The Jewish Przemysl Blog

Gerda's Story: Family Krebs

2012-01-12T12:21:00.000-05:00

Hello David and thank you very much for your kind note.

Yes, Pesach Krebs was my grandfather, though I never knew him. My father took over the store on Franciszkanska No: 8 after my grandfather died. My other grandfather David Goliger (my mother's father) owned a large lumber yard and wood processing plant right on the river San. We lived on ulica Pilsudskiego 27 in a house owned by my mother, which faced the lumber yard.

In October 1939 Russians occupied eastern Poland & our river San became the border between Germany & Russia at that point. The communists took all our personal possessions since they considered my father an enemy of the State.

In the spring of 1940 we moved to Lwow, trying to avoid being sent to Siberia. (In retrospect, we may all have survived if we had gone to Russia)

We spent the rest of the war in Lwow, but unfortunately I was the only survivor. Out of 40 close relatives only one other cousin & I survived the Holocaust. His name was Zygmund Schwarzer & he lived in Jaroslaw before the war. His mother Zofia was my mother's older sister & his father Wilhelm, was a physician.

When the war began, they joined us in Premysl & later entered the Ghetto. The parents were both shot, while hiding in the cemetery, while Zygmund was sent to Auschwitz. During one of the worst & longest Actions (round-ups) in the Lwow Ghetto, I was sent into hiding, outside the ghetto and spent 6 weeks in a cellar of a Polish woman who was willing to hide me for a price. My young cousin Richard about 11 years old, lived with us. His mother Helena (my mother's youngest sister) was taken out of a bread line several months earlier & never returned. Her husband Henryk Leibel (they lived in Bielsko & he practiced law) was sent to Russia with his aged parents where he survived. Richard lived with us & my father sent him into hiding as he did me. Unfortunately, Richard was afraid to stay in his hiding place & returned to the Ghetto.

My mother could hide alone, but since he'd be left alone, she opted to stay with him. My father worked in a textile factory & was considered a useful Jew with a good Ausweiss so he was "safe". My dearest mother and Richard were taken to Janowska Street camp & from there they were sent to Belzec. My father desperately tried to save me & found a Polish woman, who was willing to take me in as her illegitimate daughter( who in fact died in infancy, but had she lived, she'd have been my age)

I spent the rest of the war living with her as her daughter & her slave. Though my father paid her generously, I performed all the house work, cooking, took care of her baby son, (also illegitimate). Actually, she needed me as much as I needed her, but despite the fact that she was very mean & treated me badly, she did save my life.

My father planned to go to Germany on false papers, since he spoke fluid German & did not look Semitic. I hoped to see him when the war ended, but fate took a different turn. My father was recognized on the street in Lwow by some Polish anti-Semite & pointed him to the police. I don't know how or where he died, but he died because he was trying to help other Jews. THAT MUCH I KNOW.

When finally I was able to tear myself from her clutches in January of 1946, I went to Katowice to stay with a friend of my parents, who wanted to adopt me. I was too old for adoption but I was grateful for her rescuing me from the Polish woman. Soon after I was able to go to England with a transport ow Jewish war orphans, led by Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld.

We arrived on a Swedish ship in March 1946 and I began a new life. After learning enough English, I entered Nurses Training at St. James' Hospital and graduated in 1950 as an RN. By then, my cousin Zygmund lived in the US in Brooklyn & was able to obtain a visa for me. I arrived on August 11-th 1951 to New York & started my third stage of my life in America, a country I dreamed about since my early childhood and never believed, that I would ever be able to live here.

Each move and each change presented many problems & difficulties, but nothing was impossible. I was young, full of hope & energy and I was always full optimism. I met my future husband Harold Seifer at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York and we've been married 56 years. We have resided in Long Beach since 1956, have 3 children and 4 grandchildren. We are a very close knit family and our children all live in the Los Angeles area.

Well David, this is quite a long story, though I did not mean it to be so long.

SINCERELY, GERDA.

read more about Gerda in the JPost

I've been a poor correspondent

2012-01-05T15:16:00.000-05:00

Seems the blog has been off line for some time. No more. The Przemysl Blog is back!

A father without a face - family Pritsch

2011-07-10T21:02:00.003-04:00

To find the missing is hard; to find a photo is next to impossible. Nevertheless, I fully understand why the emailer, below, must try. Anyone have any leads that might help this family?

Dear Mr Semmel,

My name is Richard Sherman. For the past several years, my sister and I have been attempting to locate any information, but ESPECIALLY a picture, of our Polish grandfather, Josef Pritsch.

Our mother, Irene Sherman (originally born Ruth Pritsch), has never seen a picture of her father; she only has descriptions from her mother and uncle. We believe Josef Pritsch was executed by the Nazis in Poland in approximately 1943, possibly in Auschwitz, and possibly by hanging instead of the gas chambers.

The reason I am writing to you (I got your e-mail from the Jewish Przemysl Blog site) is that we are desperate and all of our family's efforts to date have not been successful. Based on family stories, we have strong reason to believe that, at some point prior to the German invasion of Poland, our grandfather temporarily went to Palestine, but returned to Poland when our grandmother refused to leave. So he came back.

Our presumption is that, if the story is true, he must have received some kind of travel documents, possibly a passport. I have been unsuccessful in attempting to confirm this however. Another website had a list of surnames, but his was not listed. The instructions stated that it wasn't an exhaustive list, and several other factors may account for missing names. Attempted contact with the person who I thought ran the website, a "JR Baston" did not get a reply.

Information I can provide about my grandfather in addition to his name is: He was born and lived in the town of Przemysl for most of his life. I believe he was born in 1910. His parents' first names may have been Mordechai and Tauba. He was married to Klara Kurzweil, who was also his cousin. Klara's family may have operated some kind of import/export business before the war. He was a college student (possibly in Austria?) before the war.

We believe he went to Palestine at some point, possibly in the 1930's. His daughter, Ruth Pritsch (my Mom), was born on June 6, 1938. We believe he was executed by hanging by the Nazis, likely in 1943, possibly in Auschwitz.

I have filed records requests with other organizations through the US Holocaust Museum and received some responses, but no information more than what we already have. My sister and I have also attempted contact and sought help from both the Polish Embassy (which was no help), and some more distant relatives that settled in France and in Israel. (who also didn't have any information or pictures we could positively identify as him. This was hampered more because the relative in France we found was blind, didn't speak English [we had to use an interpreter], and was still angry at my grandmother's side of the family for her not going with grandfather to Palestine when they had the chance.)

Since the website listed your contact info regarding your book, I thought you might have some help or advice for us as to how we might find any photographic evidence of our grandfather.

It would be the greatest gift I could give my mother if I could allow her to see the face of the father she is too young to remember. If you can, please help us. I eagerly await your reply.

Richard can be reached at: rsherman1 (the "@" sign) yahoo.com

More Love Letters

2011-05-02T14:15:00.007-04:00

A treasure trove of love letters from a young Jewish man in Soviet-occupied Przemysl to Janina (Janka) Rottenberg, one of 7,000 Jews deported into the Russian interior. So who was the letter writer? I forwarded the scans to our friend Lukasz, and...

Hello Alana and David,
thanks for sending me the letter. Very moving indeed. Janek's name is Ringelheim. Jakub, Josef, Israel ... we don't know. Janek is Polish diminutive from Jan, John. He writes from Slowackiego 68 ... Bingo!! This house belonged to Jakob Ringelheim, wealthy landowner.

A few Google searches later and here it is, on the US Holocaust Museum site, no less:

Pictured are Jacob and Miriam (Reich) Ringelheim with their son Josef. All were shot in a mass execution in Sambor in 1943.

Chaja (Klara) Ringelheim (later Chaja Rosenfeld, Chaja Rosenzweig, and finally, Claire Rosen) is the daughter of Jacob and Miriam (Reich) Ringelheim. She was born December 5, 1911 in Jaroslaw, Poland. Chaja had three brothers: David (b. 1906), Shimon (Sidney, b. 1907) and Josef (b. ca. 1921-22). Chaja's father, Jacob, had immigrated to the U.S., where he was naturalized on May 5, 1903. The following year, he was joined by his younger brother Benjamin, who was naturalized in 1913 and remained a resident of the U.S. for the rest of his life. Jacob returned to Poland in 1904 or 1905, settling in Jaroslaw. There, he married Miriam Reich and raised three children.

Together with his brother-in-law Nathan, Jacob ran a flour mill and possibly also a marmelade factory. Jacob returned to the U.S. in May 1916 following a violent incident at the flour mill. He returned to Poland in 1920 or 1921. His two sons, David and Shimon, immigrated to the U.S. in 1924. The rest of the Ringelheim family moved to Przemysl in the early to mid-1930s. Jacob eventually acquired co-ownership of a brick factory and several apartment houses.

Hitler's rise to power was a source of great concern to Jacob. Already in 1934 he wrote to his brother Benjamin in the U.S. that he was worried about the impact of the Nazi regime on the political stability of Poland, and was considering returning to America with the rest of his immediate family. However, the difficulty of liquidating his assets in Poland seems to have prevented him from doing so. Chaja started to work for her father as a bookkeeper in the brick factory in 1932 and continued in that capacity until the end of 1937.

In August 1937 she married Henryk Rosenfeld, the son of Chaskiel and Ernestyna Rosenfeld from Jaroslaw. The following year the couple left for Pisa, Italy, where Henryk began or continued medical school. Soon after the outbreak of World War II, Henryk decided to return to Poland. Chaja's mother tried to get her permission to return to Poland, but did not succeed. Consequently, Chaja remained in Italy, and on April 13, 1940 was issued an American passport in Genoa (on the basis of her father's American citizenship). She immigrated to the U.S. shortly thereafter. Her parents and brother Josef were killed in Sambor, Ukraine in 1943. Henryk was also killed in 1943 near Przemysl. Chaja was living and working in the United States when she received a letter from Markus Rosenzweig, a Polish Jew from Krakow, who had survived the war as a member of the Anders Army. He invited her to come to London to meet with him. He was single, and when he learned that Chaja was a widow it seemed as if it might be an opportunity for them both. She sailed to London on the SS St. Mary in 1948, and on January 22, 1949 Chaja and Markus were married. The wedding took place in Paddington, England, and the couple moved later that year to the United States. In 1951, when Markus was naturalized as an American citizenship, they formally changed their names to Marcus and Claire Rosen.

So, does the ten-year old Josef in the photo grow up to be the letter-writer Janek? Alana thinks so:

This is truly amazing, and very fast. I recognize Janek's ears from the photograph I have, and the one you just sent me, so that's definitely him. I can't help but feel incredibly sad right now - My girlfriend and I had quite fallen in love with Janek from the letters we have translated so far. I can't imagine what it was like for my Grandmother.

Lukasz weighs in:

That would be strange, but not impossible. The diminutive from Josef is Jozek, not Janek. OK, sometimes they changed their names. Anyway, I'd rather be careful and think of some Ringelheim cousin. Israel, Icchak, who liked to be called Janek. I forgot to add that my family was deported to Siberia from Lwow at the same time. To Altai, not to Kazakhstan, like Janina.

Me? Hmmmm... Next: we get the Kazakhstan address and locate Janek/Josef's niece(?)

Love letters from Przemysl

2011-04-25T15:10:00.003-04:00

From over time and overseas comes a remarkable time capsule to my in box. In it is the story of a doomed love between a man in Soviet occupied Przemysl and a women who had been deported to a work camp deep in Russia. Ominously, the letters end in June, 1941 - coinciding with the date that the Nazis crossed the San and took control of Przemysl.

I have been living with and caring for my late-grandmother’s sister - Ada Halpern (formerly Ada Rottenberg born 1922 in Przemysl) while she suffered from dementia. She has since passes away, and I’ve discovered 132 love letters / telegrams sent from a man in Przemysl named Janek to my Grandmother Janina (Janka) Rottenberg during the beginning of WW2.

The love letters are dated from May 10th 1940 to June 18th 1941, and are addressed in Russian to Siberia where Janka and Ada worked in a labor camp and were able to survive the war. Neither of them mentioned these letters to my father, and Janka married my grandfather - Henryk Kornfeld (another survivor) after the war. Unfortunately my grandmother passes away just before I was born, so no one knows the story.

Attached are scans of a couple of the letters and photos I've found. A friend is helping translate the Polish, but I’d love to get them professionally done. If you know a good service, please let me know. I would love to find out if anyone knew of my family, and what happened to Janek – the man who wrote these incredibly tender letters, that give some insight into what it was like in Przemysl during that period. There are other names mentioned briefly in the letters of others living there during that time that may help connect people. (Above) is a photo dated 1939 with the name Janek in the same hand writing from the letters. I think it might be him and my Grandmother?

I do know a little about Henryk Kornfeld (my Grandfather). He was not from Przemysl, but he had been studying in Italy when he came back to Poland to visit his mother. He ended up being sent to three different concentration camps before buying his way onto Schindler's List with a diamond his mother gave him. He worked in Schindler's munition factory until the end of the war, and would smoke Schindler's cigaret butts that he dropped on the factory floor. He told my father that Schindler was a very good business man.

Henryk only ever spoke of his experience the one time just before he died. After the war he moved to the Phillipines and eventually Australia (where I grew up), and became a very successful business man himself. It's quite an extraordinary story that I'd like to write about and find more information on as well.

Alana

One of the letters:

Addressed to Siberia

The Przemysl Fourm is moving

2011-04-09T13:24:00.003-04:00

As promised, we are moving the Przemysl Forum to a GoogleGroups platform that provides improved functionality and ease-of-use.This blog is NOT moving!

Design of New Forum Platform:

• A Google account but not a Google address will be necessary to obtain access.
• When signing up, a person can opt for several different options for email notification when there is a new post.
• In order to post a message, a person must first apply to the Moderator to be accepted into the group.
• Documents can be posted (e.g. mini Family Finder) on GoogleDocs and linked to the forum by contacting the Moderator.

Transition from Old to New Platform:

• In order to continue to be part of the Przemysl Forum, each person will need to (re-)register on the new platform (instructions below).
• Messages from the old forum will not automatically be transferred to the new one. Access to the old platform will continue and people are encouraged to re-post important messages to the new platform.

INSTRUCTIONS

Getting into the Forum

1. Go to the Forum: http://groups.google.com/group/jewish-przemysl-forum?hl=en

2. If you are not signed into Google, or if you have not been invited/accepted to the group, you will only see the Jewish Przemysl Forum header, not any of the comment threads.

3. To sign in, click “Sign in” in the upper right corner.

4. If you already have a Google account, use your email and password to sign in, then skip to number 6, below. Otherwise, click “Create an Account” on the right side of the page.

5. You can use any valid email address to create a Google account. Fill in all the information and press “Accept” at the bottom of the page. Google will send you an email - you MUST click on the link in the email to activate your account. You will then be re-directed back to the Forum.

6. Next, click Apply for group membership on the right side of the page. You will be asked for a nickname that will identify you to other forum members, and for preference on communications with the Forum - how often you should get updates. This option can be changed anytime after you are in the group.

7. You will get an email once the Forum’s administrator approves your request to join the group. From then on, you can simply go to the Forum and sign in. http://groups.google.com/group/jewish-przemysl-forum?hl=en

Using the Forum

1. Posts are organized as “Discussions” or topics. Your personal settings for notifications can be changed by clicking “Edit my Membership” on the right side of the page.

2. You may post to the site in two ways. From the web, simply hit “New Post” and type. You can also post by sending an email to jewish-przemysl-forum@googlegroups.com Note: you must send this email from the same address that you joined the group from.

3. One of the first posts is called “Forum Files.” Clicking on this will bring up a post that has a link to the Forum’s collection of files. You can view and download them at will. Files can be almost anything - spreadsheets, documents, photos, etc.

4. For the time being, the admin will post all files. If you have something you’d like posted, email it to przemyslforum@gmail.com

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR PROBLEMS WITH THESE DIRECTIONS, CONTACT ME BY EMAIL!

The power of the 'net

2011-02-26T17:22:00.000-05:00

75+ people are now using the Przemysl Forum to discuss all topics Jewish Przemysl. New connections are formed, information gets exchanged, and discoveries are being made.

Go to The Forum

Given the interest, the Forum needs much work. We are looking at enhancing the platform we have (Nabble - freeware) or switching to Google Groups. Comments on functionality and governance are always welcomed.

I want to thank Ellen Korpi for taking the lead on building the Forum. While I've been off working on, gasp, work, she's been doing the heavy lifting of getting people to participate in the Forum. Great job, Ellen!

Poland National Day of Judaism in Przemysl

2011-01-16T18:13:00.001-05:00

Our friend Domicela shared videos from the Jewish cemetery.

OGOLNOPOLSKI DZIEN JUDAIZMU - PRZEMYSL

Part 2

Part 3

Announcing...The Jewish Przemysl Forum!

2011-01-04T13:29:00.000-05:00

If you look to the right, you will see a link to a new feature - The Jewish Przemysl Forum.

The Forum is a place where anyone can post, respond and generally chat about all things Przemysl. The main goal of the forum is to connect people looking for their family roots with one and other, to help make connections, to enhance the research process, and to find the missing.

I am using 3rd party freeware from Nabble for the Forum. Please let me know about any bugs or issues. Because I am using a very old version of Blogger for the Blog, I have to fool the system by using an old date for the Forum page - nothing I can do about that right now. Someday, I'll upgrade the blog to the current version...

This Forum can only work if people participate, so please tell your Przemysl (and surrounding areas) friends, and please, please - POST!

A walk through the cemetery

2011-01-03T23:00:00.002-05:00

Blog-friend Marla forwarded me this wonderful video.

One of these days I'm going to go back there with a camera and a tape measure and document all the surviving stone's locations...

Domicela's Przemysl

2010-12-16T14:02:00.002-05:00

Blog-friend and Przemysl resident Domicela shared loads of interesting photos with me...

Here's a few:

Entry to the cemetery. Looks to be in fine shape these days.

Domicela's family

Memorial stone at Krasiczyn, near Przemysl.

From Wiki:

Lieberman was born into a Jewish family in Galicia, then part of Austro-Hungary. In 1907–14 and 1917–18, he was a member of parliament in Vienna.

He was a Legionnnaire in World War I, and a leader of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). In January 1919 he became a member of the Polish Sejm (parliament). After the May 1926 Coup d'État, he became an opponent of Józef Piłsudski. In the aftermath of his prosecution in the 1931–32 Brest trials, he emigrated to France.

During World War II, he cooperated with Władysław Sikorski. In September 3, 1941 – October 20, 1941, Lieberman was minister of justice in the Polish government-in-exile in London, England.

Mass graves from the '39 massacre.

Edward Metzger - my great uncle.

Rozia Felner. Read Dr. Hartman's obit here.

The stone my family erected in honor of my mother's Przemysl families: Metzger and Silberman

Parts of the cemetery still need a lot of work...

Rebuilding Jewish Przemysl?

2010-10-31T20:00:00.000-04:00

Blog-friend Philip alerted me to this fascinating project. It's worth clicking through - even if, like me, you can't read Polish. There are many interesting photos and diagrams.

Recently an engineering student unveiled plans to rebuild from scratch the entire Jewish quarter of Przemysl, including (rather excitingly) the old synagogue. There are some computer generated images and details here:

I do hope this project is realised as it'd be wonderful to regain so much of the city's history.

Yours
Philip

Here is one of many computer-generated views of the reconstructed Jewish quarter. The dark brick structure is the Tempel.

This is the Alte Synagogue to the right (I think!) with a glass wall added. Artistic license for the rebuilders?

A new novel: 11th of Av

2010-10-16T16:00:00.003-04:00

I've written and published a novel about the Jewish experience in Przemysl during World War I.

It is available now on Amazon.

From the back cover:

The 11th of Av is a story of love, death and dreams set in the often-besieged Galician town of Przemysl, a fortress on the frontier of the socially dynamic, multicultural border of pre-World War I Austria-Hungary. It is the story of a tough, passionate, and optimistic generation - the ultimate flowering of eight centuries of Jewish life in the East - who believed, despite overwhelming odds, they could build a better world. But it is also the story of the beginning of the end of Eastern Jewry, as the brutal conflict sets in motion their heartbreaking transition from subjects of The Empire to a fractured, stateless people struggling to carve out new lives in an unfamiliar and increasingly dangerous world.

100% of the net proceeds from the sale of this novel will be donated to charities involved in the restoration and upkeep of Jewish sites in Przemyśl.

(I apologize for the shameless self-promotion!)

Family Segal of Przemysl

2010-10-09T12:33:00.002-04:00

Via email come Family Segal of Przemysl...

Hello,

In memory of my great-grandparents who lived in Przemysl, I would appreciate if you post these photos in your blog.

Chaim Segal (son of Mechel) and Hinda (daughter of Naftali and Drezla Zins) had 9 sons and 5 daughters. Six of their children left Przemysl before WW2 and lost contact with those who stayed.

Thank You

Nili Goldman
Israel

Chaim and Hinda

Pinkas and Genya Segal (my grand parents) with 2 children before leaving Przemysl to Portugal.(1925)

Chaim and Hinda in front of their home with family (1939)

(If Hinda was also known as Mina, then I believe that the home was at Dworskiego 6 which is listed as owned by Mina Zins (Zinsowa)-- David)

The 5 Segal Girls (born between 1887 and 1908)

The Story of Mann

2010-09-17T10:03:00.001-04:00

As we have become accustomed to, Lukasz in Warsaw comes through with the answers regarding Family of Mann:

Hello David,

I owe you some stories on Przemysl. The last question about Manns deserves an answer. Fasten your belt, I'll take you and Kenny on a ride.

"His sister's name was Clara, I believe.", writes Kenny. Klara died in 1941 and her tombstone is among not so many (ca. 750 out of thousands) that survived.

The sentence on the plaque of Klara's tomb reads: "To my mum who taught me to be eternally young. Son."

What's more, we have a story about her funeral, written by her granddaughter. This is a piece:

“I’m on Slowackiego Street. A little higher up is the Jewish cemetery, where my grandmother was buried during the winter. I think back to her wretched funeral: that little coffin on the rickety cart, Mother and I following behind. I go to the cemetery. […] It’s quiet and peaceful in the cemetery. Fat insects crawl over the grass. The old stone grave markers tell the histories of former families. The gold letters of the shining sepulchres call to those who have gone and assure them of the impeccably good taste of those who have remained. My grandmother’s grave is off to the side. In the beaten clay a black marker has been stuck. ‘Klara Mann, born… died 12 XII 1941’... a beginning and an end. I stand by my grandmother’s grave but I do not cry. I am not thinking any more of her lonely death. She loved me so much. In my thoughts I beg her to help me rescue my parents and my brother.”

Sounds familiar? Yes, this is a part of memoirs I uploaded at ARC website years ago.

Aleksandra Mandel was the daughter of Salomea Mandel (born Mann), Klara's daughter, and Aleksander Mandel. She was the only survivor. She later changed her first name to Cecylia. Diminutive of Cecylia is Cesia (pron. Tsesha) and it must be "someone known as Aunt Tseckia", as Kenny writes. Kenny may not remember that Cesia visited them in Africa, sometime in 60's. This visit was foreseen in prophetical conversation in Przemysl ghetto, moments before it's liquidation started:

"‘To turn my Mother’s sad thoughts to other things – my Mother, who is so bravely bearing the burden of our poverty – I hug and kiss her, and talk to her about my uncle, who from far, from Africa, writes to us through Switzerland and who will certainly help us as soon as the war finishes.

“And you, Mama, will be the first great lady of Africa, and Tata and Jozio will eat bananas for breakfast and pineapples for dinner.”

Mama looks around at our shabby little room, at the lamentably empty cupboard, at the unlit stove, and says: “Child, you might see it, but my grave will be growing grass by then…”

And next passage:

“The Gestapo bang on our window.

“We’re coming,” says Tata, “Here you are, my watch, it will stay with you.” He puts the old watch that was his father’s down on the buffet.

“Think that you were with us on a ship during a wreck, and we went down, while a life buoy brought you to shore...”

“Uncle will ask you to Africa after the war,” Mother adds.

Here is the most disinterested, sublime love in the world. Even now my parents don’t think of themselves.”

After the war Aleksandra/Cesia lived in one of Galician towns and worked as a journalist, like her father. She wrote an article about her african trip which is remembered there.

She and her husband founded an obelisk at Przemysl cemetery commemorating her parents and her brother.

The rest is also true - her son Oles and a grandson Maciek are well known photographers indeed, now in Krakow.

Aleksandra deposited her memories in 1946 at Jewish Historical Commission in Krakow. They are kept at Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw now.

I wish you, all your family, and Kenny too, sweet and peaceful New Year.
And Gmar Hatima Tova.

Lukasz

Family Mann

2010-09-07T11:13:00.001-04:00

Over the transom comes yet another amazing Przemysl diaspora tale. Does anyone out there have any information on family Mann?

I have just been reading your website with interest. My father was born in Przemysl and lived there until 1939 when he walked out barefoot as Hitler invaded. He ended up in Bucharest where he met my mother and they married. they had to escape yet again and ended up in Kenya, where they settled and where I was born and raised.

I am making a film about their extraordinary story - there were very few Jews in Kenya - and while I have a lot of material on my mother, I have virtually nothing about my father and his family. He was born in 1907. His name was Igor Mann in later life, but I believe his real first name was Izidore. He trained as a veterinarian at the University of Prague and he had a sister who died of TB before the war. I believe his father died when he was 13 and his mother died in 1942.

Is there any way in which I might be able to find more information about him or his family? He was 32 when he left, so there must be some records - or maybe not, since the Jewish population was so thoroughly wiped out. Anyway - if you can make any suggestions for me as to further research, I would really appreciate it.

Many thanks!
Kenny Mann

Some additional information on her family:

Yes - you may post my note to the blog. Some of the people contributing were about the same age as my father - perhaps they knew the family. His father was a bricklayer. My father became an orphan at age 13 and made money by de-backing and selling stamps and mending tennis racquets. His sister's name was Clara, I believe. There is someone known as Aunt Tseckia (I don't know how to spell this) who has a son called Olesh who apparently became quite a well-known photographer - they now live in Krakow, I believe.

A Catholic Woman Remembers Przemysl

2010-08-19T14:26:00.008-04:00

I've had a fascinating back-and-forth with Renata - a Catholic woman born in Przemysl. She found me while doing research on her tree; it seems we have an intersection. The Jerzy she mentions, below, was the step son of my great uncle, Izaac (Edward) Metzger. His story, and how he came to adopt Jerzy, is outlined here.

My mother was from Przemysl, so I enjoyed reading a bit of its' history, and Anna Wojtowicz, Jerzy's wife, is a distant cousin of mine. We've both been working on our mutual family tree and her husband, Jerzy, hoped that we would find out what became of his father. While that question has not been answered, at least your article sheds some light on the subject. Thank you! I appreciate the time, effort and work that went into returning to Poland for answers and writing this.

Isaac + Family

After I responded, we talked about our connection - In 1939, Izaac Metzger went off to join the Red Army fighting the Nazis, just like his Catholic neighbor. Both men left wives and children behind in Przemysl. Isaac survived to return to Przemysl; his neighbor did not. His wife and children were gone, murdered. He ended up marrying this neighbor's widow - Aneila, adopted her young son Jerzy, and started calling himself Edward.

More from Renata:

Edward/Isaac
I think people's lives are so interesting, that in many cases it IS almost like reading an intense piece of fiction. Your uncle, Isaac/Edward is a prime example. It was emotionally moving to see a picture of him with his wife and four little children, looking happy and fulfilled, and to imagine how he must've felt when he returned home from war to learn that his whole family had been eradicated. I'm amazed that he had the resiliency to start life over again with someone else, that he didn't just curl up into a bitter ball of hate and despair, as many did. Aniela was still relatively young when they married and I'm surprised they didn't have any children of their own, but nevertheless, both of them seemed to make the most of their own, horrible situations and obviously must've found comfort in sharing their mutual burdens. It sounds as though he liked his stepson, Jerzy who obviously needed a father figure. Still, a Polish/Jewish connection must've been a difficult way for both him and Aniela to live. My understanding from my mother's stories, from the era in which she lived in Poland (1919-1949) was that Jews were not generally liked in Przemysl. There was a lot of prejudice against them and probably envy as well. Some were persecuted, especially the orthodox ones that really stood out. My mother was born in Brooklyn and moved back to Poland with her parents when she was 8. She used to tell me about how tough it was to get accepted by her classmates when her parents uprooted her and took her back to the old country. Her new classmates didn't like her because she was a well-to-do American girl (in their eyes) and it was the Jewish girls, who understood ostracism, who welcomed her into their circle and helped her get up to speed in her new school and maintained warm friendships with her until everyone scattered to go to college, so she developed good relationships with Jewish people in Przemysl, but I think that was the exception.

Maybe after the war, anything went. People were just trying to survive and move forward, but prior to the war, Aniela would've had a hard time living in Przemysl, being openly married to a Jewish man, although he tried to become integrated; had a "street name," had a last name that could've just passed for German, and didn't look strikingly Jewish.

Click below to read more...
I told Renata that Aneila had told us that Edward was imprisoned at one point in the early 60s for something political…

Jerzy + Anna
It didn't take much to get arrested in the early 60s ... just say one wrong word to your neighbor, or even to your own child who repeats it in school, and suddenly you disappeared. That was everyone's worse fear--disappearing. It happened all the time. My mother sent me to Poland, where I spent the summer of 1963 in Przemysl visiting with her family. My parents did not accompany me; they had to work. I was 12 yrs. old, and the Polish relatives kept telling me over and over and over and over .... Don't speak loudly. Don't ask questions outside of the home. Don't express opinions. People were getting arrested left, right and sideways for the least little suspicion, and here I was, a kid from NYC, no experience living in a repressive regime, and curious about everything. I used to run around Przemysl and environs with a Kodak Brownie Starmite hanging from my neck, taking pictures of anything that interested me, and it used to give the relatives fits. They were terrified that something would happen to me and what would they tell my parents?! There was no meat to be had anywhere, except for an occasional chicken. There were long lines for any type of food, and oftentimes the quota ran out long before the line did. There was no freedom. People were suspicious of everyone, even their neighbors and friends, because one word from any of them to the Milicia and you were taken in for interrogation. Poland's vast natural resources (Przemysl sits on large reserves of natural gas) were being piped over the border to Russia while Poles had to use wood to cook and coal to heat. The dollar was King back then. One dollar equaled 100 zlote, and the average worker made 1200 zl. My mother's brother was an attorney. He made 2000 zlote a month. He could've made more, but he refused to join the Communist party, so he died a poor but honorable man. An unemployed person, or an old person, got 500 zl. a month. So my mother sent them $20/mo. for my care, which at that time was lmost half of a month's rent for her and a fortune for them, but she wanted them to take me around to see Krakow, Zakopane, Czestochowa ... and that $20 paid for train trips, hotels, meals, and there was still some left over. Not anymore!! Haha!! Today Poland is a relatively free country and life is as expensive as it is in the USA, from what I hear.

Bernice's Cemetery Photos

2010-08-16T09:19:00.001-04:00

I posted recently about Bernice's Trip to Poland. Here are some photos from her visit to the Przemysl cemetery:

Postcards from Przemysl

2010-08-07T12:05:00.003-04:00

Posted below are post cards sent from Przemysl to relations in Basel. One of the things that makes these so interesting are the dates - 1943 - right in the midst of the holocaust. The Nazi cancellations and Hitler stamps are disturbing reminders of the awful backdrop of that year.

Original email from Charles:

My grandmother Lifsia Intrator was born In Przemysl and a great part of her family lived there. She had 9 brothers and sisters and several of them died in the Shoa. I had the opportunity to see a number of old postcards written to my late grand-aunt Cescha who lived in Basel by one of their sisters Hadassa Eisenberg Intrator and some friends.

I found several, to me unknown names: Frieda Blech ( maybe also Frieda Rubenfeld) Pola Ungar,. There is also a postcard in Polish that I do not understand but where

Charles Mahler Antwerp Belgium.

Chick to see Charles' family history: "Israel Intrator in Przemysl."

Anyone care to take a stab at a translation?

Bernice goes to Poland

2010-08-04T12:08:00.000-04:00

Internet friend Bernice just returned from a trip to Poland, including Przemysl and Dynow. Turns out I too have relations from Dynow - mostly Kern, Laufer, and even some named Arm... just like new-found cousin Bernice!

Here is the excellent Shtetlinks site for Dynow

Dear David:

Just a quick note to let you know that while we were in Przemysl, we visited the cemetery. At least there are still gravestones left.

On June 24th, 2010 in Dubiecko, a plaque was unveiled indicating that a vibrant Jewish community once lived there for hundreds of years.

We than went to the cemetery, where there are no headstones, Germans used them for roads. The chief Rabbi, M. Shudrich said kaddish and the local bishop repeated it in Polish. The names of the 160 men, women and children , who were killed by the Germans and buried in a mass grave, were read by 3 high school girls. We, two of my cousins and I, and some of the townspeople laid stones in memory of those killed.
The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish cemeteries in Poland has now taken over control.

It was a highly emotional day for me. I still cry when i talk about it as a number of my family members including my father's brother were read. One of the attendees was the daughter of a woman who had saved a Jewish woman. Her name was submitted to Yad Vashem and she was given a medal honoring her. The woman is no longer living but her daughter was running around showing the medal to everyone and how proud she was of her mother. Too bad there were not many more people like her.

I also went to Poland to do research on my family Arm/Frand. The Arms came from
Dynow, the Frands from Dubiecko. I was told that I would not find any documents on my family from Dynow as they were destroyed. I did find some information about the Frands from Dubiecko but now to figure out who they are.

An interesting note; A young orthodox Rabbi, who is a follower of the well known
Rabbi from Dynow is building a Polish Jewish Heritage Center there. the building is large, will have 2 mikvahs, dormitory rooms, synagogue, etc. It will be a teaching and learning center. He told us that had 150 people for Shabbat services the week before. I do not know where they all came from but I am assuming Israel. He is trying to also touch base with what's left of the Jewish population in Poland to come and learn at his institution. In August he having a festival at which time he is inviting the whole town of Dynow to bridge a gap between the Jewish people and the townspeople. We were invited but of course will not be in attendance. I hope we can get more information about it on the internet after the festival.

Well, a quick note turned out to be a long note.

Have a good day!
Bernice Bernstein

Pleasae, please help

2010-05-08T11:32:00.006-04:00

Once a year I take a break from blogging family remembrances and ask everyone who is interested in saving what little is physically left of Jewish Przemysl to join me and Dr. John Hartman in raising money for the effort.

Spring has come to Poland and with it, Mr. Joachim Glettner again begins work on the restoration and maintenance of the Jewish cemetery in Przemysl. Joachim, one of a handful of Jews left in a city that was once a vibrant center of Jewish life, has been doing this labor of love for the last eleven years with sole financial support from the people like me and you, through the not-for-profit Remembrance and Reconciliation Foundation, Inc.

Work consists of repairing the damage done by the harsh winters and the toll the passage of time has taken on over 1,000 gravestones, two mass Holocaust graves, and the newer memorials erected to remember the deceased. Grass has to be mowed many times per year, masonry and metal fences need securing, and trash must be collected. And ice storms downed tree limbs, adding considerably to the annual spring pruning and brush clearing. The value of the dollar has dropped significantly over the past two years, pushing the cost of repair and maintenance up to over US $5,000. per year -- just to maintain the status quo.

Please, please donate today. Each and every contribution, regardless of size, is desperately needed and deeply appreciated. The Foundation accepts donations by check, or by email or credit card via our PayPal account (click to donate!):

Remembrance and Reconciliation, Inc.

300 S. Hyde Parke Avenue, Suite 150 Tampa, FL 33606

The Foundation has no expenses -- every dollar collected goes toward the maintenance of the Jewish cemetery in Przemysl and to remembrance of nearly a millennium of Jewish heritage in Poland.

Warm regards to all,

David R. Semmel
Dr. John Hartman

Family Sporn/Shacham

2010-04-25T11:27:00.001-04:00

Here is an email to me...

Both my father and mother's families were from Pshemishl.
My mother's family was Swartz, and they were lucky to leave Poland just before the war.
However, my father's family were probably lost in the WW2.

I am trying for a long time to find out what happened to them, and maybe your blog may help.

My father was Itzhak Sporn, came to Israel in 1934.

He left behind a married sister (Sali Diamand, husband Yoseph, and 3 kids: Hela, Milek and Buzia),and two unmarried sisters: Sofia and Cila.

Please publish this note, maybe someone will know something about my lost family.

Thanks,

Zvi Shacham (Sporn) zvi.shacham@gmail.com

As it turns out, I am familiar with the name via Martin Sporn,a man who married a cousin of mine after the Shoah.

Florine Getter was born in 1926 in Paris. Her mother was Chaya Silberman (photo, right), my grandfather's sister. Chaya and husband Muni Getter (photo, left) were both arrested in France and put on trains to Auschwitz where Chaya perished. Muni, miraculously, survived. Their child Florine was hidden for the entire Shoah in a convent in Grenoble. After the war, her father found her in Paris and they immigrated to New York where she married Martin Sporn. I do not know if Martin was from Przemysl...

Looking for Grandmother's school mate

2010-04-14T13:12:00.001-04:00

I received the email below from the grand daughter of one of the students at The Primary School for Girls in Przemysl. Unfortunately, the email I have for Anna Demby (nee ŚWITALSKA) is no longer valid. Does anyone have her contact information?

I’m writing to you because on the one of photos you have published on your web site. I recognized my grandmother. Her name is Irena Popiel (nee Osmak). On the photo she is the last person at the bottom right of the picture (a sitting girl with a dark hair, and dark school uniform - http://gosiapopiel.pl/pliki/irenaosmak.JPG ).

Grandmother is living in Poland in Bydgoszcz now. Unfortunately she has a health problems. She can not recall any details of her youth. If there is any possibility that you could put us to touch with Mrs. Demby, I would really appreciate it. As a grandmother’s friend form the class - maybe she will be able to help us uncover history of my grandmother.

And maybe you have some information about my grandmother family – Osmak from Przemysl?

We (me and my family) will be grateful for any help.

Best regards,

Małgorzata Popiel

Izio remembers: The Synagogues - Part 2

2010-03-12T09:24:00.001-05:00

Izio remembers: The Synagogues - Part 1

2010-03-03T12:24:00.002-05:00

Frequent contributor and friend of the blog Izio (Jack Fields) Felder recalls the synagogues of Przemysl.

Here I am sending you a few Emails with pictures all concerning the 5 main Synagogues in prewar Przemysl. There were also quite a number of prayer rooms in private homes.

Przemysl had 5 main synagogues:

The Slowackiego street synagoge in Slowackiego street
The Big Beth Hamidrash in Walowa street
Die Alte synagogue in Serbanska street(Rybi plac)
The Temple on the corner of Serbanska and Jagielonska streets
The Zasanie synagogue

Klaus was not a self standing synagogue but a large room in the "Kahal" which was the building of the Jewish society.

In this photo the Slowackiego street is on top left and the Slowackiego synagogue was close to the city center. That street is rather long and at the end of that street on the right side were cemeteries those from WW1....WW2 and at the end is the Jewish cemetery.

Plac na Bramie (This means The Square Near the Gate, which refers to the entrance gate leading to the ancient Przemysl fortress. The fortress is located nearby).
This view is from Mickiewicza street. This is a central place from which the following 6 streets originate: Mickiewicza, Dworskiego, Slowackiego, Franciszkanska, Ratuszowa and Jagiellonska Street.

The largest and most modern synagogue is called the Big Beth Hamidrash in the Yizkor book of Przemysl. It is described but difficult to understand and it is not mentioned where it was situated. It says that the old Beth Hamidrash was in ruins and it was rebuild in 1910 and a large crowd was there at the ceremony so it was built about the same time as the synagogue on Slowackiego and it was quite modern and it was very similar in appearance do the synagogue in Slowackiego street

I lived at Walowa number 11, directly opposite the big Beth Hamidrash and I saw it every day.

Here is a picture of the damaged old synagogue die Alte as it looked during the Soviet occupation. To the left is the start of Walowa Street.

The house with the 2 windows on top and the door this is Walowa st number 2 next is the Szklarska Street. Next is the house of Walowa number 4 next is the high wall... this was the large Beth Hamidrash. Walowa number 6:all that can be seen is the high wall of the synagogue and this is the only picture available showing the big Beth Hamidrash. It was as modern and as large as the synagogue on Slowackiego.

Go to Part 2

Old Cemetery Returned to Jewish Community

2010-02-23T20:12:00.000-05:00

JPost writer and Przemysl Blog friend Michael Feund reports the good news:

The Jerusalem Post, February 23, 2010

Polish city returns medieval cemetery to Jewish community
By Michael Freund

The decision marks a triumph for the Warsaw-based Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland.

Przemysl, Poland - After years of negotiations, a centuries-old Jewish burial ground in southeastern Poland that was desecrated by the Germans during the Holocaust has been restored to the Jewish community.

The cemetery, located in the city of Przemysl, near Poland's border with the Ukraine, dates back to the 16th century and served local Jews as well as those in nearby towns such as Jaroslav, Pruchnik, Kanczuga and Dynow for hundreds of years.

But the Przemysl municipality, which took over the site following the end of World War II, resisted calls to return it.

At a meeting last week, however, Poland's government-backed Regulatory Commission, which resolves claims regarding Jewish communal property, instructed city officials to turn the cemetery over to Jewish control.

The decision marks a triumph for the Warsaw-based Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, and especially for its president, Monika Krawczyk, who led the effort in recent years to recover the graveyard.

Krawczyk, whose foundation is responsible for safeguarding thousands of Jewish cultural, historical and religious sites throughout Poland, expressed satisfaction at the news.

“We are happy that the Przemysl cemetery was returned to Jewish hands," she told the Jerusalem Post, noting that, "its history is so important and intriguing".

Known as the "old cemetery", the Przemysl burial ground was in use for nearly 300 years until it became full in the middle of the 19th-century, prompting the Jewish community to open a second one in the area.
Sitting on two hectares (20 dunams), the "old cemetery" had graves dating back to at least 1574 (5335 on the Hebrew calendar).

But after the Germans invaded Poland in 1939 and occupied Przemysl, they vandalized and despoiled the site.

Prior to the Holocaust, the city was home to an estimated 20,000 Jews, who constituted nearly 30% of the city's population. Most of them were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators.

"The ancient tombstones in the cemetery were used by the Germans during the war to pave local roads, and until now, we have not succeeded in tracing them," Krawczyk said. "After the war, the brick wall surrounding it was demolished, and the materials were used by neighbors to repair local buildings."

No graves are currently visible on the site, which is overrun by weeds and vegetation and badly in need of renovation. The only trace left standing is one of the entrance gates to the cemetery.

Krawczyk, whose group will be responsible for restoring and administering the site, said that the first priority will be to take steps to prevent its further deterioration.

"We need to start with securing the perimeter of the cemetery and building a fence to protect it,” she said. The foundation has already commissioned a technical team to prepare a design.

Krawczyk expressed the hope that Jews from abroad will assist with the refurbishment of the cemetery grounds.

“We have to remember that we do it for the past generations who contributed so much to our people and our culture, and we do it also for future generations," she said.

"The least we can do for those who were buried in the old Przemysl cemetery is to try and restore the dignity of their final resting place," she added.

Families Sternbach and Eisner

2010-02-01T09:16:00.000-05:00

From Tina in LA... if anyone has information on these names, please contact me.

I subsequently found a note on Lukasz Beidka's indispensable site DeathCamps.org on the Belzec Remembrance page:

EISNER nee Weinstock, Ludwika (Luta)
Born in 1893. Deported from Przemysl ghetto to Belzec, in the beginning of the first "action", on 27 July 1942.

The first email:

Hello David -- My maternal grandmother - Rose Sternbach married Jacob Eisner and she definitely lived in Przemsyl until she immigrated tothe Unites States in 1921, New York, and took up residence in Brooklyn. I would appreciate any assistance you can give me to find out if I have any relatives living there or if any members of my family survived or died during the Holocaust. I believe it was a good size family and my great grandfather owned some sort of shop there. Thank you very much - Tina Valinsky

I remember an old postcard...

Tina - While I have no direct knowledge of the names you mentioned, I can tell you that the name Eisner is known to me from a postcard I have of the Eisner Store (Men's clothing, I believe) located on Plac na Bramie in Przemysl c. 1910. I wil try to find the scan I have of it. A quick look through the JRI dadatase shows loads of Przemysl-related Eisners. It would take some effort by someone who knew the family to decipher. Sternback is not a name I know from Przemysl nor does it show up in my records. Lastly... may I post this info on the blog site? Warm regards, David

Different Eisner...

Hi David - Thank you so much for your assistance. Actually, it was Sternbach who owned the small shop, his first name might have been Samuel. My grandfather, Jacob Eisner was an upholsterer but not sure if he worked in Przemysl ( but probably did ) and then immigrated to Brooklyn with my grandmother Rosa Ester (Sternbach).

On the ship's manifest, the Adriatic, from Southampton, England, it says Hernbach was my grandmother's father's name but that must be a mistake. Yes, you have my permission to post something about this and give my email for a response. Again, I appreciate any help trying to sort out my family tree and perhaps actually connect with relatives. Sincerely, Tina Valinsky

A Treasure Trove of old Documents

2009-12-01T16:42:00.002-05:00

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?

2009-11-27T20:14:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-24T09:37:00.002-04:00

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

2009-09-14T22:16:00.005-04:00

Moysey's Rybotycze Photos

2009-09-14T22:13:00.007-04:00

Moses Rubinfeld of Rybotycze near Przemysl

2009-08-05T14:24:00.010-04:00

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

2009-08-04T14:46:00.000-04:00

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

2009-07-10T14:02:00.007-04:00

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

2009-07-07T13:29:00.004-04:00

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

2009-06-20T10:42:00.002-04:00

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

2009-06-16T09:37:00.004-04:00

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 -

2009-06-14T16:14:00.005-04:00

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!

2009-05-30T21:27:00.002-04:00

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

2009-03-24T18:28:00.004-04:00

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

2009-03-06T15:29:00.006-05:00

"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

2009-02-16T09:08:00.005-05:00

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

2009-02-03T15:23:00.002-05:00

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?

2009-01-20T08:17:00.004-05:00

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

2008-12-24T21:00:00.001-05:00

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

2008-12-21T01:02:00.000-05:00

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

2008-12-19T02:18:00.003-05:00

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

2008-12-18T16:05:00.000-05:00

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

2008-12-01T15:00:00.004-05:00

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

2008-11-30T20:52:00.012-05:00

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

2008-11-18T14:35:00.005-05:00

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

2008-11-10T10:40:00.000-05:00

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

2008-11-08T13:59:00.015-05:00

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

2008-10-20T12:03:00.005-04:00

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

2008-10-17T13:00:00.003-04:00

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

2008-10-17T12:53:00.007-04:00

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

2008-10-05T10:04:00.008-04:00

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

2008-09-25T09:32:00.003-04:00

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

2008-09-16T14:40:00.004-04:00

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...

2008-09-12T13:51:00.006-04:00

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

2008-09-12T13:10:00.009-04:00

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

2008-09-11T10:34:00.001-04:00

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?

2008-09-10T11:20:00.002-04:00

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

2008-09-09T22:01:00.000-04:00

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

2008-09-09T01:37:00.005-04:00

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

2008-07-03T08:54:00.005-04:00

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

2008-05-12T08:08:00.005-04:00

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

2008-04-29T20:15:00.005-04:00

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

2008-04-01T16:53:00.010-04:00

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

2008-03-16T09:07:00.007-04:00

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

2008-02-15T20:33:00.001-05:00

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

2008-01-29T20:29:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-13T09:34:00.000-05:00

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"

2008-01-02T21:55:00.000-05:00

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).
...

Przemysler's Ball - Update

2007-12-25T19:20:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-11T10:57:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-13T19:53:00.001-05:00

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

2007-11-13T08:26:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-24T11:24:00.000-04:00

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

(From the collection of L. Biedka.)

Treasure trove of photos

2007-09-18T19:26:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-17T07:49:00.000-04:00

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?

2007-09-09T21:45:00.001-04:00

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

2007-09-07T07:00:00.000-04:00

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

2007-09-06T11:51:00.000-04:00

[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 !

2007-09-04T08:04:00.000-04:00

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

2007-07-25T15:07:00.000-04:00

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

2007-07-12T12:48:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-24T09:31:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-19T09:50:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-19T09:36:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-24T08:44:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-16T08:11:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-15T09:44:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-07T15:09:00.000-04:00

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.]