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Survival in PlontchThe Story of Abe, Walter, and Carl Kaufman
By Abraham Kaufman
I was born on January 1, 1920 in the village of Polaniec, Poland, 150 kilometers south of Cracow. My earliest recollection is of my first visit to Hebrew School at age 3. I was taken there by my cousin, Maury Nissenbaum. My melamed (teacher) was an old man who lived three houses away from us. Our village was very small - 1,000 people of whom 150 were Jewish. Our family was better off than most. This is how we lived: we owned our land, and our wooden house consisted of two extremely large rooms. My mother and father slept in one bedroom, and my two brothers, two sisters and myself slept in our large kitchen. In the summer, it was not unusual for us to sleep in the cool hayloft and to swim in the river behind our property. Rachael, my eldest sister, was born five years before me. My brother Walter was three years younger than i, and the last to be born were the twins, Carl and Sarah, three years after Walter.
We always had plenty to eat. My father was a
butcher and also rented a fruit orchard from a Gentile farmer, and harvested and
sold the fruit to wholesalers. Kosher butchers in Poland were permitted to sell
both Kosher and non-Kosher meat (hind quarters) on the honor system. We owned
several cows and a barn, and our corner house had a fence, a sign of modest
prosperity. In most other ways we lived like everyone else, even those extremely
poor families who were our neighbors. We had no car, not even a horse and wagon.
Everyone went on foot. There was no electricity, nor was there running water and
we had to use an outhouse. Nevertheless, my family never felt deprived and, as I
said, we were better off than others.
There was a very old synagogue in our village built 600 years ago by the Polish King Casimir the Great, and it was decorated with beautiful paintings of animals on its ceiling. Our rabbi was paid by the Polish government! Each Friday before Shabbos the shammes banged on every Jewish door with his hammer to summon people to prayer. On Selichot the summons came at midnight. Our family, which had worshipped at that synagogue for generations always sat in the same seats. We also had a Belt Hamidrash, study hall. I remember my mother sending food for Se'udah Shlishit (the third Shabbos meal, accompanied by a study session) - mashed potatoes, borscht and stuffed derma. Each Shabbos, a Gentile woman went from house to house lighting the fire and milking the cows.
Because we didn't have enough land to grow our own hay, we bought hay from a local priest, and sent our cows out to pasture with local farmers. Vegetables were plentiful, and in the fall when we stocked up we stored potatoes in our cellar in very high piles. Our beets and carrots were stored in a hole in the ground outside, which was covered with straw. Because we had no electricity and no refrigeration, our meat had to be slaughtered every other day. We drank the milk from our cows and the remainder was made into butter and cheese by my mother. Even the waste liquid from cheese making was saved to be fed to the calves. My mother also made preserves from pears and berries and even from pumpkins.
I have a very vivid recollection of my sister's wedding, arranged through a shadchen (matchmaker) in the next town. It was a grand event. For the occasion my father had a whole steer slaughtered, and all the food had to be prepared within two days because of the lack of refrigeration. All the relatives came to help and my mother supervised. The wedding took place under the chupah we kept in the shul. Then everyone came back to our house for the reception. All the furniture had been moved out. As was the custom, 10 to 15 poor people showed up because they had heard there was a wedding and, of course, they were not turned away.
There were no Gentile guests at my sister's wedding since we never socialized together, the main reason being we could not eat non-Kosher food in a Gentile home. However, some of our neighbors did look in through the window, Jew and Gentile alike.
Wedding guests came from far away by the only means of public transportation - horse and wagon rented in the public square. In the snows of winter this became horse and sled. The only time travel was difficult was during the Spring thaw when the unpaved roads turned to mud. The main road ran right in front of our house, and I often remember my father freeing stuck carriages by placing logs under the wheels.
We lived in relative harmony with our Gentile neighbors. While we had no social contact with them, we often had business dealings. Government officials and police treated Jew and Gentile equally and there was no overt anti-Semitism. Occasionally the kids in school called us names, but we gave it right back to them.
The Jewish youth in our village held meetings in our home of the Shomer Hatzair, the young people's Zionist organization. The Mizrachi rented a room next to our barn for this purpose, and the young people learned history. The older members sometimes held dances.
Any news of the outside world was sparse, mostly brought in by travelers and letters. We had no newspapers. At Pesach we looked forward to receiving matzohs from our relatives in America. And so we lived until one Friday morning in 1939 when we heard from the local (Jewish) doctor - who owned the only crystal radio - that Germany had invaded Poland.
On that Friday morning in 1939, before Yom Kippur, most of our townspeople gathered in the yard of the village doctor who owned the crystal radio. We listened to news of the Nazi invasion of Poland. At the time we Jews had no idea of the particular danger to our people. Most of us clustered there were farmers, including several German farmers who had lived in our village for a long time. Almost immediately, the Polish police began to arrest these German farmers but many of them ran away. Within a week of the broadcast the Nazis had conquered almost all of Poland. Then the German farmers returned with rifles and stole goods from the Jewish shops. At the same time, Nazi soldiers arrived and emptied merchandise from the shops onto the streets for the local Poles to take. It became clear to us that the Jews were being singled out for special attention. The Nazis established a Judenrat (a bureau of Jewish affairs run by Jews). They began conscripting our boys and girls to work in their Polish munitions factories. The Polish youth, however, were sent to factories in Germany. All Jews had to wear yellow armbands.
Travelers arriving told of frightening events in some big cities. Of the city of Mielec they told the following story: Before Yom Kippur it was customary to "shlug kippurim" which meant a person slung a live chicken around his head which was meant to transfer his sins to the chicken. During this ritual, he said to the chicken "Mir tzim leiben und dier tsum toyte" (I should live and you should die). Then he would go to the slaughterhouse to have the chicken killed. However, at the "shlugging kippurim" in Mielec several days before, the Nazis had rounded up the participants and the schochet (slaughterer), herded them into their synagogue - sealed it and burned everyone to death inside. Some witnesses, horrified, had run to our village and related the story. Actually, it seemed a little safer in our village of Polaniec because there were no Nazis stationed there, only periodic patrols.
We received an official order from the Nazis forbidding the slaughter of any meat (by Jews or Poles alike) since they needed it for their troops. We managed to hide enough food from day to day to survive, and there was an active black market although this was punishable by death. At great risk, Kosher slaughtering took place secretly in a local barn. The black market was run mainly by those storekeepers whose shops had been destroyed, but everyone who could, Poles and Jews, dealt in the black market. It was the way I survived from the end of 1939 to 1942. I would take off my yellow arm- band and act like a Pole.
In early 1942, the deportations began to "work camps" which we later learned were concentration camps. If a person escaped from a camp, the Nazis retaliated by shooting every tenth person. One of my uncles was killed because he was a tenth man. In 1942 after Succoth the Nazis surrounded our village (ours was one of the last to be affected). We were given a few minutes to assemble in the square. Expecting our deportation, we had sold anything of value, including furniture. Everyone was crying. My father said to me: "Take your brother and go." I asked "But where?" My father replied "I don't know, I'm too old to run."
In the general confusion, my brother Walter and I snuck through the guards surrounding the town, leaving behind my parents and my sister Sarah. Carl, her twin, was visiting my elder sister, Rachel, who was married and living in another town. After walking about 3 kilometers, we came upon heavy woods and encountered other Jewish people from our town who had similarly escaped. For three days we stayed together in the woods with nothing to eat. On the third night, we decided to return to our village, and we found the Jewish section to be a ghost town. Deserted, its houses had walls and floors ripped apart. Most of us had buried money, jewelry and other valuables before we left and now dug them up. The precious Torahs from our synagogue, we found out, had been cut up and used as insulation around Polish houses to keep the wind out of the cracks.
We didn't know where to go. It was fall. We were cold and hungry Then, someone heard of a group of Jews in the next town of Pacanow so we headed there… and we were joyously reunited with my father, mother and sister. They had also managed to escape from Polaniec. We stayed together for a week and then my mother told me she had left shirts and other clothing with a neighboring Polish family five kilometers from town. She thought it might be safe now to retrieve them, so Walter and I prepared to leave that evening. How could we know then it was the last time we would see our parents?
Walter and I walked a long distance and came upon a farmhouse. We knocked at the window and the farmer opened it and gave us food, and that evening we slept in his barn. In the morning he informed us that it wasn't safe to go back to Pacanow because the Nazis had surrounded the town and were deporting everyone. We knew then that our family was lost.
We were afraid to continue our journey to the neighbor who had our clothes, and we kept on wandering but there was nowhere to go. Nobody would let us in. We started to cry like babies. Finally, we snuck into another barn and for several days were given food by the farmer. What he didn't know was that we were sleeping in his barn at night. When he asked where we were staying, we replied "In the woods". As it turned out, he, Mr. Drodsiarke, was a leader of the Polish Underground which had now turned against the Jews. If he had been found helping us in any way, it would have angered the other members of the Underground. He sent us for a time to a relative's house, and it was then that we found Carl. We spotted him walking down the street from a hole in the attic wall, and sent someone to get him before he was caught. Carl told us how he had escaped: during the deportations in my sister's village, he had tired on the long walk to the transport train and slid into a deep ditch at the side of the road. He hid there for a while and wandered into this town.
When we could no longer stay where we were, Mr. Drodsiarke suggested: "There is a house, not far near the river. A mother and daughter used to live there but both were killed by the Underground for informing to the Germans. You can stay there."
We found the house. The roof was made of straw. We removed a little of the straw and crawled into the attic where we hid for a time. We returned periodically to the Drodsiarke farm, and on one such visit we asked him about another farmer named Majsak who had done business with my father and who we wanted to ask to hide us. His reply: "I don't trust him but if you can live a few days longer it's worth the chance. Go!"
We arrived at the Majsak farm. He lived with his wife, son, and two daughters in one room and in the other room his mother-in-law lived with her three grown boys. "If you hide us." we told him, "you'll be the richest farmer in Poland after the war." He thought about it and told us to come back in a few days but as we were leaving, we heard his children exclaim, "No, Pop, they'll kill us." He repeated, however, his instructions to us to return.
Something about our conversation led me to believe Mr. Majsak would hide us, and for a long period of time. As we left his farm, walking the five kilometers (3 miles) back to Mr. Drodsiarke's place, a strange thing happened. It was a considerable distance to travel, barefoot, on frozen ground, and it seemed to me I was being transported, lifted above ground, so that we arrived at our destination floating, rather than walking. When I asked Walter about it, he said he hadn't had the same experience. I can only attribute it to my belief (and relief) that finally someone would hide us on a permanent basis.
We stayed with Mr. Drodsiarke several more days and then returned to the Majsak farm, as instructed. He had prepared our hiding place - chopped up a great deal of wood as high as the ceiling right next to the barn, leaving a little hole in the wood pile just big enough for us to slide through. The barn itself was a storage place for rye, and this little area between the barn and the woodpile would be our hideout for the next two years. It was August 1, 1942. I was 22 years old, Walter was 19, and Carl was 16.
Mr. Majsak had prepared a hole in a woodpile inside a small shed adjacent to his barn. Three walls of the shed were fashioned from reeds and the front wall was made of slats, so there was very little protection from the cold. It was December 1, 1942 when my two brothers and myself entered what would be our hideout for a very long time.
Since the space was low, we could neither sit nor stand but sort of had to recline. It was always dark and our hours, days, months were spent waiting - waiting for outside sounds to amuse us.... the sound of birds, the sound of workmen threshing the rye in the barn, the sounds of doors opening and closing (we could tell who it was after awhile), the sounds of dogs barking (we were able to identify specific dogs). Most of all, we waited for Mr. Majsak to bring us food when he fed the pigs nearby, always first looking around to see if anyone was there. If Germans were in the area, he would fill the entrance hole in our woodpile and take his family to the fields, ready to run himself if we were found out. We rarely left our hiding place for five months, except to go to the bathroom outside in the open behind the barn.
Incredibly, although the house they all shared was roughly twelve feet away, neither Mr. Majsak's mother-in-law nor her three boys ever knew we were there. Mr. Majsak considered it too risky as they were very fearful people.
One day, from our hideout, we listened to a group of workmen discuss us while threshing rye. They had heard that our entire family was dead. including myself and my brothers. Mr. Majsak, who was with them, said that he had heard the same rumor, obviously doing so to protect our safety. It was a strange feeling to listen to people speak of you as dead and to be glad they thought so.
One night, while the three of us were huddled together in our torn pants which we had patched with straw, sleeping under the feather blanket we had been able to salvage from home, my father appeared to me in a dream. He was all in white in what seemed to be a shroud and was wringing his hands. He spoke to us through his tears: "Oh, my children. how you suffer!" Then he lifted up the corner of our blanket and covered us. I woke up suddenly, very frightened, to the blackness of the barn. We had long supposed our parents to be dead, and while my father appeared very much alive during my dream, this somehow at the same time confirmed his death.
In the spring of 1943. after so much time in our hideout, we decided we had to get out for awhile. We had waited for the rye to grow high enough so that we could move about undetected in the woods and fields. Shortly after leaving, we were happy to find other Jewish neighbors - one family with three children and a man named Aaron and his wife. We camped together for two weeks in the bushes near a big river, like the Hudson, and even did a little cooking. We had just washed and hung our clothes to dry when the Polish underground discovered us and without warning we were surrounded. They began firing machine guns and we scattered as we ran. Aaron's wife was killed. In my panic, I fell over my brother, Walter, and we each bolted in a different direction. Fortunately, coming upon a patch of bushes, I hid there, so frightened that all my teeth hurt terribly and I couldn't seem to breathe. I believed my brothers and Aaron to be dead and remained there until evening when it began to get cold and I knew I had to find shelter. Without them I couldn't bear the thought of returning to the woodpile.
I began to walk, heard a wagon, jumped into a ditch and saw something move. It was Walter and with him was Aaron. So the three of us walked back to Mr. Drodsiarke and told him what had happened. He, however, fearing for himself and being unable to help us, suggested instead that we go back to the river where we had been camping to collect our clothes which was our most pressing need, and then hide out at the river house again. Instead, we went back to another hiding place to search for Carl, and found him clothed only in a burlap sack he had taken from a clothesline. The four of us sat, back to back for warmth, shivering, and finally returned to the river house, thankful to be together.
Once in the river house, Aaron and I left Walter and Carl to try to find food. On the way Aaron stopped at a house where he thought he could obtain clothing first. While I waited outside, he entered and when he came out, he said we would have to wait for the farmer to bring clothing out to us. Instead, the farmer emerged with a band of Underground members, armed with rifles. We started to run. Aaron was shot immediately. I ran in the other direction and hid in a barn under some straw. Waiting until the next evening, I arrived at the house where we thought we could obtain food and my brothers were waiting there, having left the river house be cause they already thought me dead.
With our companion Aaron dead, it was only the three of us remaining... my brothers Walter and Carl and myself in that summer of 1943. Constantly hungry, at times we did not eat for as long as three days. We were reluctant to return to our woodpile hideout at Mr. Majsak's because being young we found it too stifling and preferred to remain outdoors, even with the risk. Besides, had we attempted to travel back and forth from the woodpile, Mr. Majsak's dogs would have alerted the neighborhood. Nor could we go back to the river house since at that time it was particularly dangerous. So we spent our days in barns and slipped out to Mr. Drodsiarske's in the dead of night for food.
In the fall of 1943, the cold weather again forced us to return to the woodpile. Slowly, we became aware that other Jews were also being hidden in the area. One person in particular was coordinating this activity -- a Mr. Korczak, a Polish farmer, who made it known to us that a former neighbor named Moishe had nowhere to stay. To bring him into our hideout, I waited for a full moon and traveled the five kilometers where Moishe waited, walking "like a rabbit" with my ears up to hear everything. The four of us now remained at Mr. Majsak's until one day we detected strange vibrations coming from the ground which proved to be heavy shooting nearby. That day, when Mr. Majsak brought us our food, he told us the Russians were in the next town. It was August 1, 1944 when they finally reached our village. After the arrival of the Russian troops, and now free to move about openly, we returned to Mr. Drodsiarske. I would like to clarify that despite Mr. Majsak's kindness, it was really Mr. Drodsiarske who was our guide and advisor, having been a former neighbor and a good friend. The occupying Russian forces dug deep ditches around our village where they remained entrenched against the Germans for five months until January, 1945. Life under the Russians was much less harsh since we were allowed to keep our food and were not harassed. Often, they even slept in the homes of villagers.
Liberated, we felt like newborns, having neither money nor clothes. We stayed with Mr. Drodsiarske, slept in his barn, ate in his house, and found work on nearby farms with villagers whom we knew to be friendly. Mr. Drodsiarske arranged shelter for others as well as ourselves, including a Jewish chemist who taught him how to raise silk from silkworms. The worms were kept on the shelves of a barn, and the chemist showed his host farmer how to grow food for the worms as well. It was of considerable interest to us all at that time. When we thought we had availed ourselves of Mr. Drodsiarske's hospitality long enough, we prepared to leave. We knew that our family's house had been sold by the government and the new owner had arranged for it to be dismantled and moved. Technically, we could have retrieved the property under Polish law but we preferred to do the following: knowing that a cousin's house had been taken over by a former neighbor - a widow with three children, we made an arrangement with her to live there in one of the four large rooms. We never did attempt to regain our property, even after the war. It just seemed to be too much trouble.
It was not long before we had an opportunity to repay, to some extent, Mr. Drodsiarske's kindness. This is what transpired: Shortly after the Russians arrived in our town, they rounded up the underground to purge the village of weapons, and Mr. Drodsiarske was included in the roundup. He was then in his late 30's. His mother, frantic, came to me, and said, "Abe, my son helped you; now please help him." She asked us to go to the authorities and explain how her son had defied the Nazis. So the three of us went to the office of the KGB and a guard stopped us and demanded identification. We told him, "We are Jews and want to see your chief." We were finally admitted to the KGB chief and explained Mr. Drodsiarske's role in our survival. However, when he asked if we had ever seen guns in his house, we lied and said no. He accepted our testimony and announced that Mr. Drodsiarske would soon be set free, but this did not happen immediately; we had to return another time to plead for his release. Finally, the KGB chief freed Mr. Drodsiarske and much to our surprise said he was coming to visit him the next night at his house. I advised Mr. Drodsiarske to prepare for his visit - buy good whiskey, collect honey from his bees, and provide a good dinner. When the KGB chief came, he ate and drank and then turned to us and said, "You know, you're lucky that you identified yourselves as Jews because I'm a Jew too and that's why your friend went free."
Our liberation in the summer of 1944 took place before that of the rest of Poland and of the concentration camps. During that time, as I said, we worked in the fields but after the summer when there was no more farm work, we began a business trading with the Russian soldiers: we would buy vodka in the next town which was 190 proof and dilute it with water, then divide it into bottles of 45 proof each. Our investment was therefore multiplied, and with the profit we purchased clothing and sold it to farmers. Within five months we had accumulated a great deal of money.
After January, 1945 the true horror of the concentration camps became known to us as it was to the rest of the world, and we began to understand how widespread it had been. At the same time, the Russians departed from our region and the Polish underground re-emerged and started killing Jews again. Understandably, after this there was a large exodus from small villages like ours to the larger cities where more Allied troops remained. Many of our townspeople were heading for Cracow where we knew we could obtain the bogus visas necessary to cross the borders and eventually reach Germany. In the American-occupied zone we could then try to contact relatives in the U.S.A. When we arrived in Cracow, in addition to getting visas, we also changed our meager Polish money to German Deutchmarks and U.S. Dollars. To hide the money, I pried open the walls and bottom of a small valise wherein I then placed a bread and salami. I also took apart and resealed a pocket mirror where I hid another $40 in American money.
Then, we purchased tickets to the Czech border and, as expected, were searched by police for money and jewelry - but my trick worked. Our money remained safe.
We arrived in Prague, Czechoslovakia, just in time for Yom Kippur services. The synagogue was packed and everyone was extremely kind. All attention on that Yom Kippur eve was focused on getting to Germany. During our short stay in Prague, the official Jewish Committee was very helpful and the Czech gentiles, also very kind, often traveled with Jews on public transportation to show them the way and even paid their fare.
A few days later, we embarked on a train to Carlsbad, Czechoslovakia, which was full of Russian soldiers. We went as far as the train would take us and then waited for nightfall to cross the border. When we heard patrols approaching, we jumped into a ditch. Able to sneak past border guards, we slept awhile, and were awakened by dogs barking. Following the sound, we arrived at a house where two American soldiers and their German girlfriends directed us to where we could hire a horse and wagon to take us to Munich.
A week after Yom Kippur, 1945, we arrived at the relocation camp in Lanzberg, Germany, and with the help of HIAS were able to contact our American relatives.
All the while maintaining contact with Mr. Majsak, Mr. Drodsiarske and Mr. Korczak, we waited in Germany for three and a half years, during which time I supported us by dealing in the black market.
On March 13. 1949, we arrived in the U.S.A. and were taken in by my mother's sister who owned a hotel in Moodus, Connecticut. All three of us worked at the hotel that summer. After that, we were split up among our various relatives. My mother had three sisters in America and my father had four. I ended up living with one of them in Brooklyn.
In 1964 I arranged papers and tickets for Mr. Majsak to come to the U.S.A. to attend the World's Fair, and in 1966 I brought over his son and presented him with a new car.
In 1970, my wife Ann and myself returned to Poland to visit our village and we were given a grand reception with people competing for a chance to put us up. In 1971 Mr. Majsak's son came to this country again to visit with us for a month. I have sent money to both families since coming to America and will continue to do so.
My brother, Walter, lives in Elmont, L.I. and is married, with three children. He works in the garment center. Carl lives in Manhattan, is married, and is a butcher, like me. We all keep in close touch. I am married, have two sons and have recently moved from Yorktown to Montgomery. N.Y.
I consider it miraculous that with all we endured we did not become sick or malnourished. I think that part of the reason we are alive now is because every day we talked about how "we have to survive." My memories, certainly, will remain with me always and I will never cease grieving for my family and for everyone lost during those days.
Very soon I will be arranging to have all
three of my righteous gentiles - Mr. Majsak, Mr. Drodslarske and Mr. Korczak
honored at the memorial of Yad Vashem.
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