Never Forget Your Name. Alwin Meyer
was annexed by Nazi Germany in autumn 1938.35 And on 15 March the following year, just one day after Slovakia declared its independence, the Wehrmacht occupied the rest of the country. The German terror began right after the arrival of the Wehrmacht, SS units and police. Jews, Roma and political opponents were persecuted, interned and murdered.36 Dáša’s father was also arrested immediately and imprisoned in Pankraz. While the family still lived in Odolice, at the time of the Czechoslovakian elections on 19 May 1935,37 Otto Fried had offered to drive inhabitants to the polling station with the farm’s vehicles. Among them were many Germans. Because Fried feared that they would vote for the pro-Nazi Sudeten German Party, which later merged with the Nazi Party, the vehicles never reached their destination: ‘My father told the drivers to go somewhere else. That’s why he was arrested immediately after the Germans entered Prague.’ Suddenly, Dáša and Sylva became worried again. Fortunately, their father was released after a few months. ‘I have never discovered what happened to him in prison.’
The girls became hopeful again. They continued to go to school and played with their relatives’ children. Friends also visited them in their nice apartment. ‘My mother loved to have people around her and to organize celebrations.’
Janek Mandelbaum In the Free City of Danzig/Gdańsk, around 35 kilometres from the Polish city of Gdynia, the Nazis won over 50 per cent of the vote in the May 1933 elections. In spite of the League of Nations mandate, Jews were increasingly discriminated against and expropriated. A modified version of the Nuremberg Race Laws entered into force there on 21 November 1938.38 This provoked great worry and concern for Janek’s parents, Majloch and Cyrla Mandelbaum. They wondered fearfully what that would mean for their future and whether they would be safe in Gdynia.
In autumn 1936, the following report on the situation of the Jews of Danzig appeared in the Jüdische Revue published in Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia:
The situation of the Jews … is determined by the fact that although a democratic constitution prevents Jews from being legally discriminated against and from becoming second-class citizens, the population is being urged through strong Nazi propaganda to boycott Jews economically.… As the dominant government party, the Nazis will do everything to pursue anti-Jewish legislation as in the German Reich.… A ban on kosher butchering was recently ordered as part of the Emergency Regulation Law. Other regulations are likely to follow.39
Majloch and Cyrla Mandelbaum often received visits from friends. ‘They talked about politics nearly all the time. They had an idea about what was going on in the Nazi Reich.’ They knew about the marginalization and repression of the Jews in Germany and wondered why Hitler and his followers hated the Jews so much. Janek’s parents didn’t talk about their concerns when the children were present. ‘They wanted to protect us.’ But Janek often listened at the living-room door – or wherever he could – and learned a lot in that way.
In the meantime, Majloch Mandelbaum made successful efforts to arrange for the family’s emigration to Australia. But there was a problem: ‘The regulations specified that the husband must live for six months in the country before he could fetch his family.’ Janek’s mother did not want to be separated for six months from her husband at times like these.
‘So we didn’t go. Everything would certainly have been different for the family if we had emigrated to Australia.’ But no one, including Janek’s mother, knew at the time what awaited the family.
The summer of 1939 had begun and Janek had just celebrated his twelfth birthday. His parents wanted him to have his barmitzvah a year later, making him a fully fledged member of the Jewish community. This celebration usually takes place on the first Shabbat after the thirteenth birthday. On this day, the barmitzvah boy has to read a portion from the Torah in Hebrew. On the following day, the barmitzvah is celebrated with family and friends.
‘My father engaged a teacher to prepare me. He was meant to teach me Hebrew to study the Torah and whatever else I needed for my barmitzvah. After one or two months of lessons, the teacher disappeared and never returned. Perhaps he had fled from the impending war. The German border was just a stone’s throw away.’
One day it was announced: ‘Schools will not open as planned after the summer holidays.’ Janek and his friends were delighted: ‘Great! Longer holidays! What could be better?’
Janek’s father had a premonition, suspecting that Gdynia would be one of the first military objectives of Nazi Germany. He wanted to be sure that nothing would happen to his wife and children. ‘It was decided that we should go to my grandfather. My father believed that we would be safe with his father. He said he would follow us in a month.’ So, one morning in August, he brought his wife Cyrla and his children Ita, Jakob and Janek to the train station. It was crowded with people: ‘Many were fleeing to the interior of the country.’ The Mandelbaums embarked on what was a long journey at the time, around 550 kilometres. They were to travel for more than twelve hours.
Janek’s grandfather lived in Działoszyce in southern Poland, 55 kilometres from Kraków. ‘It was a very Jewish town’, as reflected by the population: in 1899, 4,673 of the 5,170 inhabitants were Jews; in 1910, 6,446 out of 7,688; and in the mid-1930s, over 5,000 out of 6,700.40 The Jewish community had a large synagogue seating 800 worshippers, a prayer house, a Talmud Torah school with 80 pupils, and a 15,000-square-metre cemetery. There was also a Jewish library with 3,000 books.41
Janek’s grandfather was waiting for the family at the train station. He was a pious orthodox Jew in a ‘black caftan with a long beard and Hasidic headwear’. He was surprised, ‘if not shocked’, at Janek’s appearance: ‘I was wearing short trousers held up by narrow braces.’ He looked darkly at the boy and said to his mother: ‘I don’t ever again want to see my grandson leave the house without a hat.’
As they made their way back to his grandfather’s house, Janek stood out: ‘The town was full of Jews dressed in black. They all spoke Yiddish. There were lots of small shops with Jewish owners.’ Some were also to be found on the market square near his grandfather’s two-storey house. The boy felt at home in the large house, where the grandfather worked as a sign writer. To please him, Janek wore a kippa thereafter. He also went with his grandfather ‘for the first time before going to the synagogue’ to a mikvah – a bathhouse serving not for hygienic purposes but for cleansing ritual impurity.
Two weeks after the Mandelbaums arrived in Działoszyce, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Seven days later, on 7 September 1939, the Wehrmacht occupied the town.
We heard the tanks rolling from far off. The streets were empty. The Germans also came past my grandfather’s house. We hid behind the curtains. He finally mustered the courage to look out on the balcony. The Germans had not only tanks but also motorcycles with sidecars and trucks full of soldiers.
We heard that people from the town had been arrested. Our fear grew with every day of the occupation.
Janek hoped against hope that his father would finally arrive. But he didn’t come. Instead, the family received a card one day saying that his father had been sent to Stutthof concentration camp. He had been allowed to send a message: ‘I’m in Stutthof. Don’t worry. I’m fine.’
Janek Mandelbaum discovered fifty years later that his father had been arrested on 14 September at the age of 36 and transported to Stutthof, 18 kilometres from Gdynia, the family’s hometown.
The Nazis had already compiled lists of ‘undesirable Poles’ before the war. The deportation and murder of the Polish population, especially the Jews, was part of the plan to completely ‘Germanize’ Poland, including Gdynia and Danzig/Gdańsk. Polish leaders, including members of political parties and unions, were among the first victims. Jews who had not been shot when the Germans first invaded were arrested with non-Jews and interned in Stutthof. There, and in the thirty-nine satellite camps, the Wehrmacht interned around 110,000 people from twenty-eight countries, 63,000 to 65,000 of whom died.42
Mindla Czamócha, the youngest sister of Janek’s father in Słomniki,