Never Forget Your Name. Alwin Meyer
could move in to help a little after the birth. She and her husband owned a grain mill and promised ‘Ita will never go hungry with us.’ Janek’s sister and mother agreed.
Around three months after they arrived in southern Poland, Cyrla Mandelbaum decided to move with Jakob and Janek to her older brother. He lived in a small town called Sławków, 80 kilometres from Działoszyce. Because her husband was interned in Stutthof and couldn’t join them, she ‘preferred to live with her own family’.
There were around 960 Jews living in Sławków. The town had been occupied by German troops at the beginning of September. A few days later, 98 men were shot by German soldiers. They were all from Sławków and the surrounding area and had attempted to escape. The synagogue was also desecrated and the German occupiers demanded a high ransom from the Jewish inhabitants. They took hostages to press their claim. And – as everywhere in occupied Europe – a Jewish council was set up in the town, which, among other things, had to recruit Jews for forced labour.43
When the Germans occupied Sławków, they immediately forced the people to work on the roads. In winter 1939/1940 they had to shovel snow. The snow was lying higher than me. The Jewish council was commanded every day to provide 200 or 300 people. I was not on the list because I was only 12. But I replaced people who still had some money and paid me to work for them.
Janek thought up this idea himself because his uncle was ‘quite poor and had five children of his own’. They all needed to be fed ‘in those difficult times’, which was ‘not easy’. A package, ‘probably with valuable contents’, that his father had managed to send shortly before his arrest also never arrived – ‘And so I wanted to contribute to the living expenses.’ And it worked ‘quite well and I learned what hard labour means’. For a time he was assigned to an electrician as his assistant. From January 1940 to June 1942, he was conscripted for forced labour.
At the end of 1941 or the beginning of 1942, the Jews of Sławków were concentrated into a ghetto. It had no fence or wall, but they weren’t allowed to leave it. There was a strict curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., and all the Jews had to remain in their homes.44
Janek was very worried about his mother. She tried to be strong so as to be able to look after him and his brother. ‘But she was extremely worried – particularly about my father and my sister.’ They weren’t allowed to visit Ita. The place where she lived with her father’s youngest sister was now part of the General Government45 − the part of Poland occupied by Nazi Germany but not incorporated immediately into the Reich. The situation in Sławków, where his mother lived, was different: the town now belonged to Germany. It was impossible for her to get to the other sector. ‘This situation was intolerable for my mother. She was sick with worry.’ But Janek was also losing his joy and hunger for life. ‘I just wanted it to be over.’ He wanted to get back to his old life in Gdynia with his mother, his sister and his brother. ‘With papa to meet us there.’
Heinz Salvator Kounio In Thessaloniki, the parents of Heinz, Salvator and Helene Kounio (called Hella), were increasingly anxious at the news broadcast several times a day by the BBC. The family followed the fate of the Jews in Germany in particular, with great concern. ‘My sister Erika and I realized that something worrying was going on. But we didn’t know exactly what was happening.’ Erika was 12 years old and Heinz 11.
Their grandmother came from Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary) in Czechoslovakia. When German troops invaded in autumn 1938, practically all of the Jews living there, as elsewhere, fled. Over 15,000 Jewish children, women and men from the border areas left their homes, as did 13,000 non-Jewish German Nazis and 155,000 to 160,000 non-Jewish Czechs.46
Ernst and Theresa Löwy, the grandparents of Heinz and Erika, were among them. ‘My grandparents arrived in Thessaloniki as refugees. With two small suitcases. They were only able to take a few things with them. Just what they had on, plus a few clothes. They had to leave all their belongings behind. Now I began to understand that there was something terrible going on.’
The family, particularly Salvator Kounio, continued to maintain a few contacts with Germany, especially the Leitz company. ‘My father imported and sold the famous Leica cameras.’
Ferenc and Otto Klein Their parents in Hajdúböszörmény in Hungary also listened to the BBC every day. Sometimes their father listened to a Russian radio station broadcasting in Hungarian. ‘The talk was all about war. We children often listened to the programmes as well. And we also understood very well what was going on.’
In 1938 or 1939, five of the twins’ cousins had escaped to North America. ‘My parents didn’t want to leave.’ They were convinced that what was happening to the Jews elsewhere couldn’t happen to the Hungarian Jews. The twins were 6 years old; their sister Ágnes, 8. The persecution and discrimination against the Jews had already started in Hungary. In May 1938, the Hungarian government adopted the first anti-Jewish laws from Nazi Germany. The proportion of Jews in business and the professions was limited to 20 per cent. The Jews were increasingly excluded from public life in Hungary.
The anti-Jewish climate was stirred up in particular by the press, which was predominantly financed by the Germans. The ‘solution of the Jewish problem’, as it was cynically known, was on the agenda of various pro-Nazi parties and Christian churches. And the Hungarian army was extremely antisemitic.47 ‘My father was forced to reduce his business activities. Jews were not allowed to sell heating fuel. He was able to continue trading in building timber and roof tiles. We were still relatively comfortable.’ Many Jews who had fled to Hungary from Slovakia lived in the town. It was forbidden to help them. That didn’t bother Otto’s mother: ‘She refused to be intimidated and helped all refugee Jews with food, clothing and everything they needed.’
Otto and Ferenc could sense that their parents were becoming more and more worried as time went by. The wanted these uncertain times to end and asked themselves: ‘When will the war be over?’ ‘When will the Germans lose the war?’ It was fairly clear to them that that would be their only salvation.
‘Unfortunately, the Hungarian Jews were far too trusting of the Hungarian government and other nations. But what happened was still unimaginable for most people.’
Yehuda Bacon Even before the Germans invaded Czech Sudetenland in October 1938, the 8-year-old Yehuda Bacon was already aware that there were changes taking place in Europe. He recalls that, after Austria’s annexation to the Reich in March 1938,48 Jews from there fled to Poland via his hometown of Ostrava. One of them came to his father’s leather factory asking for alms. He told of the ‘brutality of the German and Austrian Nazis’ and wanted to ‘open the eyes of the world’ with his descriptions.
At the end of 1938, the Bacon family obtained the addresses from the Jewish community of people who had fled to Poland to whom packages could be sent. The wife of the rabbi to whom the Bacons sent food wrote back and said that the package was like a ‘straw in the ocean to which she clutched to prevent herself from sinking’. And an acquaintance informed them from Poland: ‘Our wardrobe consists of a nail on which I can hang all of my possessions.’
‘That’s the situation in Poland’, thought the family, ‘but it couldn’t happen here. That was the feeling at the time.’
The extent to which we were mentally unprepared is demonstrated by the fact that when the German troops occupied the town, we children stood at the side of the road as the tanks rolled in, trying to touch them because we had heard at home that they were made of cardboard. In addition, the jubilation – as it appeared to us – and the sea of swastikas made a deep impression, and we were keen to obtain franked envelopes from the post office with the inscription: ‘The city of black diamonds [the city had large coal reserves] thanks the Führer – Day of Liberation!’49
The consequences were also felt in Ostrava: the rights of the Jewish inhabitants were gradually reduced and ultimately removed entirely.
Yehuda Bacon’s family were very scared of raids. ‘The houses of Jews were searched, and every pretext was used to enter and check an apartment.’