community. She also began sending him links to various websites for him to learn more about Judaism.

As freelance writer and author, Halper has been directing interested students to various websites about Judaism for many years.

"Thanks to the Internet [Bienda] has been able to e-mail other Jewish people of colour. They've been able to find out about Jewish philosophy in their native language, which is French," Halper said.

Halper sends journal and newspaper articles to Bienda over the Internet on a regular basis, so that he feels connected to the Jewish community in America. She is happy that the Internet has given him a chance to expand his knowledge about the subject. "It's making information available," she said.

Linking the Holocaust to the Internet and Jewish genealogy

Gary Mokotoff always knew he was Jewish, but he didn't always feel a connection to the Holocaust. His grandparents had come to the United States from Poland before World War II, and for Mokotoff, "the Holocaust was something that happened on the other side of the Atlantic.î"It didn't affect him -- or so he thought.

Then Mokotoff traced his roots back five generations, and from there he found 1,700 descendants of his great-great-great grandfather.

"Of those 1,700 people, about 400 of them were murdered in the Holocaust," he says. "When I saw the Mokotoff name in print, associated with the Holocaust, it upset me terribly."

Now an award-winning genealogist who specializes in Jewish genealogy, Mokotoff says his case is typical of Jewish people tracing their roots.

"Tragically, virtually every Jewish family has been impacted by the Holocaust," he says. "Every Jewish genealogist goes back as far as they can -- which is not more than seven, eight generations -- comes forward, and finds all the aunts and uncles, and the great aunts and uncles, and the great-great aunts and uncles. Suddenly, they find that a significant portion of their family was murdered in the Holocaust."

The Internet, Mokotoff says, is playing a significant role in helping Jews makes such discoveries about their family history.

Websites like Ancestry.com, JewishGen and Yad Vashem allow people to search archives of historical data and communicate with other users on message boards.

"The Internet has cut down the amount of time that is necessary to find information by 90 per cent," Mokotoff says.

These days, Mokotoff says, he can access records without leaving his home or office. But when he first began to do genealogical research 25 years ago, he usually had to request information by mail or travel somewhere to find it. Even if documents were stored locally, it was at least a half-day effort to find them," he says.

Now, he describes the research process as "instantaneous."

For example, he says, before he had the World Wide Web at his fingertips, he had never managed to trace his paternal grandmother's family back in history. With the Internet, he traced them back to around the year 1800 in the space of an hour.

Mokotoff says the Internet is also helping Jews create a lasting record of family members lost in the Holocaust.

"There was an attempt to eradicate that they (Jews) ever existed," says Mokotoff. "The Germans destroyed Jewish records as well as Jewish people. What happens in Jewish genealogy is virtually every Jewish genealogist will say, 'The work I am doing is a memorial to the members of my family that were murdered in the Holocaust.'"

Mokotoff is among those genealogists. The record of his 1,700 relatives, he says, is "not just a bunch of names."

"I know the names of their parents and their great-grandparents, and exactly how they're related to me in the vast majority of the cases," he says. "My work perpetuates that they once existed."

Britt Aharoni, Natalia Halec, Michelle Higgins, Natasha Marar and Shobhita Sharma are students in the MA Journalism Program at the University of Western Ontario.

Searching Przemysl name Rubinfeld

This came in over the transom:

Dear David:

My father was born in Przemsyl and came to America in 1935. He passed away ten years ago. I have been trying all my life to find out what happened to my grandmother, Zeisel Rubinfeld and her daughter (my aunt) Fela. Do you have any knowledge of my grandmother, aunt or any of my relatives from Przemsyl?

L to R: Uncle Froium Mendel Rubinfeld, Fela (my aunt), my father Pinchas. Seated is my grandmother Zeisel

Sincerely,

Sidney Rubinfeld

Contact me to get in touch with Sid.

1899 Przemysl Report Card

Dear Lukasz and David

As I know your affinity to anything that has to do with Przemysl, I am attaching a document that may be of Interest.

(Click to enlarge)

Soon to be 120 years old, this is my late grandfather, Dr. Joseph Knoller's report card from school (I cannot make out if it is third or fourth grade) for the year 1899.

I am lucky to hold all of his school and academic diplomas as well as my grandmother's, the late Edith Knoller nee Probstein. If you would like more scans, let me know.

Bear in mind that it also has a back side which has other printed comments but nothing hand-written. The scan is 200dpi which does not allow to notice the faint, pink, decorative background.

Gideon

Family Segal?

Anyone out there remember family Segal of Przemysl?

Hello,

My Grandmother Shara Segal was from Przemysl. Can you please help me to find out if anyone remembers her and her family?

She had a twin sister and the family owned a hotel and a restaurant on Adam Mitckevitz Street. (Mickiewicza) As far as I know my grandmother was the only survivor from her family. Her parent names were Esther & Yaacov Segal

Thanks
Irit M
Israel

Mickiewicza, the grand boulevard leading east out of town toward Lemberg, was lined with many fine hotels and restaurants before the shoah.

Izio's Zamek

Our dear Aussie friend Jack Fields, who started life as Przemysler Izio Felder, has been kind enough to share another recollection of pre-Shoah Przemysl. What follows is his homage to the Zamek - the Castle and its grounds - that to this day dominates the hillside of our city.

His story holds special meaning for me. I remember my grandmother, Fannie Metzger Silberman, telling me about the Zamek park one night in Miami when I was about 20 years old. She talked longingly about the smell of the flowers, the "pfennig arcades," and most of all of the constant live music from "Gypsies" to Choirs to Austrian and Hungarian Army bands.

The Zamek in the centre of the city of Przemysl??? Whats that???

How well I remember the Zamek (castle) in the centre of Przemysl but what is more interesting is the huge very green park attached to it.

This is my family at the gate of the Zamek a few years before WW2. I am at the left next is my younger brother Munio and my younger sister Dziunia. My father Herman Felder and my mother, Dina Unger.

Our family and many other families particularly Jewish have walked to the Zamek every Saturday morning before WW2 when the air there was fresher and cleaner and cooler. This was the holiday place for those who did not travel to spa resorts.

We always used the entrance from the Rynek, the city square. After about 30 minutes of walking along the steep Grodzka street, we arrived at the Zamek, the meeting place for a lot of Jewish families on shabbos.

This is a photo of the entry to the Zamek from Grodzka street. Please note the difference between the gray city and the very green and leafy trees and plants. It was like entering a paradise...

In that part of the Zamek there was a permanent gardeners cottage. Next to his house was a cieplarnia- a plant nursery in a glassed-in hothouse. The gardener worked there every day, raising many different exotic plants and flowers that were then planted all over the park grounds. The aroma was great.

On the left in the back is the gardeners cottage. To the right is a small zoo. Next to the right is the glass covered plant and flowers nursery. Out of the picture to the right was the Ciurek. In front to the left was a tennis court. During the Soviet occupation the tennis court was dismantled because it was considered by the Soviet authorities that tennis was a capitalist sport... and not for the working class.

In the same area was the ciurek - a concrete cave structure - and inside there was a spigot with very cold spring water running nonstop.

This photo is from before WW1. Inside the concrete structure was a pipe and cold water was running summer and winter. It was said that this water is from the mountains and is full of minerals, and very healthy ...young and old were drinking it and enjoyed it. In front was a man with a basket selling pretzels salty and crispy and soft with poppy seeds. I nagged my mother to get me one and she said I would not eat it after nagging she bought me a pretzel and after 2 bites I would not eat it Today the ciurek does not exist and the water in the Zamek is polluted.

A second entrance to the park was via Katedralna street, so named because half way up there was a big church called The Kathedra.

Entry to the Zamek from Katedralna street. Jewish families very seldom used this approach.

From this approach, a narrow path lead to the highest peak in the valley, the Tatarska gora - the tartars hill. From there the whole of the city of Przemysl and near by villages could be seen. Also near there there were ruins of a part of the stronghold which was build during WW1 by the Austrian army, the Przemysl festung - Fortress Przemysl - the biggest fort in Europe after Verdun.

Only the strongest went all the way up. Usually my father and I made it there!


Tatarska gora was so named because in the middle ages Przemysl was attacked and occupied by the Mongol Tartars from Asia under Genghis Khan. There is a legend that in the hill was buried a Tartar chief, but as far as I know no evidence has ever been found.

The Zamek itself was situated in the centre on a hill 800 meters above the city, generally a 30 minute climb from our homes, depending which of the three entrances we took.


In 1939, control of the city was divided by the San, with the Przemysl side under the Soviets and the Zasanie side run by the Germans. War broke out on September 7 in Przemysl.

My family and many others were in the Zamek that afternoon, listening to a Soviet army band playing beautifully. People were singing and dancing - it was a very happy afternoon which lasted late into the evening. That night, the Nazis started the bombardment of our side of Przemysl. It was completely unexpected - people in the street said that something had exploded in the railway station and thought it was just an accident.

During the German occupation of Przemysl, even before the ghetto was established, a sign was placed on the iron gate leading to the Grodzka street garden entrance that read: FUR JUDEN UND HUNDE EINTRIT VERBOTEN - Entry for Jews and dogs is forbidden.

Many people who visit Przemysl these days are not told how very important the Zamek was for the Jewish people in pre-WW2 years. I suppose it is because the guides were born after WW2 and they simply don't know. Today the walk up to the Zamek is neglected - people go for excursions in their cars - not the same.

The Zamek now belongs to history - one I have bittersweet memories of.

- - Izio Felder

The Primary School for Girls

From Lukasz:

Below is the 1937 class photo for The Primary School for Girls on Konarskiego Street in Przemysl. The school was bombed by the Nazis just two years later on September 7, 1939.

Jewish children attended almost all schools in Przemysl, not just the Hebrew school on Tarnawskiego. The names below are mostly Jewish and Polish with a few Ukrainian sounding ones.


The description on the reverse:

Żeńska Szkoła Powszechna
przy ul. Konarskiego w Przemyślu. 1937

WAGNER Lyda,
AMSTER Tosia,
MALINOWSKA Jadwiga,
WEINREB Giza,
STURMLAUF Luba,
BUCZKOWSKA Władysława,
BLOK Zuza,
KUC Maria,
KUPFER Blanka,
KUCZEREPA Jadwiga,
PIPE Ewa,
WEISS Irena,
FELZEN Dora,
HIBLER SARA,
WIECZYŃSKA Bena,
HANDE Alina,
NAKONECZNA Irena,
BRANDLER Janina,
OLECHNOWSKA Janina,
CWYNAR Danuta,
BARTOWY Danuta,
SŁUPECKA Józefa,
SZTNIDLER Nora,
NACHYNA Hela,
SPATZ Lusia,
LUSTIK Mala,
MARGULES Mania,
LIEBICH Ela,
KWIATKOWSKA Julka,
GLEICH Rena,
ZIOMEK Danuta,
KACANIK Zofia,
OSMAK Irena,
....... Zofia,
GÓRSKA Krystyna,
RYCZAK Jadwiga,
JURASZ Maria,
ŚWITALSKA Anna,
GOTTDANK Dzuna,
FRENZEL /?/

Architecture of the Tempel and the New Synagogues

From our friend Diana Applebaum Muir:

The Reform community of Przemysl dedicated the Tempel synagogue on Jagiellonska, on the river San, on September 18, 1890. It was a substantial brick building in the Romanesque revival derived style known as Rundbogenstil. It was designed by architect Stanisław Majerski (1872-1926,) a graduate of the Lwów Politechnical School. The Tempel had an organ and most of the service was in Polish.

Construction of the religiously traditional Scheinbach Synagogue, also known as the New Synagogue, began in 1910 and completed in 1918. It was even larger and more elaborate than the Temple. The building survives; it has been renovated and is in use as a public library. While it is a handsome building today, the Communist-period renovations stripped so much of the exterior detail that it presents an appearance in marked contrast to the building we see in old photographs.

The synagogue is a free-standing building in the heart of the city with the sidewalk and street tight against it on every side. Like the Tempel, it was designed by architect Stanisław Majerski, and, like the Tempel, it was built in the Rundbogenstil tradition. Unlike the Temple it was embellished with an eclectic array of elaborate rooftop crenellations and molded decoration. Period sources appear to have described the synagogue as “Mauretano-eclectist” in style. Mauritania, the Roman name of a Berber North African kingdom, was used as a synonym for Moorish in the period when the synagogue was built. Building synagogues in Moorish style was a statement of identity, a way of boasting that Jewish lineage could be traced back to ancient Israel. The only apparent Moorish element in the Przemysl synagogue is the roof line crenelation.

The elaborate interior decoration with Biblical scenes and what appear to be palm trees in the old photo reflects an early twentieth-century fashion for decorating synagogues with Biblical scenes and Eretz Israel motifs. The fashion reflected increasing familiarity with and enthusiasm for the Land of Israel at a time of increasing enthusiasm for Zionism. Photographs, posters, lithographs and other images of Eretz Israel hung on the walls of every synagogue in the Diaspora, whether the congregation was Zionist or anti-Zionist.

The New Synagogue in Przemysl was fortunate in being wealthy enough to have such scenes painted on the walls and ceiling and to have a notable set of stained glass windows. The windows and paintings were by a Jewish Przemyśl artist named Adolf Bienenstock (1888-1937,) a graduate of the Krakow Fine Art Academy (like Przemysl, Krakow was then part of Austrian Galicia,) and a student of the notable Polish artist Józef Mehoffer. Bienenstock taught art at the the Przemysl Gymnasium. The interior, in the sole photo that I have seen, appears to reflect the influence of the Young Poland movement of which Mehoffer was part. Young Poland was the Polish version of the jugendstil (art nouveau) movement.

A plea to Przemysl readers - Please Help

Once a year, and no more, this blog asks it's readers to help out. Not with the blog, and not for me, but for what's left of Jewish Przemysl.

Over the past decade, The Remembrance & Reconciliation Foundation (R&R), led by Dr John Hartman, has taken the lead in the restoration and maintenance of the Slowackiego Street Cemetery in Przemysl. Anyone who has been to the site ten years ago and recently can testify as to the progress - and the amount of work that remains.

We wage a constant battle against the elements in the form of yearly maintenance and repair. In general, the winters in Przemysl are harsh and combined with the hilly topography of the site, there is constant and serious erosion in many places. In addition, there was a windstorm recently that downed several trees, requiring an unplanned, emergency clean-up.

We are lucky to employ one of the very few Jews left in the town, Mr. Jocaim Glettner, a mason by trade, as the general contractor/overseer. Paying him, and just keeping up with maintenance usually costs $5,000/year – but over $8,000 this year as the dollar tanked.

To date, about 2/3 of the money raise comes from Dr Hartman and me. We are barely keeping ahead of the weather, and make precious little progress on actual restoration.

Unfunded priorities for this coming year, each with "naming opportunities" for donors, include:

1) Star plaques commemorating mass-murder victims ($100 each)
2) Jewish historical plaques for the cemetery wall ($500 each)
3) construction of a walkway between the two mass-murder monuments ($7,500)
4) clearing of walks and access paths in the older parts of the cemetery ($1,000)

PLEASE consider making a donation of ANY size to the Foundation.

R & R is a tax-exempt, non-profit 501(c)3 organization. Contributions are used only for projects in Poland. We have no staff or office expenses. You can send funds in US dollars to:

The Remembrance & Reconciliation Foundation
Dr. John Hartman
300 S. Hyde Park Ave, Suite 150
Tampa FL, 33606 USA

Email me if you would like to use PayPal or have any questions or comments.

THANKS TO ALL OF YOU AND CHAG HANUKKAH SAMEACH

-- David Semmel

Scheinbach Synagogue - Update

Update to the Scheinbach/New Synagogue Post

Diana points me to the Hebrew University Center for Hebrew Art site for this photo of the New Synagogue's Ark doors:

From the site:

Description
The double-winged door is a vertical rectangular tablet. It is adorned by foliate scrolls stemming from two tulips on either side, and rays radiating from the four corners. The decoration surrounds a rectangular central tablet with a Hebrew dedicatory inscription, engraved in filled square letters, that reads:

"ז"נ (זו נדבת)/ הר' (הרב) אהרן ניסבוים נ"י (נרו יאיר) עבור/ נשמת אמו רבקה ע"ה (עליה השלום) בת ר' דוב/ בערל ז"ל (זכרו לברכה) שנפטרה י"ז תשרי/ תרפ"ד ( 1923. 27.9 ) "

This is the donation of the Rabbi Aaron Nissbaum, may his light shine, for the repose of the soul of his mother Rebecca, may she rest in peace, the daughter of Rabbi Dov Berl, of blessed memory, who died on the 17th of Tishrei, (5)684 (27.9.1923)

History/Provenance
The doors were purchased from Mr. S. Kotula from Rzeszow, on 3.8.1971, who claimed that they were originally from one of the synagogues of Przemysl. It is not known in which of the city's synagogues the doors were used. Nonetheless, our object's height indicates that they might not have been the doors themselves, but were probably attachments to larger wooden Ark doors, adjusted to its double wings.

The Scheinbach Synagogue

Writer and historian Diana Muir Appelbaum, a friend of this blog, has pointed me to an interesting write-up on Przemysl's Scheinbach Synagogue, also known as the New Synagogue, at the Przemysl Library site

HISTORY OF THE BUILDING OF THE PRZEMYŚL LIBRARY

The Ignacy Krasicki Przemyśl Public Library is located in the younger of the four existing before the war Przemyśl synagogue. This synagogue was currently called the "Naje Schul" (New School). It belonged to the Przemyśl New Synagogue Association which members were in favour of the "Askenazy style" prayers. The planning of this building was initiated in 1905 by the well known Jewish Przemyśl activist Moishe Scheinbach. The construction began, with the financial help of the City Council and different Jewish banks, in 1910. It was planned by the Polish architect Stanisław Majerski (1872-1926) from the Lwów Politechnical School who was very popular at that time in Przemyśl. The main works were finished just before the beginning of the First World War but the construction was not ready at that time.

It was built in the mauretano-eclectist style. It is a two-stories building made of bricks and separated from neighboring buildings. Its entrance is oriented to the West. The building has a basement and its rusticated ground-floor is separated by a mould with a range of decorations. All its windows are closed by a complete arch. Pilasters are indicating the axis. The extreme ones and the central one are indicated at the level of the roof by complete arches and the central one is also indicated by a round window with the David star. The synagogue is covered by a steel roof with a rectangular platform construction. In the roof, there is a range of little windows and moulds. In the interior of the synagogue there is a big prayer room with galleries for the women in the West and the South.

The finishing works were made only in 1918. In this purpose, the Jewish Przemyśl artist Adolf Bienenstock (1888-1937) was employed. He was graduated from the Cracov Fine Art Academy and was the student of Józef Mehoffer. The polichromies he made on the walls and the roof of the synagogue were linked with biblical themes and Jewish legends. He also planned the very beautiful stained-glass windows according to original Jewish motives. They were giving to this synagogue a unique attractiveness and its decoration was considered to be the most beautiful Jewish monument of the religious art in the inter-war Poland.

During the Second World war the synagogue was not destroyed by the Germans because they used it as a stable for their army horses. After the war the synagogue was first changed into a textile warehouse. Later it was taken over by the State which tried to adapt it for school purposes. At the beginning of the sixties, after a consultation with Jewish organizations of Poland, it was decided to transfer the building in the hand of the City State Library. The works to adapt the building were finished in 1966 and from the 1st march of 1967 the building is used by the Library. In 1978, after having obtained the agreement of the Union of Jewish Religious Associations of Poland, the building including the place, was given to the property of the State Library. Now more than 133 000 books and reviews are contained in its walls. There are inside the main reading-room, the children reading-room, the hiring department. The Library is carrying exhibitions, lectures and publishing activities and several other forms of cultural and educative activities for the city of Przemyśl and its region.

- - Stanisław Stępień.

The synagogue/library stands today at ul. J. SŁOWACKIEGO 15, just up from the Plac na Brame.

Below is a scan from the Sefar Przemysl showing the ceiling of the New Synagogue. It must have been stunning...

Roma's Story - Onward

I can't really express the profound joy, the sense of discovery, the nachas that has come from being a small part of Roma Baran's journey of discovery. It has been a pleasure and an honor to have chronicled her uncovering of not one, but two hidden families. Her long-lost flesh and blood, some murdered and others surviving casualties of the holocaust, and he other one: her ever widening circle of newly found friends - researchers, kindred souls, brothers,and sisters - all scattered across the globe yet woven together as one by Roma's openness, curiosity, and love.

Now, after a dozen posts, hundreds of emails, and not just a little sorrow, it is time for this blog to return to its core mission - telling the story of Jewish Przemysl.

But Roma's story is an important and unfinished one - and will go on - at a new blog site:

Roma's Story

Click on the above link and bookmark it.

I will try to keep up with the frenetic pace of discoveries from New York, Canada, Poland, and Israel on the new Blog... And all of the old Roma posts will remain here at the Przemysl Blog.

Roma Baran - Uncovering the hidden past

Posts in this thread: Most recent first:

In Memoriam

Mary & John in Pictures

Mary Baran's Story
John Baran's Story
Time... suspended
I believe I found...
...as irrevocably as death...
The Secret Extended
Mishpochah
How did you find out?
Getting Started
Revelation
The entire "thread" HERE

Roma's email that started this remarkable saga:

I just ran across the Przemysl blog and wanted to ask your advice. I just discovered (at the age of 61) that I am a Jew, that my parents survived the Holocaust under assumed names, and that I lived in Israel between 1949 and 1951. I am now in the early stages of trying to reconstruct my parents' real history. A summary of my father's reparation file states that he was interred in the Przemysl ghetto in 1942, liberated in Uzhorod in 1944, and was in Przemysl and Bytom after the war...

In Memoriam

IN MEMORIAM
Mary Baran/Roza Kluger

Dear friends,

I am very sad to tell you that my mother died in Montreal on Wednesday, October 22. The night before, she watched "Tootsie" (for the umpteenth time) with Angela, a caring staff member at her nursing home, and they laughed uproariously. On Wednesday she was well and cheerful, read a magazine, and enjoyed every last bite of lunch. Afterwards, she lay down for a nap on a golden fall afternoon, and had a fatal arrhythmia. She was 87.

I have spoken of her in the context of our recent revelations and my history with her in that regard, as well as my first reactions to the discovery. I wanted to tell you a little more about her and her life, and how much of what I value in my own life I learned from her. She was born on March 11, 1923 in Przemysl, Poland. She was an outgoing, vivacious, very attractive and intelligent young woman growing up before the war. She learned many languages fluently, English, Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Russian, German, Italian, French, ancient Greek, Latin and, I recently discovered, Hebrew and Yiddish. (My uncle just gave me her book of off-color Yiddish jokes, where I found a number of grammar corrections in her hand). She played the accordion amazingly, dancing with a big 120 bass Scandalli like it was made of paper. She was also a virtuoso whistler -- she had practiced under the covers at night when she was a child. She was close to her handsome and gentle brother, Zygmunt, two years her junior, and to her parents, Dorka (Halpern), an incomparable cook, and Bernard Kluger, a powerfully built machinist with an almost Zen aura of peacefulness. The family was not deeply religious, but they observed the holidays and traditions of a Jewish household.

Mary was eighteen when the war broke out, but still went to Lwow and studied medicine until the Germans invaded Russia. She returned to Przemysl where she was interred in the ghetto, and did forced labor. She met my father Jakub Cytryn around this time, a civil engineer whose mother's brother was the revered David Guzik, JDC Director in Poland. Around the time of the first set of Aktions she and her parents escaped with forged documents and new identities, surviving the war by hiding in a dirt floor hut owned by a Polish man named Sawitzki in Mogila (outside of Krakow). She supported her parents by bicycling many kilometers every day to work in a tobacco factory. Zygmunt survived the war, too, fighting with the First Polish Armored Division under General Maczek that became part of the First Canadian Army. Many other relatives were lost in the Holocaust. My father was the only one of his large immediate family who survived.

After the war, Mary lived with my father, now known as John Baran, in Silesia, where she ran his construction office. I was born in Zabrze in 1947. In 1949 we emigrated to Israel. We fled Poland with almost no possessions, but Mary would not leave without our enormous black Giant Schnauzer, Peter, a German messenger dog whom she rescued at the end of the war when he was about to be shot by the retreating army. Peter was undoubtedly the only Nazi-trained dog to make Aliyah. Later Peter drowned off the beaches of Tel Aviv, and my parents walked up and down the sand for weeks looking for him.

We emigrated to Montreal in 1951, and Mary taught Kindergarten and finished a
Ph.D. in Classics. She worked hard, raised me, struggled with anxiety and
depression, and also struggled in a sometimes difficult marriage. My father's
war experiences had wrought their damage on him, too, but she was devoted to him for life.

She was a natural teacher, and had immense patience, with me, and with the hundreds of Kindergarten students fortunate enough to start their school careers in her "magic kingdom" of a classroom. She taught me to love learning, and to
approach the world with intellectual curiosity. She taught me to love music, not just passively, but with hands-on gusto. Even when she stopped recognizing people and didn't speak, she could sit down at the little keyboard in her room and play through a Gershwin tune, in time and with all the complicated chords. She taught me to fall madly in love with animals, starting, of course, with Peter. She had a wicked sense of humor, and even when rendered non-verbal by Alzheimer's, she'd make sight gags with small props. She taught me to find humor in the detail of everyday life. And she tried to teach me, not altogether successfully, to be "a mild judge of others," as her beloved father Bernard had put it.

Like her father, Mary had endless stories and sayings, an "apropos" for every occasion. When someone proposed an activity she had decided not participate in, she would say "Include me out!" I hear myself using the phrase now and then, in her intonation. After a long, complex life, Mary included herself out. I feel the loss even more keenly having just found a large piece of her life she had successfully hidden for so long.

-- Roma Baran

John and Mary in Pictures

John Baran (Jakub Cytryn)


Mary Baran (Roza Kluger)


Yad Charuzim on Laszczynskeigo St. - Where Mary lived at the outbreak of war



Dworskiego 51 - Where Mary lived on return to Przemysl



Kopernika St. 5 where John lived with his first wife (née Katz) and her parents



ul. Wspolna 54 - where John lived in Warsaw when the war broke out

Mary Baran's Story

From Roma's mother's Wiedergutmachung - German government holocaust reparations - affidavit.

I, Maria Rose Baran, née Klueger-Karas, teacher in Montreal, having been informed of the significance of declarations under oath, do declare the following:

When the war broke out I was living in Przemsyl, Leszczynski St. 13, and went to Lemberg [Lvov] in October of 1939 where I studied medicine; my address was Snopkowska 4. Lemberg was occupied on 28 June 1941 and we had to wear the star of David as of 1 July 1941. At the Gestapo [site] in Lemberg, three of my teeth were knocked out when my accordion was confiscated. Unfortunately I do not know the name of the official.

In autumn, October or November of 1941, I went back to Przemysl where I lived together with my parents first in Dworski St. 51 and then in Cerkiewna St. in the ghetto.

During this time I had to do hard work in a forced labor camp. Following two large-scale Jewish cleansing campaigns [Judenreinigungsaktionen], I left Przemysl in December of 1942 and lived with my parents in the village of Mogila near Krakow, in hiding with a family by the name of Sawitzki. I had to get the money from Krakow, however, and had to go to Krakow at great risk with illegal ID documents every month.

Once I left Mogila for a few days in order to bring money to the man who is now my husband, who was in hiding at the time in Sokoliki.


I remained in Mogila until it was liberated by the Russians on 19 January 1945.

Read to, approved by, and signed
[signature: Maria Baran]

Montreal, 11 October 1956

Roma wants to thank her friend Marlene Schoofs in Berlin for the translations and for wringing these files out of the German bureaucracy.

John Baran's Story

From Roma's father's Wiedergutmachung (German government holocaust reparations) affidavit.

I, Jan Thomas Baran, previously Cytryn, resident of Montreal, declare under oath after being informed of the significance of declarations under oath:

When the war broke out I was living in Warsaw, Wspolna 54A with my first wife, Anna Cytryn née Katz, who was from Przemysl. My parents lived in Warsaw, Leszno St. no. 56, and remained there. This street was later added to the ghetto. My parents had to wear the star of David, and also do forced labor. Later my parents fled the ghetto and lived in hiding. I did not hear anything more from them, and so must assume that they died.

In September of 1939 I was conscripted into the army and in early October of 1939 I left the army and came to Przemysl. I lived there with my first wife (née Katz) and her parents in Kopernika St. 5 until the start of the German-Russian war in 1941. As required I wore a star of David then and had to work in a SS forced labor camp.

In early 1942 my first wife left the Przemysl Ghetto and went to Krakow where she hid and later died.

My current wife, Maria Rose Klueger-Karas, lived in the village of Mogila near Krakow and worked in a tobacco shop there. Like myself, she was pretending to be a Pole. We were in regular contact and met several times; this was possible because we were both pretending to be Poles, but despite that we didn’t want to live together in order not to attract attention even in this manner.

After the death of my first wife in March of 1943, Maria very much wanted me to come to Mogila, but many of my acquaintances were killed and I thought my chances were better in Tarnawa because it was near the Hungarian border; in September of 1943 after the Jewish forced labor camp was liquidated I left Przemysl and went to Tarnawa.

I then went to Sokoliki, where I lived hidden in a tiny room in the attic of one Jan Maslowski for one month (September 1943). During this time my friends visited me: Jan Krzysztof from Przemysl, my previous boss, who brought me money, and also Maria, my current wife.

In March of 1944, Maria had the opportunity to come to Lemberg by truck for a few days. I came from Tarnawa to Lemberg then as well. We were both in very low spirits and desperate, and we married on 14 March 1944 in order to belong to each other at least in this way. Right afterwards, Maria returned to Mogila and I to Tarnawa Wyzna.

Because the attic was very cold, I had to leave this place and I went to Tarnawa, where I hid in a pig stall owned by one Gorski, with counterfeit documents. I had to leave this place for a few days at great risk in order to get money from Lemberg, and returned immediately to Tarnawa. My files include a copy of the registration under my cover name – Baran – with the police in Tarnawa Wyzna.

The Ukrainian national organization UPA had a very strong presence in this area at the time. The leader of this organization was Stefan Bandera, and its goal was to fight against the Russians and the Poles. Many Polish families were attacked by these bandits and horribly murdered; those that survived felt compelled to seek assistance and protection from the German authorities. As the Russian front approached, the UPA became even more violent and the local German commander issued special permits for Polish families to travel from the Sokoliki Gorskie train station to Uzhorod with German supply troops.

The local German commander in Sokoliki Gorskie – Tarnawa was a quiet and educated man who loved chess. I think he came from Cologne, but I no longer know his name. I also think that he had the rank of Hauptmann. It would be very easy to determine this via German military reports. The garrison in Sokoliki Gorskie – Tarnawa had a special butcher’s department, and made sausages and other meat products for the Wehrmacht.

In September of 1944 my old friend Michael Kampel visited me, bringing news and money from my current wife who was hiding at the time in Mogila.

Because this town was endangered by bands of Ukrainian partisans, I decided to leave Tarnawa to reach Hungary by walking through the woods at night. I arrived in Uzhorod in mid-October. Uzhorod was completely cleansed of Jews [judenrein]; all the Jews had already been relocated [umgesiedelt] when I arrived. I lived in a building that had belonged to a Jewish family, near the bridge, in the same complex [Block] as the Gestapo office.

I was liberated in Uzhorod by the Russians on 27 October 1944.

Supporting documentation from an old friend:

Affidavit of Michael Kampel

I, Michael Kampel, New York, resident of New York, 1530 Plimpton Avenue, merchant, do declare the following under oath in connection with the restitution [application] of Mr. Jan Thomas Baran, earlier Cytryn:

I was born in Rostaka on 17 December 1909 and was living in Premzsyl at the start of the war. I applied for restitution and have already received full payment; I lived at Targoviza no. 10 in Premzsyl when the war started, and came to the Stalovawola camp in 1939 where I stayed until 1941. In 1941 I returned to Premzsyl and lived in the ghetto there until September of 1942, at which time I was caught again and sent to the Plaschow concentration camp near Krakow, where I stayed until 1944. In 1944 I was sent to another camp, namely Skajjisko Kamena, where I remained until August of 1944. In August of 1944 I escaped and then lived in different places in the woods near Krakow until liberation. When I was in the Premzsyl Ghetto in 1942, I saw the applicant, Mr. Jan Thomas Baran and his current wife, Marie Rose Klieger. At that time they were not yet married. We were old acquaintances and that is why I remember this meeting. Later – after I fled the camp – I met the applicant Baran in September in Tarnowa, where he was hiding in a pig stall owned by the farmer Gurski. I knew this because it was told to me by a third party, namely my brother-in-law, who also coincidentally was named Gurski but is not related to the farmer. I visited him in the night and subsequently also visited his current wife Baran, who was hiding in the cellar of the farmer Savitzki in Mogila near Krakow, and passed on greeting from her then friend and/or finance Mr. Baran and/or Cytryn. I then did not see the applicant or his wife from this time until liberation, because visits of that type, while very pleasant, were mortally dangerous, and therefore I could not repeat them after I had hidden in the forests.

Read to, approved, signed and sworn: 2 July 1959

Roma wants to thank her friend Marlene Schoofs in Berlin for the translations and for wringing these files out of the German bureaucracy.

The power of the global... Mispochah

New Year's day brought this to my in box:

Dear Lukasz and David,

As time flies and we are involved in so many things we tend to sometimes forget the essence.

I so anted to write to you and wish you a Happy New Year – especially, because you were two of a handful who made my previous year significant. And the holiday went by and, regrettably, I did not write. So before Yom Kippur comes around, I will use the double opportunity to first apologize for my oversight, and second, to wish you a really jubilant, successful, peaceful and happy new year.

I have been following closely the fascinating story of Roma Baran unfolding on your blog, David. You cannot imagine how moving an experience it is. If Roma needs any paperwork from Israel, I would be happy to see how to deal with it.

Shana Tova,

Gideon Goldstein

To me, the privilege of corresponding and connecting to people like Roma, Lukasz, and Gideon is the reason to have a blog in the first place. Emails like this make the new year sweet.

So I forwarded Gideon's offer to Roma and sat back as the emails flew! Below is Roma's introductory letter; a good summary of where she's at reconstructing her family's true history.

Dear Gideon,

I was moved to read your response to my adventure. Would you mind telling me about yourself, your background, and what you do?

I will be in Israel from December 11 to 17th, traveling with friends. I will also try to take some time to visit new found relatives, do some research, and will try to track my family's stay in Israel. Finding out that I lived there was almost as shocking as the other parts of the revelation, and I am making various efforts to integrate the idea into my sense of my own history. And to how living there fits into what it means to me at this late date to be Jew.

My general research falls into several areas. Tracking my mother's family from Przemysl is in some ways the easiest. My uncle (her brother) Zygmunt is alive and has been very generous with his time, information, and photos. In addition, there are relatives in Israel on my mother's side with whom I will be able to visit.

My father's side is most mysterious. I know almost nothing about his family, not their real names, dates of birth, only that both parents and all four siblings (sisters) and their families died in the Shoah, mostly in the Warsaw Ghetto. I know very little about his wartime experience or how he survived.

Finally, I would like to reconstruct our emigration -- from Poland in late 1949 by train to an island off Venice, a boat to Haifa (possibly the Kedmah), a stay in barracks, possibly an abandoned/bombed out coastal building in Jaffa, and then living on a rooftop adjacent to St. Anthony's church in Jaffa. My grandparents (maternal) followed us to Jaffa shortly after we arrived. While we were there, my father eventually got some work in construction, and my uncle established a small workshop converting old tires back into usable rubber ( I will send a picture of the workshop on Monday). We left Israel in August 1951, taking a boat to Marseilles (this may have been the Kedmah trip instead), meeting up with my father's cousin Wladek Guzik (JDC director David Guzik's only surviving child) and together all going to Canada.

I am attaching a photo of my uncle on the Jaffa rooftop, my mother and her cousin on the rooftop ( the cousin whom I will visit, an architect in Tel Aviv), and my parents and I on the Kedmah. (A wonderful group on a ship forum identified the SS Kedmah from my photos. Isn't the internet amazing? Here's the link to that exchange.

One of the unexpected and rewarding benefits of my search has been making contact with interesting and generous search partners, such as David Semmel, Lukasz Biedka, Sheila Schneider and many others. David's wife Jocelyn taught me the concept of Mispochah.

I would appreciate it very much if you could guide me to resources in Israel that could help fill in some blanks. Let's talk some more.

Best regards,
Roma

Below is Gideon's response; just another fascinating, wonderful personal success story of a first generation Israeli. The last part of the letter is an excellent primer on how to do Jewish historical research in Israel.

Dear Roma,

I am very happy to hear from you. Yes, I was touched by your story and would be happy to help as best possible.

I was born in Haifa, my mother's family is from Przemysl. Most of them were fortunate to emigrate to Israel before the war. My father was born in Haifa, yet his family is from Belz, which is usually referred to as the ultimate Shtetl, probably because of a very famous Yiddish song called "Mein Shtetl'e Belz".

I hold a law degree from the University of Tel Aviv, yet I never practiced. I have a graduate degree in educational leadership from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and at present I am working on my PhD Dissertation in educational leadership at the University of Bath in England. I have a daughter and a son, both living in Israel.

I teach college and do some consulting, mostly in instructional technology and education. I have been involved in Holocaust studies as well as with student study missions to Poland for over 15 years. My genealogical research is a hobby.

I read your message with the fascinating details behind the story on David's blog. I think I can help you on three levels in preparation for and during your visit to Israel.

One: The Ministry of the Interior in Israel holds all documents of people who had entered the country since its independence in 1948. I assume there would be a record for each of your family members (I understand that would include you, your parents, your maternal grandparents and your maternal uncle) the information on record should include full names and parental names; Dates of entry and exit; The name of the vessel you arrived on as well as addresses in Israel. There are three levels of information. Basic information is provided on request pending some identity of the individuals (if you have any of their Israel assigned ID numbers, that would be of help). All you need to do is show up at any of the census offices, wait in line and apply. You would probably be given a printed record on the spot (free of charge). A more detailed record is available as well. Your own should be given to you at the same time you receive the basic information. As for your relatives, this depends: I had some success in obtaining detailed relative information after writing a letter to the Minister. In other cases, a court order is required. The third level includes the possibility to examine the original documents (as in personally filled immigration forms) would always require a court order.

Much of this could be done before your arrival. I can help you draft the letter to the minister, if you wish to follow that route. I can also recommend an attorney who would advise you as to how do proceed in obtaining the needed court orders. Let me know what you think.

Two: The Jewish Agency held, between 1945-2000 a special unit called "The Search Bureau for Missing Relatives". This bureau received over a million requests over the years of people searching for relatives gone missing during the war (WW II). Since its closure in 2000, the archived records were transferred to the "Zionist Archive". Take a look at the options under "Family research". I have never used the service, but I will be willing to help if needed.

[After closer scrutiny of the central Zionist archive website - it seems that they hold a list of all immigrants arriving Palestine/Israel through most of the 20th century. They require one fills a form (available on-site) and pay a fee of USD20 per household investigated. This may a good starting point as you can do this by e-mail - It also located on the Family Research section. -GG]

Three: Israeli public radio was the voice for the above searches. In the 1950's 60's and 70's it aired a special program also called "The Search Bureau for Missing Relatives". The program, discontinued a long time ago has been resumed. With the current version still focusing on Holocaust stories, but allows for modern reunions as well. I think that your special story would receive much attention and would be allocated sufficient air-time to try and find people who may have known your paternal grandparents, your aunts and probably your family during your stay in Israel in 1949-51. The problem here is that the program is flooded with requests, and again, I believe that you would probably receive preference.

If you are willing to share your story with a radio audience, we would need to work on an encapsulation of the facts (names, dates, places) before your arrival and prod the producers for preferential treatment in allowing this to air just before or during your visit here.

I think this is an overdose of information for a first message. Take your time to sort it out; let me know if you need more information. When you make your mind up regarding what it is that you would like to do with each of the sources, let me know so we can progress.

All the best,

Gideon

The power of the internet; the power of the Mispochah... does it get any better?

Time... suspended

A post card from Przemysl, 1928:


Roma:

My grandmother Dora Kluger (Halpern) on the sled with her kids (my mother and uncle); Dora's sister Lola is pulling.

Time -- even the snowflakes -- suspended.

Fourteen years later Lola would die in the Lwow ghetto, while Dora survived by becoming Helen Karas and escaping to Mogila.

Reverse side:

I believe I have found my father

Nonchalant as ever, Roma emails her latest discovery...

I believe I have found my father, real name Jakub Cytryn, in the 1939 Warsaw Directory (page attached). He was a civil engineer. It appears that he lived at 29 Piusa XI, and had a an office at 56 Lezno. Other Cytryns lived at 29 Piusa and of them the family of Samuel, Anna Zosia appear to have survived the war (per JRI-Poland).

love, Roma

Some new leads, new information, and new friends:

I met with Estelle Guzik at the Center for Jewish History yesterday. She is wonderful, and generously showed me around the collection and the databases.

Your Sheila (JRI Przemysl Coordinator) is a marvel, too. I’m following up on her suggestions, and hope to meet with her soon.

I spoke to my Uncle Zygmunt again, and got more information, especially on the relatives who are still alive - most of them in Israel, of course!

One of the pictures of old Przemysl I sent him from the net actually shows the place they lived across from (in?) the Bursa. He was pretty excited, saying “This window was the kitchen, then my bedroom...” I can’t figure out which pic it was, but I’ll get him to show it to me when I go up to Montreal.

I found my grandmother’s brother Henrik (and his wife) in the Yad Vashem records:
Dr. Henrik Halperin was born in Skole in 1895 to Yulius and Helena. He was a lawyer and married to A.

Prior to WWII he lived in Lwow, Poland (now Ukraine) Dr. Halperin perished in the Shoah. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 01-Apr-1956 by his sister.

Interesting that my grandmother (Dora Kluger nee Halpern, later Helen Karas) took her mother’s name as her new false first name.

Hope all is well with you.

love, Roma

they lost me almost as irrevocably as death...

When Roma Baran was born in 1947, her parents Jacob and Roza Baran/Cytryn made a conscious, well thought through decision to try and shield their only child from the unspeakable horror and degradation that they faced during the Shoah. They secured the help, or at least silence of the entire remaining extended family, and for over 60 years, lived a lie they never thought would be exposed.

Had a cousin not died intestate, Roma probably would have gone to the grave not knowing of her ancestors faith - and the lie would have become fact, forever. But fate intervened, and now a daughter wants to know, needs to know one simple truth - why?

What happened, physically and mentally, to cause this? What went on in her parents hearts and souls to force such a decision?

Roma will probably never fully know. Yet Pandora's box is open, so there is no choice but to look inside.

We pick up the thread with Lukasz's email to Roma

Hello Roma -

You ask me what pulled me to work with Survivors, with secrets, mysteries, lies. Because this is what we deal with during our sessions very often, here in Poland. I think it was silence, secrets, mystery. My mother learned that she is Jewish in 1946 at the age of 14. My grandfather and mother survived in Siberia. She was introduced to the truth in Przemysl, by a stranger ("and here lies your grandma" - at the Jewish cemetery). The history of Jewish secrets is older than the Shoah. I was told about our origins when I was 12, as usual here. Children, most of those I know, are told at 12 - 14. This is is age they are considered to be able to keep the secret and hide by themselves.

I became more interested in my roots when I went to Przemysl for the first time in 90's. Then I met my cousin, Maria Orwid, Przemysl ghetto survivor and psychiatrist living in Krakow. Since then we run a program for Survivors and 2nd generation. We have marathon session for Survivors - about 50 people. Next session is scheduled for mid October. We meet in Srodborow, in former post war orphanage. Not far from former orphanage named after Dawid Guzik in Otwock. Srodborow in fact is a part of Otwock. Consider yourself invited. You could meet people that learned about their origins at the age of 30, 50 ... 90 % from mixed marriages. There are a few very dramatic instances, when a daughter saved by nuns learned about her Jewish father (living across the street) a year after he died. He couldn't find her after the war because the nuns hid her really effectively ...

My fantasy is that what definitely decided about "un-subscribing" in the case of your parents was the Palestinian experience. If this guess is true, this could be very important "case" in the ... history ... I never heard of such a story when both parents were Jewish.

My daughter departs to study in Jerusalem for a year tomorrow morning. I won't be able to reply to the messages for a while ...

Cheers, Lukasz

Roma responds...

Dear Lukasz,
Thank you for your insights, they are fascinating. I’m just getting a backward glimpse into the world you see every day. But, of course, it was always there, un-named.

I spent years in therapy, discussing some early life that was a fiction. I am an only child, so I had no one to check in with who shared the experience. Now I’m just starting to interpolate the torrent of new data into my sense of my family, my life.

The horror of war experiences had functioned adequately to explain my parents’ anger, depression, anxiety, fear of sudden loss (much of which I absorbed as if it were genetic). But the revelation of the world of “secrets, mysteries and lies” my parents continued to live in every day explains so much more.

Walking into the house — as a child and even as an adult -- was like stepping into a dimly lit slippery tunnel with no safe footholds. The house was silent, and tense, with a lingering odor of impending doom. I could never get a straight answer about anything. I couldn’t wait to get out of there, left the first moment I could, and have never been very close to them.

The sad irony is that in trying to “save” me, they lost me almost as irrevocably as death.

I am very interested to hear your “un-subscribing” thoughts. I had just been thinking (every few minutes something pops into my head that starts like “wait a minute!!”) about my mother’s parents, with whom I spent many, many hours as a child. I guess I had believed my father’s anti-religious rants, and my mother’s passive few attempts to assimilate into a Christian community, as coherent with who they were.

But, wait a minute!! what about my grandparents, simple (supposedly Christian) Polish working people? What is the likelihood that they, too, both of them, were atheists, and never showed a moment of interest in, knowledge about, or even nostalgia for Christian culture, holidays, trappings?

I hope you are enjoying your daughter’s company. I am sorry that our trips to Israel will not coincide, but I am hoping to go to Poland next May, including both Warsaw and Przemysl. We have time to plan.

Best regards,
Roma

Jocelyn joins the thread...

I can well imagine that your family's experiences during the Holocaust and in Palestine could have been traumatic and deeply scarring, so much so that all the adults entered into a pact (whether spoken or unspoken) to live an alternate reality. They could even justify it, because can't anyone become a Christian? Perhaps as a protective mechanism, they even came to believe it. I have known people whose parents were survivors - some of the parents lived in supportive communities in the US or Israel and retained their strong Jewish identities; others had parents who absolutely refused to speak about the past and the horrors of the Holocaust and the people they had lost. Your parents must surely have carried with them crippling fear, overwhelming sadness and possibly suffocating guilt.

Roma replies:

Dear Jocelyn,
Thanks for the thoughts. My parents certainly did live in an alternate reality, but it was not a Christian one. I don't know why they didn't take that extra step, additional cover.

When I first went to public school in Montreal, my parents registered me as an Anglican (a fact that has raised many an eyebrow over the years). The class would say the lord's prayer, pledge to the flag, and sing a Christian hymn, like Onward Christian Soldiers. I had no idea what was going on, but joined in. When I finally came home and asked, my father had a sit down with me, as though I'd asked where babies came from. Some people are weak and stupid, he told me, and they need to believe in a fairy tale about a better life when you die. Play along, he advised. I already got that part. What does happen when you die, I asked. Dad had the answer: you rot. Later he would mock religion and thought it was the greatest evil of history.

My mother suddenly made a half-hearted attempt to get me to go to a local church with her when I was a teenager, although she never went herself. It was all about appearances in a new community. After she brought the pastor home one weekend and my father was rude, she gave up. Christmas meant a tree and presents, the end.

And now? Well, I certainly don't feel like a Christian. I now realize how utterly tenuous that part of my identity was, no belief, no cultural context, no family rituals. How could there be -- they were Jews, all of them.

I am definitely interested in Jewish history and culture, and have been reading avidly -- thanks for the site, it's just the right level for me. A friend has invited me to the Congregation Beth Simchat Torah Yom Kippur services at the Javits Center, and I'm very excited about our trip to Israel. Right now it all feels exploratory, historically and emotionally.

Warmest regards,
Roma

I am struck by the lessons Roma's story offers to assimilated Jews, like me, about the deeper meanings and personal significance of religious and cultural belonging. Are there Jewish "genes?" Do your beliefs determine who you are or does who you are determine your beliefs?

Lukasz gets the last word for this post:

Roma,

This is exactly as you say - family secrets tend to "generalize", paralyzing all communication within the family. Any manifestation of openness, frankness, endangers The Secret. That's why we have troubles with 2nd generation. And the 3rd generation starts to show up. All this mess is not about the Shoah, it's about secrets. Although it all started with the Shoah. It's not Jewish specialty. Goyim, pardon le mot, have their problems - illegitimate children, grandfather a traitor, Nazi grandfather, Jewish grandma ...

Anyway, you can consider yourself lucky. At last you've learned. After countless hours on the couch it happened to be so simple. Mazl Tov !

As they say, lepiej pozno niz wcale. "Isn't it a fantastic adventure to be born again?" T'shuvah or not t'shuvah, it's pure gaiety and dance ...

I allow myself to copy this to my wifie. She is a member of Secrets Circle.

Love,
Lukasz

The secret extended from parents to grandparents

Roma's parents and grandparents:

When I was 6, my mother and father brought my maternal grandparents to Montreal from Bytom, where everyone ended up after the war. (How they all got there is one of the puzzle pieces.) I lived with my grandparents, since my parents worked long hours. I knew them as Helen (maiden name Tuhanska) and Joseph Karas. I was told my grandfather's brother was Anton Karas, the zither player who composed the music for The Third Man.

In fact, as I just learned, my grandparents' real names were Dora (maiden name Halpern) and Bernard Kluger. Dora was born in Skole and Bernard in Bukovina, and they settled in Przemysl. Anton Karas, whom I was proud to call a relation, especially in my music world, was a prop, and not a relative.

My mother, Roza Kluger ( whom I've known for 61 years as Maria Baran, nee Karas, still a shock after a month to write the other name) and her brother Zygmunt ( the only one of the family to keep his real first name) were born in Przemysl, in 1921 and 1923 respectively. Everyone is/was Jewish. In fact, my grandfather's grandfather was Shlomo Kluger, Rabbi of Brody. My grandfather's real brother was Carl Kluger, early Zionist activist and senator in Bukovina.

I emailed Roma my belief that I could not judge her parents on the lie they chose to foist on her for the past 60+ years. How can anyone know how to react amidst such horrors? How can anyone say that they would have acted differently? Her response:

I agree with your conclusion about the unimaginable effect of the Holocaust horrors. One rare story my father did tell was of finding himself in a small village as (what I now know as) an Aktion was starting. My father circled back around, and got into a cart with bodies piled up, covering himself with blood and corpses. The cart was dumped into a pit, my father included. It was growing too dark to burn/cover the bodies, and my father was able to crawl away into the woods at night.

Growing up an only child with him as my father was no picnic. I forgive him. More on the issue of living in a giant complex lie later.

BELOW: Dora and Bernard Karas/Kluger. Bernard was a sergeant in the Austrian Army, probably in the 10th regiment, 24th Division.

Roza and Zygmunt


The Klugar/Karas family:

Mishpochah

On behalf of Jews everywhere, Jocelyn issues the formal welcome:

Dear Roma,

I am David's wife and he has been forwarding me all your email exchanges. We are fascinated by your story.

So... now that you know you are Jewish, has anyone yet taught you the word mishpochah? It means family, and it can mean your immediate family or the Jewish "family" as a whole.

So I say to you: Welcome to the mishpochah!

~Jocelyn Bowie

(yes, French first name, Scots last name, and I am a Hoosier by birth.
And Jewish. We are everywhere.)

How did you find out?

After a flurry of emails, I stopped to reflect on this most amazing story. One question lingered - after 60 years, how did Roma come to know that her parents were once both Jews? So I asked:

Hi David -

I'm an attorney and music producer in NYC. I live with my partner of 17 years who is a judge.

I was born in Zabrzre, and had been told we left Poland in '49 and traveled around Europe (France, Italy, Switzerland) while we awaited US visas. After almost two years, the story went, we gave up and came to Canada, settling in Montreal when I was about 5.

My father was a civil engineer, mother a teacher. I was told the family was Protestant/Roman Catholic and I was registered in school as Anglican. I knew very little about religion, since my father was militantly atheistic. Questions about early history generated vague and abbreviated replies. I knew my father's family died during the war, including in camps and the Warsaw ghetto. When I was older and friends raised questions about how non-jews could have suffered these fates, I handed back the explanation that I was given: that many Polish civilians died as well as Jews, especially intellectuals, professionals, sympathizers, etc. When I confronted my mother, as recently as 6 years ago, before her Altzheimers overtook her, and she ran upstairs to retrieve a faded copy of her Roman Catholic marriage documents.

Exactly a month ago, I received an email from someone doing genealogical
research which contained details inconsistent with my version of reality,
such as original names, clear references to Jews, and that we had emigrated
to Canada via Israel.

I flew to Montreal, met with my mother's brother Zygmunt, and showed him the email. Out it all came, pretty shocking. Not a drop of Gentile blood on either side. Every single name changed. And, the European vacation (from when I was 2 to 4) was in fact a patriation to Israel, where we lived in abandoned British military barracks.

So I'm dealing with it like I deal with many other things: immersion. I learn as much as can and absorb information as a way to understand what it actually means to me. I woke up on August 8th as Jew, but I haven't had a Jew's life. In addition, there's the issue of having grown up in a complicated lie.

So, many thanks for getting involved in my process. You and your web work have already been woven into the fabric of my discovery.

best,
Roma

Gettin Started

After pulling together as much data on her names as I could, I composed an reply email, copying Lukasz Biedka, a friend of this blog and a Warsaw-based psychologist specializing in holocaust family issues.

Roma's reply:

Hi David, What an amazing amount of information and leads! I'll to put something together for you that has as much information on both sides of the family as I've been able to glean in the past weeks for you to post. Your website was an inspiration for the last few days of historical/geographic research, as well as detective work!

I wrote you about my father, since the revelation started with his side of the family. By the way, his uncle was David Guzik, the director of the JDC in Poland, who, having survived the war, died in a plane crash in 1946.

In fact, my mother's family had even more connection with Przemysl. Her name as I knew it -- Maria Baran nee Karas -- is entirely invented. She is actually Ruza Kluger, daughter of Bernard and Dora Kluger, sister of Zygmunt Kluger. The Kluger family lived in Przemysl, my mother and uncle were born and grew up there. Bernard was a machinist, and Dora a seamstress and cook. Dora was from Skole (maiden name Halpern), and Bernard from Bucovina. My mother went to school in Lwow. My uncle Zygmunt who is 85 now just told me that we may be related to Shlomo Kluger, Magid of Brody. Whew! And me a gentile just 3 weeks ago!

I'm attaching an interesting document for you, my father's (forged? based on forged other document?) German Police Registration. I still have no reason to believe that the name Baran was anything but invented.

Then more from Roma:

Hi David and Lukasz,

I spoke to my maternal uncle Zygmunt today, and he had recalled quite a few more details.

My mother's family, Bernard and Dora Kluger, lived at first on Francuskiego (forgive all spellings). A man named Dinstag owned the house. It was opposite a Jewish "high school" built by the Jewish community. Then they moved to Leszynskiego (something about a house built for Jewish students?). My mother Ruza (so strange to think of her with this name!) attended a school in Warsaw to study languages, them Lwow to start medical school, probably from '38-39. My uncle attended mechanical gymnasium korkis after 7th grade. Bernard sent him away before the war to protect him, first to Hungary. He eventually found his way to Northern France and joined Canadian troops there, spent the whole war out of Poland. My grandfather Bernard Kluger had a machinist shop across the way on Leszynskiego. He did some work for "cyclop fabrika maszyn odlevna zelaza." When the Russians arrived, they seized the tools and parts from the shop and moved them elsewhere, and ordered Bernard to work there.

My mother was 19 when the war started, attractive, outgoing, spoke German, Russian, Polish and entertained with the accordion. Apparently an SS man who had taken a liking to her warned the family of an upcoming Aktion, and helped them escape. They went to Mogila, lived somewhere with a dirt floor. My mother worked in a tobacco factory. There they survived the war. (Did their change of identities happened around the move?)

Of note are two relatives:
It appears that Rabbi Shlomo Kluger of Brody was Bernard's grandfather, ie my great-great-grandfather (wiki entry). Bernard's brother was Carl Kluger, who was a friend of Romanian Zionist Meyer Ebner, and was elected to the Bucovina Senate. Interesting story here mentions him a few times.

No idea yet how my father ended up interred in the Przemysl ghetto in '42. Perhaps he had been courting my mother?

Thanks so much for helping me with the puzzle.
Best, Roma

Lukasz responds with info:

Hello Roma,
yes, the house at 2 and 4 Frankowskiego St. belonged to Samuel Dienstag. The
Hebrew school at Tarnawskiego St., now empty, was unsuccessfully claimed two years ago. The school for young craftsmen Yad Charuzim at Leszczynskiego St now houses the orphanage. The Cyklop - Fabryka maszyn i odlewnia zelaza was very close to Frankowskiego St., at Moniuszki and Tarnawskiego St.

There are two Mogila villages - one north of Przemysl, second East of Krakow
(now Krakow suburbs). T'was more likely the latter place.

More intriguing is how he ended up in Uzhorod labour camp (it couldn't be
the ghetto in '44) ...

Best regards, Lukasz

Revelation

My parents are first-generation American, my grandparents urban Galicians, fleeing chaos and pogroms in the aftermath of WWI. Their parents; shtetl Jews living in fear of Cossacks. Before that? Likely just ordinary Jewish peasants living as often unwanted guests in lands dominated by others back to time immemorial. Interesting, but why do people like me, comfortable, assimilated, western Jews study our ancestry? For me, is so that when I contemplate who and what I am, I have some historical context. Because in both genes and culture, we are, in many ways, the end result of the lives our ancestors led.

I also research to learn the fates of family members who disappeared, or were never known, in the great calamity of the Shoah. What became of my grandfather’s brother, Elia, last seen crossing the San and joining the Red Army in 1939? What of his wife and children? How can I honor their memory if I don't know their names?

Every Jew alive has some heartbreaking story of loss. Sisters, sons, and parents vanished into the Nazi death machine, entire families, gone. Here on the Przemysl blog, I give special treatment to survivors looking for lost souls, knowing that today, some fifty years after the holocaust, the odd of finding any information is very slim.

The email below arrived last week. It made me realize that their is another important category of searchers – gentiles who discover, through some revelation, that contrary to their upbringing, in complete opposition to everything they have been told, they are, in fact, of Jewish ancestry. To them, the sense of loss must be profound. Not only do they suddenly "inherit" the holocaust, but they simultaneously lose a lifetime of assumptions about where they came from. And above all, why the cloak of silence about the past? Why were they lied to? What horror happened to cause their ancestors to switch faiths?

Its my blog so I'll state my opinion: Those of us who did not live through the horrors of 1939 and on in Nazi Europe are in absolutely no position to judge the actions of those who did. Anyone who thinks that they can imagine how they would react to seeing family members tortured and murdered is simply not being honest with themselves.

Here is the email:

Dear David,

I just ran across the Przemysl blog and wanted to ask your advice. I just discovered (at the age of 61) that I am a Jew, that my parents survived the Holocaust under assumed names, and that I lived in Israel between 1949 and 1951. I am now in the early stages of trying to reconstruct my parents' real history. A summary of my father's reparation file states that he was interred in the Przemysl ghetto in 1942, liberated in Uzhorod in 1944, was in Przemysl and Bytom after the war. I am attaching the summary. I knew him (he died in 1988) as John Thomas Baran, or, in Polish, Jan Tomasz Baran, but his real name appears to have been Jakub Cytryn. His parents, Mojzesz and Masza Cytryn nee Guzik (I grew up referring to them as Boleslaw and Maria Baran) and his sisters Roma, Adela, Franceska and Sabina all perished in the war. I have traced Sabina to her death in Auschwitz in February 1943, not found any of the others. I would appreciate any advice on tracing the Przemysl connection. Thank you very much.

And so started the breathtaking story Roma Baran.

In the following posts, I will reprint (with Roma’s permission) the emails that have been flying ever since she found out about her real family history.

Please feel free to email me if you have any additional information that might be helpful to Roma, or if you simply want to comment.

Przemysl 1939

War re-enactment seems to be a big deal in Przemysl. There are several videos of this May 25 event on YouTube when Nazis stormed the city.



See the participant dressed up as a Hassid?

Death of a Righteous Gentile

While not specific to our town, the passing of such a human being is worthy of note for all Jews and Gentiles:

Woman who saved kids from Holocaust dies
Irena Sendler, who smuggled children out of Warsaw Ghetto, was 98

(from AP)

WARSAW, Poland - Irena Sendler — a Polish social worker who helped save some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto and giving them false identities — has died. She was 98.

Sendler died at a Warsaw hospital on Monday morning, her daughter, Janina Zgrzembska, told The Associated Press. She had been hospitalized since last month with pneumonia.

Born in Warsaw, Sendler served as a social worker with the city's welfare department, masterminding the risky rescue operations of Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during Nazi Germany's brutal World War II occupation.

Records show that Sendler's team of some 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps.

Under the pretext of inspecting the ghetto's sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, Sendler and her assistants went inside in search of children who could be smuggled out and given a chance of survival by living as Catholics.

Babies and small children were smuggled out in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages. Teenagers escaped by joining teams of workers forced to labor outside the ghetto. They were placed in families, orphanages, hospitals or convents.

In hopes of one day uniting the children with their families — most of whom perished in the Nazis' death camps — Sendler wrote the children's real names on slips of paper that she kept at home.

‘A true miracle’
When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the slips, which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate's yard. Some 2,500 names were recorded.

"It took a true miracle to save a Jewish child," Elzbieta Ficowska, who was saved by Sendler's team as a baby in 1942, recalled in an AP interview in 2007. "Mrs. Sendler saved not only us, but also our children and grandchildren and the generations to come."

After World War II, Sendler worked as a social welfare official and director of vocational schools, continuing to assist some of the children she rescued.

Honored in Jerusalem
In 1965, Sendler became one of the first so-called Righteous Gentiles honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem for wartime heroics. Poland's communist leaders at that time would not allow her to travel to Israel; she collected the award in 1983.

Despite the Yad Vashem honor, Sendler was largely forgotten in her homeland. Only in her final years, confined to a nursing home, did she finally become one of Poland's most respected figures, with President Lech Kaczynski and other politicians backing a campaign that put her name forward for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sendler is survived by her daughter and a granddaughter.

Przemysl Report - Work to be done

Our friend, Dr. John Hartman, is just back from a trip to Przemysl.

John, founder of the Remembrance and Reconciliation Foundation, has overseen the restoration and maintenance of the Jewish Cemetery. He reports:

The cemetery sustained some winter damage due to a big wind storm and the unusually harsh winter conditions. The city helped out a bit but we will need to spend some money by the summer. The original holocaust memorial is eroding and needs repair.

Repairs are not cheep, particularly with the current euro-dollar exchange rate. Just keeping up with the weathering this year will run in excess of $5,000. But it's raise the money or watch this sacred place crumble before our eyes and soon be forgotten.

I'll be writing more on this project soon. In the meantime, if anyone would like to donate toward the maintenance of the cemetery, please email me directly (link on right side column).

Here is one more photo - the cemetery's most recent burial - Rozia Felner:

In 1939 / 40 school year the same books will be in use as in the previous school year

Lukasz has unearthed another gem from the Przemysl archives: a pamphlet containing the names of the town's Jewish students circa 1938/9.

It shows who the teachers and administrators were:

It also lists students by classroom. While I can not be sure, perhaps the Berta Metzger listed here is my cousin - our family has only a single photo of Izac Metzger's family of six. Four unknown children and his wife Laia did not survive the holocaust.

With the awful knowledge of what happened to the Jews of Przemysl in September of 1939, and understanding the likely fate of each and every child on this list, these painfully casual words found in the brochure take on an entirely new and chilling meaning.

"In 1939 / 40 school year the same books will be in use as in the previous school year."

How unbearably heartbreaking.

25 Czarniekiego

My friend Lukasz was kind enough to send me a photo of 25 Czarniekiego Street in Przemysl. Based on addresses from old family post cards, this is where my great-grandparents Marcus Metzger and Chana Laufer lived with their family c. 1910-20.

The building is located near the corner of Rokitnianska Street, directly across from the main train station, was owned by a Mozes Teitelbaum. It was in the center of what would become the Przemysl Nazi ghetto, just a few steps away from the notorious prison where 1,200 Jewish men, women and children were shot dead on September 9, 1943. In all, 1,580 Jews perished there.
By then, only Izac (Edward) Metzger, wife Laia, and their four children remained in Przemysl. While Izac went to war, fighting with the Red Arm, his family was murdered, perhaps only steps from their front door. After the war, Izac returned to Przemysl and re-married Aniela Binczak who was a neighbor. Aneila's story is here.

From one mountain town to another

My parents were born in New York; it was their parents who came to America. I am two generations removed from any first hand living experience in Przemysl. I can study and learn, look at old photos, even walk the streets and imagine - but I'll always be filtering through American eyes. It's just a place, an abstraction of a part of my family's history that is gone forever, a parable not to be forgotten but not fully remembered.

That is why the email that came in from a Jewish woman who grew up in Przemysl is so precious to me: live, first-person testimony; not easy to find in 2008. As we sit today, the number of living Jews from Przemysl is unknown. Dozens? A hundred? What we do know is that you can count the current Jewish residents of our little town on two hands, at the very most.

Here is Alexandra's story:

Thank you very much for sharing with me all your Przemysl websites. I admit that I got "lost" traveling through time, visiting my little town and seeing it again through a lens of so many loving eyes. I was delighted to see a picture of my friend, Julek Glettner, and learn about the beautiful memorial held in Oct. of 2006. The memories captured in the photographs and stories about families like yours make my heart ache.
My family moved to Przemysl from Lodz in 1957 when I was 4 years old (the year this photograph was taken.) My father, David Rozenberg, opened a private business -- allowed under the socialist rule to supplement government-controlled industries. It was a small store with men and women’s clothing, shoes and such, called Galanteria. Located on Jagielonska Street, it provided for a very comfortable life.

As I mentioned in my earlier email, for years we resided on Tarnowskiego Street # 3, same location as the former Jewish Orphanage. I must admit I did not know of the building’s former use until I looked at one of the websites and noticed a picture of my old home. You can imagine my reaction! When I lived there, there was no information displayed or noted on the building’s past and certainly no one talked about it.

In that same building, there was a “make due” synagogue; a couple of rooms, benches etc. and when I was a child my father would take me with him when he attended services. I remember it smelled musty, but I liked being there; there was something magical and special about that place.

As much as I remember of my childhood, in those days life as a Jew in Przemysl was petty uneventful. There couldn’t have been more then 20 Jewish families.

At home, we celebrated Jewish holidays and relished our Jewish traditions more then our religion. We shared those traditions with friends, many of whom were Roman Catholic. Everyone knew we were Jewish and I don’t recall too many instances of blatant anti-Semitic behavior until the mid to late 1960s when the Polish economy (again!) took a turn for the worse and the government needed a tried and true scapegoat.

I was always very proud of being a Jew and felt great disdain for anyone who thought it a hindrance, although I must admit that the sheer force of anti-Semitism in 1967 (and beyond) was astounding. I could not imagine such level of latent hatred - I am sure you are very familiar with that period in Eastern Europe.

Along with thousands of other Jews, we left our homeland at the strong "invitation" of the Communist Party Secretary, Mr. Gomulka, "for all the undesirables (read, Jews) to leave Poland now." Although our family left Przemysl “willingly,” there were several instances of direct pressure by the government to “persuade us” to leave. My sister, who is 3 years older, was in her first year of studies at the Jagiellonska University in Krakow. She began receiving disturbing and frequent visits from the Polish Secret Police pressuring her to infiltrate the student underground and report on their activities. At first she ignored it, but when she and our family were threatened, we all applied for our passports/exit travel documents, triggering a stunningly quick – 3-month- departure process.

We had to resign our Polish citizenship and left on September 29th, 1969, traveling by train to Vienna where we stayed for 4 months before coming to New York in January of 1970. I was almost 17 and my sister 20.

During the initial years here I tried not to dwell on the searing pain I felt for having to leave my life behind; all that I knew to be real and all that I cherished was gone. My school and my friends, my first love...it is still a blur, and only now do I allow me the emotional space to reflect upon it. Being rejected at a tender age of 16, having your friends ,or at least people you thought were your friends, turn away from you, having a "dirty Jew" written on your classroom desk are but a few of many painful images.

The one memory that is most deeply etched in my mind is that of a banner strung-up across Slawaskiego Street reading: "Zionists, go back to Israel!" At the time I wondered: “Was this meant for me?”

Not unlike millions before us, we made our life here in America. I remain grateful to this beautiful country for embracing us and for allowing us to call it home.

Both my sister and I finished school in America. I have a graduate degree and my sister is an MD and a practicing psychiatrist with a wonderful family living in New York. Unfortunately, our parents passed away, my mother Anna in 1987 and my father just a couple of years ago.

Unlike my sister, I never acclimated to life in a big city and instead went searching for a place more reminiscent of Przemysl - my small mountain town. I fell in love with Colorado and decided to raise my children there. I am very fortunate to have found a rewarding career as the CEO of a college foundation.

I hope that this snapshot of my life gives you a bit of a perspective on the last Exodus of Jews from Poland. Thank you for allowing me to share my story with you. It is a healing process. I will be delighted to hear from you and to continue our conversation.

If you'd like to get in touch with Alexandra, email me and I will forward to her.

Then... and now

To the left stands my great aunt and uncle, Izac and Laia Metzger. Laia and three children were murdered in the holocaust. Izac joined the Red Army and survived the war. He is buried in the Slowackiego cemetery as Edward Metzger. His story is at the end of this article.

Both of these photos were taken in Rynek, the Old Marketplace. The street in the background is Mostowa, a small street near City Hall which in the present day photo is undergoing some renovation.

Many thanks to Jacek Szwic for making this discovery.

Izio Felder's life in Przemysl

Izio (Izaac) Felder is a Przemysl native who survived the ghetto, transport, and the holocaust. He immigrated to Australia after the war. He was kind enough to share some of his recollections of pre-Shoah life in Przemysl with us:

How well I remember the Alte Shul (old school) and the place in front of it called "Rybi Plac," the fish-place. I passed that place every day; it was the center of Jewish life in Przemysl.

To the left of the synagogue, about 3 houses away, was the "Kahal," the building of the Jewish community of Przemysl. Another 2 houses to the left was my Polish school. To the right of the synagogue was a small lane where there was the entrance to a room in the Alte Shul which was called the little Beth Hamidrash. Further to the right was Ratuszowa Street which was also a very Jewish street. Opposite the Alte Shul was the Jewish bath house which was quite large and was owned by the "Kahal," the Jewish community of Przemysl. There were separate tiled bathtubs, a steam bath, and a mikvah. (see a map of Jewish Przemysl here)

My mother and other Jewish mothers have gone to the Fish place to make shopping. The peasants come there very early in the morning with such goods as butter, green vegetables, eggs, chicken, ducks, geese, potatoes, etc. Przemysl did not have greengrocer shops; it was all purchased directly from the peasants.

There was no such thing as buying dead plucked chickens. They had to be killed by the religious shohet. On Thursday and Friday there were live fish sold there, mostly carps and pike - in Polish language szczupak fish. My mother bought those fish live and kept them home in a tin bath with water for several days.

The Fish place was a very lively and busy place. I bought there ice cream for 2 groszy and apple juice called cider, also 2 groszy. And hot cooked broad beans for 2 groszy per portion and roasted pumpkin seeds.

To me Przemysl looked a large city but now I can see that by world standards a population of 65 000 is not large. However, Przemysl was an important city because during the WW1 there was a large fortress there - the biggest after Verdun - and there was a big army there with lots of officers and officers aristocrats. In that Austro-Hungarian army there were also Jewish officers.

In the fortress there were 100,000 horses and a big demand for services. After WW1 there were too many doctors and lawyers in Przemysl and Przemysl became poorer because the demand for goods and services has dropped.

Przemysl had a lot of religious beggars and at least 15 of them came to our house every day. Each got 1 groszy. There were also some rich Jewish people and some in the middle.

In Przemysl the Jewish people made about 30% of the population but there was not a single Jewish policeman , railway official, in the fire brigade, postman or in the government office. Yes there was a lot of anti-Semitism, particularly after 1935 when Jozef Pilsudski died and the government in Poland was taken over by the anti-Semitism. Life became still harder every day.

- - Izio Felder

If anyone wishes to ask Izio about his recollections of Przemysl, email David and I will get you his email address.

“When he opened his mouth, I saw the gates of the crematorium"

Though not from our town, Michael Goldman-Gilad's holocaust story revolves around Przemysl. His amazing story is recounted in the Yad Vashem E-Newsletter.

“In a Sentence, I Felt Like I was
Going Through the Holocaust All Over Again”
Interview with Michael Goldman-Gilad,
Investigative Officer for the Eichmann Trial
Interviewers: Yael Novogrodsky and Limor Bar-Ilan

Michael Goldman-Gilad was born in 1925 in Katowice, Poland. After the outbreak of the war, he escaped with his parents, brother and eight-year-old sister to Przemysl. From there, he was deported to Szebnie and later, in November 1943, to Auschwitz-Birkenau. After a month and a half in the camp, he was transferred to Buna-Monowitz – Auschwitz III – where he worked in the I.G. Farben factories until the evacuation of the camp in January 1945. He was then forced on a death march, from which he managed to escape and hide with a Polish family. In February 1945, after liberation, he volunteered to fight in the Soviet army and was wounded in one of the battles. In September 1945, he reached the Pocking DP camp in Germany, and in May 1947, boarded the immigrant ship “Hatikvah” to Israel. The ship was seized at sea by the British navy and forced to change course to Cyprus, where Goldman-Gilad spent a year and a half in a detention camp.

After the establishment of the State of Israel, he immigrated to Israel, settling in Tel Aviv, and enlisted in the police. In 1960, following Adolf Eichmann’s arrest, he was attached as an Investigation Officer to Bureau 06 – a special unit set up within the police to conduct the investigation. He also served as personal aid to Gideon Hausner, Attorney General, who headed the prosecution. In 1963, he left the police, and was sent twice to Latin America as emissary on behalf of the Jewish Agency. He later returned to Israel and served as head of the Central Administration for Schlichut, managed by the Jewish Agency, until his retirement in 1995. Today, Goldman-Gilad is a member of the Yad Vashem Council, a member of the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous Among the Nations, and a member of the Bialik Institute Directorate. He is married to Eva (nee Goldschmidt), who was born in Jerusalem, and has five children and eight grandchildren. He is currently writing a book of memoirs, due for publication in the near future.

His story is riveting; truely must-reading for any student of the Shoah and anyone interested in learning about the holocaust in Przemysl.

An excerpt:

“A story that other than once before, I’ve never told anyone”

While at a labor camp in the Przemysl ghetto – I was young, sixteen-and-a-half, closer to seventeen years old – and belonged to a group of boys called the “Transport Commandos”. We weren’t skilled laborers, so we were made porters. We had a horse and carriage, and under Gestapo supervision, we had to enter abandoned homes, empty the contents, and transfer it all to warehouses in the camp, in an orderly fashion: closets here, books there, shoes here. The collected possessions from the abandoned homes were processed at workshops by skilled workers: cobblers, tailors and other artisans. They would process, launder and repair the collected property, and this would be sent to Germany.

In the summer of 1943, shortly before they liquidated the ghetto, the SS discovered that the person operating the Przemysl railway station was a converted Jew, and he was executed together with his family, even though his wife wasn’t Jewish. We had to go to his home, which was outside the ghetto, with our carriage, empty the house and transfer the contents back to the camp. When we entered the house, I saw a very large library in the living room, and when we started taking the books out, I saw he had many books about trains. He was director of the train station and also a rail engineer.

We already knew about the trains. We knew what was going on, where Jews were being taken on the trains. I decided that when we brought these books into the camp, I would hide them so they wouldn’t reach German hands. This was sabotage of the first order, punishable by death.

When we reached the camp, I placed these books separately. With the help of some friends who were with me, we hid them in various workshops, so they wouldn’t reach the hall that was serving as a library, where they would arrange the books by subject. The Jewish prayer books would be gathered separately and sent to Berlin to the Alfred Rosenberg’s "Institute for the Study of the Jewish Problem”.

Three days later, I suddenly hear someone calling me. The Jewish head of the camp is calling me to come out; I didn’t know what for. I see Josef Schwammberger, who was the commander of several camps – Przemysl among them - on behalf of the SS, standing next to him, with a dog restrained by a leash. He had a heavy leather leash, with an iron buckle. He used to yell at the dog “man, get the dog!” (in German), and the dog would attack. That was his expression. This is why, when we were interrogating Eichmann, I was so angry at Less for referring to Eichmann as “sir’ – I was called “dog” and he’d be “sir”?

We all knew that if someone was summoned to Schwammberger, he was finished, because Schwammberger used to draw his gun and shoot for no reason. And so if there was a specific reason, all the more so.

I had no idea why I was being summoned to Schwammberger. I approached him. He removed the leash from the dog and looked at me. He had the same murderous look even [much later] when he was on trial as an octogenarian. He asked me: “To whom did you sell the books?” (in German). In the first moment I was confused, but I came to my senses and realized what this was about. I instinctively found an answer, I had to find some answer. I said that when we reached the courtyard with our carriage, it was time for a lunch break, we went to eat the soup we were given, and when we returned to the carriage, the books were no longer there – meaning that people had taken the books to read them.

Schwammberger struck me around the neck with the leash and said, “bring the bench!” I understood he did not believe my story.

The bench was a special bench where they would lay down whomever he [Schwammberger] decided would receive 25 lashes. After 25 lashes with the buckle at the end of the leash, he would then transfer the person to Ghetto B. (There were two ghettos: Ghetto A, which was the workers’ ghetto overseen by the SS, and Ghetto B, of the “non-workers”, overseen by the Gestapo, and Polish police at the entrance. They would occasionally transfer people from Ghetto A to Ghetto B, where the women and children were, and from where transports were sometimes sent to the death camps. Where we were, in Ghetto A, there were no longer any children.) After 50 lashes he would take out his pistol and fire; we knew that.

When I was laid down on the bench, I started counting. I thought I could last for as many lashes he would give, if it were 25 or maybe more. He started beating me, and I through the beatings I managed to count 13, 14, 15, and then fainted. Later, when I awoke, I again felt I was being beaten, and fainted several times.

Suddenly I couldn’t feel anything. I didn’t know there were eighty lashes. During the lashing, they took people out to the courtyard to be witnesses, and they were the ones who counted. My friends are the ones who told me later. They said they wanted to know if I am to be transferred to Ghetto B or shot. They are the ones who counted eighty lashes. Dr. Buzminsky stood in the courtyard, saw and counted [..]

Everything fell silent. I awoke and heard Schwammberger’s voice, “aufstehen!” (get up!) I want all the books back here in three minutes!” (in German).
...

Quoted text Copyright © 2007 Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority

Przemysler's Ball - Update

Update to a post from last February. Back then, I couldn't remember who sent me the photo. This email came in today:

I sent you the Przemysler's Ball photo. The man in the back left is my great-grandfather Joseph Kalter. I am guessing that the abbreviation in the caption stands for "Young Men's and Young Ladies' Przemysl Association." I do not know the reason for the ball, but note that the date in the caption, 16 Dec 1911, was the first day of Chanukah that year. -- Logan K

(Click photo to enlarge)

Yoachim in 1930

These heartbreaking photos just came in from Yoram in Israel.

It is just recently that I have managed to identify the identity the child in the attached picture, maybe it will be of interest for you. This is a picture of Yohachim Kammerman taken in ~1930 in Przemysl. Yoachim perished with "Ada" his mother, in Belzec camp in 1942.

His father "Abele" (below) survived the camps and lived the rest of his life alone in Sweden.


Never Again.





UPDATE: Lukasz B. writes: I'm not 100 percent sure, but it is most probably corner of Franciszkanska and Serbanska St., by the house where Herman Liberman lived (not in the background, to the right).

A river runs through it

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Nazi-Soviet pact, divided up Poland between the Germans and the Russians. In the southeast, the line ran down the San River, splitting Przemysl in half - the Nazis on the Zasanie shore and the Reds on the Przemysl side.

Signed in August, 1939, the division of Przemysl would last until June 22, 1941 when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.

The photo above shows Russian Przemysl from the German Zasanie side. The three posters, from left to right are: Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, Western Army head Kliment Voroshilov, and, of course, "Uncle" Joseph Stalin. Below Stalin are the words "Workers of the World Unite!" written in Ukrainian. (photo from the collection of L. Beidka. All rights reserved)

Many Jews joined the Red army on that day in June, including my great uncles Elia Silberman and Isaac Metzger. Isaac, also known as Edward, made it back to Przemysl after the war to find his wife and three children murdered. Elia, his wife and two children were never heard from again.

You gotta have HEART

Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

This site contains an excellent collection of holocaust histories of Polish towns, including Przemysl.

Przemysl

Przemysl is a city in Poland, situated on the San River, in the Lvov district, Eastern Galicia and before the Second World War approximately 24,000 Jews lived in Przemysl.

The Germans bombed Przemysl on 7 September 1939 and the following day the bombing continued setting fire to the shopping centre Pasaz Gansa.

Many of Przemysl inhabitants fled the city, to escape the bombings, and the Germans entered the city for the first time on 15 September 1939, approximately 20, 000 Jews lived in Przemysl, including refugees from western Poland.

The Germans immediately began to humiliate the Jewish inhabitants and started to arrest members of the Jewish intelligentsia, physicians, lawyers, industrialists and Jewish political activists. Forty-three leading Jewish citizens were arrested, taken for forced labour, savagely beaten and then shot. Among the forty-three was Asscher Gitter, whose son had emigrated to the United States in 1938, hoping that one day his father would join him.

...

I urge you to read the whole account. (Copyright Lukasz Biedka, and Chris Webb H.E.A.R.T 2007)

Rare (and sad) photo

Nazi troops marching into Przemysl on Grunwaldska Street (Zasaine).

(From the collection of L. Biedka.)

Treasure trove of photos

Tomek Wisniewski's web site bagnowka.com contains the largest gallery of pre-war photos of Poland, images of Jewish cemeteries, and old maps of hundreds of cities and shtetls. In addition, there are photos documenting the old wooden architecture of Poland, extensive holocaust pictures, and even photos of pre-war mosques in Poland.

In all, there are over 40 000 images, each sorted alphabetically by town. It is quite a valuable resource; quite a treasure trove.

Below is a street scene, one of 37 pictures of Przemysl on his site.

[Photo copyright bagnowka.com]

Tomek Wisniewski

Gal from Israel wanted me to be sure and credit Tomek Wisniewski for locating the old map of Przemysl, published in a prior post. But there is much more to Tomek than just one map...

Tomek Wisniewski is a journalist, historian and writer. He is the author of three books (ie: "Jewish Bialystok and surroundings") and has written over one hundred articles (ie: "A Lost World… for sale") about Jewish culture, history, and social life, especially in the Bialystok region. He publishes articles regularly in Polish Jewish magazine "Jidishe Wort".

Born in 1958, he graduated from Warsaw University in 1984 and spent nine months in prison during war time in Poland. He has amassed a fabulous collection of old photographs and postal cards, using them to illuminate holocaust education projects and exhibitions like this one at the University of Southern California and this one at Szukamy Polski.

Tomasz has recently left the journalism business and is now devoting his full time to his real loves: tour guiding, photography and other genealogy-related pursuits. Contact him directly for more particulars about his various services. Tomy, as he is known to his genealogy friends, concentrates primarily in the Bialystok/Lomza/Suwalki area, but can easily assist people in any part of Poland and is willing to discuss his abilities to take extended trips to Lithuania and Belarus.

He can be reached via e-mail at: bagnowka (at) yahoo.pl (replace (at) by @ - to avoid spam)

Anyone know anything about family HANFLING?

This came in over my (electronic) transom today:

I am looking for information about my father's family.

Yosef Hanfling (left in the photo) was born in Przemysl on 16/05/1915 and died in 1989. The oldest of five sons, he came to ISRAEL in 1938 and lived in kibbutz Hamaapil.

He is the only one from his family that we know survived the shoah.

His father's name was DAN and his mother was PEARL. They may have lived at 41 SLOWACKIEGO street.

Email: Alex Hanfling

(email edited by DRS)

Counterfeiters

I was tipped off by an anonymous commenter to the existence of a counterfeit URL for the important Shoah site Deathcamps.org hosted by the ARC.

The more correct link to Mr Biedka's article on Przemysl wold be found at:

http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/przemysl%20ghetto.html

Note the removal of the Hyphen in the URL. The hyphenated version of the genuine ARC website is a counterfeit copy.

I highly doubt Mr. Biedka would so dishonor the memory of those who perished in Przemysl by linking to fraudulent websites and holocaust profiteers.

Here is my response:

I have changed the UR on my post Przemysl Ghetto... it is hard to understand why anyone would want to steal this material when it is being freely offered as a public service...

My advice? Drop the hyphen. Use the real site.

Old Map of Przemysl

[Click to enlarge]

This map dates from the 17th century. Small note: the object in the lower left hand corner of the city that is marked "28" is the Alte Synagogue, destroyed by Nazis c. 1943.

This map comes to me courtesy of Gal V in Israel. Gal is researching his wife's family roots in Przemysl, names: Adolf and Zalc/Salz. Their daughter will visit Przemysl with her school this fall.

Shana Tova U'metuka !

5768

We wish you all a good year

filled with sweetness, joy, success, good health, peace and lovely surprises!

שנה טובה ומתוקה Happy New year!

David & Jocelyn

[post card c.1915 Image courtesy of cousin Meliza Amity]

Looking for Glasser from Przemysl

Sheila Schneider, the coordinator for the Przemysl shtetlinks site, is looking for information on the Glassers of Przemysl per the email, below. If you have anything for her, please email her (click on he name).

I am corresponding with two brothers from Przemysl that survived the Holocaust. I have placed Ben’s stories of life in Przemysl before, during and after the Holocaust, on the shtetlinks page. I am waiting for David’s stores. Ben has asked me to use my resources and locate any information about his schoolmate mate friend with the surname of Glasser. Below are Ben’s comments:

"I went to school with a Jewish boy, Glasser; I don’t remember his first name. He lived in a house, not in an apartment house, on the street Trzeciego Maja. I remember visiting him at his place when he was ill."

Jacek Szwic's well earned award

Jacek Szwic was recently recognized by the Israeli ambassador to Poland, the City Council of Pittsburgh, and the Jewish Historical Institute for his work in the preservation of the memory of the Jews of Przemysl.

In addition to playing a major role in the erecting of the monument at the Grochowce forest mass grave site, Mr. Szwic was primarily responsible for the indexing of the stones at the Jewish cemetery on Slowackiego St. He has also staged three exhibitions on the Przemysl synagogues and ghetto, and contributed to and edited two book on these topics. As a reporter for local weekly Zycie Podkarpackie he has often written about Jewish Przemysl.

The ceremony took place at the Krakow Muzeum Galicja, on June 1. Jacek Szwic was among nine awarded this year.

Click HERE for the news story in Polish.

Hat tip: Lukasz B in Warsaw

Grandson's trip home

I've recently been corresponding with an American engineering professor whose grand parents were from Przemysl. Prof. Danny's story has loads of interesting tidbits about our town from before the Shoah.

He's heading back this summer to try and locate his grandmother's grave.

In our October 2005 visit, with the help of a good Polish friend, and the good memory of my mother, who lives in Rechovot Israel, we were able to find the house she was born in Slowackiego 47, where my grandfather Avraham Schwartz had a tobacco and liqueur store.

Where, no doubt, my grandfather bought cigarettes...

The cemetery is on the same street and the lot between it and the Catholic cemetery belonged to my grandfather, who used the money to move the ENTIRE family to Haifa in 1937.

Thank Ha-shem for that!

The communal grave of the 102 Nazi victims from 1939 is on the edge of my grandfather land lot. My Grandmother Batia Yahre Schwartz is buried there (died around 1931/2) and my mother remembers that she was placed in area No. 6 of the cemetery.

Does anyone know or have a map of the cemetery layout?

We visited the Scheinbach synagogue, on the same street, and it is in great condition as a public library. My grandfather was the Ba'al Kore, before he left for Palestine.

Baal Kore is the Torah reader

We found at Koleyova 5 (the train street) the 5 story building that my uncle, Shemuel Schwarz, the architect, had built and lived on the top floor. We also found the photo studio of my uncle, on Slowackiego, just as it gets to the downtown. He was active in the Temple synagogue.

We could not find my mother's school: Hebrisca Schola Co-Edcatzina on Ulicia Gurna (the hill street).

Anyone know what became of this school?

A few notes

Shalom to everyone... I apologize for the light blogging this past month... life just got a bit busier than I had expected... a few quick items:

1. Lukasz B is putting together a collectin of original photos of pre-war Jewish Polish towns for a major exhibition. If you have any old pictures that you would be willing to allow us to scan and use, please email me.

2. I have been looking at Mitchell Levins wonderful This day... in Jewish History site every day-and every day I learn something new. Check it out!

3. Our friend Michal of Rent in Shekels fame will be visiting Przemysl this summer. She asks for pointers on where to stay, and who and what to see. Again, email me and I will forward. Thanks!

Przemysl Slicha - Update to the update

I have forgotten to mention the name of the person who translated the Slicha into English: Jerrold Landau. Thank you for your wonderful work, Mr. Landau!

21st Century Genealogy

I recently received an email from a woman researching her roots in a most interesting manner. In addition to the usual--pouring through the JRI database trying to make connections--she is using DNA marker testing to try and establish linkages between all the families with a common surname.

In her case, the name is Gottesman, her GGM. She emailed me because my GGGM was Beila Gottesman from Medyka/Przemysl, as listed in the JewishGen Family Finder. If you have any living Gottesmans in your tree, be sure to visit her site!

There are two main ways to test your DNA. The y-DNA test traces common lineage along an unbroken paternal line. For me, it baselines my Semmel roots--my father's, father's, father's, etc... It can tell if I am related to other Semmels (or Semels, Zemels, etc...) It also reveals much about ultimate origins -- Cohanim? Levite?

There is also a maternal line test using M-DNA. Because of name changes, it seems less useful for recent generations, but does yield fascinating deep roots information as scientists have narrowed down most of humanity as having sprung from one of 7 "Daughters of Eve" Unlike Y tests, this one works for males and females. (though all your M-DNA comes from mom!)

The test itself costs around $1-200, depending on how many markers you want to establish. In general, more markers means more accurate results. No blood - it's all done from a swab of your cheek.

I just ordered a Y test kit. I'll post the results when I receive them!

Przemysl Slicha - Update

Update to this update: I have forgotten to mention the name of the person who translated this work into English: Jerrold Landau. Thank you for your wonderful work, Mr. Landau!

______________________________________________

Frequent contributor and friend of the blog Lukasz Biedka comments from Poland on our recent Przemysl Slicha post:

[Here are] pictures of Boruch Myers (Chief rabbi of Bratislava) and Michael Schudrich (Chief rabbi of Poland) reciting Przemysl Slicha at Jewish cemetery in Przemysl. For the first time since the war and the probably last time ever. Autumn 2006.

Photos by Jacek Szwic

Complete English translation of the Slicha here.

The Jewish Armed Resistence has become a Modern Army

Not specifically Przemysl, but worth the detour. A very big hat-tip goes out to EF at the American Thinker for this:

This Sunday is Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) for victims of the Shoah (Holocaust) in commemoration of the deliberate slaughter of six million Jews. Over 90% of European Jewry died in five years. From the ashes: the Israel Air Force Eagles fly over the Auschwitz death hell 3 1/2 years ago. To those who threaten a second Holocaust: Never again!

Przemysl Slicha

JewishGen has again added to their English translation of the Sefer Przemysl - the Przemysl Memorial (Yizkor) book. For those of you who have not seen it, this is THE source for first-person history of Jewish Przemysl from the middle ages through the shoah.

What caught my eye was the Przemysl Slicha. According to the book: The Slichot Scroll that is recited in the city of Przemysl on the eve of Rosh Chodesh Nissan, the fast day in memory of the libels against and the martyrdom (Sanctification of the Divine Name) of the aforementioned Rabbi Moshe. Was March 19, this year.

The first stanza:

{Alef} Oh G-d and G-d of our fathers
You are the G-d of gods and the L-rd of lords
Unique, you are first among the early ones and last among the latter ones
Where is your zealousness and might about which our forefathers have told
The great, mighty and awesome G-d who does not play favorites?

Read the whole Slicha here.

It is a beautiful and instructive scroll. But what really amazed me about the recitation can be found in the translator's footnotes:

# This Slicha is a fourfold acrostic (i.e. each stanza has four lines that start with the same letter of the alef-beit. I notated each stanza with the appropriate letter. After tav, there are other stanzas starting with various letters, forming an acrostic with the name of the author

# These 8 letters seem to be a cryptic, poetic reference to a year. In this genre, years are often coded with a hidden message. The 8 letters can be read as Mehuma Tzara – which stands for “confusion and distress” and may be a reference to “The year of confusion and distress”. The numerology of these 8 letters adds up to 390. This could be the year 5390, which would be 1630 (the millennium is often assumed).

# After the alphabetic acrostic concludes, the next verses begin with the following letters: shin beit tav yud samech beit reish yod tzadi chet kuf zayin tzadi lamed chet zayin kuf vav alef mem tzadi alef vav. This type of acrostic is usually the signature of the author. This is similar to the Akdamut poem, which is a twofold acrostic, and then ends with the letters of the author. If I put these letters together, I get the statement (extraneous letters which I could not fit in are in parentheses): Shabtai (samech) the son of Reb Yitzchak zatzal chazak vematz (alef vav). This would mean: Shabtai the son of Reb Yitzchak of holy blessed memory, may he be strong and mighty.

Kind of makes the New York Times Acrostic Puzzle look like a snap!

[JewishGen's Translation Fund Donation Form provides a secure way to make donations, either on-line or by mail, to help continue this project. Donations to JewishGen are tax-deductible.]

The boys are back in town!

This just came in from Chaim... more photos at the bottom...what a wonderful way to kick-off Pesach!

Hello David,

We are back in Israel after our week in Poland. It was an excellent trip, and our visit to Przemysl was definitely a highlight.

On Thursday afternoon, after visiting the site of the Belzec death camp, our group got on the bus and headed to Przemysl. None of us (including our guide) had been there before so we did not know what to expect.

On the way, we called Lukasz Biedka with whom I had made contact through this blog. Lukasz said he would be happy to meet our group and gave the bus driver instructions on where to pick him up.

Lukasz was an excellent guide. He first brought us to the Jewish cemetery and pointed out the spot of the Scheinbach shul along the way.

We then got back on the bus and drove across the river to the old Zasanie Synagogue (now, abandoned). It was late afternoon by that point and our group had not yet davened mincha. Our guide noted that "shuls are meant for prayer" so we stood outside the fence of the shul and I led the group in the afternoon service. The attendants at the gas station next door were certainly intriguied with what they saw...

At that point, we had already been in in Przemysl for an hour and our schedule called for us to leave and head to Krakow, but Lukasz insisited that he show us the old ghetto. So, we jumped back on the bus and drove over the river once more. Lukasz told us the story of the ghetto and showed us around. He then brought us the the memorial of the mass shootings which stands behind the prison. We said kaddish and lit candles.

Although I was the only one from the group who had a family connetion to Przemysl, everyone got a lot out of our visit. Prezmysl is a beautiful town and it was easy for us to imagine what it must have been like with its once thriving Jewish community.

As promised, I attached some photos of our visit to this e-mail.

Thanks again for starting this blog. It proved to be an invaluable resource for our visit.

Chag Kasher v'sameach,
Chaim

P.S.
I did a little more research on Horodek (the birth place of my grandfather). Turns out that it is, in fact, about 80km south or Przemysl. It was within the region of Lisko (now Lesko).

3 Dozen Bal Toyreh in Przemysl

I received this email while lounging on a beach in St. Lucia. Pardes does wonderful Jewish education work and Heritage rounds it out with trips to Israel via Poland.

36 bright, young Jews tromping around Poland and Przemysl - how great is that? And we get pictures!

My name is Chaim. I'm 22 years old from Toronto, Canada. Since July I have been studying at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.

On Monday night I will departing to Poland with 35 of my classmates on a trip run by Heritage Seminars.

The leader of our trip mentioned to us a few weeks ago that if we had family members who were from Poland and knew the name of their city or town, that we should tell him and that perhaps we could stop off there.

I told him a few days later that my late grandfather, Jack (Yankel) Shiner was born in Przemsyl. (In truth, some family members think that he was born and grew up in Horodek, which is south of Przemysl, but he always told us that he was from Przemysl...).

[DRS Note: Lukasz B. thinks Horodek is probably Grodek Jagiellonski n. Lwow where his GGF worked. It is more East of Przemysl than South.]

Anyway, our trip leader told me that he looked at our schedule and he allocated an hour's worth of time to explore Przemysl. The catch was, that I had to help guide the tour!

That is when I frantically started researching on Przemysl and I was so glad to happen upon the blog that you started.

I'm writing you for a few reasons:

- I thought you would want to know that a group of over 35 (mostly) young Jews will be visiting Przemysl this coming Wednesday.
- I wanted to thank you for setting up and maintaining the blog. It has been very helpful to me.
- I noticed that you visited Przemysl yourself. Do you have any advice? We have about an hour there, what do you think we should try to see?
- Finally, I wanted to know if you could provide me with the contact information for Michal from the "Rent due in Shekels" post. I'd be interested to get a bit more information from her so that I can tell her story when we're there.

Thanks so much. I look forward to being in touch with you.

I'll be sure to take lots of pictures when I'm there and pass them along to you to post at your whim.

All the best,
Chaim

Przemysler's Masked Ball

(Update to the Przemyslers Ball post)

My cousin Bruce Rauch saw the "Ball" post and shared with me a wonderful story about an annual masquerade ball in Przemysl, held at least into the 20s.

He wrote:

I don't know where the picture on the web site was taken, but there was an annual ball in Przemysl sponsored by some Jewish social club. Mendel ( Silberman, David's GF) and my father (Marcus Rauch) were both members and were also close personal friends.

Mendel was on the host committee circa 1920. My father wanted to meet my mother (Salka/Sally Silberman, Mendel's sister) so he made a deal with his friend.

The ball was a masked ball and each guest had to unmask before a member of the committee to verify that they were invited. The deal was that Mendel would know who my mother was and would tip off my father so he could fill out her dance card.

Judging by Salka Silberman & Marcus Rauch's wedding photo, above, taken three years later, apparently it worked!

While I still think the Ball photo is from a New York event, it is possible that the English caption was written later and it is Przemysl. The more likely case is that whatever group sponsored the Ball had members move to New York who wanted to continue the tradition.

Przemysler's Ball

My laptop crashed last week and while transferring over data to the new one, I came across a wonderful old photo someone sent to me several years back. (Who? If this is yours, please email me!)

(Click photo to enlarge)

The inscription reads: "Przemyslers ? ? ? Arrangement comm(ittee) of the Ball Dec 16, 1911.

I assume this was a big annual soirée of Przemysl immigrant (youth?) in New York City but I've not been able to find anything concrete. Anyone know?

Maurice Papon died a free man

My grandfather's sister was Chaya Silberman. Her and her husband, Muni Getter came to France in the late 20s to escape from war torn, antisemitic Przemysl, Poland. Life was good until the Nazis invaded and occupied in 1940. Soon thereafter, with the aide of efficient French collaborators like Maurice Papon, Jews were rounded up and and put on cattle cars, headed back to Poland for the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Just before Chaya and Muni were taken, they managed to hide their 13 year-old daughter Florine in convent in Grenoble--yes, there were righteous Frenchmen.

Chaya was murdered, probably not long after arrival at the Birkenau camp. Forced to strip naked and disgorge all valuables, she was gassed with Zyklon-B in a sealed room with hundreds of others before being incinerated in specially designed ovens.

Muni miraculously survived Auschwitz and returned to France in 1946 to find his daughter. Months later they were reunited and soon sailed to America where they lived for a time with my grandparents in the Bronx.

Muni died in the 70s, while Florine passed away a few years ago.

Why do I care that Maurice Papon lived to be 96 and died a free man, protected by the French government, living in the lap of luxury? Here's why:

Chaya Silberman Getter - born June 6, 1906 in Przemysl, murdered 1942 in Auschwitz:

French Nazi-era collaborator Papon dies

By ELAINE GANLEY, Associated Press Writer Sat Feb 17, 6:11 PM ET

PARIS - Maurice Papon, a former Cabinet minister who was convicted of complicity in crimes against humanity for his role in deporting Jews during World War II and became a symbol of France's collaboration with the Nazis, died Saturday. He was 96.

Papon, who underwent surgery on his pacemaker at a clinic east of Paris last week, died in his sleep on Saturday, said his lawyer, Francis Vuillemin.

Papon was the highest-ranking Frenchman to be convicted for a role in the pro-Nazi Vichy regime.

The April 2, 1998, guilty verdict was the culmination of a trial that offered a painful look at one of the darkest periods in modern French history.

However, Papon — who at one point fled France to avoid prison — lived out his final years a free man, released from Paris' dour La Sante prison on Sept. 18, 2002, because of failing health.

In a February 2001 letter to the justice minister, Papon said he had neither "regrets nor remorse for a crime I did not commit and for which I am in no way an accomplice."

Papon served only three years of a 10-year sentence for ordering the arrest and deportation of 1,690 Jews, including 223 children, from the Bordeaux area to Nazi death camps.

"We fought ... so that he would pay," said Michel Slitinsky, a Bordeaux historian who narrowly escaped a Papon-ordered roundup and who uncovered documents implicating him. "He paid. Sadly, he only spent three years in prison, a golden prison, at that."

When Papon was released, the Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld said that the decision to free him showed that "part of the French establishment does not admit that a man like Papon can die in prison."

Papon's lawyer, Vuillemin, said Saturday his client "fought till the end."

"He died a free man," Vuillemin told LCI television.

Papon had been a civil servant par excellence. During the war, he held the No. 2 post in Bordeaux' Gironde region in southwest France from 1942-44. Trial documents showed Papon, responsible for Bordeaux's Jewish Affairs department, was greatly appreciated by the Germans for his "efficiency and reliability."

After the war, Papon enjoyed a brilliant political career, easily slipping into the machinery of the postwar state. He rose to become Paris police chief under then-President Charles de Gaulle in 1958, holding the post until 1967. He was named budget minister in 1978 under President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and kept the post until 1981.

It took 16 more years to bring the case against Papon to court in France, which struggled for decades to come to terms with its collaboration with the Nazi occupiers.

While found guilty of complicity, Papon was absolved of guilt in the deaths of the Jewish deportees, most of whom perished at Auschwitz. The jury accepted the defense argument that Papon was not aware of the Nazi plan to exterminate Jews.

Papon relentlessly proclaimed his innocence, arguing that he was only carrying out orders. On his final day on the stand, he said he was a victim of "the saddest chapter in French legal history."

He fled to Switzerland after the guilty verdict and was apprehended a week later. Papon had said that exile was the only way to maintain his honor. Then-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin called Papon's flight a "final sign of indifference, contempt and provocation with regard to all victims of the Holocaust."

Papon was promoted five times during the war, becoming police supervisor in the Gironde from 1942-44. Afterward, he became cabinet director of Gaston Gusin, named by de Gaulle to administer Bordeaux when the Germans pulled out in August 1944.

He later headed Algerian affairs in the Interior Ministry and went on to head prefectures in Constantine, in eastern Algeria — then part of France — and in Corsica.

Papon would have slipped quietly into retirement after President Giscard's defeat in 1981 were it not for Slitinsky's perseverance.

Slitinsky, whose father perished in Auschwitz, stumbled on documents revealing Papon's role and gave them to a newspaper for publication. Klarsfeld, the Nazi hunter, then fought to bring Papon to trial.

Slitinsky said the former minister "carried on his shoulders the responsibility for 1,600 arrests, including 250 children."

Because of Papon's credentials, and efforts at the highest levels to shield him, the case dragged through France's legal system. In 1994, President Francois Mitterrand admitted he had intervened to stall the case.

[cross posted to LearJet SWAT Team]

Przemysl Landsmanschaft in NYC

Though not Przemysl specific, there is some interesting stuff at The Museum of Family History web site. In addition to excellent narratives on immigration, particularly from the Russian Pale, I found the extensive collection of family post cards to be revealing. The cemetery maps are also quite useful.

This photo of the cemetery in Elmont also caught my eye as it is where my Przemysl grandparents - Fannie Metzger and Emanuel Silberman - are burried.

This memorial was erected by Congregation Tifereth Joseph Anshei Przemysl (founded in 1891 in New York). They are the only Przemysl Landsmanschaft (a society of people from the town) that I know of in America. Last time I contacted them, Gerry Meister was the President.

Rent in Shekels - Update

To the left is a photo of the building in Przemysl recently re-claimed from the Polish government by Michal, a Jewish woman living in Tel Aviv.

Michal's family ownership of the property goes back through the Bethauer family to at least to her great-great-grandmother, sirnamed David.

Now several apartments, the structure is at Number 6 Rejtana. You can see the Scheinbach synagogue (now the town library) directly to the right.

Read the original post HERE.

Looking for the Rothmanns of Przemysl

J. A. Lebman emailed me the truely amazing story of her father, Hermann Rothmann. She is looking for any information about her Rothmann family post Shoah. -- David

I was extremely excited to come across your site. I found it by chance having "googled' “Przemysl,” something I do fairly often.

An entire branch of my family lived in Przemysl until World War 2 and then disappeared. My grandfather, Isaak (Erich/Israel) Rothmann was born in Przemysl c. 1898 and lived there until he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army in WW1. He joined the cavalry, but according to the family, he was not even supposed to be drafted. The call came to his older brother but he was indispensable to the family business - at that time the family ran the local "taxi' service – troikas, horse powered of course. My grandfather took his brother's name and identity and fought on the Russian front and was captured twice by the Russians. On one occasion he pretended to be a dentist and spent some time pulling teeth. His regiment marched to the Radetsky march.

After his second escape he had had enough. He threw his uniform in the river and fled to Leipzig, Germany. He worked for a man who made leather goods, married the boss’ daughter (Betty Rappaport) and eventually moved to Berlin where he continued in the business. I suspect that my grandmother’s family (Rappaport) may have had a Przemysl connection – their original town (before Leipzig) was Stary Sambor – but I remember some reappearing names in the family tree and it is possible my grandfather went to their factory in Leipzig because he knew them – or they were distant relatives.

My father, Hermann Rothmann, was born in 1924. He remembers visiting Przemysl. Galicia was definitely less advanced and less sophisticated than Berlin. As a boy, he felt as though he was going back in time when he visited. He arrived by train and a fleet of horsed drawn taxis was waiting to take him to the family home - remember, taxis were the family business.

The Rothmann house backed onto the river at 75 Kapernikov Street (Kopernika). My father remembers a boy cousin his own age called Koby. (Yaakov). My grandparents and father were lucky enough to survive the war. My father was sent to England on the kinder-transport and my grandparents fled and ended up in Israel.

None of the Przemysl branch appears to have survived. My cousin in Israel (son of my father’s younger brother) has some more information on the family in Przemysl – but if anyone has any information about the Rothmann family - either remembers them or if they appear on a branch of anyone’s family tree, I would love to be in touch.

J. A. Leberman

Your rent is due in Shekels!

I have been emailing with Michal in Israel. A thirty-something technologist working for a hi-tech start-up in Tel Aviv, Michal may well be the only Jewish property owner in Przemysl. Here are some excerpts from her email [my comments in brackets]:

As to the building, it's a 3 story structure just next to the synagogue, [the Scheinbach Synagogue on Słowackiego] My grandmother grew up there. It was in the possession of her grandmother, the David family, from, well, ever.

You need to know a bit about my parent's history. My parents were deported from Poland in 1969 and stripped of their Polish citizenship by the communist's government . After wandering in Europe for a year, the Jewish Agency converted my mother and they made Aliya to Israel.

In 2000 my parents and my brother received their Polish citizenship back and then I received mine. In the same year the Polish government said that Jewish family's that lived in Poland during the war and had their property confiscated by the government could bring proof of that and receive the property back.

So we did it. We went to the city council of Przemysl and found all the necessary pre-war documents. I'm now corresponding with a notary in Przemysl in order to transfer the ownership on my building from my father (who lives in Poland) to me. Since I have a Polish citizenship it's suppose to be quite easy - at list I hope so. [beware: the Communists are gone, not the bureaucrats]

The government divided the building into 12 (!) small apartments and the residents that live there have the special legal position of protected tenants. Well see what we're going to do about that... the Jews are back in town!!! [Put a mezuzah on the entry door!]

It's always a surprise to my friends in Israel that I have a non-Jewish side; it's not always popular here. I still have a large family all over Poland from my mothers side - good Catholics that I love. I even have family that lived in Germany and served in the Army during WWII. We have a very warm and loving on-going relationship.

Dr. Bethauer, a prominent Przemysl attorney, was murdered along with hundreds of others in the first wave of atrocities carried out by the Nazis during September, 1939. He is noted in the Sefer Przemysl.

The Broken Silence of The Holocaust Survivor

Today, Bruno Ritter is a retired, bronze-star decorated US Army combat veteran living a normal, happy life with his wife and children. That he is alive is nothing short of a miracle. When he decided to tell his story of loss and survival to a German court after keeping it to himself for decades, he helped bring justice to one of the last Nazi officer to be brought to trial.

Bruno was born as Moshe Schatzman in Przemysl in 1928 to Isak Schatzman and Sabina Ritter, a barber and a beautician. He grew up on the second floor of the family owned building that also housed the shop where his parents worked. Their's was a typical, uneventful working-class story in a medium-sized town until Poland was occupied by the Nazis in 1939 and began the systematic extermination of Przemysl's Jewry. Over the ensuing five years, he lost everything; his mother and father, his extended family, neighbors and acquaintances - all murdered.

Somehow, passing through a series of jails, forced labor and concentration camps, Bruno managed to survive the Shoah.

After the war, he came to Kansas City, adopted his mother's family name and joined the US Army, serving from Europe to Vietnam as a proud American citizen - his tragic and heroic past gladly forgotten.

Normally, that would be the end of the historical part of a holocaust survivor's story - but not for Bruno Ritter.

As fate would have it, justice finally caught up with the brutal, sadistic Nazi SS officer who oversaw the murder of the Jews of Przemysl, Joseph Schwammberger, when he was extradited from Argentina to stand trial for his crimes in 1990. Ritter was called to be a star witness at the trial and his testimony was key in convincing the court to condemn this monster to life in prison. Schwammberger died in prison in Germany in 1997.

A few years ago, Washington Post writer Marc Fisher wrote a piece about Bruno Ritter, a son of Przemysl, titled:

The Broken Silence of The Holocaust Survivor

Please read it. It is a moving story about an amazing life.

Special thanks to Wendy Hodgden, Bruno's American daughter, for sharing her father's story.

Posting Comments

Everyone is welcome to post comments by clicking the "xx comments" link at the bottom of each post. You can comment anonymously or with a Google user name. I will answer all serious comments and look forward to hearing from you! - - David

Extremely detailed maps - c. 1910

Here is a link to a series of extremely detailed topographic military maps of Austria-Hungary made in 1910. They show every town, every road and every hill, regardless of size. Click on the sector you want to look at, but be careful - they are 3.5Mb each - they take a while to display!

Here is the Przemysl area map

Postcards - WWI

I scanned my collection of Przemysl postal cards over the weekend. Here is the first batch - some Przemysl WWI scenes.

Kusmanek was the Austrian commander of Przemysl during the siege of 1914-15. Ivanoff was the Russian General who took Przemysl from the Austrians March 1915. Meckensen is the German General who re-took the city on June 3, 1915. The last card is the main bridge - blown by the surrendering Austrians. (Click cards to enlarge)






More photos and historical details on the Siege of Przemysl here.

Edward Wichura 1927 - 2006

Obituary by Lukasz Biedka

The Jewish-Polish actor Edward Wichura passed away on June 4, 2006 in Warsaw. Born in Przemysl on July 5, 1927 as Esriel Leimsieder, he was the son of Moritz Hut of Zablotka, Brody and Mirla Leimsieder.

Wichura was the only survivor from the final liquidation of the Przemysl Ghetto - the Nazi transport from Zwangsarbeitslager Przemysl to the Stalowa Wola forced camp during September, 1943. He lost all his entire family in the Shoah - his father was beaten to death by Germans while his mother and sister perished in gas chambers of Belzec.

After graduating from the Polish State Theatrical Academy in 1951, he made his stage debut at the Nowy Theater in Lodz where he remained a featured player until 1961. Edward then moved to Warsaw, where he acted in several prominent theaters – Polski (1962-65), Klasyczny (1965-69), and Rozmaitosci (1972-88).

A highly regarded and universally recognised face in Polish cinema, Wichura appeared in lead and supporting roles in at least 25 feature films from 1953 to 1989. He was also popular on the small screen, playing major parts in several dramatic and action series on Polish television, including the role of Shmaltzovnik, a policeman who blackmails Jews (“Kolumbowie”, 1970.)

Edward Wichura left behind a short testimony entitled “Notes of my memory – on Jewish martyrdom in Przemysl ghetto” which will be published next year by the Polish Center for Holocaust Research.

Views of the Temple - II

Four more views of the Przemysl Temple from L. Biedka's postcard collection.

Views of the Temple - I
Here is an earlier post about the Temple.

Family Research 101

I've received a number of emails asking for help in researching family root in Przemysl. While I always like to help, let me assure you that I have no secret stash of records or private access to Polish Archives! Luckily, much of what you'll need to get started is available to all on-line.

Think like a detective - develop theories, follow leads, keep an open mind, pay attention to details, and be sure to take notes when you interview the witnesses!

Researching your (Przemysl) tree:

1. Before you start searching I highly recommend that you invest in a program to keep track of your records - your tree. I use Family Tree Maker - it's OK - but I'm sure almost anything would do the job.

2. Populate your tree as best you can. The single best source for family information is your family! Call/email/write every living relation. Do they remember your great aunt's maiden name? Grandfather's birthday? Every detail is useful - keep them all. Look at old photos for clues. This is the fun part! Once you have a basic tree built, you can see what's missing and focus your energy there.

3. Join JRI-Poland and JewishGen then go to Family Finder Search and register your surnames. This puts you in touch with other looking for similar names in your towns. Email them - network! Download and read their Hints and their Research Guide.

4. Search the JRI - Poland Database These are the birth, death and marriage records from Poland that are over 100 years old. If you find a match, copy all the information. Remember: names change over time - the uncle your family knew as Morris might have been born Modrechi. Also check for children's names under the mother's maiden name - they were sometimes listed that way. You want to try to make connections - If you find a birth record with parental data, try to find the marriage record of the parents, etc. Search all of the other JRI databases: The JewishGen Yizkor Book Necrology Database, Galician Surname Index, etc...

5. ShtetLinks: Przemysl is a very useful site well worth perusing and joining. It is part of Gesher Galicia, the special interest group for the parts of Poland once ruled by Austria. They have an excellent search page.

6. For Shoah victims, you'll want to search The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names at Yad Vashem.

7. For relations who came to the US, Ellis Island records can be of tremendous value as the ship manifests often show birthplace, name of person the passenger is going to and a name back in the old country. Again, names can be different than the one's you know. Web pages by Stephen P. Morse is a great place to start as he allows for more complete searching than the Ellis Island Search itself.

8. It's worthwhile looking at the old business directories for Przemysl if you suspect your family had a store or a business. I use this one: Search Engine for Online Historical Directories

This is only the beginning... happy hunting!

Views of the Temple

Below are several views of the Przemysl Temple - the progressive (reform) synagogue - from L. Biedka's collection of old postcards.

Here is an earlier post about the Temple.

Part II of this post

Chag Chanukah Sameach

Remembering the Jews of Przemysl - Photos

As promised, the photographs Dr. Hartman brought back from the Remembering the Jews of Przemysl event last October have been posted at the Remembrance and Reconciliation Foundation website.

Photo: Przemysl holocaust Survivor Gerda Krebs Seifer and husband Harold

Przemysl's Jews in the Army - WWI

Przemysl, home to the largest Fortress in the Empire, was a very important military city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Jews of Galicia, as citizens of the Empire, either joined or were conscripted into military service from the late nineteenth century on. War broke out on August 1, 1914. The next day, which happened to be T'ish B'Av, a general conscription was announced.

The 10th - The Przemysl Regiment

The Austrian Army was also know by the acronym kuk which stands for kaiserlich und königlich, German for Imperial and Royal, referring to the so-called "Dual Monarchy" of Austria-Hungary.

The basic building block of the army was the regiment. Each regiment had a home garrison, a ceremonial name, as well as unique colors. While this post will deal with infantry regiments, they were by no means the only kinds of formations organized by the Austrians who had Cavalry, Artillery and Fortress regiments. Additionally, there were literally hundreds of specialty units at the battalion level - bridges, sappers, engineers, veterinary, medical, food, supply, religious, laundry, pay,…

Regiments, which consisted of 4 battalions, were raised locally, which in the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, meant they were from everywhere. I do not know if Jews were put in a specific battalions but I do know that the Army had a designation for Feldrabbiner - literally "field Rabbi." They were joined by Feldkurats, Catholic, Greek and Protestant, as well as Militärimams for the Army's Muslims. Casualties were horrific, and no one was spared.

The table below lists the four Regiments that were garrisoned in Przemysl just before the war. The Garrison column shows the home base of the Regiment's officers (Przemysl) and sub-garrisons of its battalions. The bold garrison indicates the area that the conscripted troops for the regiment came from. If you were a Jewish man living in Przemysl, you probably went into the 10th, the Gustav V. König von Schweden Regiment and wore a uniform with parrot-green facings and white buttons. If you were from Sanok, your facings would have been scarlet and your buttons yellow.

Regiments were further organized into Brigades. The 10th belonged to the 48th Brigade. Brigades made up Divisions. All four regiments garrisoned in Przemysl were part of the 24th Division. Divisions were incorporated into Korps which in turn made up Armies. Korps and Armies were reconstituted as facts on the ground changed. On occasion, Divisions and Brigades were assigned to Groups - special Armies with specific missions usually named after the General or Field Marshall who commanded them.

The 24th Galician Division (source data)

Regiment Name	Reg No.	Brigade	Garrisons/Recruits
Graf Clerfayt	9th	47th	Przemyśl, Stryj, Radymno
Erzherzog Joseph Ferdinand	45th	47th	Przemyśl, Travnik, Sanok
Gustav V. König von Schweden	10th	48th	Przemyśl, Bijeljina
Philipp Herzog von Württemberg	77th	48th	Przemyśl, Sambor, Tuzla

Below is a listing of the Korps and Armies for Przemysl's 24th Division throughout the War. From the outbreak of war, August, 1914 to November 1916, they were in Poland and Ukraine - the Eastern front - fighting Tzarist Russia. During November, 1916 they were moved to Romania, joining two smaller Groups before heading to the Italian front during May, 1917.

You can follow the march on maps by clicking on the linked Army numbers, below. Find the corresponding Army number in the red (Austrian) box.

As far as I can tell, the 10th regiment fought in the Battle of Caporetto, on the Trentino (mountain) front. After the battle, they were transfered to prisoner of war duty behind the lines - there were a lot of Italian prisoners! They remained in Italy until the war ended.

The 24th Division during World War One (source data)

Date	Army	Korps	Notes
8/1/14	1st	X	Przemysl
10/15/15	4th	IX	Luck (Ukraine)
1/11/16	7th		Brody to Monasterzyska (SW Ukraine)
7/3/16	7th		Group Benign
7/23/16	10th		to Wlodawa, Poland
11/1/16	10th		Group Eichhorn (N Poland)
11/13/16	10th		Brest -Litowsk to Kronstadt (Romania)
11/30/16	10th		Group Gerok
12/22/16	1st		Group Stein
3/1/17	1st		Group Seeküchner
5/14/17	1st		Madefalva (Romania) to Podmelec (Croatia)
6/5/17	5th	XVII	48 IBrig with 57 ID near Trieste
10/24/17	11th	XXIV	Battle of Caporetto
12/26/17	1st		S of Udine, prisoner of war duties: Palmanova
7/1/18	1st	IV	Cinto Caomaggiore / Pramaggiore.
8/15/18	1st	VII	Cinto Maggiore: to the end.

Identifying your Przemysl ancestor's WWI uniform:

Austrian Army uniforms can easily be identified by the scalloped chest pockets.
Ranks were worn on the collar facings. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to tell a soldier's rank from a black & white photo as color was a major determinant. For example, the only difference between a lieutenant and a corporal was that the latter's stars were made of white celluloid wile the former's were usually embroidered gold or silver. Here are the rank insignias:

Another page of insignias is here.

In addition to facing color, the regiment number was usually embroidered onto the side of the field cap. See examples here.

Ranks in the Austro-Hungarian Army

Rank	English	Command
----- General
Feldmarschall	Field Marshall
Generaloberst	Colonel General
General	General	Army
Feldmarschalleutnant	Lieutenant Field Marshall	Corps
Generalmajor	Major General	Division
----- Regimental
Oberst	Colonel	Regiment
Oberstleutenant	Lieutenant Colonel
Major	Major	Battalion
----- Field
Hauptmann	Captain
Oberleutenant	Lieutenant
Leutnant	2nd Lieutenant
----- non commissioned
Feldwebel	Sergeant-major
Zugsführer	Sergeant
Korporal	Corporal
Gefreiter	Lance-corporal
Infanterist	Private

The Polish Legions & Early Army

Some of your Jewish ancestors may have ended up in the Polish Legions. If they did, they may, (or may not!) have had different uniforms. The Legions were allied with Austria against Russia and operated as part of the greater Austro-Hungarian army until late in the war.

When modern Poland was born, in November, 1918, the Legion became the Polish Army and fought a war against the Soviet Russians and the Ukranians, from 1919-22.

Rank insignias for the Legion during WWI can be found here. The most easily identified Legion/Polish Army item is the 3 sided hats called "Rogatywka" - a symbol of Polish independence. The photo above is a typical late 20's Polish dress uniform. Ranks for the Polish army here.


Early Polish army men in Przemysl, c. 1920, including my grandfather, Emanuel Silberman, seated, center.

~~~~ *** ~~~~

Sources: There are many wonderful Internet sources for information about the Austro-Hungarian army. I used the following for this post:

Austro-Hungarian Land Forces 1848-1918 by Glenn Jewison & Jörg C. Steiner

THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN ARMY 1914-18 FOR COLLECTORS OF ITS POSTAL ITEMS
By JOHN DIXON-NUTTALL

Austro-Hungarian Army uniforms in WW1

Uniform Insignias

Przemysl Ghetto

Author Lukasz Biedka has written and maintains what is THE definitive web resource of the Shoah in Przemysl from September, 1939 to July, 1944.

This is a must read.

The Alte Synagogue

Below is a series of photos of the Alte (Old) Synagogue in Przemysl, taken by Dr. John Hartman a few weeks ago.

Two things make them so extraordinary: First, the Alte Synagogue, the heart of Jewish Przemysl, was a magnificent structure with history dating all the way back to 1594. Second, it was damaged in 1939 then destroyed by the Nazis in 1941. These pictures are of a photo essay erected in the empty lot on Jagiellonska Street, Przemysl, where this great building once stood.

The installation was conceived and created by Jacek Szwic.

Dr. Hartman brought back hundreds of photos from the Remembering the Jews of Przemysl event last October, which included this street display. They will eventually all be posted at the Remembrance and Reconciliation Foundation website. I'll post a heads-up when the photos are posted.

All photographs © 2006 John Hartman

Ski Przemysl!

Did you know that there is a ski hill within the city limits of Przemysl? I had no idea. Tells you something about what the winters must be like... cold!

Website: Stok narciarski w Przemyślu

Przemysl Pix!

Taking a break from surfing through stories about the sorry state of the world, I came across this web site with loads of pictures of Przemysl. While most are modern, there are several of old postcards. I have a large collection of old cards and magazines, mostly of WW One (Przemysl was a pivitol fortress in WWI) and will post them when I get the time to scan!

Main PHOTO PAGE
Old Pix of PRZEMYSL
New Pix of OLD PRZEMYSL
Pix of ZASANIE (across the river)

Really bad news...

Seemingly out of the blue, the new director of the Polish State Archives (PSA) has unilaterally canceled the contract with Jewish Records Indexing - Poland (JRI) meaning no more indexing of records and no more on-line ordering of record copies.


Oy vey. The JRI-PSA partnership revolutionized the process for finding lost relatives. A person could sit in front of their computer and search indexes ten ways to Tuesday for names of interest, often making important discoveries just from the parental information in the index. If you wanted to dig deeper, you could then order copies of the actual records which might contain even more lost treasures. Over the past 5 years, I would guess that I've found 6 of my direct ancestors and 100+ aunts and uncles through JRI. There is simply no way these people would ever have been named without them.

JRI's Executive Director, Stan Diamond, and the Order Coordinator, Mark Halperin, are terrific and hard-working people, and doubtless are doing everything they can to either restore or restrike the deal with PSA. Every Jew researching roots in Poland owes them and everyone at JRI a huge debt.

As bad as this news is, everyone should remember that JRI's millions of records will continue to be available on-line. And keep in mind that the PSA records are only a fraction of the genealogically useful information out there. JRI will continue to index the copious non-PSA information that's available, adding to the database for years to come. JRI is still THE place to research for your Polish roots.

Please $upport JRI. This GREAT organization needs your help - now, more than ever.

Two German officers in Przemysl

Two German officers in Przemysl, two righteous among the nations.

From Yad Vashem:

Battel, Dr. Albert

Albert Battel was born on January 21, 1891 in Klein-Pramsen. As a fifty-one-year-old reserve officer and lawyer from Breslau, Dr. Battel was stationed in Przemysl in south Poland as the adjutant to the local military commander, Major Max Liedtke. When the SS prepared to launch their first large-scale “resettlement” (liquidation) action against the Jews of Przemysl on July 26, 1942, Battel, in consort with his superior, ordered the bridge over the River San, the only access into the Jewish ghetto, to be blocked. As the SS commando attempted to cross to the other side, the sergeant-major in charge of the bridge threatened to open fire unless they withdrew. All this happened in broad daylight, to the amazement of the local inhabitants. Still later that same afternoon, an army detachment under the command of Oberleutenant Battel broke into the cordoned-off area of the ghetto and used army trucks to whisk off up to 100 Jews and their families to the barracks of the local military command. These Jews were placed under the protection of the Wehrmacht and were thus sheltered from deportation to the Belzec extermination camp. The remaining ghetto inmates, including the head of the Judenrat, Dr. Duldig, underwent “resettlement” in the following days.

After this incident, the SS authorities began a secret investigation into the outrageous conduct of the army officer who had dared defy them under such embarrassing circumstances. It turned out that Battel, though himself a member of the Nazi party since May 1933, had already attracted notice in the past by his friendly behavior toward the Jews. Before the war he had been indicted before a party tribunal for having extended a loan to a Jewish colleague. Later, in the course of his service in Przemysl, he was officially reprimanded for cordially shaking the hand of the chairman of the Jewish Council, Dr. Duldig. The entire affair reached the attention of the highest level of the Nazi hierarchy. No less a figure than Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer-SS, took a lively interest in the results of the investigation and sent a photocopy of the incriminating documentation to Martin Borman, chief of the Party Chancellery and Hitler’s right-hand man. In the accompanying letter, Himmler, one of the most dreaded men in the Third Reich, vowed to have the lawyer arrested immediately after the war.

All this remained unknown to Battel. In 1944, he was discharged from military service because of heart disease. He returned to his hometown Breslau, only to be drafted into the Volk Storm (Volkssturm) and fall into Russian captivity. After his release, he settled in West Germany but was prevented from returning to practice law by a court of de-Nazification. He died in Hattersheim near Frankfurt.

Battel’s heroic stand against the SS, unparalleled in the annals of the Third Reich, came to be recognized only a long time after his death; most notably, through the tenacious efforts of the Israeli researcher and lawyer Dr. Zeev Goshen.

On January 22, 1981, Yad Vashem decided to recognize Albert Battel (posthumously) as Righteous Among the Nations.


And from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

In Przemysl, Poland, Major Max Liedtke prevented the SS from staging a raid on the city's Jews, by ordering his soldiers to stop them from crossing a bridge. He was dismissed from his post and sent to the front. He died in Russian captivity.

'This is powerful stuff'

Holocaust files unsealed
Vast archive opens to reveal victims' stories
(from the Chicago Sun Times)

November 19, 2006
BY ARTHUR MAX

BAD AROLSEN, Germany -- The 21-year-old Russian sat before a clerk of the U.S. Army judge advocate's office, describing the furnaces at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where he had been a prisoner until a few weeks previously.

''I saw with my own eyes how thousands of Jews were gassed daily and thrown by the hundreds into pits where Jews were burning,'' he said.

''I saw how little children were killed with sticks and thrown into the fire,'' he continued. Blood flowed in gutters, and ''Jews were thrown in and died there.'' More were taken off trucks and cast alive into the flames, he said.

Today, the Holocaust is known in dense and painful detail. Yet the young Russian's words leap off the faded page with a rawness that transports the reader back to April 1945, when World War II was still raging and the world knew little about gas chambers, genocide and the Final Solution.

The two pages of testimony, in a file randomly plucked off a shelf, are among millions of documents held by the International Tracing Service, or ITS, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

This vast archive -- 16 miles of files in six nondescript buildings in a German spa town -- contains the fullest records of Nazi persecutions in existence. But because of concerns about the victims' privacy, the ITS has kept the files closed to the public for half a century, doling out information in minimal amounts to survivors or their descendants on a strict need-to-know basis.
...

Read the whole AP wire story here.

A small part of 6 million

I was looking through the pictures in the Przemysl Yizkor (holocaust remembrance written by survivors in Hebrew and Yiddish) book the other day when I came across a photo that caught my eye. After a few moments racking my brain, it dawned on me; this is the same photo that my grandmother Fannie had in her album - the one that no one in the family could identify. A funeral, but for who? And where?

Now we know: It turns out that the photo is from the dedication of a memorial stone to those lost in Shoah, taken in 1946 in the cemetery in Przemysl.

My mother thinks that it may have been given to my grandfather Emil who spent every Saturday down at the HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) office in New York, trying to find out what became of his brother Elia (his photo to the right), last seen crossing the San river in 1939 to join the Red Army when the Nazis took over Przemysl. To this day, we do not know his fate. It also may have been sent by my grandmother’s brother Isaac (Edward) who did return to Przemysl from Russia after the war only to find his wife and four children gone, but that’s another story altogether.

In any case, I’m glad we have this photo, and I can now appreciate what it meant to my grandparents – this little ceremony really was a mass funeral for all those who didn’t make it back home to Przemysl after the Shoah, including Elia Silberman, Leah Metzger and four children with names unknown to us. Never again.

Poles discover their Jewish roots

Adam Easton of BBC News has an interesting piece today on Poles re-discovering their Jewish roots. The story centers on Pawel, a young ex-skinhead who makes a starling discovery about his own background:

"A young person always needs to find an enemy and we found this enemy in Jews, blacks and Gypsies."

Six years ago, Pawel made a discovery that turned his life upside down - he found out that he was Jewish. His parents had turned their back on Jewish life and they had never told him about his background.

"When I looked into the mirror I asked myself: why should I be a Jew? It was the biggest shock of my life. It was really a huge blow. For most of my life I hated them. It was too much to take in at once."

Click HERE to read the whole story. Hat tip: Dr. Hartman.

The Przemysl Ghetto

From the Yizkor book, here is a map showing the progression of the Nazi ghetto in Przemysl.

(Click to enlarge.)

A Map of Modern Przemysl

Click to enlarge this map (It is very detailed).

Click here for pre-Shoah map.