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A Place Called Planch Fresh Meadows Jewish Center hosts 80th anniversary of one of last surviving landsmanschaften. by Hilary Larson - Jewish Week Correspondent
[ Originally published in the Jewish Week, December 2, 1999 ] As a child, Ruth Harris yawned through meetings of the First Plancher Benevolent Society, while her parents eagerly kibitzed with old friends over tea. But as an adult, she has become devoted to the group of Jews who trace their heritage to a village in central Poland: “You want to be with your roots, your background,” she says. “My kids are not interested, so once it’s over, it’s over.” On a recent Sunday, Harris, now 57, showed off photographs and mementos from Planch, Poland at the Fresh Meadows Jewish Center, where the benevolent group gathered for its 80th anniversary celebration. “So many of these people are my relatives, either directly or from way back when, so this is like a family reunion for me,” she says. Over 100 members of the First Plancher Benevolent Society, who call themselves Planchers, turned out for the celebration. “My whole youth in Planch was a joy,” recalled Saul Appel, who gives his age as 76 1/2 . Born and raised in Planch (Polaniec in Polish), he is one of the few Planchers, as they are known, who can actually remember the place. A retired accountant who lives in south Florida, he journeyed to the reunion “to recapture a joyous youth, which is something you don’t often hear about very often from people who grew up in Europe during that those years.” When the First Plancher Benevolent Society was founded in 1919, it was one of hundreds of such landsmanschaften, clubs of immigrants from the same hometown that flourished in New York during the heyday of Eastern European Jewish immigration. Landsmanschaften generally provided health benefits, interest free loans and burial rights and aid to mourning families. In addition, according to the Plancher group’s president, Harold Unger, these groups sent money back to their hometown, brought over other landsmen (townsfolk) and helped members find jobs and spouses. Times have changed, and today the Planchers no longer send money to the hometown, since all the Jews either emigrated or were killed in the Holocaust. Before the war, there were 865 Jews in Planch, according to the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora in Tel Aviv; now there are none. And the social services are no longer necessary in the age of Medicare, Social Security, and upward mobility. But Planchers still relish a chance to get together a few times a year to reminisce about the ties which bind them together after decades in America. They meet on holidays several times a year at the Workmen’s Circle in Manhattan, hold an annual memorial service for members who passed away recently and in the Holocaust, and socialize among people who have known them for generations. “It’s important to keep the history, to have an awareness of where we come from and how our families lived,” says Sandy Lawrence, 55, a second-generation Plancher who brought her family from Maine to attend. As other Planchers whirled around the room in a lively horah, she recalled the stories she grew up with: tales of hardships in the old country, of using an outhouse and sharing everything, the joys and sorrows of a simpler, more rural place and time. One of the most unusual aspects of this gathering was the number of younger people present. While most landsmanschaften have long since dissolved, there are still approximately 75 official members in this group, only a handful of whom actually remember Planch. Many of the guests were like Phyllis Wollman, a middle-aged, soft-spoken blonde who discovered an affinity for the group after her father died. At his funeral, Wollman says, “visiting the [Plancher] cemetery felt like home ... it was very poignant to see all the Planchers there.” Although her father never took the family to meetings, getting involved in the group is “a feeling of honoring his memory,” she adds. “We had to reconnect.” Carl Appel, the 77-year-old past president and Saul’s brother, remembers his first Planchers’ meeting: after the family arrived in America in 1934, the Appels’ father took his children to a meeting, where young Carl was awed by all the food and entertainment. “It was really amazing for a young boy from Poland to be exposed to all the luxuries of America,” he says. Rose Minuta, 77, cherishes memories of the earliest Planchers’ meetings on the Lower East Side. Her father, who escaped from a Siberian prison in 1910, came to America the same year and helped found the organization nine years later. “We used to cook meals for each other at our houses every Sunday, like a family,” Minuta recalls. “They were feisty people! They quarreled all the time, for them to have a quiet meeting was very unusual — they each had their own opinions on everything except one thing: all for one and one for all. “They charged dues and gave $2 and candy to each sick person, so they would think of sweet things,” she says. Looking around the banquet, Minuta says she feels “euphoric” to see that so many younger members are still devoted to the group, although she is amazed at how civilized the gathering seems, in contrast to the raucous gatherings of her youth: “It’s a tremendous difference,” she says with a giggle. Among the featured speakers was Walter Kaufman, 76, a native Plancher who managed to survive the war in Europe. Kaufman was at the banquet with his brother, Carl. During the cocktail reception, they spied Morris Szlachter, another Plancher in his 70s, and the three fell into an animated Yiddish conversation. “We don’t really know each other,” Walter Kaufman joked. “We just hid in a pit together during the war! ... I remember finding out that he was the only one of his family surviving, and we went one night to pick him up and bring him to where we were hiding.” At the banquet, the crowd listened as Walter Kaufman spoke about his experiences in Europe: risking his life to find food in the village, scavenging in the forest with his brothers, and finally finding a warm-hearted gentile farmer who took them into hiding. He loves Planchers’ meetings, he says, because “these are people we knew, our connection to the past. ...We have something to say to one another.” As for the Plancher spirit — the character that keeps these landsmen together after decades of assimilation — Saul Appel has a few ideas. “Planchers have an inherent camaraderie, rising out of the closeness of the families,” he reflects. “That’s what we love, that’s what we come back for. We’re just very joyous people.” © 1999, The Jewish Week.
We gratefully acknowledge, and are thankful to Gary Rosenblatt, Editor and Publisher of The Jewish Week, and the author, Ms. Hilary Larson, for their permission to reproduce this article on the web site. Click here for the Home Page of The Jewish Week
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