Background Information:
Pilzno was a shtetl of 150 Jewish families on the
Wisloka river, 101 km east of Krakow.
Click
here for the background information on the Jews of Pilzno.
Searchable Databases
List of People or Researchers with an Interest in Pilzno
To add your name and your family connections and
e-mail or Postal Mail address, email to
Sharlene Kranz .
Families - Name - Mail
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Names of Residents of
Pilzno in 1939
Family Names of the Jews of
Pilzno before World War II
MEMOIRS:
- Abraham Louis Kranz Family by
George Kranz
- Maurice
Chilowicz
- Israel Turk
- Martin List
- Rachel Bochner
- Helen Bochner Cohen
VISITORS TO PILZNO:
Harry
Kranz (Sept. 1985)
George Bodner (Sept. 1989)
Family of Rabbi Josef
Singer (1998)
NAMES OF RESIDENTS OF PILZNO IN
1939
Remembered by Maurice Chilowicz. All perished in
the Holocaust except as noted.
List created March 1999.
The Guttman Family
Gerszon Bodner family. Leibek and Rumek survived.
Jakob Bochner Family. Son Avrum killed. Son Leizer
survived.
(Leizer is in 1946 photo; see below).
The Klauzner family.
David Zweig and family
Chaim Warowitz and family
Burech Grumet and family. Grumet's wife died of
illness before
the war; Grumet was caught, shot
and killed. His name is on the
cemetery
monument in photo (see below).
Herszel Sperber and family
Izaak Kampf and family. Son Shloime survived. (See 1946 photo)
Adel Kampf and family
The Thau family
The Schneps family. Moishe and Leib survived. (See 1946 photo)
Nechemie Wolek and family. Moishe, Shmuel and Dvora
survived.
M ordche Holzer and family.
Mendel Reiner and family
Herszel Klotz and family
Moishe Krotz and family
Chaim Schloss and family
Leib Derszowitz and family
Selig Derszowitz and family
Benjamin Derszowitz family. Benjamin survived. (See 1946 photo).
Zachariah Derszowitz, wife and two daughters
Chanine Weisman and family
Malke Weisman and family
Wolf Reich and family. Sons Josel, Shloime and Tuler survived
in the bunker with the Bochners.
Nusen Berkowitz and family
Meche Stern and family
Max Korn and family
Moisze Blumenberg and family
The Lichtenberg family
Mendel Epstein and family. Laibish survived.
Jankiel Epstein and family
Rose Epstein and family
Szmiel Baum and family
Aron Schissel and family
Binem Semel and family
Shimon Abraham and family
Elish Abraham and family
Avrum Abraham and family. One son Monek survived.
Jankiel Schindlawer and family
Mechel Flam and family . One daughter survived.
Szloime Kalb and family
Nusen List and Family. Peretz survived. (See
1946 photo)
The Ascheim family
The Treibish family. Dzunek-Bronka survived.
Shloime David Kohn and family
Chaim Schloss and family
Seryl Waisman and family
The Steinhauer family
Beryl Korn and son
Chane Tauba Einspruch
Moishe Einspruch and family
Shloime Tulipan and wife
Israel Tulipan and family
Efroim Tulipan and family
Moishe Beer and family
Beryl Turk and family. One son, Israel, survived. (See his interview below).
Avrum Turk and family
Moishe Turk and family. Three daughters survived in Israel and
USA.
Chanine Gralitzer and family
Itzek Leib Seger and family
Itzek Leib Greenberg and family. Itzek Laib survived.
Avrum Giesser and family
Hershel Giesser family
Pesel Kranz Reich (daughter of Moshe Aaron Kranz) and
sons.
Daughter Leika survived; married
Leizer Bochner. (She is in 1946 photo).
Jankiel Ateslender and family
Mechlowicz family. Meir and Shloime survived.
The Just Family
The Wurzel family. One son, Jozek survived.
Aron Forsher and family
Moishe Sroka and family
Josel Knoblauch and family
The Mendel Tanenbaum family
Berl Tanenbaum and family
Chaskiel Haber and family
Leah Sinai and family
The Schneps family. Two sons survived: Moishe and Leid.
Pesel and Leizer Bochner, children of Ruchel Laya Kranz
Bochner.
Ruchel Leah Bochner and two sons, Meilech and Hershel, and two
daughters-in-law, Esther and Shushka, one daughter Mindl, Mindl's
daughter Helen. All survived underground.
Moishe Aron Kranz and wife Gittel.
Alter Kranz and family, son Mottel.
Shloime Rosenbaum and family
The Haber family
Leibish List and family. One son, Manek, survived. (This is Martin List who
lives in California; see his interview below.)
Moishe Kirsch. Two sons, Chaim and Faivel, survived.
Isaak Trzesniawer and family
The Chaim Riemer family.
Josel Sroka and family
Rabbi Menashe Horowitz and family
The Sperber family. One daughter Hendel survived.
Faivel Schuss and family. Two sons survived.
Mordche Spirer and family
Towie Schaje and family
Jankiel Rendel and family
Zacharia Schmaie and family
Jehosua Roth and family
Josel Insel and family
Mechel Herbst and family. Daughter Zlata
survived.
The Shrang family
Eli Apfel and family. The Shoichet.
Snair Brochfeld and family. 4 survived in France.
The Montag family
The Ormianer family. One son survived.
Mendel Eisenberg and family. One son, Moishe, survived.
Michel Schonwetter and family
David Nord and family. Son Srulek survived.
Meyer Lerner family. Son Selig survived in Israel.
Chiel Reiner. Sons Mendel and Chaim Wolf survived.
Mechel Stechler and wife
Avrum Schiffman and family
Hershel Stepel and family
David Chilowicz and family. One son, Moishe, survived (this is Maurice
Chilowicz, author of this list , see 1946 photo and interview,
below)
Kalman Chilowicz (brother of David) and family. Two sons
survived.
Samuel Birnbach and family
Nathan Weindling and family
Henoch Adler and family
Joel Adler and family. One son, Fischel, survived.
Josef Beck and family
Rachel Licht and son
The Eisner Family. Son Mundek survived.
Yecht Ader. Two daughters, Rivka and Hanna, and son Monig
survived
Pinches Brust and family
Josel Brust and family
David Kaufman and wife
Moishe Linder and 3 sons survived; wife and daughter did
not
Josel Sturm and family
Chaim Frieman and family survived in Russia
Mendel Frieman and family
Chane Zucker and daughter
Izaak Sperber and family
Josel Balsam and family
Nusen Tanenbaum and family
Klein Mintz and family
The Holzer family
The Schell family
Jankel Katzner and family. Three sons, 1 daughter survived.
Mordche Spielvogel and family
Jente Spielvogel and family
Shloime Kuhnwald and family
Feige Berkowicz and daughter. Two sons and one daughter
survived.
The Insdorf family
Esther Sandhaus and family
David Fingerhut and family
Josel Schloss and family.
FAMILY NAMES OF
JEWS IN PILSNO BEFORE WORLD WAR II
REMEMBERED BY ARYE BODNER OF ISRAEL, RELATIVE OF GEORGE
BODNER OF PORTLAND, OREGON
Mayer Lerner, father-in-law of Mottel Chilowicz, Maurice's
brother
Shlomo Epstein, businessman, died before the war
Jacob Epstein, businessman, killed with 7 children brothers
Mendel Epstein, one son survived the war
Pinhas Bochner
Rabbi Menasha Horowitz, son of Bezalel ( Menasha was the Rabbi
when the war began)
Chazkel Sinai, tailor, killed by Germans
Aryon Grapschrict, businessman: lumber yard; relative of Shushka
Bochner
Mendel Klausner, a poor man, killed in war
Jacob Bochner, brother of Pinchas
David North, businessman
Michael Schonwetter, shoe store
Lazar Weiss, older man, father-in-law of D. North and M.
Eisenberg
Mendel Eisenberg, businessman, one son survived
Montag, glazier
Wiesenfeld, died before the war
Tovya Orniner, died before the war
Weinberger, saloon, moved away before the war
Schneyer Brachfeld, pottery store
Hershel Gieser, egg business, died before the war
Harry Shmaya, coat and mortar business, also a small grocery
Yankel Rendel, brother-in-law of Harry Shmaya
Sussman
Abraham Cohen
Schmuel Steinhauer, died before the war
Shia Steinhauer
Abraham Giese, family died before the war
Beryl Spiera, butcher
Moshe Ber, sextant
Alter Weissman
Mort Treivich
Schloss
Gabriel and Moshe Einspruch, brothers. Gabriel married Chaya
Kranz; he died before the war. Moshe was killed in the war.
Abraham Einspruch, son of Gabriel, went to NY
Chaim Freeman, exported meat, survived in Russia
Yosef Brust, ready-made suits, killed in the war
Chana Zucher, milk
Shia Sperber
Mechel Stern, shoes, in 1924 photo with child; killed in the war
Shloime Kalb, repaired pots
Mechel Flam, had a store, and horse & buggy
Shloime David Cohen, baker; killed in the war
Natan Berkowitz, died before the war
Wolf Reich, shoe store, had 3 sons who survived in the bunker with
the Bochners
Esther Sandhaus, soda fountain, made seltzer
Solomon Mayer Kranz
Alter Kranz, son Mottel; had a fish store.
Moshe Linder, yard goods, survived with 3 sons in Russia, but wife
and daughter were killed in the war
David Fingerhut, tailor
Samuel Baum, candy store, sons Chaim and Leibish; none survived
Beryl Tanenbaum, grocery store, died before the war
Leah Semel Blumenberg, killed in the war
Gastwirt
Binash Leicht, died before the war, sold lingerie
Yoel Adler, hardware store
Stepel Sackel, hardware store
Itzak Scheshniaver, 7 children, none survived
Shimon Abraham, store keeper, killed with his wife
Abraham Abraham, Shimon's brother
Chaim Reimer
Feibel Kirsch, and his father Moishe; hardgoods; went to Israel
before the war
Abraham Turk, cattle dealer
Moshe Turk, grain dealer
Beryl Turk
Milchman
Leo List, son Martin lives in California
Nathan List, son Peretz lives in NY
Kampf
Eli Furst
Fivel Schuss, 3 sons survived in Russia
Kalman Chilowicz, Maurice's uncle
David Chilowicz, Maurice's father
Selig Derszowitz and his brother Binyamin Derszowitz
Leo Leib Derszowitz, their father; married Esther Parizer, the sister
of Malka
Parizer who was Mordche Bodner's wife.
Zacharia Derszowitz
Mordche Bodner, went to Tarnow before the war with wife Malka,
sons
Arye (the author of this list), Jacob, Chaim, daughter Chana
Gershon Bodner, to Tarnow before the war with wife, sons Leib,
Abraham and Herman
Israel Tulipan, married to Leah Bodner, sister of Mordche and
Gershon
Ephraim Tulipan, Israel's brother
Chaim Tulipan, Israel's brother
Shlomo Tulipan, Chaim's son
Samuel Binam
Samuel Wolf
Max Kohn, bar/restaurant, son Aaron
Asher Ader, son of Yechi Ader, the first Jew to live in Pilzno.
Asher died before the war. Grandson Howard Ader lives in
California.
Joseph Balsam, bar owner, killed in war
Jacob Katzner, Jacques Katzner's grandfather
Abraham Kienwald, cousin to Maurice Chilowicz
Wolf Berkowitz, died before the war; one son and two daughters
survived
Moshe Eisner, his son Mundig, a lawyer, survived
Mechel Herbst
Ellie Apfel, shoichet, killed with his children in the war
Yechi Reiner, parents killed with their daughters; 2 sons survived
PHOTO OF TALMUD TORAH SCHOOL
OF PILZNO, 1924
Photo donated by
Maurice Chilowicz. Students identified by Maurice
Chilowicz.
Top Row, left to right: Chaim Baum, Shloime Mechlevicz,
Tulek Katzner, Moice Epstein, Aron Chilowicz, Hershel Bochner, Nussel
Kampf, Shia Sperber, Hazkel Kohn, Itzik Brust, Ichik Katzner, Henig
Bodner, Yankel Brust, Fulek Geiser.
Second row, left to right: Chaim Tulipan (teacher, shamos),
Ephroim Tulipan (nephew of Chaim), Hershel Lerner, Chaim Epstein,
____ Schall, Chiel Turk, Chamek Herbst, Shloime Tulipan* (teacher,
son of Chaim), Avrum Bodner, Nissel Thau, Fulek Freeman, Hershel
Apfel, Mendel Reiner.
Third row down, left to right: Mottel Hochberg, Usher
Mechlovicz, Shimen Schonwetter, Zreil Apfel, Yurma Herbst, Leibish
Apfel, Chaim Reiner, Nussen Schindlawer, Pincus Apfel, Saul
Eisenberg, Shia Wollek.
Bottom row, left to right: Maurice Chilowicz, Mayim
Mechlowicz, _____ Pelz, Chiel Kohn, Chaim Berkowicz, Itzak Stern,
Nussen Montag, Monik Brust, Yankel Hochberg, Zamus Insel, Wolf
Tanenbaum, Elik Linder, Simche Waxpress.
*"You can see Shloime Tulipan is holding a long stick. When
you were bad he hit you over the head."--Maurice Chilowicz.
Memoirs:
This Pilzno Shtetlinks Page was written
by Sharlene Kranz, whose grandfather Abraham Louis (Avram Leib) Kranz
was born in Pilzno, Province of Galicia, in 1893. He was the
last of 24 children sired by his father; he was born six months after
his father's death and was named for him. Abraham Louis Kranz
came to New York City in 1910 to join his brother George, a house
painter. George wrote these memories of their early life
together to Sharlene's father.
ABRAHAM LOUIS KRANZ
FAMILY
Letter from George Kranz to Harry Kranz,
1960:
My father Avrum Leib Kranz, son of Eli Meilech Kranz of Notzgova,
was born in Notzgova, Poland (near Sedziszow) and lived in
Pilzno. He was the cantor, the mohel, the dajan, the baal
koreh, the register of births and deaths and the wedding performer,
and teacher of Hebrew and Yiddish. With his first wife
Chana Zweifach, he had 14 children, of whom only two reached
adulthood: Moishe Aaron Kranz (born 1869), and Ruchel Leah Kranz
Bochner (born 1874).
After Chana's death, Avrum Leib married Chaya Bisgayer.
Chaya's mother's name was Rebecca; Rebecca's sisters were Bella and
Raisel. Chaya and her mother were both born in Pilzno.
Our mother Chaya bore 10 children to our father. The first 3
children died very young, I never saw them. Then came sisters
Yetta, Bella and Lena, then a sister named Yehudis, she died when she
was about 8 or 9 years old. After that, in Oct. 1889, I was
born. Two years later another son was born, Noah, I remember
him very well, he died at about 8 or 9 years old.
In 1887 or so, our father went to America. There was a
Pilzno Society in New York, not the one that is existing today which
my brother and I and Chaim Adler reorganized in 1912, but a more
religious society which had their own school. They imported
your Zeida to daavin for them in their synagogue on the High
Holidays, but he didn't stay that long, only about 3 or 4 months,
because to quote his words 'America is not kosher, even the stones
are trefe there.' Another reason was that the Pilzno community
in Pilzno also wanted him for the High Holidays. So they
brought him back, promising to settle all differences to his
satisfaction. As a result, they bought for him a large 2 room house,
in which we all lived comfortably and he also conducted his school in
it. At that time we were a very happy family, honored and
respected by the whole city, until your Zeida took sick. A few
weeks later he died, on the 2nd day of Passover, 1893. Your
father was born six months later and was named for his father.
Our mother was left a widow with 7 children, your dad was a
nursing baby. I remember reciting the Kadish a whole year, but
could not say it by myself. Your grandmother had a hard life.
The only material thing she had left was the house to live in but no
other means of support for her 7 children. Mother took
over the school, teaching the girls only. Parents wouldn't send their
boys to a lady teacher.
By that time sister Yetta was about 12 years old, she already had 5
or 6 years of Public school education, she was the big girl, so her
duty was to take care of the baby, your father, and to help mother in
the teaching. Your father was a nice healthy looking baby and we all
played with him and this made our mother very happy. Sister Bella,
10, and sister Lena, 8, their duty was to help in the house work and
the cooking. Teaching the girls did not bring in enough money,
so mother had to do something to supplement her income. She got
herself a stand from where she sold soap, spices, yeast, and
different cereals in bulk.
When we grew up a little, your father and I worked as a team. The
bazaar was only on Mondays, so every Monday morning we had to build
up the stand and in the evening we had to dismantle it and bring home
the unsold goods. The customers came from the surrounding country,
some of them bought on credit. So mother had to go collecting. They
paid with farm products such as chickens, eggs, grain, even potatoes
and beans. These products had to be carried to the city, and what we
didn't need for ourselves to eat had to be sold. Your father and I
built a sleigh for the winter season and a wagon for the summer to
cart the produce. It was not only labor, we had a lot of fun pulling
each other on the way out and even with a full load, down the hills.
As your Aunties grew older, it was time to talk about a "Shydech",
matrimonial talk, there were many nice boys who wanted to marry them
because our sisters were beautiful, well mannered, and
respected. But without a dowry it was hard to find the right
suitor. So they decided to follow the crowd, to go to America.
Yetta, being the oldest, went first, in 1900. One of Ruchel Leah
Bochner's relatives had a brother in NY, Joe Bochner. He
sent a ticket for Yetta. One year later Yetta sent a ticket for
Bella, who didn't care to go so Lena went instead, she was about 18.
Lena sent a ticket for me. By this time Bella was married in
Pilzno, to Moishe Milgrom, a carpenter, so her husband used my ticket
and they went to New York. Bella had learned from a Bochner sister to
make wigs for the Jewish married ladies, and they had saved up some
money.
Now it was a little easier for our mother. Once in awhile
she received a letter and a few dollars from her married daughters in
America and she had her two beloved sons near her, but she still kept
up her school. During those years your father and I were great pals.
In addition to public school, we went to Jewish School. Fanny Falek's
father was our Yiddish teacher. At the age of 16 I had already
finished my 3 years apprenticeship as a house painter. When your dad
became Bar Mitzvah, at 13 he became apprentice to a baker.
In those years 1907 08 09 we joined a Zion Club in Pilzno,we
played chess and checkers, we listened to lectures and took part in
discussions, we got acquainted with Yiddish literature; our favorite
author was Sholom Aleichem. In the winter months 1909-10 we began
talking about going to America. Our mother didn't need us anymore,
she married again. Also, I had reached military age and was about to
be drafted into the Austrian army. Sister Yetta and Paul Hirschman
sent me a ticket; receiving the ticket had to be kept secret from the
Military Commission. I arrived in New York May 1910.
Chaya had two more husbands: Hyman Fogel, and lastly Yosef S.
Einspruch, a widower with one son, Abraham Einspruch.
Chaya died Dec. 29, 1933 in Pilzno, of natural causes.
Moishe Aaron Kranz, son of Avram Leib Kranz, was born in Pilzno in
1869. He married Gittel Haber in 1889; they sold yard goods at
the weekly market day in Pilzno. Moishe Aaron was a founder of
the Talmud Torah Hebrew school in Pilzno (see photo). He and
his wife were killed by the Nazis, July 1942, in Pilzno.
According to Moishe Aaron's nephew Harry Bochner, an eyewitness
to their deaths, Moishe Aaron and Gittel "were shot by
the Germans in the ritual bath with twenty other Jews on Tishabov,
July 1942 in Pilzno."
The Jews of Pilzno were rounded up by the Nazis July 21-25,
l942 and taken to the nearby town of Debica, placed on trains and
taken to the Belzec death camp. During those four days 12,000
Jews from Pilzno and its surrounding towns were deported to
Belzec. All were gassed at Belzec. (In the death camp of
Belzec, all but a handful of deportees were gassed shortly after
their arrival. From March to December 1942 between 550,000 and
580,000 Jews were gassed at Belzec. See Belzec, Sobibor,
Treblinka, by Yitzhak Arad, Indiana Univ. Press, l987.)
Moishe Aaron and Gittel had eight children. Six of
Moishe Aaron's children perished in the holocaust. Only Freidel
in Uruguay and Wolf in America survived.
Avrum Leib Kranz's daughter Ruchel Leah Kranz was born in 1874 in
Pilzno. She married Pinkus Bochner in Pilzno in about 1895 and
had eight children: Hannah, Freda, Max, Lazar, Pescl (Paula), Mindl
(Minnie), Michael and Harry. Pinkus died in 1914 at age 36 of
cholera. (His youngest son Harry was 6 months old). Pinchus was a
dealer in animal hides, selling in Tarnov and Dembitz.
Hannah, Max, and Freda came to America in the 1920's. Ruchel
Leah survived the war by hiding in a bunker, buried with her sons
Harry and Michael and her daughter Mindle. Lazar and Pescl did
not survive the war; their names are on the monument
in the Pilzno Jewish cemetery (see photo)..
Ruchel Leah Bochner came to America in Feb. 1947 at age 73 on
the SS Marine Perch and lived in Jersey City with her daughter Hannah
at 272 Hutton St. She died there March 31, 1954 of a heart
attack. Ruchel is buried in the Pilzno plot at New Montefiore
Cemetery, Queens, NY.
Maurice Chilowicz and the Story of
Pilzno.
Compiled from:
Letter from Maurice Chilowicz to Harry Kranz,
May 5, 1986; and
Interview by Sharlene Kranz, Forest Hills, NY,
Jan. 18, 1999
I was born in Pilzno on Dec. 22, 1918. My Jewish name is Moshe
Yankele. My father's name was David Chilowicz, my mother
Sabina. My father was born in 1885. His brother Itzhak
and his sister Esther Kirschbaum came to the U.S. before the
war. I had four brothers and a sister. My father is
not in the 1924 synagogue photo. He had no time for that, he
was a businessman, a wholesale grocer. He was on the city
council. My father supported half the town. On Mondays
for market day, people borrowed money from my father to buy
merchandise, then after the market they paid him back.
The towns around Pilzno were very small, smaller than
villages. The Jews were clustered in Pilzno. They came
for the High Holy Days to Pilzno from the little villages. Most
of the Jews were merchants, some had cows, a horse to come to
town. Pilzno had 150 Jewish families, about 600 people.
The pictures from 1924 were taken the same day to show the
people in America what their money had built. Our rabbi was
Menasha Horowitz.
-
-
INTERVIEW WITH ISRAEL
TURK
via e-mail with Sharlene Kranz and Dov Rubin, March
1999.
Tell me about your family.
I was born in Pilzno in 1925. My father was Berel (Dov), born
about 1892 and murdered in 1942; my mother was Rachel Reiss Turk,
born in the village of Lubzin. My grandfather was Israel Turk, died
1924. Israel's brother was Zvi Josef. Their parents were Berel (Dov)
and Kayle. They all lived in Pilzno and were buried in the Jewish
cemetery in Pilzno. I was 15 when the Germans deported me and my
family and relatives to the extermination camp, I am the only
survivor from my parents, brothers, sisters and relatives. My father
died in 1942 in Pustkow, the labor camp. My brothers Leib, born 1921,
and Michael, born 1923, died in Auschwitz Sept. 1942. My mother and
sisters Sarel, born 1928 and Ester, born 1931, and all the relatives
from Pilzno were murdered in Belzec July 1942. I came to the United
States in 1951, and I have lived in Los Angeles since 1966. My wife
Lili survived Auschwitz, and we met in a displace persons camp in
Sweden after the war. In the pat 20 years I have visited the memorial
in Pilzno many times, but it is getting harder to travel, and Los
Angeles to Poland is a long trip.
Our house was one level, four rooms and a kitchen. It was built
from large logs, the floors were wooden boards, it was quite
difficult for my mother to scrub them every week. There was a large
wood stove and a large stone oven to keep the house warm; we also had
a large baking oven where my mother baked the bread, challas and
cakes weekly, and every year before Pesach all our relatives in
Pilzno came to our house where we helped each other in baking our
Matzos.
Every Friday afternoon my father, me and my brothers went to the
public Jewish bathhouse. There were bathtubs with hot water, and also
a large sauna but I could handle it. The mikva for my mother was on
another day with the women at the bathhouse.
We did not have electricity until 1937.
Our neighbors were all Catholic.
We had horses and chickens, no other animals.
Our synagogue in Pilzno wa called Bais Medrish, it means house of
learning. There were long tables where young and older children were
sitting and learning, until our Talmud Torah was built in 1924.
Since the Nazis, a Polish family moved in to our house and the
third generation of this family lives there. In addition, they have
built more houses on our land.
Pilzno was a small town but it had everything. There were several
Jewish organizations, of which no Hasidic children were members, an
Akiva club, Hanoar, Mizrachi, Shomer Hozoar, and many others
including Batar. Most activities in these clubs was Saturday after
dinner. We would gather, and there was entertainment, discussions,
personal contacts and dance. During summers groups would go out near
the pine forest about a couple of miles away for entertainment and
lectures.
Tell me about the synagogue:
The synagogue was built of brick, probably about a hundred years
old, where my Great-Great-Grandfather who also lived in Pilzno
attended services. There re several Safer Torahs, the Talmud Torah
had their own Safer Torahs, Rabbi Manashe Horovic had his own Safer
Torahs at his residence, where many Jews in Pilzno often attended
services. The mikva and the building where the shochet killed the
chickens was located on the same grounds, except a little river
separated the synagogue and the talmud torah from the other
buildings. I t was very beautifully located. During the time
especially near and on the High Holy Days we felt like talking to
God, I know it is difficult to understand or imagine the experience
on that level.
Tell me about your childhood?
I do not think that any child could be more happy than I was, all
the fun was while I was in Cheder, while other children were learning
I and others were playing and catching fish and frogs in the river,
until it was our turn for learning, about a mile away there was a
large river where I and my brothers and friends went swimming
whenever time permitted. We also lived near another river during the
winter I was sliding down the steep canyon and many times I went into
the river because the ice broke, but that was part of having fun. But
it is only memories, we were the only Jews living in a Catholic
neighborhood but I and my brothers and sisters were never threatened
until 1939 when hell let lose.
Did you know Maurice Chilowicz in Pilzno?
When I knew Maurice Chilowicz, his name was Moshe Yankele, I was
about 13 years old and he was about 20, and the only chasid among his
siblings. He was wearing a black coat. He also had a little stutter
in his speech. One of his brothers, Aron, was the first one killed by
the Germans in 1939 on Rosh Hashanah eve when he was forced by the
Nazis to deliver a 50 gal. barrel of kerosene to our synagogue to set
fire to the synagogue and the Talmud Torah which were next door to
each other.
Did you know Ruchel Laya Bochner and her children?
I knew Ruchel Laya Bochner's husband passed away before the war.
She had three sons, Laizer, Hershel and Mailech and two daughters.
They had a grocery store and other businesses, when the Germans
occupied Pilzno Hershel joined a committee the Juden Rat who selected
Jews in Pilzno for slave labor, after all Jews from Pilzno were
deported to the death camp of Belzec, Ruchel Laya and her sons were
hiding during the Holocaust in a cement bunker which they had built
in a field near the Jewish cemetery, and after the war they lived in
New York.
Did you know Shlumy Mayer Kranz?
He was not married, was involved with the business in purchasing
and selling farmers live stock. In July 1942 he was sent to the death
camp of Belzec. I also knew Aaron and Wolf Kranz, age 17 and 15
during the holocaust. They were hiding in a large water tank at the
Jewish public bathhouse, but they were discovered by the Poles and
taken to the Germans and shot. I wish I could write something better
but this is the story and tragedy of our people.
Tell me about your education:
At the age of five I was signed up five days a week from nine to
five with one hour for lunch, but we had constantly intermissions
while others were learning, we only had four classrooms, the teachers
were permanent and strict, in the beginning I was learning writing
and writing Yiddish and Hebrew and after chumish, Rashi and Gemurah,
at age of seven I was signed up for public school, from 8am to 1pm,
at two after lunch I attended Talmud Torah (Cheder) including Sunday
all day. In 1940 our Rabbi was Menasha Horowitz.
INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN LIST
March 28, 1999.
My name is Martin List. I was born in Pilzno in 1929. My
parents were Leib List, who was born in the nearby town of
Brzotek, and Lottie (Leah) Braun, who was born in Pilzno. My
father's parents were Zalman and Rose List of Brzotek. I never knew
my mother's parents. I had three siblings, sisters named Nina (Necha)
who was 18 when she was killed, and Rose, who was 9; and a brother
named Joseph who was 2 years older than me. He was shot and killed
outside Pilzno by the police when he was 16. My father's, sister's
and brother's names are on the monument in the Pilzno cemetery.
My father's business was the exporting of food stuffs to Germany
and Silesia.
I had a happy childhood, and went to Cheder for half a day and
then public school for half the day, starting when I was 7. We had
two synagogues inn town, and the Talmud Torah. I never had a Bar
Mitzvah. I am now an atheist, but a dedicated Zionist. When I was 7 I
fell in love with my teacher, a nice local shiksa. Every day I would
bring her flowers. I studied arithmetic, reading and writing, and
history. I went for the first 3 years of public school. Then when the
German's came into town in Sept. 1939 they kicked the Jews out of the
public schools.
The synagogue was a nice building, wood, accommodating a few
hundred people. It also had a shtable, a little room where smaller
groups could pray on weekdays. The Talmud Torah housed the Cheder,
across from the synagogue. It also housed the local Jewish council
and the rabbinical court.
As a boy for fun we had sleighs, and skiing in the winter, and
swimming and fishing in the rivers in the summer. The little town was
like a country estate.
My parents house was made of wood, simple, we got electricity
about 1937. My father was not very involved in the synagogue. But my
mother was a religious woman, and we celebrated the Jewish holidays
in our house.
Most of my friends were Jews, but some not. Many of our neighbors
were not Jews. The relationship was always a tense one. The Poles
would sing songs that we should go back to Palestine.
On Market Day, Monday, most of the merchants were Jews. They had
little stalls on pushcarts. It was like a holiday, everybody was out.
Things started to change in 1939, when the Germans came, with the
burning of the synagogue and the Talmud Torah, and shootings. Maurice
Chilowicz's brother was one of the first to be shot. They ordered the
Jews to surrender their gold, their furs, and they would beat us.
Toward 1941 they set up a labor camp nearby, Pustkow, and took the
young men making them building roads to nowhere and crush stone, to
break them down. They were allowed to go home every two weeks; if
they didn't go home, their families would be killed. The workers at
Pustkow were starved and beaten and shot. Starting in 1942 we began
hearing that people were being taken to concentration camps. In June
1942 the Germans formed the local ghetto, and four weeks later it was
liquidated. Some were sent to Belzec, and some to the ghetto in
Dembitz to work. By the end of that summer where was not one Jew
living in the town officially. Only those in hiding.
In 1942 my family went to live/hide in the forest. From 1942
to 1945 I was hiding in the forest. A German Christian family helped
me. They were clients of my father's before the war. We brought
them to live in our house . My parents died just outside of Pilzno,
shot by Poles. I came out of hiding when the Russians came in, Jan.
16, 1945. It was truly a joyous occasion. Many of the Russian
officers were Jewish. Without the help of the Russians during the
occupation it would have been difficult.
I decided to come to the U.S. when I made contact with my mother's
sisters who lived in NY. I had to wait 3 years because of the quota.
I have never gone back to Pilzno. I served in the Israeli Army in
1948, and then in 1987 I lived in Jerusalem for 3 years. After
liberation I spent some time in England, then in Palestine, and came
to the US in 1950. I finished high school in NYC and went to Columbia
University. Eventually I went to medical school and became an
oncologist. I never married.
Interview conducted by Sharlene Kranz
Interview with Rachel Karpf
Bochner
transcribed from videotape by Sharlene Kranz
I was born May 6, 1914 in Ulanow, Poland. It was a very
small town but very lovely people. We had about 300 Jewish
families, very orthodox. We had two shuls, a Hebrew school, a
Zionist organization for the girls, and the boys belonged to
Batar. Our life was quiet, we had a shoe store and
galanterie. After school we always helped in the store.
My father was very bright, he was the head of the Jewish
community. We had a one family house. We were four
children: the oldest was Gloria, then me, then my sister Esther, and
the baby brother Joel Mayer. We got along beautiful, we
respected our parents. We always wondered, how would our parents
react. And we did everything to please our parents, Moses and
Amalia Tannenbaum Karpf. My mother was born in Ulanow.
We were strictly observant, we didn’t work on the holiday,
our parents went to the synagogue, we had a nice meal, it was a
holiday with a capital H. Passover was my favorite holiday
because it was spring coming; Rosh Hashanah was a lovely
holiday but more on the scary side, and Yom Kippur was a sad holiday
for us. We made ourselves think of the whole year, what we did,
and we made plans for the next year; if we did something wrong we
promised to improve. We hoped for next year and the year after
next; we were very serious about life, we didn’t take anything
easy. Usually YK was very very sad. My mother would light
the candles a day before, and she was praying and begging for a good
year, for health, for the children to succeed. Everything was
taken so serious with all your heart and all your brains. Every
holiday had a meaning for us.
My school was very close to our house. We liked school, we
did good in school. We had a problem with books, books were
very expensive. When we finished one year, the books were like
new, we sold them and bought books for next year. I remember in
the 5th grade a physics book was very very expensive, we
couldn’t get it right away. So we borrowed the book, and
me and my sister wrote everything in the book on paper, nights we
copied the book, because we didn’t know when we would get our
book. How careful we were and respectful for the book.
It was a public school, run by the city, didn’t cost
anything. We went to school with Polish children. School
started 8am, we had half an hour at noon, then back till 2pm. Then we
went home and started to tackle the Hebrew school. Hebrew would
be 6am to 7:30 in the morning, then two afternoons till 4pm we had
Hebrew lessons. From 5 until 9 or 10 pm we had lectures
in the Hanaor Hatzion. Our close friends were those children
who went to the Hebrew school.
My sister was a very smart girl, she was two years older than me
but we went to school together because she had a speech defect.
She’d speak only to me. I started at 5 instead of 6 but
they took me because of my sister. But somehow I made it.
She was smart, the best student in the class, knitting and sewing was
easy for her. A very capable woman.
My favorite subject was Hebrew. We belonged to a group
Marginate Hasofar Hebraic, to take care of the Hebrew language.
I still read and write Hebrew.
Our organization was Hanaor Hatzion, a youth group, a beautiful
group of people. We did Israeli dancing, lectures about books,
we helped each other a lot. We had a lot of poor girls.
You had to pay 2 zlotys a month, and some girls couldn’t afford
25 cents, but we took them in. We taught the younger
children. For the 2 zlotys we used to buy Hebrew books.
We didn’t wear fancy dresses. We belonged to the scout
organization, and we had a gray dress and a blue scarf, even for the
holidays. We played ball, we swam, and classes and
studying. We had visitors from Krakow, the main organization,
who came to teach us. We were prepared to go to Israel, and
some of our group did go to Israel. My parents didn’t
want us to go to Palestine, because to make a living in Israel was
hard. I was in a special school to prepare to go to
Palestine, we got up at 6am, we studied Hebrew, 7:30 breakfast and
went to work. I worked in a printing place which was not
bad, we came home, had supper, and again start
Hebrew. You had to apply and be sent. Then they
sent me to a summer camp in the mtns for seven weeks. I got
sent to another town to teach Hebrew, but I didn’t accept
this--there wasn’t a salary to live on. You had to eat
with the people who would feed you. I had too good a home to
accept this, although this was a honorable thing to do. I was
probably not mature enough.
Anti-Semitism did not hit me before the war, I spoke very good
Polish, it was friendly. They called you ‘Jew” but
I was not insulted. They complimented me that I
looked like a Polish girl.
My father’s store was in our house, a one-family
house. Mainly shoes, but also ladies underwear, ties, socks,
stockings, cosmetics, books for school. My mother got a license
to sell school supplies, ink, pens, pencils. The court bought
paper goods from us. We were surrounded by villages. We
exported wood to Danzig. We were not rich people but we made a
living. The town had a lot of people who were not
educated, just the Hebrew education, but if they had trouble they
would come to my father and he helped them. I have here friends
from my hometown who told me stories about my father.
What were the first signs of danger for you when the war
started? We knew what was going on in Germany, that some
were expelled in 1939 in a very cruel way, they took them without
luggage and left them in a place without food. When the Germans
walked into our town, there were some German Jews and they ran to
welcome the Germans, and the Germans killed them on the
spot. In 1939 we had the Germans, then
the Russians. The Germans made NO MAN’s LAND, you could
do to the Jews whatever you wanted. The Polish people during
the night they broke the windows, the lights, neighboring towns were
expelled from their city and they came to our city. They
had a miserable life. When the Russians came it was
quiet. Then the Germans came back so life was miserable.
Most of our people ran with the Russians to Lvov. My father,
too, with the understanding that he would send a carriage and horse
for us. But my mother said I have a store and merchandise,
I’m not going. My grandmother was there, too. Then
my father came back to us, 1940.
When the Germans came whoever was a Jew they wanted to hurt the
Jews. The Jews were made to sweep the streets, they cut their
beards, the girls had to go into the courthouse where the soldiers
were stationed, to wash the floors. Insulting jobs. Till
1941 the war with Russia broke out. The situation for us got
more serious. Some more Jews came to our town from other towns
with what they could carry. We took in some people. The
Polish people hid them and robbed them at night, and they had no
place to complain. In the summer of 1941 came 2 or 3 Germans,
dressed in black, and they took some people out of the town, with
tools to dig a hole, they were killed, but they were not all killed,
but the Polish people told us the earth was still moving, they were
still alive. Some of us went and dug them out and buried them
in the cemetery. One day the Germans went to another town
and surrounded the Jews and killed them in a fire. We heard of
it. Then the survivors picked up the pieces of the dead and
buried them in one group grave. I couldn’t believe
this! German people don't know what happened, six million Jews
perished, they didn’t know. As a Jew I didn’t have
the right to go to school, my brother was expelled after the fifth
grade. If a Pole hit me, they could hit a Jew, and police
wouldn't do anything. We didn't have rights. One of us
would watch, and we would hide in the woods. They could come in the
store and take whatever they wanted.
What happened to your parents?
I really don’t know too much. The last day of Succos we
were ordered out. My father prepared for all 3 girls gentile
papers. Children, he said, you have to go on your
own. He gave us some money. Keep yourselves together, he
left himself without money. “ I have my talis and
tefilin,” he said. I didn’t say
goodbye, we went. We went to a Pole who had a small boat, he
took two friends, and us at night, I didn’t say goodbye,
we just left. I had a big pocketbook and in it were nightgown,
a sweater, a pair of shoes, and on me I had 3 underwear, 4 sweaters,
whatever I could put on. It was autumn. We were afraid to
carry a valise. We walked at night six kilometers to a
station. The two friends who were with us were talking, but we
were quiet. We came to Dembitza, we planned to go
further. But the train stopped for hours, with no connection,
we had to leave the station. We walked around the city to
the Dembitza ghetto. I saw a Jew and I told him I am looking
for the Bochner family from Pilzno, and he told us there
is a Bochner working over there as a furrier. That was my
husband. So we snuck into the ghetto. We were already
calmer because we were amongst Jews. There was my cousin Resha
who married a Bochner. So we were 18 people in one room.
Where did you meet your husband?
I knew my husband when he was about 14 years of age. When I was
a child my sisters and I went to visit my Aunt Shpritza in
Pilzno. She was my Grandma Tannebaum's sister. Shriptza
married Aaron Grafshrift. Their daughter Resha Grafshrift
married Leizer Bochner. So I met Michael Bochner, my future
husband, on that visit. When I came to the Dembitza
ghetto in 1942 I arrived at his house. We got in with his
family and we stayed with them. Then we heard there would be an
AKTION. So I said to my sister let’s go to
Lvov. We went to a friend of my father’s for help,
he gave us potato latkes, he gave us an address where the Jews
had been killed. So we got that room. And we did some
mending. But the landlady figured out we were Jews,
we had to leave. We packed and left. We walked 12 hours
to catch a train and we went back to Dembitza.
We bribed someone and got my oldest sister out to Germany.
She worked in a factory making Rosental china/porcelain.
We were taken to the Gestapo, me and my sister Esther. We
came back to the ghetto, to the Bochners. 11 Dec 1942 we left
Dembitza. The next night half of the group left, and the
next night the other half left. In the first bunker were
me and my husband , my mother in law, my sister Esther and her
husband Harry, which is my husband’s brother. My sister
in law Minnie and her husband Abe and her 3-year-old girl Helen (see
interview with Helen Cohen). Pescla Bochner and Leizer Bochner
for a short while they lived with us. It was too crowded, they
arranged for another place in another village. Unfortunately
they didn’t make it.
We stayed there seven months, in Kolomeyea, it was a small
farm with one cow. We slept
double-decker. We had an encyclopedia! We had
a tiny lamp. We didn’t wash, maybe once in four months we
changed. There was not room to stand
up. The farmer woman, she was very poor, an
old lady, two of her grandchildren were taken to work in
Germany. Yashe Krembach brought us there. My
husband and brother in law made a bunker in the barn where the cow
was. They got a shovel and made a hole big enough for us to go
in. They lined it with trees so it would not fall
on us. The hole into the bunker was a big as this
chair. The cow would lay down on the cover of the
hole. The farm woman suddenly had a coat, a sweater,
beer. Someone informed on her. The Police came, but the
cow sat down on the hole, so we were saved. But life always has
something prepared for us. This Krembach made another bunker
for another group, a family Tau, husband and wife and a
seven-year-old son and an educated girl to tutor the boy. But
they didn’t have a bunker like ours, they were sitting in the
barn and a fellow saw them. So Krembach said he would
take them to Tarnow ghetto at night in the horse and
buggy. But he took their goods, and killed them in the
woods. A retarded girl showed them where they
killed the Jews. The police asked Krembach and the
retarded girl where are the rest of the Jews, and she showed
them. The police threw a bomb in there and killed all the
Jews. Krembach never came back to this village, he was
afraid. So our farmer told us what happened,
and suggested we leave. We left at night and lived
two weeks in the woods, stealing from the fields. The police
killed the woman who had hidden us. We had paid the farm woman
4000 zlotys a month.
We married in the ghetto, we didn’t have a real wedding but
we didn’t think we would live, so what would it matter.
So two weeks living in the woods, my husband and my brother in law
would trade with farmers for bread. Then we met three brothers,
and they knew the villages, and they joined us. The Reich
brothers. We paid a farmer shoes to take us for a few
days. So we built the second bunker. It was in a
barn, too, and we built a tunnel you had to creep in. My
brother in law and my husband and the Reich brothers built it.
And we took in 3 other Jews, my husband knew them, We
paid the second farmer 6000 zlotys a week and after the 3 others
joined us, 6,300. The farmer gave us potatoes, potato
soup, some bread, some days we each had a slice of bread. It
was a miracle how we lived through, how we managed, in such
unsanitary conditions. We still had the encyclopedia in the
second bunker. Once it was pouring, and we stood deep in
the water, and we asked for pails and we stood in a line and emptied
the water outside the barn.
There was a fire in the bunker, a lamp caught fire, some people
got burnt on their legs, my brother in law was sleeping and all of a
sudden he woke up and he smothered the fire. The burns
got infected, we didn’t have medication, they got marks but it
healed up.
When we were living in the woods, my brother in law cut hedges
from the tree and covered us to hide from the people from the
city. So a man was walking through with a cow and the cow ate
some branches, and they saw all the Jews. So we gave him money
and he promised to make us a bunker in the woods. So that
evening my brother in law and my brother asked him to take us, and he
said I’m a poor guy, I have only one room and no barn, but I
can tell you run away because he will turn you in because he has
denounced already a lot of Jews. My mother in law said
children, you go, let me die here, but my brother in law said no ma,
you will stay with us. He took his belt and my husband’s
belt and tied the mother around himself . So when he
walked he pulled her.
The second bunker was in the town of Lubcza, near Pilzno.
In the second bunker were me and my husband Mike Bochner,
My sister Esther and her husband Harry Bochner,
My mother in law Rachel Bochner,
My sister in law Minnie and her daughter Helen Bochner.
3 Reich brothers.
Israel Hamel from Dubezeko; Benjamin Deresciewitz from
Pilzno who married Minnie Bochner after the war; and Avrum
Einspruch from Pilzno. The Reichs knew which farmers to go
to. Helen lost her father this way, he went for bread for the
baby, and they turned him into the police. So you had to know
who to go to.
The three other men, we met when they came to our farmer to ask
for bread, and he mentioned them to us. So for 300 zlotys more
we could take them in, but for the same amount of food.
During the day it was pitch dark, we didn’t see light at
all, we had to get along. If we got bread my husband had a
scale so we got the same amount. I would dream and
pray, like my father’s dream, that the name of his family would
not be killed, destroyed altogether. And all three of us
sisters did live. My brother went to a village, Jarocin (near
Ulanov) and I don’t know how, he was shot by polish police in
1942; he was 13 years old.
The second family that hid us was: Stephan Bradlaw, Clara Bradlaw
the wife, oldest son Taddeus, sister Francisca, and Antony the
youngest he became a priest.
We got news of the war if the farmer went to the city, he bought a
paper, but he had to hide the paper because normally no peasant would
buy a paper. The last 3 months my sister and I lived with
another farmer in his house. Because we were not from Pilzno no
one there knew us. But after so long in the bunker we
lost our voice. So in the house we were reading together, me
and my sister, and we worked in the garden to get some color in our
cheeks. So we regained a normal voice. We were in the
second bunker 13 or 14 months. We were all together 26 months
in both bunkers.
The Russians liberated us, my sister saw them and she ran to the
bunker and yelled ’the Russians are here’. We
didn’t trust them and they didn’t trust us. The
next day all the Jews came out of the bunker and went to
Pilzno. Their house was demolished, so they took another Jewish
house, nothing from the house was left.
I went back to Ulanow but I found it empty. Even the
stove had been taken.
First we lived in Pilzno, then to Katowice where there were some
Jews, and we left our address on the walls because I thought my older
sister would come. My sister from Germany found us
in Katowice. Now she lives here in Jersey City in a small
apartment.
So we lived in Katowice, and made contact with the U.S., and we
got passports to leave Poland. My brother-in-law Max Bochner in
New Jersey sent $7- or 8000 to Sweden, and a guarantee, but we
couldn’t get a visa to Sweden. This was Feb.
’46. So we sold the house and saved for a visa to
France. Our train stopped in Munich, we went to the
community center there, we got an apartment and food from UNRA, and
furniture. My husband went to work selling fur coats, and we
got ration cards. We were in Germany from 1946 and we left in
1949, 3 years. Then we came to Jersey City because my husband
had two sisters and a brother already here, and my mother-in-law had
already come.
In America I worked in a brassier factory, Maidenform, and my
sister sewed. My husband couldn't get a union card
as a furrier. So we bought a small grocery store on
a mortgage.
Was it difficult for you to reintegrate into society after the
war?
When I was in Germany, we got an English teacher. When I gave
birth to Paul, in Jersey City, the doctor said “push”and
I didn’t understand! So he got someone to say it in
Polish. When we got here we went to high school at
night. After five years I became a
citizen. All of us after five years became a
citizen. Most of my friends, in the beginning, were all
survivors. We were in contact with each other and helped
each other.
When we came here there was a big Pilzno Society. Max Fogel
was the President when we came, later William Seiden was the
president. We did attend meetings. Slowly the group
became smaller and smaller.
We opened a grocery store. We didn’t know the names of
the items, we couldn’t afford to pay anyone, so I worked with
him and my sister was with the children. Until my sister took
sick, they discovered it Mother’s Day and before Yom Kippur she
passed away. I was left with a grocery store and 3
children. I raised the 3 boys.
I think about the Holocaust, I read everything, I watch on
television. I still live with the past.
I just hope that we’ll live in a nice surrounding from now
on, we’ll have sunshine and no discrimination. The Second
World War taught us a proper lesson. There’s plenty of
room for everyone, and it doesn’t have to disturb anyone that
I’m a Jew, or yellow, or a black person.
–Oral interview conducted in 1996, transcribed by
Sharlene Kranz.
INTERVIEW WITH HELEN BOCHNER
COHEN
"My name is Helen Cohen. My parents were Avrum Bochner
and Mindle Bochner; they were first cousins, and both were born in
Pilzno. My father’s father was Jacob Bochner. My
mother’s parents were Pinkhas Bochner (Jacob’s brother)
and Ruchel Laya Kranz Bochner. I think my mother was head over
heels in love with my father. She came from a poor family with
no dowry. I was born in Tarnov, in August,
1939 in the hospital. That is where people from Pilzno went to
have their children if they wanted to give birth in a hospital.
I was born 5 days before Hitler came to power. My first language was
Polish, then I learned Yiddish.
My father’s family had a grocery
store in Pilzno. My grandmother Ruchel Laya had a small store
at the front of her house.
Before the ghetto, I remember a lot of Jews
were arrested. Some of them would daven in their jail
cells. My mother brought me to visit a man who was davening in
jail and he held me on his arm next to his talles.
In 1942 we lived in the ghetto in
Dembitz. I remember being in a place during the war, the
ghetto. Lots of people in a big room. My mother was
carrying me when we escaped from the ghetto and there was a lot of
snow. For water we would suck on the snow. There was
shooting and we ran and my mother and grandmother by pure
coincidence ended up at the same farmer’s house. I
remember being on a wagon pulled by horses.
My uncle Harry was the leader of the
family. He realized they were deporting people to concentration
camps. A plan was devised for small numbers of the family to
escape. My mother Mindle and grandmother Ruchel and I escaped
out of the ghetto to a Christian farmer's house. We evaded
soldiers and bombs. The farmer kept us hidden. Before the
war my parents buried some possessions in our own backyard.
(After the war my mother and stepfather and I came to dig up the
things we had buried but nothing was found.)
In the first bunker the men slept on the
top bunks and the women on the bottom There were poisonous
snakes one time; the men caught and killed one with a shovel,
cut it up. The mattresses were made of straw.
We stayed in the bunker, buried under the
floor of the barn, under the cows and straw. The farmer would
bring us food, potatoes and bread. My father Avrum Bochner went
out at night to get bread. They had to trust the Poles.
They sold the stuff they had hidden before the war. We bartered
for food. My father went out to buy food from a Polish farmer,
and while he sat down to eat at their table the farmer’s
wife went and got the Germans and they shot him. My uncles and
stepfather did the same thing--went out at night to get food.
We were underground there one and a half years. Then someone
told, and we camped out in the forest for a few weeks, then another
Pole hid us till the end of the war. We experienced real
hunger. The men dug another bunker a little at the time to take
the removed earth away, dump it in the woods at night. We had
bunk beds, a barrel for a toilet which was dumped in the evening.
In the second house we were 13: Harry and
his wife Esther, me and my mother and grandmother, Uncle Mike and his
wife Shushka, Benjamin Deresiewicz, the 3 Reich boys, Avram
Einspruch, and Israel Hamel. Lazar and Pescl, my mother’s
brother and sister, were with us for awhile but decided to
leave. They were soon shot by the Nazis.
I remember being quiet, no playing no
reading, no radio, no books. I had to learn to walk again when
I was 6, I was sitting on one bed for so long my legs
atrophied. At one time my neck swelled up and the Polish farmer
made me an ointment. My mother and grandmother and I shared a
single cot.
When we changed bunkers the Germans found
our old bunker and killed the family who had been hiding us.
At the end of the war we went back to
grandma's house in Pilzno which was still standing. My parents
house was gone. My mother married Benjamin Deresiewicz.
His father was Avram Leib Deresiewicz. Benjamin had been
married before the war and the Germans killed his wife and five
children and his parents and brothers and sisters. He dealt in
‘futures’; he would go to the orchards and buy the right
to pick a future crop. So he knew all the local farmers.
After the war, the Russians came into our
house and demanded to be fed. The country was occupied.
We left Poland through Czechoslovakia and went to West Germany where
we lived in an apartment in Munich 1947-49, with my aunts and uncles,
waiting to get us into the U.S.
The Poles who hid us, were very brave to
do it. But also they did it for money. They were very
poor. They had a farm, and after the war my mother and Harry
and Mike continued to send them money and goods. The father,
Brodlow, had 3 sons and a daughter; he got sick and we sent him
medicine, clothes and money. One of his sons, Anthony Brodlow,
became a priest. They took a big chance on hiding us, but they
got something out of it, too. I wouldn’t go
back. My uncles' wives, Esther and Rachel
(called Shushka by the family) Karpf, were sisters. There was a
third sister, Gela. Rachel was dark and spoke perfect Polish.
Esther was blond and blue-eyed and could pass for Polish.
My grandmother Ruchel came to the US in
l947, then Mike and Shushka early in '49, then Esther and Harry and
Martin (l year old), and then me and my parents came April 6, l949
sailing from Bremen to NYC on the S.S. General Black.
I remember when we got on the boat from
Bremerhaven, Germany. I was told the boat only had white bread,
and I didn’t like it but they told me that America only has
white bread! Abraham Louis Kranz, my grandmother's younger
half-brother, met us at Ellis Island, and took us to Jersey
City. I remember riding in his car and looking up at the
skyscrapers; I was 9 years old. We lived in J.C. on Van Houten
Avenue. My mother’s brother and sister, Frieda and Max, helped
us get an apartment, furniture and clothes. I attended Yeshiva,
Douglas College and Hofstra. I met my husband Joel Cohen when I
was 16. We were married in 1960.
My mother Minnie sewed dresses in a factory with her sister
Freda in New York. My mother enjoyed embroidery and
needlepoint. She was a good seamstress. She lived with
her mother until she married and then moved across the street.
She could read Yiddish and Polish. She was bright but
old-fashioned. Mr. Deresiewicz went into Uncle
Max's ladies undergarments business, and learned to be a
cutter. My step-father wanted me to know Yiddishkeit, so he
sent me to Yeshiva. I had learned Hebrew while we were in
Germany. He died in Dec. 1970. My mother died in
Feb. l982; they are buried in the Pilzno Soc. plot, Sec. 3, at New
Montefiore Cemetery.
I admired my grandmother very much.
She had a tremendous understanding of human nature. She was
always religious, even after the war.
My husband Joel and I have three children
and three grandchildren."
Interviewed by Sharlene Kranz, June 1999
VISITORS TO PILZNO:
VISIT OF HARRY KRANZ TO PILZNO, POLAND
SEPTEMBER 10-11, 1985
As part of a sight-seeing tour of Eastern Europe (principally
Budapest, Prague and Warsaw) during the first two weeks of Sept.,
1985, we decided to visit the two small towns in southeastern Poland
in which my father (Abraham Louis Kranz, Pilzno) and mother (Anna
Zimmerman Kranz, Dzikow) had been born. At the time when they were
born (1893-1900), both towns, only about 75 miles apart, were in the
province of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After World War
I, Galicia was divided among Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, etc.
Today Pilzno and Dzikow are in Poland, due east of Cracow.
Before departing in August; 1985, I had contacted the current
president of the Pilzno Society in New York (William Seiden); a
cousin in New Jersey (Anna Bochner) who had come from Pilzno before
World War II; and the man they both referred me to, Abraham Einspruch
of Brooklyn, N.Y., who had emigrated to the United States from
Pilzno/ Tarnov in 1954, when he was 50 years old. He was the last
U.S. resident to have visited Pilzno, but he had kept in touch by
mail with a 70-year-old woman, Eleanora Micek, whose daughter, Maria,
writes Einspruch periodically. He gave us the Micek address.
Uncle George Kranz had written me several years ago that my
grandmother Chaya had re-married after her first husband died a few
months before my father was born in 1893. it turned out that she had
remarried twice, the last time to Abraham Einspruch's father!
On Tuesday morning, Sept. 10, 1985, my wife Shirley and I left
Warsaw by plane to Cracow (also Krakow). In the Cracow airport, we
were met by an English-speaking Orbis (Polish travel agency)
"greeter" and our driver, Jan Swiba, who could not speak English.
Since Orbis had been unable to get an interpreter for us, we accepted
the offer of an English-speaking young man standing nearby who
volunteered to guide us for two days. He was Romuald Kazmierszak of
Warsaw, a flight engineer for the Polish Lot airline, who had flown
to Cracow on a 5-day holiday, intending to mountain climb, but found
the weather turning rainy.
After lunch in the "big city" of Tarnow, we arrived in the main
square of Pilzno around 2 PM. We parked next to a taxi stand on Rynek
Street, on which the Micek family lived at No. 28. There was no 28
visible from the street, but there was a 29, which housed a bar
downstairs and apartments upstairs. Going through a hallway at 29, we
came out in a rear courtyard, where there was a somewhat ramshackle
small house with the number 28.
I knocked on the door and Mrs. Eleanora Micek came to the door.
After some explanations by our guide, she invited us in. She had not
received my letter of Aug. 28, 1985, indicating that we would be
visiting on Sept. 10. When I mentioned Abraham Einspruch's name,
however, her eyes lit up. She picked up a red phone, dialed the store
on the town square where her daughter worked and told Maria to come
home immediately, which Maria did.
We met Maria's son, Przomystarv Szewcryic, 8, and then Maria. Our
interpreter read her my carbon copy of the letter I had sent, asking
for her help when we arrived. Maria said she would be happy to take
us around, but first had to return to the store to tell them she was
taking off from work.
While awaiting Maria's return from the store, I took some photos
of the town square; bought some picture postcards of Pilzno at a
newsstand; visited one of the two churches in town, which was
undergoing renovation; and passed by the combination Town Hall/School
House in the central square as school was letting out.
Buses and taxis were crowded around the square, which also
contained at least two bars and a bakery on the Rynek Street side.
(Our driver, Jan, speculated the taxis were needed to drive workers
home after they got done drinking, or to drive shoppers who lived on
farms outside town and did not own cars.)
About 4 PM, as the children poured out of school to take regular
city buses home adults lined up and jammed inside the bakery shop to
buy loaves of freshly-baked white bread. It reminded me that in this
town my father served his first apprenticeship as a baker at a very
young age.
When Maria arrived, we all climbed in our rented car and drove
about a half mile outside the center of town--up pebbly roads to a
farm' where we parked the car and walked down a dirt road toward a
farmhouse about 400 feet away. We were about to visit the remains of
the Pilzno Jewish Cemetery and the Nazi "killing field." A farmer,
carrying a rake over his shoulder, came toward us. Maria introduced
him-- Franciszek Szymaszek, and later his wife, Janina.
Maria and the farmer pointed out the old pre-war Jewish cemetery
remains on our right, just off the dirt road. Most of the grave
stones still there were lying on their sides, partially and some
totally covered with dirt. A few still showed above ground, but we
never found grandmother's grave. As a boy of 11 in 1939--and before
he was sent to Germany by the Germans to work in 1943--the farmer had
witnessed the shooting of the Pilzno Jews here on this "killing
field" by the Nazis. There was a small house here then, and the
murdered Jews were ritually bathed and buried in mass graves by other
Jews. Later, the death house was also destroyed.
There were two memorial stones visible on the cemetery grounds.
The largest, about 10 feet tall, is under a tree, which is gradually
covering and encircling it. I was told the large memorial was erected
in 1945, when the bodies of the murdered Jews were exhumed (by
Chilowicz and Bochner) and re-buried there, and the monument was
reconstructed in 1970. It contains the names of about 43 Pilzno Jews
killed by the Germans. I recognized the last names of such friends of
my father as Rosenbaum, Bochner and Chilowicz, but since I was told
that Mr. Einspruch has a list of all the names, I did not bother
copying them.
The small memorial at the far end of the cemetery near the farm
house bore the name Sara Storch, and I was told it had been erected
in 1945-47 in memory of a one-legged man whom it took the Germans 7
bullets to kill. I was never quite sure who had built the two
memorials (local Christians, local Jews or Jewish visitors), but hope
to pin it down in further communication with Abraham Einspruch.
I felt a strong emotional pull in trying unsuccessfully to find
grave stones with names of my father's mother Chaya and his father,
Abraham Lieb Kranz. The ancient graves were desecrated, stones broken
and covered with dirt, and only a few words could be made out here
and there on the graves. Weeds were everywhere around and on the
graves.
I asked the farmer, "Who owns the cemetery land now?" The Town
Council, he replied. The cemetery was right next to his farm and had
no barriers around it. He said the Town Council had been promising
for several years to have a barbed-wire fence erected around the
cemetery (the remains of an ancient fence and wall were visible on
the ground), but had not gotten around to it yet.
From a short distance away (where we parked the car, for example),
all you can see are farm fields off the road, and you have to look
closely to find the fallen stones and the still-standing two memorial
stones at the end of the cemetery near the farm house.
When we drove back to the center of town, I asked to see the site
of the synagogue and my grandmother's home, formerly at 3 Maja Street
(now re-named First of May Street). Maria went searching for an older
man who would know the locale and came back with 76-vear-old
Wladystaw Micek, a cousin who also lives on the town square at 4
Rynek, near City Hall.
With Maria and Wladystaw, we all walked across the square and down
First of May Street. He showed us what is now a large hedge bordering
the road, covering a fence, behind which is a shed and small factory,
now privately owned. These buildings have replaced the synagogue and
my grandmother's house, which were burned to the ground by the Nazis
in September, 1939. Wladystaw said he knew my grandmother, Chaya, who
died in 1933, and was buried in Pilzno.
Wladystaw said he worked with "Chilowicz" and when the Germans
burned the synagogue, Chilowicz refused to come out of it and was
burned to death inside. The rest of the Chilowicz family was killed
in the Jewish ghetto, except for one brother who went to the USA.
Wiadystaw also said he was a friend of Abraham Einspruch and
administered his properties in Pilzno. Wladystaw was arrested on the
street one day by the Nazis (for no apparent reason) and spent two
years in Dachau concentration camp. He has a 90-year-old sister
living in Chicago. We distributed ball point pens from the U.S.,
kissed Maria good-bye and left. We spent the night in a Polish hotel
in Rzeszow, half way to my mother's home-town of Dzikow.
(Visit to) OLESZYCE
On Sept. 11 we left Rzeszow and drove about 48 miles east and
northeast to Oleszyce, the town near my mother's birthplace of Dzikow
Stary (Old Dzikow) where she said Jews were buried, since Dzikow,
about 5 miles away, did not have a Jewish cemetery.
In Oleszyce, our interpreter inquired in the Town Hall, where a
clerk told him where we could find the Jewish Cemetery. It was only
about 5 minutes away and just off the main road near the center of
town. It was raining lightly--on and off--when we got there.
Unlike Pilzno, there was a fairly new wire fence completely around
the cemetery, replacing one which lay on the ground in disrepair.
There were two breaks in the new fence, one for people to walk
through and the other wide enough for a horse and wagon to drive
through. The cemetery was about a city block square, and within it we
could see about 300 gravestones, mostly tilted over in a 60-degree
angle, as if a strong wind had blown them half over. Some were lying
on the ground or buried under dirt.
Besides the toppled and tilted gravestones, the outstanding
feature of the cemetery was the thousands of clumps of animal dung
(dogs, sheep, cats, etc.) dropped everywhere between and on the
graves. And on the graves still legible, I could not find any names I
recognized of any of my mother's Zimmerman/Kupersmith ancestors.
While I and my interpreter were examining the back end of the
cemetery near a clump of trees, a man who evidently knew the area
well came walking blithely through the cemetery. He walked the entire
length of the cemetery, right up to the back fence, chewing on some
food all the time; at the fence, he calmly lay down on the ground,
picked up the bottom wire with one hand while holding his food in the
other hand, and rolled under and through the fence. Then he got up
again and walked away. We never exchanged a word. He seemed to be
taking his usual short cut through the cemetery.
After some photos of the cemetery, we drove to the town center,
where I tried unsuccessfully to buy picture postcards. They didn't
have any. At a small post office, I bought airmail stamps for my
Pilzno postcards.
(Visit to) DZIKOW
After about an hour in Oleszyce, we drove to Dzikow, now divided
into Dzikow Stary (Old) and Dzikow Nowy(New). Dzikow Stary is where
my mother was born and her mother and ancestors had been born and
lived. Today there is not much noticeable difference between Old and
New Dzikow, only a few kilometers apart.
The road leading to Dzikow from Oleszyce is fairly new, recently
paved with tar and two lanes wide. Our auto easily passed horse-drawn
wagons and our driver could zoom at over 55 miles per hour down this
country road, when wagons, geese, cows or other animals did not block
it. We did not find any trace of Jewish life, current or ancient, in
either Dzikow. What we did see was mostly tobacco farming (growing
and curing the leaves) and horse breeding and sales. There was also
plenty of cattle, including flocks of geese and ducks, occasional
cows. On each little farm, there was a small pond or lake, on which
geese and ducks cavorted. A truck full of logs, newly-cut, was being
driven to a lumber mill.
The homes were generally small--some very old, made of wood,
looking like shacks. others were modern cottages, colorful, with
gardens and TV antenna on the roofs. In the town itself, the dominant
features were two churches, one of the Eastern Orthodox Christian
faith and the other Roman Catholic. In this part of Poland near the
Soviet Union, virtually every town had the two churches.
(Visit to) CIESZANOW
After less than an hour in Dzikow, we drove 10 kilometers (6
miles) to CIESZANOW, where my mother's father was born. It's only 2
miles from Oleszyce. Arriving here about noon, we stayed for about an
hour.
We drove first to the center of town and parked across the street
from the Town Hall. I decided to try to find out if there were birth
records for my mother's father (Marcus Zimmerman) who had been born
in this town and where he lived before marrying Gittel Coopersmith
(Kupersmith) in Dzikow, my mother's mother, his second wife. (Born in
1865, Marcus had been a butcher, buying and slaughtering cattle in
CIESZANOW. He brought my mother and her sister, Fannie (Alter) to the
U.S. in 1910, returned to Dzikow in 1913, and in 1920 emigrated to
the U.S. permanently with Gittel in time for the marriage of my
mother and father in N.Y.C. in 1921. Marcus died in 1938 in N.Y.C.
and his widow, Gittel, died in 1947.)
Before entering the Town Hall, I took a photo of my interpreter in
front of the building. Immediately, a policeman materialized and
started questioning (or accusing) me in Polish, which, of course, I
did not understand. My interpreter determined that the cop didn't
like my photographing the red signs in front of the Town Hall. (I
don't know why). The cop then asked for my passport; he started
copying, asking my interpreter what my name was and how "Kranz" is
pronounced. Next he had the interpreter and driver also produce their
passports and he made notes in his book from each of them. Shirley,
waiting in the car a few feet away, was not bothered. We were then
free to go.
The interpreter and I entered the Town Hall, where we found only
one person working on the entire first floor. She happened to be the
Town Registrar. When told we wanted the birth records for Zimmerman,
born before 1890, she got out several hand-written books and started
scanning for the name. She examined all the records until 1915, when
I stopped her and told her it was before 1890, maybe 1870 or 1860.
She said records before 1890 had been destroyed, but the church might
have a record for Christian babies born before 1890. However, if
Zimmerman were Jewish, she said, no record would be available. The
synagogue never turned in the birth records for Jewish babies before
World War 11, (as the churches did), and the records were burned by
the Nazis with the synagogue in 1939.
Asked if there were any remains of the synagogue, she said yes,
not far from the remains of the Jewish cemetery. We asked directions
and took off, walking about 5-6 blocks, crossing the junky town
square block and proceeding 3-4 blocks further with guidance from a
local woman walking our way.
Within a square block bounded by a thin layer of tall trees, but
no fence, was the site of the Jewish Cemetery. It was two blocks from
two churches and across the street from the Christian cemetery.
Unfortunately, there was not a single stone showing above ground.
There was a slight hill in the center of the plot, as if stones below
had been covered over with a mile of dirt. In the corner were some
more trees. The only thing on the plot was grass and some chickens
plucking at the grass. I took a photo of the chickens to mark the
place where the cemetery once was visible. "This needs an
archeologist," my interpreter remarked.
When we left the cemetery, we walked past the large Christian
cemetery, with large crosses and monuments, behind a wire fence. We
walked past one of the churches and crossed the street. Inside a
fence and stored materials was a very large brick building, two
stories high and topped by a double tiled roof. This was the former
synagogue; it had not been burned down, but had been converted into a
warehouse for agricultural seed, feed and other farm products. All
symbols of Judaism had been removed. Only warehouse signs now adorned
the building. Around the outside stood 5 or 6 poorly dressed men,
talking.
In an alley near the former synagogue were some very poor wooden
houses on an unpaved road. This could have been the ghetto where Jews
formerly lived, but there was no evidence of it now.
About 1 PM we left CIESZANOW for the Rzeszow airport and our
flight back to Warsaw. The next day we visited the remains (two
monuments) of the Warsaw Ghetto and of the rebuilt old town,
flattened during World War 11. Two days later we were back home.
VISIT OF DR.
GEORGE H. BODNER TO PILZNO, POLAND SEPTEMBER 1989
At the start of a Council of Jewish Women Tour of Poland,
Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, we left our group in Warsaw, and in the
early a.m. of September 9, 1989 flew via the Polish Lot Airline to
Krakow. At the Krakow Airport, we were met by our translator, Adam
Szostkiewicz, a tall, lean, Polish intellectual in his early
thirties. Adam proved to be an outstanding person. He has an M.A. in
literature and is a former teacher. Eight years ago he was active in
organizing Solidarity for which he spent six months in jail. He spoke
perfect English and is now an editor of the largest and very liberal
Catholic newspaper in Poland, Tygodnik Powszechny. He is still very
active in Solidarity. We had followed many leads to find a translator
and were most fortunate to engage Adam through the efforts of Sylvia
Frankel's friend, Jeanne Jazowick of New York, who made numerous
calls to Krakow and Portland to make arrangements.
Originally, we had planned to hire a taxi for the next
two-and-a-half days, but at the airport Adam advised that we had
better rent a car with a full tank of gas, since there is a shortage
of just about everything in Poland, and one of the worst shortages is
of gasoline. It's not unusual to see a line-up of cars at every gas
station one-fourth to one-half mile long, waiting two to three days
to get a fill-up. That includes taxis! So we were able to rent a
shiny new Volkswagen, and with Adam's friend Marek Sadowski to drive
it, we started out for Pilzno, 50 mile east of Krakow, stopping once
before Tarnow for lunch. Marek had also worked in the Solidarity
underground as a printer, at risk of death, and spent six months in
jail with Adam eight years ago. Both Adam's and Marek's wives are
psychologists, and both have children.
PILZNO-SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9TH, 1989
For a few months prior to leaving Portland, I had phoned and
written to many people in search of a contact in Pilzno. These
contacts included William Seiden, Secretary of the Pilzno Society in
New York, and Harry Kranz; of Bethesda . Maryland, who visited Pilzno
in 1985. They both referred me to a man who left Pilzno for the
United States in 1954 when he was 50 years old, Abraham Einspruch of
Brooklyn, New York. He remembered the Bodner families. Mr. Einspruch
has been in contact with, and a good friend of a 74-year-old Polish
woman, Eleanora Micek, and her daughter, Maria Szewczyk, whose
husband is Jerzy. Mr. Einspruch, as well as Mr. Kranz, gave me the
Micek address in Pilzno, 28 Rynek, and encouraged me to write a
letter announcing our arrival. I had a Portland friend write the
letter in Polish and hoped that it would be received.
We carried with us a detailed map of Pilzno, drawn from memory, by
our cousin Chaim Bodner of Israel. Chaim, Arye, Yaacov, and Chana are
the surviving children (in Israel since 1948) of Uncle Mordche Bodner
and his wife, Malka Parizer Bodner. Mordche and Malka and two
daughters, Golda and Hendel, were killed by the Nazis. Abraham, in
Israel since 1948, the late Leo Bodner of Philadelphia, and a sister,
Perl, in Brazil are the children of Uncle Gershon Bodner and his
wife, Paja Rattenhaus (died 1939). Gershon and his son, Ephraim Zvi
(Herman), Herman's wife, Hella Wachs Bodner, and their I 1-year-old
daughter, Tova, were all killed by the Nazis. Herman was shot by the
Germans in Tamow in 1941.
At 2 pm on Saturday, September 9, we drove into the town Square of
Pilzno. We were struck by the fact that on a quiet Saturday afternoon
we were looking at a typical downtrodden shtetl, similar to the set
of "Fiddler on the Roof." This included horse drawn carts, a woman
pulling her only cow by a rope to another grazing spot, and the shops
and houses, most of which were very old, and many of which were run
down. We felt that not much had changed here, except that 50 years
ago there was an organized Jewish community of 750 Jews and now there
were none. Harriet and I were very aware that we were that day the
only two Jews in Pilzno.
We parked in front of Rynek 28, supposedly the Micek residence,
and saw that it was now a Police Station! Questioning a neighbor
nearby, a man sitting outside with two children, we learned that Mrs.
Micek and family had moved to a new location. He indicated the
direction and we began walking. We turned the comer and wandered up
the narrow, winding cobblestoned road, lined mostly with ancient
dwellings, for perhaps four or five blocks. There to the right was a
later vintage apartment house. Adam spoke to a man standing in front
and he turned out to be Jerzy, Eleanora. Micek's son-in-law. He
appeared to be waiting for us and promptly invited us up to the
second floor apartment shared by Mrs. Micek and her daughter and
son-in-law and their two children. We were greeted effusively with
hugs, kisses, and tears. Eleanora Micek remembered two Bodner
families, Mordche's and Gershon's. Maria planned to show us locations
and introduce us to an older gentleman, Adam Palej, who knew much and
was anxious to help us with information. Then, while tea and cake
were being served, we took photos (slides) and Mrs. Micek showed us
some us some of her small collection of snapshots of Pilzno.
She insisted on giving us three of her pictures, but the one of
Abraham Einspruch she kissed and clasped to her bosom. Then the
conversation turned to what had occurred in Pilzno during the
holocaust, I taped all conversations that we had in Pilzno. To
summarize some of Mrs. Micek's information:
Many gravestones were taken by the Gemans to the bank of the river
nearby and broken up in a pile. The Germans made the Jews break down
the cemetery walls. The Germans forced the younger Jews to dig a
common grave, and they brought the older Jews there in carts and shot
them on the spot. Some of the young Polish boys who took cows to the
fields, looked through holes in the cemetery wall and they saw the
Germans shooting the Jews down. There were some good, decent Poles
who tried to help the Jews, but there were many more who were not
good. She heard one Jew who was being taken to the cemetery say to
his wife, "I'll say good-bye to you now - I'm leaving this world."
Jerzy, who was not born at that time, became very indignant and angry
and asked what kind of people could do things like that, and said
that the Germans should be punished for their misdeeds. Harriet and I
felt that of all the people we interviewed in Pilzno, this family
alone seemed sincerely upset about the tragedy that had occurred.
After a warm farewell to Eleanora Micek, we walked with Maria to
find the locations. As we passed the small church on the Square, she
pointed to the third house past the church and told us that Bodners
had lived there, but the house had been rebuilt. According to our
map, it was the location of Mordche's home. Then we continued down
towards the large church, and before reaching it, at the
intersection, there was a vacant lot. Maria indicated that Bodners
had lived there, but the house had been destroyed and never rebuilt.
Chaim's map showed that Uncle Gershons' house had been there. Next
she took us to the spot where once stood the synagogue, talmud torah,
cheder and bathhouses, all destroyed by the Nazis in September 1939.
When the Germans were burning the synagogue, one member of the
Chilowicz family refused to come out of it and was burned to death
inside. Now the location is occupied with a factory building with a
fence around it.
Next I was most anxious to find the location of the home of my
grandparents, Leib and Hendel Bodner. This took a little longer,
either because of some changes in the shape of the Square or because
of some adjacent apartment construction. We finally figured it out,
and following the map, walked around a curve in the road and I found
myself looking at two connecting houses of ancient vintage, one of
which I instinctively knew to be the house where my father Jacob
(Jack) Bodner was born. One house was painted white and the other
dark brown. The current occupant of the dark house, an elderly woman,
came out to talk to us. Her name was: IRENA KRZYSZTANOWICZ
She told us that Jews had lived in these houses before the Germans
came and that none of them had survived. She didn't remember the
names, but she remembered that in the brown house the wife was a
beautiful woman, the husband stooped and not good looking. There were
two lovely daughters. I knew that my father's sister, Aunt Leah
Tulipan and her family had occupied my grandparents' home after the
grandmother's death, probably in 1912. Leah Bodner Tulipan was
married to a Talmudic scholar, Israel Tulipan. Two of their daughters
emigrated to the U.S. in the 1920's, Anna Hartenstein of Brooklyn,
and Pauline Shulman (Gelman) of Brooklyn, and Hallandale, Florida.
'Me children who remained in Pilzno were three sons, Moishe, Rabbi
Jacob, and Abraham who was married to Regina Adler. Also two
daughters remained with the parents, Feige and Hendel. Israel and
Leah and all of the above-mentioned who stayed in Poland, were
murdered by the Nazis.
As to the matter of which house was the family home, it was
resolved later in the day by the farmer we interviewed at the
cemetery. He positively identified it as the white house, which I
instinctively felt it was at my first sight of it. It is a simple,
small, cabin type home showing its antiquity but still inhabited.
Despite some alterations, it still closely resembles a sketch made
for me a few years ago by Chaim Bodner. It is apparent that the
entrance door, which originally was located on the short end of the
house, had been moved to the wider front section. This must have been
done more recently, when a more modem apartment structure was
constructed to within a few feet of the wall, where the front door
had been. The Poles who live there now did not appear and we did not
see the interior. However, as you can imagine, it was a uniquely
moving experience to see the house where my father was born and where
he lived from 1884 to 1905.
Next we went back to the Square where the car was parked. I bought
some postcards and Adam bought a loaf of freshly-baked, white bread
at the bakery. The five of us then got into the car and drove on a
narrow rocky road for about a half mile from the Square towards the
Jewish cemetery. We parked the car and walked down a dirt road
towards a farmhouse about 400 feet away. Looking across the fields,
it was not apparent that there was a cemetery in the vicinity. From
the farmhouse came the farmer's wife to greet us and from the
cornfield on the left came the farmer. We were introduced to them by
Maria.
FRANCISZEK & JANINA SZYMASZEK 39-220 PILZNO UL.
WEGIERSKA 81 POLAND
One of the advantages of having sent the letter to Mrs. Micek
quite a bit prior to our arrival, was that there was time for her to
alert others in the village. We were expected, and they had time to
do a little research on the locations, etc., such as this farmer
definitely identifying the original Bodner house, and Maria, the
other locations.
To the left of where we stood we saw the sad remains of the Pilzno
Jewish cemetery. Here and there were pieces of broken
gravestones, many covered partly or wholly with grass and earth. We
all searched for inscriptions on the parts of stones, for me to read,
but very little was to be found. There was a 10 foot memorial
monument containing 23 names of victims from 12 families, with their
ages and approximate date of death. I assume it was erected by
survivors of those families. I have a close-up slide of the stone
clearly showing the information. There was a tree growing next to
this monument which had been cut back severely to keep it from
covering the stone. We found two other memorial stones in the
cemetery, probably placed since the war by their families. One could
clearly see the foundation of the original cement wall. Now there is
no fence and no wall. With the help of Chaim's map, I found the spot
in the cemetery where the graves of my grandparents, Leib and Hendel
Bodner should have been located. There was broken stone jutting from
the ground. It was there that we placed the flowers that we had
bought earlier in the day near Tarnow, and I said Kaddish for the
Bodner family.
Prior to this we had elicited the following information from the
farmer and his wife. She said that she wished we had come sooner,
because his father who died seven years ago, knew the Bodners well.
His father had some business transactions with my uncle involving
traveling to Tarnow and some other towns. The farmer said he
remembered the Bodners because they lived on the Square. He then
showed us the "killing field" in the cemetery. This was where the
Jewish boys were made to dig a ditch about three meters long, and the
Nazis would bring the Jews in carts and then shoot them down in the
ditch. Sometimes it was a few of them, sometimes a dozen or a few
dozen. After part of the people were killed, the Germans splashed the
bodies with a liquid substance, and then killed some more people.
After they had finished, they made the Polish boys fill in the dirt.
He had witnessed the killing as a young boy, looking through the
small holes in the high concrete cemetery wall.
We left the cemetery, after presenting to the farmer and his wife
gifts of tea or ball point pens and U.S. money. We did that with all
the people who we came into contact with that day in Pilzno. I might
add that we left the cemetery with heavy hearts, but pleased that we
had been there.
Now, Maria suggested that we visit the "old man" who was expecting
us to come by. I was anxious to travel to Debica (Dembitz) about five
miles further, but decided to put that and Nowy Sacz off till the
next day. So we went to a street near the Square with a row of
ancient attached houses. There Maria introduced us to: ADAM PALEJ. At
that point we excused Maria, and sent her home to her family with a
kiss and a hug. She had been a tremendous help to us, and was a very
lovely person.
Mr. Palej graciously invited us into his home which was most
interesting. It was built in 1722 and has been in his family
continuously. They had been, and still were the owners of the butcher
shop. We found out that he was born in 1924, and so the "old man" was
actually five years younger than 1, but looked older than 65. The
interior of the house was dim to dark, but crowded with beautiful
antique furniture, china, hangings, etc. We couldn't help wondering
where all that stuff had been acquired - but didn't ask!
Marek was tired and stayed in the car. Harriet was in charge of
the camera. Mr. Adam Palej and my translator, Adam, and I sat at the
dining room table with the tape recorder.
The following is only part of the information given by
Adam Palej:
He said that in the building where he still has the shop, some
Jewish women used to live. He saw one of them being shot down by the
Nazis. In the shop there was a double door, and when the Germans
patrolled the streets looking for Jews, the other woman, a Mrs.
Block, would hide herself inside the double door, and thus she did
survive. He named some of the Jewish friends he remembers from school
days, Chilowicz and Tanenbaum, which were two of the names inscribed
on the monument in the cemetery. When I asked if he remembered the
Tulipans, he said the house is gone, but they lived on the same
street, and he remembered them very well. They were bakers and made a
lot of cakes on Sunday to sell in the marketplace on Monday. I think
that this was in addition to another occupation, and perhaps was the
family of one of Israel Tulipan's brothers. He then told a long story
about how Mrs. Tulipan had to sell all her cakes at once to some of
her Polish soldier neighbors who were drunk, but I won't go into
that.
He related that during the war he was an inmate in a compulsory
work camp along with some Jewish boys and some Russian P.O.Ws. They
were made to dig ditches by the Germans, but the Jews were treated
much worse than the Polish boys. The Jews were never allowed to go
home, whereas the Poles were given weekends off to go home and get
clean and change clothes. One time when the Germans were moving all
the young boys from that camp, and they were marching them through
Pilzno, some of the Jewish boys escaped.
He remembers that the ghetto was established behind the large
church, and he watched many, many carts full of Jews moving to the
ghetto. From that ghetto some of the Jews of Pilzno, and also Jews
from other places, were being transported to a larger ghetto in
Dembitz. All the carts were pulled by horses, and one day his friend
Chilowicz came to him to tell him that he had just seen his own
father killed by the Germans, while he was on from other places, were
being transported to a larger ghetto in one of the carts. The boy was
so upset, and also afraid, and he sat under the dining room table to
hide, while he told what had happened to his father. This was exactly
where we were now conversing, but it was a different table.
He recalled that before the war there was a Jewish cultural center
for youth where the Jewish boys in town would meet to have a good
time. It was called Akiva. And the gentile boys would peek through
the windows to see what was going on.
When the Germans set fire to the synagogue, talmud torah, cheder
and bathhouse, there was a tremendous conflagration. The fire was so
big that pages of the books from the library in the school, and from
the prayerbooks, were flying over the roof of his house.
Then Mr. Palej told us about another Chilowicz, an uncle of the
boy who had come to his house. This man had a shop on the Square. One
day some Germans came into his shop and ordered him to show some of
his wares to them, which he did. Then the Germans, who were SS men,
directed him to make a parcel of the articles and requested that
Chilowicz have his young son deliver the parcel to their place. The
boy did what they told him to do, but when he was coming back it was
after the curfew was in effect. "So it must have been arranged, of
course," said Mr. Palej. There were Nazis near the synagogue. They
stopped the boy on the street and asked, "What are you doing out
after curfew time? You are not allowed to be on the streets at this
time," and they pushed him into the synagogue where they made him lie
on a bench, and then shot him in the face. (Adam Palej said that he
was a witness). And on the body of the corpse they left a note which
read, " if you are not happy with what has happened, go tell it to
your God."
He related that before the ghetto was established in Pilzno, and
during the winter, the Germans would get all the Jews out and tell
them to remove all the snow from the highway, so that the highway
would be clean and spotless during wintertime.
There was an old Jew name Epstein with a long beard. The Nazis
stopped him on the street, and made him stand at attention while they
set fire to his beard.
Mr. Palej told us about other killings by the Nazis in Pilzno, but
I think enough of that nature has been related already in this
letter. He then explained that his family was unable to keep Jews in
hiding. The reason he gave was that he and his sister had been
selected for compulsory hard work in Germany. Therefore it was likely
that the Germans would come for them at any time for deportation,
which they eventually did. Adam Palej was just warming up and would
have continued for hours, but by now Harriet and I were very tired.
Between jet lag, the horror stories we had heard, and over all a very
emotionally draining day, we were ready to leave. Besides, it was
then about 8:00 p.m., and we had been in Pilzno for six hours! With
Adam and Marek we sped back to Krakow, found that our room was on the
same floor with 200 Israeli high school students, who were in Poland
to visit the camps. So it was to be a long night, too! At 10:30 p.m.
we made it into the hotel dining room for dinner. Later, I was able
to practice my conversational Hebrew by telling the kids to quiet
down, because we wanted to sleep. However, I must admit that despite
the noise, it was so good and even healing, to see those beautiful
Israeli children and hear the lovely songs of Eretz Yisrael, in
Poland, of all places!
VISITS OF FAMILY OF RABBI JOSEF SINGER
TO PILZNO 1996 and 1998
Testament of Living History
by: Toby Schwarzman
On Thursday August 23,1995, at 3:00 p.m., we arrived in
Pilzno, Poland, for what was in effect the reason why our
whole trip had been planned: the groundbreaking ceremony for the
gate which is being built around the Jewish cemetery in the town.
My grandfather, Rabbi Joseph Singer, who was born in Pilzno,
commissioned a gate to be built around the cemetery where his
grandparents, Rabbi and Rebbetzin Gershon Adler (who was Rav in
Pilzno before World War 1) are buried. After having spent
the morning touring the Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp, we
arrived late for our meeting with the mayor of Pilzno who
was scheduled to be joining us for the ceremony. Though the mayor
was unable to attend, due to the funeral of a local member of the
Catholic church, the ceremony was carried out with our twenty four
family members, the mayor's secretary, the architect of the gate,
Mr. Bartosz (the curator of a museum in Tarnow, Poland, who is
helping my uncle, Mr. David Singer, to restore the Jewish cemetery
in Pilzno), and his nineteen year old daughter.
As we moved along the border of the overgrown cemetery
devoid of tombstones, accompanied by the family who owned the farm
adjacent to the cemetery, a strange calm settled over our group.
With each stake that we nailed into the ground as a ceremonial
corner stone of our gate, something was nailed into our hearts. I
felt the presence of the cemetery's souls... they smiled, as we
trudged along through the overgrown weeds, discovering the
foundations of the old fence. Their cries of triumph joined in
with the howl of the winds as we moved along, encircling the
sanctified ground of the cemetery. Each spade full of earth moved
aside in order to make place for border marking stakes, contained
remnants of a nation... remnants of a history. It is this that we
attempt to protect, as we build a fence around the sanctified land
of our ancestor's graves... land which has since been given over
to graze land for the local animals.
As we walked back towards the town, and our waiting bus,
the sky showered us with its blessing, and the parched earth
received much needed rain. We drove off accompanied by the
friendly farewell of the family from whom we took back the land
which is rightfully ours... as they too felt the presence and the
blessing showered upon us by the souls buried in the desolate, yet
sanctified cemetery down a deserted dirt road in a small Polish
town called Pilzno.
Adam Bartosz works at a Jewish museum in Tarnow, Poland.
He visited the family of Rabbi Josef Singer in Brooklyn, in 1998,
and later that year met Rabbi Singer’s family in Poland to
escort them on a trip to Pilzno.
Bartosz wrote his impressions in the journal:
POLIN: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 11, 1998, published
by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. The article
is entitled: “A Pilgrimage from Bobowa to
Bobowa”
by Adam Bartosz
A few weeks before the Singer family’s departure from New
York, those who had confirmed their participation in this family
pilgrimage had received an itinerary of their European journey and
practical instructions and advice. >From JFK airport in New
York they were to fly to Warsaw: 'Please be at the airport three
hours before departure and do not forget your valid passport.'
>From Warsaw they would go in hired buses through Lublin,
Majdanek, Lezajsk, Sieniawa, and Lancut to Tarnow. Tarnow and its
surroundings was the group's first main destination. 'As you know,
the highlight of our trip is the unveiling of the fence around the
cemetery in Pilzno which, through the untiring efforts of
our parents, Rabbi and Rebetzin Joseph Singer, has now been
completed, standing in its full glory, lest we forget, for
generations to see, witness, and remember for years to come,'
wrote David Singer (the rabbi’s son) in the introduction to
his invitation cum instruction sheet.
When the Singers had visited Galicia the previous summer, Rabbi
Joseph Singer, who had been born and raised in Pilzno, had decided
to commission the tidying up and fencing of the ruined cemetery of
his home town, and had asked that I, in Poland, should help him in
this task. The pilgrims' other destinations were in Slovakia,
Hungary, and Transylvania all part of the former Austro-Hungarian
Empire. It was in this direction that the hasidic movement, born
in Galicia, had developed and spread; on this territory of the
former monarchy that the fate of David's and his wife's ancestors
had unfolded.
David had spent some months drawing up the list of the members
of his community teenagers as well as adults who would come on
this pilgrimage, and arranging their journey. It is not easy for a
religious hasid to travel:
“Please bring along your own food. Bring non
perishable items that you like to eat.
Examples are as follows ... Your cutlery, paper plates, cups,
napkins are your own
responsibility. Should you wish to bring along a hot pot or coffee
maker, please
remember it has to be 220 Volts ... Please do not schlep more than
you need. Traveling
with too much baggage restricts our ability to check in and out of
hotels quickly ...
All medication which you may need on this trip is to be brought
along in carry on luggage. Medications, whether over the counter
or prescription, cannot easily be obtained in Europe. Please pack
with care. There will be no stops at Shop Rite or Rite Aid. Do not
count on others to have what you need! ... Don't forget to bring
along candles, matches, and pre written kvitlech [notes with
petitions] and tehilimlech [books of psalms].”
When I first met them in Tarnow David introduced me to the
members of the group: 'When Mr Bartosz met with the rebbe [in
Brooklyn] they conversed in Polish and nobody understood them. And
when we asked the rebbe what they talked about, he declared that
it was a secret! We were very intrigued. They talked for a quarter
of an hour.' The motif of that conversation in Brooklyn was to be
repeated over and over again, and in each retelling the length and
magnitude of the event were to grow.
On Wednesday evening we left Tarnow to go south to Bobowa,
where the synagogue is still standing. For years after the war, it
had housed part of a technical school; successive classes of young
people had learned how to weave on looms set up there. But several
years ago the school moved out, leaving behind an empty, neglected
interior. Miraculously, the decoration of the eastern wall, into
which the aron kodesh had been built to conceal the sacred Torah
scrolls, was almost undamaged. The colourful, folk baroque
ornamentation sported garlands of flowers, grapes, pilasters, and
finials. Not even the black hole left where the hallowed cupboard
had stood, nor the cold, musty walls, damaged floor, or smelly
vestibule, could diminish the radiance of the rich embellishment.
The group wanted to begin their day with morning prayers in that
synagogue.
Upon entering the empty hall, the group looked around
curiously, photographing each other against the backdrop of the
decorated ruin and asking about the history of the building. They
asked me if anyone was planning to renovate it, and who took care
of it. The carefree, even easygoing, mood slowly transformed into
one of reflection as the men began preparing for prayer.
Concentrating with respect, they each placed the black cube of a
phylactery on their forehead, wrapped the leather strap with the
second black cube around their left arm, and covered their head
with the tales. The sound of prayer, led by David's son Shlomo,
reverberated through the empty space. Shlomo stood right by the
eastern wall; placing his prayer book on a radiator, he rocked
back and forth as he prayed, as did the others, who chimed in with
him or walked around, engrossed in individual prayer. The women,
gathered by the back wall, prayed separately. The older, married
women covered their bewigged heads with scarves for the duration
of the prayers, and in many cases covered their faces with the
pages of the prayerbooks. The young women too sometimes covered
their faces with their open prayer book; with their eyes closed,
they concentrated on their prayers. The praying, interrupted at
times by song, lasted for nearly an hour.
Later we walked along the path that leads between the fields
to the cemetery, some distance from the centre of the town David
commented: 'For our children this is a very important
pilgrimage. They know that our roots, the beginnings of our
hasidic religion, are to be found in Galicia. Here are the graves
of famous tsadikim; here are the graves of our forefathers. This
pilgrimage will help them better understand their history and
religion.' When they entered the ohel, with its plaque
announcing that there lay Solomon and Nathan, tsadikim and
ancestors of the Bobower rebbe, their spiritual leader in
Brooklyn, the pilgrims were deeply moved. Rabbi Joseph Singer
leaned against the matsevah inscribed with the name of Solomon,
son of Nathan; he whispered a prayer. David's cousin Steve Garrin,
a lawyer, with whom I had visited this place for the first time
five years before, steeped himself in deep supplication, hidden
behind the headstone. David pulled out pieces of paper handwritten
in Hebrew. 'Before we left, we visited the tsadik. The Bobower
rebbe gave us kvitlech so that we could leave them here on the
grave of his grandfather and great-grandfather. His wife is in
poor health lately, so we have special cards with prayers on her
behalf. We also have prayers from other people in our family who
could not come here personally.' A few more minutes of prayer,
touching foreheads to the headstones, a few bows and photographs,
and the spiritually strengthened hasidim began the walk downhill.
The afternoon was set aside for Pilzno. When we arrived
at the Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of town, Rabbi Joseph
Singer was evidently touched and delighted to see the fence that
now surrounded the cemetery, the beautiful gate between white
posts, and the marble matsevah like upright stone with the names
of local Jews who had been murdered by the Germans. Approaching
the gates, he asked why I had not followed his request to put up
an explanatory text in Polish as well as in Hebrew. I replied that
I could not act in accordance with his wishes because I could not
agree to the phrase with which he had concluded since I did not
feel I deserved to be described as one of the 'righteous among
Gentiles'. I was embarrassed when the rabbi insisted that such was
his will and deepest conviction, and I promised to think about it.
A year previously, on a scorching summer afternoon, we had
marked out with pegs the borders of the cemetery that time had
worn away over the years. Today a ceremony of reconsecration was
to take place.
The Kaczka family, whose house was adjacent to the cemetery and
had watched over it for many years, were gathered outside the
cemetery. The rabbi talked to them, kissing the babes in arms, and
asked the neighbours for garlic: it transpired that peeled cloves
of garlic were one of the props of the ceremony. We moved as one
group along the length of the fencing. David was at the head of
the group with the prayer book. His father, led by his son in law
and grandson, tossed pieces of garlic through the fencing every
few steps. He explained to me: 'This is holy ground, but over the
years bad spirits could have come to live here. The ground has
been desecrated. By prayer, garlic, and circling the cemetery
seven times, we chase away the evil powers and return this ground
to sanctity.’
It was difficult to encircle the cemetery because of the adjacent
sown field, nearby buildings, and thick shrubbery, so the second
time we walked along the inside of the enclosure. A sudden
rainstorm created difficulty for even this part of the ceremony,
so each subsequent circling was done by a single one of the
chosen, protecting himself with an umbrella as he tramped through
the wet grass. The rest gathered around a newly erected matsevah
in order to say the appropriate prayers.
I handed David the shofar which he had given me to hold. After a
short prayer, he put it to his lips and played to the four corners
of the world. I guessed that it was the same blast that is sounded
in the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah. Now the one armed Zvi intoned a
moving incantation El male rahamim. Some began to cry; he himself
had to stop when tears did not allow him to continue. Later David
and Steven sang; and finally, with a weak and old voice, Rabbi
Joseph sang: his parents had been murdered on this land, and in
their memory he had ordered a symbolic stone to be set there. Now
the women, who up to that point had been standing outside the
fence, entered the cemetery. They prayed standing behind the men,
just as they had done in the synagogue.
Shortly afterwards the prayers finished and David poured a shot
of vodka for everyone. ('But only Lezajski kosher', he had said
over the phone.) We drank to good fortune, to life lehayim.
Evening was drawing near and so it was time for prayers. They
lasted only a short time. As always, those praying turned in the
direction of Jerusalem. The day of pilgrimage was coming to an
end.
The old rabbi was tired; not too long ago he had recovered from a
paralysis of one side of his body, while his wife had just had a
cast taken off a broken arm. In spite of that, they were pleased
that they had not succumbed to suggestions that they should cancel
their trip: they were happy to have seen the cemetery in such good
condition. Setting up the stone in their parents' memory, and
reconsecrating the cemetery were perceived as having great
religious and mystical significance. They thanked the Kaczkas and
everyone who had helped in the project. In demonstration of
ownership and responsibility for the place, they then took the key
to the cemetery from its padlock, to take it back to America with
them.
David's family were to spend the following day in Krakow, where
in honour of the new moon, they had to pray in a synagogue. When
it turned out that the Remuh synagogue was closed for services
that day, that there was therefore no access to the Torah there,
and that the only way to visit the cemetery next to the synagogue
with the graves of the holy Remuh and other tsadikim was to climb
over the wall, they were devastated. The rabbi was near to tears;
so he was overjoyed with the news that I had a Torah in the museum
in Tarnow. We returned to Tarnow, and in the museum hall they
unrolled the Torah scroll quickly pulled out of storage. The depth
of emotion this whole episode generated showed how difficult it is
to be a hasid traveling through a foreign country.
The next afternoon we reached Nowy Sacz, where the great Hayim
Halberstam is buried. In thanking me for everything, David once
more told his family about my meeting with the tsadik in America.
As usual, he finished: 'They talked for a long time and nobody
understood them!' I began to understand that the meeting had as
deep a meaning for David and his co believers as it had for me: it
was beginning to become yet another tale from the life of the
tsadik.
As we parted, Rabbi Singer reminded me that I should not forget
about the Polish text of the plaque on the cemetery gate: 'It is
my will. It is important to us.' A few weeks after that farewell,
I collected my daughter Magda at Warsaw airport on her return from
New York. Immediately after greeting me, she said: 'David and the
rabbi have asked me to tell you that they went to the tsadik to
get advice about that inscription on the gate. They referred to
your long conversation with the Bobower rebbe, and it is his
ruling that the plaque should read just as Rabbi Singer requested.
They ask you to treat this as the will of the Bobower rebbe.'
David will soon visit Galicia again, and will go to visit the
cemetery in Pilzno. So before that I must make sure that the will
of the Bobower rebbe is carried out.-- Translated by Annamaria
Orla Bukowska
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If you would like to contribute more information or material
to this Shtetlinks page, please email:
Sharlene Kranz
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Compiled by
Sharlene
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- Updated by SK October 16, 1999
- Copyright © 1999 Sharlene
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