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The Remarkable Life of P i n c h a s Ku r n e d z I dedicate this book to the precious family I lost in the Holocaust and to my wonderful wife, Susan, and children, Jeremy, Simone and Daniela, whom the Almighty graciously helped us bring into this world and raise as proud Jews. Many thanks to Danny Verbov for all his help in compiling this book and Studio Bat-Ami for the beautiful design. Pinchas Shmuel Kurnedz Ramat Poleg, Israel September 2011 / Elul 5771

Photo: With Tahel and Alon in the Old City

Historical Introduction

Poland became an independent country on 11th November, 1918. Many Jews aspired to become equal members of the new society, fully participating in the social and cultural life of the country. They believed it would be a new era of peace, prosperity and liberty.

Piotrkow was the first Jewish ghetto in occupied Poland, built in October 1939. Approximately 25,000 locals and Jews from the nearby towns and villages were imprisoned there. During the Holocaust, 22,000 Jews were sent to Treblinka while 3,000 were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.

They were wrong. The new Polish state survived only 20 years of relative stability and uneasy peace before its neighbours attacked. In August 1939, Germany and Russia signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which secretly provided for the dismemberment of Poland into Nazi and Soviet-controlled zones. On 1st September, 1939, Hitler ordered his troops into Poland.

h Piotrkow Trybunalski had been an important city in Polish governmental affairs, housing the parliament and the Supreme Court. From 1915-16, it was a centre for Polish patriotic activity.

h Pinchas Kurnedz was born in Piotrkow on 15th March, 1927. He was there when the Germans invaded in 1939 and spent the next six years struggling for survival. After the war, he was flown to England where he built a successful business and became a stalwart of the Whitefield Jewish community. He and his wife Susan made Aliyah in 2005 so they could be with their three children and 15 grandchildren1. His eldest grandchild, Leonie, was married on Chanukah 2009 and gave birth to Tehilla, a first great-granddaughter, in February 2011. These are his memories. This is his story.

By 1938, the town had 51,000 inhabitants, including 25,000 Jews and 1,500 Germans. The town boasted a thriving Hebrew printing and publishing industry (of which the Kurnedz family was part) until the Holocaust.

On 5th September, 1939, at the start of World War II, Piotrkow was the setting for fierce fighting between the Polish 19th Infantry Division and the 16th Panzer Corps of the German Wehrmacht. The Nazis then occupied the town for the next six years.

1 At the time of writing.

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Family Tree Perel Leah

Dovid Hirsh Bayla Devorah

Shlomo Malka

Chaim Baruch

Shiendel Reisha Asher

Eliyahu

Natan Meir

Dina

Yitzchak Eliyahu

Luba

Gavriel

Avraham Leib Mary

Pinchas Shmuel

Natan Meir

(and Reisha)

(and Losha)

Devorah Leah Dovid Zvi Menachem

Hirsch Mendel

Manva

Ya’akov

Rebecca

Bilha

Helene

Robert

Yaffa Ezriel Chana Yossi Roman

Ilan Oren Sandy Tamar Ross Jessica Carly Yardena Eyal Yakir Michal Shachar Dorit Amir

Bailey Noah Isabella Ethan

Michael Solomon

Eli

Joshua Nili

Tova

Chaya Sarah

Alexander Ziskin Yechiel

Roza

Malka Zissel

Ya’akov

Yehuda Leib

Avraham

2 sons

(and Franya) Hella

Ezriel

Malka

Mendel

Tzur Assael Eyal Menachem Shaul Noach

Ayala Yitzchak

Tahel Bela

Natan Meir

Yechiel

Noach

Tzipporah

Zissel

Moshe

Moshe David Yechiel Chana Bayla Dov Bracha

Yadja

Malka Yossi

Pinchas Shmuel Boaz

Sheindel Reisha

Ori Keren Chaggai

Alon Ma’ayan Rachamim Avner

Simcha Yair

Esther Frimet

Jeremy (Yechiel Yirmiyahu)

Noam Zachariah

Mendel David Hirsch Pinchas Shmuel

Michal Simone (Sheindel Esther)

Leonie Gabriella

Tehilla

Adi

Roi Omer Eliyahu Ya’akov

Itzik

Eliana Rachel

Susan

Pinchas Shmuel Alexander Ziskin

Daniela (Devorah Leah)

Jeremy

Matan Rani Amiel Ya’akov Meir Yehoshua

Tami

Miriam Avraham

Yeshayahu

Netanel Amitai

Miriam

Bracha Ruchama

Yael Chovav Aviad Michal

Prologue September 1939 The war started on Shabbat. My father and I came home from shul to an empty house. My mother, sister and brothers were at my grandmother’s, about 10 minutes away. Shortly after we arrived, the sirens started screeching and the bombs began to fall. It was very scary. Later, my father and mother were in an air raid shelter and he said to her, “Sala, listen. Whatever’s going to happen to us, to our family, remember it was all my fault. I could have got us out of here”.

"Hear this old men and listen all inhabitants of the land! Was there ever such a thing in your days or in the days of your fathers? Tell your children and let your children tell their children and their children to another generation" (Yoel 1) Our Hero

My father was very involved in the Mizrachi Movement – he may even have been Vice-Chairman or Chairman – and the Palestinate, the Palestine Office,2 which helped Jews escape to Palestine. He regularly travelled to Warsaw for meetings, which often upset my mother because he was away so much. He also gave speeches in Hebrew and Yiddish. He had the opportunity to get us visas to go to Palestine. One reason he didn’t was that he was frightened to take my mother away from her mother, because they had an extremely close relationship. He could also have saved himself because he had a job at the Phoenix glass factory. But he didn’t. He chose to stay with his family… December 2009 Susan and I, our three children and 15 grandchildren, all living in Israel, celebrated the wedding of my eldest granddaughter, Leonie. All the family together in Israel… 2 In the 1920s and 1930s, the Palestine Office distributed immigration certificates issued by the Mandatory government to the Jewish Agency, dealt with hachshara (agricultural training of halutzim), provided information to prospective immigrants, prepared and provided the necessary travel documents and served as a link to the British consulates and the authorities of the country concerned. In those years, Palestine Offices existed in most European capitals (the largest being in Warsaw) as well as in exit ports to Palestine (like Trieste) and large provincial towns of countries with a dense Jewish population (like Poland). After the outbreak of World War II, the Geneva Palestine Office rescued Jews from Axis-dominated territories and transferred them to Palestine. In later stages of the war, the offices in Istanbul and Teheran – and afterwards in Vienna, Munich, Rome and Marseilles – were particularly active in these rescue operations. After World War II, the Palestine Offices unofficially assisted the “illegal” immigration of Holocaust survivors.

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C h a p t e r

Childhood and Family The second day of Pesach, 1939. I had just turned 12 and my mother was pregnant.

“There is always one moment in

childhood when the door opens and lets the future in” Graham Greene

She woke up in a lot of pain and they had to carry her on a stretcher to the Jewish hospital, not far from our house. Dr. Winciger, the head surgeon and Hospital Director, said it looked like appendicitis and she would need an operation. My family wouldn’t hear of it. They needed a second opinion. So as soon as the Chag was out, they called a famous surgeon in Lodz. He arrived in an enormous car (with nine lamps!) at one o’clock in the morning and indeed removed my mother’s appendix. When he came out of the operating theatre, he said he guarantees my mother will be okay but he can’t be sure about the baby. My mother stayed there for about another two weeks. I could sneak in to the hospital whenever I wanted. I happened to be there, with Aunt Losha, Uncle Mayer’s wife, on the evening Mother had her stitches out. I discovered that Aunt Losha was rather squeamish…

I knew two great-grandfathers and a great-grandmother. My grandfather, my father’s father, Ya’akov Kurnedz, was a printer. He went to America in 1911. I don’t know why. Apparently, he was quite successful in business. However, he didn’t like life in America and returned to Poland in 1919 on the first passenger ship from New York to Europe. My father – I called him “Tateshi” – had a printing plant for Sifrei Kodesh in the first apartment we lived in. I would watch the workers (‘zecers’ – setters) pick the letters and set them into right-angled pieces of steel. My father – who was self-taught – must have been quite learned because he had to proofread everything before printing. Tateshi was very soft-spoken, had a beautiful voice – he was a very good Ba’al Tefilla – and used to tell us lots of stories. I remember him once sitting me on a branch of a tree and telling me a story! My mother (Mameshi) also had a beautiful voice and was a very good cuddler! She also proved to be a natural salesperson when my parents opened their hardware store. My other grandfather, my mother’s father, once took me on his knee and showed me how to prove additions in Maths. I’ve used his method many times and it always works. I also used to forge his signature!

From left: Grandmother, Uncle Pinya’s first wife, Resza, Mother and Aunt Mary

That was also the night my brother, Simcha Yair, was born. Aunt Losha knocked on the bedroom window at about six in the morning to tell us the news.

Top: Grandmother, Mother with Estusha, Aunt Losha and Menyek (Menachem)

We couldn’t have the Brit on time, but the Mohel came on Shabbat, took one look at the baby and said, “The Brit’s tomorrow!” You’ve never seen anything like it! As soon as Shabbat was out, we were dispatched to do all sorts of errands. I had to be at the sausage manufacturers at seven in the morning and I fondly remember licking my lips as I saw all that meat…

Estusha at Kaminsk, August 1936

h 10

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My father’s parents (Ya’akov and Raisale) came to live with us just before the war. My grandmother was slowly going blind. My mother’s family were very close to each other. They were known as the Bloges because my great-great-grandfather came from a village called Blogov. At that time, people used to adopt surnames connected either to the work they did or to their birthplace. Our home was full of song. We were always singing, especially on a Shabbat afternoon around my grandmother’s bed. When I was a little boy, about 4 or 5, we used to live opposite my grandparents. I could see my grandmother Malkale’s window from my parents’ bedroom. Sometimes my mother would wake up in the middle of the night, open the shutter and see whether there was a light on across the road. If there was, she would get dressed and go over there.

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I was very close to my grandparents. I remember two great-grandparents. Greatgrandfather Ezriel Ringort was always sitting in a big chair. I never saw him walking. My uncle would pick him up from the bed and put him in his chair. He died a few years before the war.

My mother, Sheindel Ringort, in 1921 Estusha and a nanny, c. 1938

My other great-grandfather, Dovid Hersh Shulzinger, was a Shochet and a Chazan. He lived in a place called Brzezin, not far from Lodz. It was very common then that the Chazan, Shochet and Mohel were one and the same person. My father’s parents were quite Zionistic. They were also Alexander Chassidim,1 although once my father became involved in Zionist activities, he had to leave the Alexander shtibl. My mother’s father was a Gerrer Chassid. My involvement in Zionist activities was fairly limited at that age, although I did start going to HaShomer HaDati on Shabbat afternoons, just before the war started. It was my father’s Zionist activities that actually brought him his bride. Although my grandparents did their best to find a shidduch for their grand-daughter – there’s a famous story of how my great-grandfather came back from the main Beit Midrash one morning with a photograph. He showed it to his grand-daughter – my mother – saying, “I’ve found you a chosson”. She took one look at it, tore it to pieces and threw it away. Later, she happened to be attending a meeting of an organization and my father was there too, leading a group from the Hapoel Mizrachi movement. They were there to cause a disturbance and they constantly interrupted the speaker with cries of “kesef vezahav metaher mamzeirim!”2 My mother was evidently impressed by his leadership, passion, good looks (or all three) and that’s how they first met.

1 The Alexander Chassidic movement flourished in Poland from 1880 until it was decimated by Nazi Germany during World War II. Now nearly extinct, it was the second largest Chassidic group in pre-Holocaust Poland. Between the world wars, Jews flocked to the small village of Alexander, near Lodz, to spend the holiest days of the Jewish year in the presence of their spiritual leader, Rabbi Yitzchak Menachem Dancyger (1879–1943). He attempted to remain neutral in political issues while emphasizing communal prayer and the study of Torah. He was murdered by the Germans in Treblinka. 2 “Silver and gold purify bastards”.

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It also turned out that he was the young man on the photograph she had torn up so defiantly a few months earlier!

h My grandparents’ house was like one big family hotel. Great-grandmother Malkale had an apartment upstairs. One of my uncles had an apartment opposite, on the right side of the house. My grandfather had an apartment on the first floor. Later, my grandfather’s sister also had an apartment on the first floor. My grandfather’s other sister and her family, from Lodz, lived in that apartment during the war. So I saw everyone – uncles, aunts, cousins. Natan Shulzinger, my mother’s cousin who later went to America, studied engineering in Piotrkow and lived there too, like his brother Usher before him.

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I remember the run-up to Edward 7th’s abdication in 1936. One of my brothers had contracted a disease, maybe Scarletina, so he was confined to our house and I was sent to my grandparents so I wouldn’t catch it. But I caught something else, I think it was pneumonia. Of course, once you had one of these diseases they wouldn’t let you out of the house for three or four weeks. So I stayed in my grandparents’ apartment and saw how my grandmother operated. She really was the matriarch of the family. She would read all the papers in the morning and then my aunt would come up to discuss the day’s menus. She would entertain a lot because my grandfather, a successful businessman, often hosted many important people. She also took care of the charitable donations. Rabbis used to come and she would feed them before having lunch herself. Friends would come over in the afternoon and in the evening my mother would inevitably come for two-three hours. My grandmother was a very clever lady. She could persuade anybody to do anything. My grandparents spoilt me, especially when I was much younger. People would say that if Pinchas asked for the “telerel frum Himmel” – a plate from heaven, he would get it! In later life, my grandmother was mostly bedridden because she was very weak, suffering from painful stomach ulcers. She died a few months before the Vishedlenya, when they dispatched the Jews to Treblinka and other places.

School I went to a very good private school called Yesodei HaTorah. My grandfather paid for my tuition because he always paid for the first grandchild in a family. I adopted that custom too. Because my grandfather broke his leg, I always had good shoes to get me through the cold Piotrkow winters. He would buy himself a new pair of thick felt boots every year, molded boots reinforced by leather strips, and he bought me a pair too. The felt was so beautifully warm and snug. He also bought me a silk coat for Shabbat and a velvet hat, a summeter hetle. The school was run by Gerrer Chassidim, and all the teachers wore a chalatel (a long coat), three-quarter trousers over the knee and a Yiddish hetle, a Jewish hat. But I never wore any of that because my mother was a bit of a rebel. She made me wear shorts in the summer and black cords and a sweater in the winter. I also had a different hat, like a baseball cap, and no payos. All the boys had shaven heads except me. I was the odd one out. One year, Rabbi Lau,3 Naftali’s father – Naftali was in my class – decided he would open a special cheder class, but not in Yesodei HaTorah. However, to get into this class you had to go to him for a test. I went with my father. I was wearing shorts. Rabbi Lau was sitting on a chair with a big walking stick by his side. He kept banging it into my leg as if to say my trousers weren’t long enough. My mother wouldn’t tolerate it so I promptly stopped going to cheder. School began at nine in the morning, with Limudei Kodesh. We came home for lunch at about one and went back at three to study secular subjects, staying till seven or eight at night. It wasn’t a particularly enjoyable experience coming home in the freezing cold Polish winter.

3 Rabbi of Piotrkow and of course the father of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau and Naftali Lavie (Lau).

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My Father

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Once the war started there was no school. After a couple of months of doing nothing, I was completely bored out of my mind. I found myself a teacher to teach me the 5th grade curriculum and a Rebbe to teach me how to lein the Megillah.

Aunt Losha (on the right) with Uncle Mayer to her left

Thanks to him, I know the Megillah by heart. He would pick a sentence at random and I would have to finish it, then I would pick one and he would finish it. That’s how I taught Jeremy to read the Megillah too.

From left: Me, Estusha and her nanny, Mendel David

I don’t recall any significant anti-Semitism before the war. We lived side by side with the Poles. Every winter we would have snowball fights with the Polish boys but nothing more. The anti-Semitism was there but we didn’t feel it because it was a predominantly Jewish area.

I never enjoyed Gemara. I wasn’t that good at it either, so I never listened. Too many repetitions and jumping from one subject to another in the middle of a page. Nevertheless, I did learn quite a lot – Baba Metzia, Kiddushin, Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah and – before the war interrupted everything – Beitza. I don’t recall discussing Emunah or Tefillah but I did become interested in reading a year or two before the war. We were learning Chumash Rashi on Parashat Mikeitz, where it says, “vatipaem rucho,” “his spirit was troubled”.4 The Rebbe told us of the other place in Nach where “vatitpaem rucho” is mentioned – Daniel, chapter 2. Nevuchadnezar dreams and Daniel interprets his dream. The story fascinated me and I began to read more. Jewish books, Yiddish books and even Polish story books. I became interested in Jewish history too.

4 Bereishit 41:8.

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We certainly weren’t frightened to go out onto the streets or to go home late at night. It was perfectly normal to go to my grandparents and come home about 10 o’clock. Interestingly, all the houses were locked at 8 o’clock. If you wanted to visit somebody after that, you’d have to ring a bell and the janitor would come and open the door for you.

h My grandfather sold animal intestines, stomachs and bladders to the Calers, the Polish butchers who manufactured sausages and other meat products. He had concessions at the slaughterhouses. Every animal killed was opened up and the innards – “krong” – were taken out and brought to my grandfather’s factory. The people there would take out the intestines, which were about 30 yards (27m) long, wash them, drain them, clean them, salt them and put them in bundles. On Tuesdays, they had a kosher Shechita so one of my uncles would always be there. He would come home at night and bring about 10 yards (9m) of kishka and kosher fat and they would divide it in the family. He gave my mother 2 metres of this stuff. She would use it to make krupnik, which is actually one of my favourite foods now; bean and barley soup with kishkas. Everybody made the same thing, so when I came Our Hero

home my mother would say, “Have you eaten?” and I would say, “Yes, I ate at my grandmother’s,” and then I went to my aunt’s and she would ask, “Have you eaten?” and I said, “Yes, at home!” Every so often, a very tall Swiss fellow called Kahn used to come to my grandfather and buy whatever he had. I think he was Jewish too.

Once he asked my grandfather, “How do you operate your business? You’ve got three sons; two are married, one is not. Do you pay wages? How much?”

My grandparents had an account at a Jewish homemade sausage place, where I could buy 10 decos (about 100 grams) without actually paying. Across the street was a baker who made little cakes called wieczorofkis (evening buns). I used to buy two or three on the way to school.

And my grandfather said, “I don’t do it that way. Everybody knows what there is and everybody takes what they need. That’s all there is to it”.

So this fellow said, “And you trust them?” and he said, “Yes.” I took this advice when I first got married. I didn’t know how much to give my wife so I asked my late partner how much I should give a week. He said, “I give my wife £10 a week,” so I said to Susan, “Look, I’m going to give you £10 a week but if you need more, take whatever you need. But if it isn’t there, there’s nothing you can take!”

Grandmother Malka holding Simcha Yair, Kaminsk

you need. That was always my criteria. That’s the way Susan and I brought up our children.

It’s always been like that. My children were brought up that way too. I always trusted them. If there is, you take and if there isn’t, you don’t. So you’ve got to watch out that you don’t take too much, just what

My birth certificate

Everyone made cholent for Shabbat in big iron pots wrapped in paper with their name on it. There were actually two pots, one inside the other. A big pot for the cholent and potatoes and a smaller one for the kugel. My mother or grandmother would make it and we took it to the baker’s on Friday afternoon for him to put in the oven with all the other pots. On Shabbat, at about 11 o’clock, you saw dozens of women, children and maids coming to pick up their piping hot cholent. While they were waiting for the men to come back from shul, my mother or grandmother would put it in the bed to keep it warm!

My grandparents, my mother and Mendel David. I’m sitting in the front. Kaminsk 1934

h Every year, my mother’s parents rented a villa in the forest in Kaminsk, about a 45-minute train journey from Piotrkow. The villa was owned by a Jewish landlord. There were a number of them up for rent and scattered around the forest, near a big clearing next to the railway station. It was self-catering so we would load up a wagon and schlep everything we needed. My mother would come out with my aunt and they would burn out all the bed bugs. The villa had a big veranda and there was a good spot in the clearing where you could go and lie in the sun. And that’s more or less what we did all day. I did take books with me though. I read Joshua, Shmuel Aleph and Bet, Melachim… I would just read them on my own.

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My Mother with Mendel David, 1934

They were translated into Yiddish anyway. I used to get very annoyed at all the misdeeds of the Jewish people and the way they were treated.

Grandmother Malka and my mother with me, Estusha and Simcha Yair, Kaminsk

At 4 o’clock, when all the kids were around, a lady from nearby Radomsk would come in by train. We would eagerly await her arrival. She carried two or three huge baking tins, one on her head and one in each hand, full of freshly baked cakes. They were called jagodzianki, oozing with delicious blackberry filling. She also made a tortove chastow, which was like a layered sponge cake soaked in different types of wine that she cut into small pieces.5 We bought them with our pocket money. I also recall buying batteries in the little shop there, maybe for a torch or a transistor radio. I can also tell you about every passenger train that passed through that station and at exactly what time! Sometimes the signalman would let us get up into the signal box. That was fun.

h My younger brother and sister gave me a hard time. I loved collecting little things, as children do, picking up objects here and there. But my brother and sister always raided my stuff so I never had anything for very long. Mendel David had some strange habits. For example, he would only eat dry potatoes! My sister, Esther, was a lovely little girl but absolutely wild. And then there was my youngest brother, Simcha Yair. He was delicious. Only 6 months old when the war started. Since I was the eldest, I had to take responsibility for certain things, like working in my parents’ hardware store when I had the time. I think that’s what sparked my interest in business.

I sold nails, screws and all sorts of odds and ends. The peasants from the villages came in looking for chains, shoe soles, you name it. If a customer came in and we didn’t have what they wanted, we would say “poniedziely” – “You can get it after Sunday”.

h We also sold huge sheets of shoe leather and rubber for cobblers. We cut whatever they needed and sold it by weight. There were two companies who manufactured rubber, Bergman and Sanok. We only sold Bergman. Until one day… I was coming home for lunch when I saw a Volkswagen Beetle parked down the road. I peeked inside and saw it belonged to a Sanok rep. There were maybe one or two cars in the whole of Piotrkow back then. Most people either walked or used droszkis, a horsedrawn passenger cart the equivalent of the modern taxi. I loved them and my grandfather used them almost every day. My parents used them to bring in goods from out of town after they had paid for clearance at the train depot. I watched the Sanok man come out of another shop and approached him as he was walking to the car. “Look, mister. We have a shop down the road and we don’t sell your goods. If you take me there I’m sure my parents will give you an order”. So he did!

They were called jagodzianki, oozing with delicious blackberry filling.

Luckily, my parents did give him an order. He went out to the car and pulled out a bundle of pencils, notebooks, crayons and all kinds of interesting things. He threw them into the air and all the kids (me included) started fighting over the goodies… what a fantastic afternoon it was!

5 “ Daddy used to make this sponge cake every Chanukah. On our family Poland trip, he stopped off to buy these jagodzianki, which he fondly remembered from his childhood” – Simone.

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Chagim

I liked Sukkot because there were no private sukkot. The whole apartment house had one very big sukkah. The men and the boys would sit in the sukkah while the women had to walk down with the food…

We always had Seder at our house although I can’t remember ever staying awake till the end.

I think most of our Arba Minim used to come from Morocco or Italy.

There were three Matza factories near us and more all over Piotrkow. Three or four weeks before Pesach, they opened the bakeries for anyone who wanted to bake for themselves. My mother, grandmother and aunts would go and have a day at the bakery. My grandfather ate Shmura Matzot.6 He had to chew for about five minutes before he could swallow it. But I never knew what Shmura Matzot actually were until later on in life! My grandfather also had special tunes for the different festivals, some of which we still sing today.

h I liked all the holidays, partly because we finished school a day and a half before Yom Tov! Our apartment was transformed on Shabbat and Yom Tov. The wooden floors were painted red, with special paint. Afterwards our home help polished it to a shine with an enormous brush. And these red floors were absolutely gorgeous. They transformed the whole house into something really special. Grandmother Malka with me, Devorah Leah and another boy. Sitting: Aunt Losha holding Menyek (Menachem), Kaminsk 1936

6 Special matza closely supervised from the wheat harvest through to the baking.

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h I also remember one or two Lag BaOmer parades that were ‘hijacked’ by the Zionist youth movements. These parades went from the centre of the town all the way down to the forest. It must have been about five miles or so. They used to march out in the morning and only come back in the evening. There were a lot of Zionist movements in Piotrkow. And a lot of competition and rivalry too.

h Yamim Noraim were something special. My father would daven most of the service on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. His tunes were beautifully mellow and he never exerted himself. I used to help him out, except for one year… it must have been 1940. My grandmother had rented a villa in the forest, near the river in Shidlov. My uncle was davening there that year. I davened with him instead of with my father at home. I always regretted it.

My grandfather also had special tunes for the different festivals, some of which we still sing today.

h There was a very big cemetery in Piotrkow. I remember my father’s father and my mother’s grandmother’s funerals. She died just before the war. And my grandmother, my mother’s mother, who died in 1942, was buried a few months before they cleared out the Jews from the town. Unfortunately, when we went back there many years later, we couldn’t find any stones marking those graves.

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C h a p t e r

Trouble in the Air We didn’t have a wireless1 but we did read the two main daily papers, “The Heinte” (“Today”) and “The Moment”.

“Tears open the

gates of Heaven;

song breaks down its walls”

Rabbi Nachman

I heard my parents discussing world affairs and other topics of current relevance. They listened to Hitler’s broadcasts and people were becoming very frightened. However, very few people left because there was nowhere to run. Where could you run to? The borders on one side led to Russia and on the southern side to Germany. Lithuania? Latvia? Romania? Poland was more or less encircled by Russia, Germany and Austria so there was really nowhere to go. By then, it was very difficult to get to America either because they severely restricted the number of Polish Jews allowed in. It was the same with Palestine. 1 radio.

I was aware of what was going on because I read the papers a little too. Mainly the headlines and pictures. I remember my father speaking to my mother in a sort of hush. I picked up words here and there...

h The war started on the 1st of September, a Friday morning. I was very excited because I remembered my grandparents and even my mother telling us stories about the First World War. Somehow we thought that this war was going to be the same. That’s how the Poles and the French started too. Fighting with swords and horses against tanks and airplanes. A lot of use that was…

My home in Piotrkow, 13 Pilsudski Street

My first memory of the war is a Seuda Shlishit in Rav Lau’s house on that Shabbat, just before Germany invaded Poland. We were in a large room full of books with a huge table in the middle. Five or six of us youngsters were running a bit wild. Suddenly, someone grabbed me and put a piece of gefilte fish in my hand. I can’t remember if I ate it or not but I do remember hiring a sleigh later that evening. It cost a few pennies and we were driving all over town. All the Polish churches were chiming away like mad because the Germans, Poles and Hungarians had just gone into Czechoslovakia. It didn’t take them long to get to us…

Walking into my old home on our return visit to Poland

Suddenly, three or four German airplanes appeared and started pumping bombs onto the village. I jumped into a big corn field and literally watched the whole town collapse, bomb by bomb. I counted the bombs… you could see them falling from the planes. They didn’t leave one house standing.

After that first Shabbat, we went to my grandparents’ house. Grandfather had a warehouse in his yard housing a big wagon with two horses.

It was very frightening. As a matter of fact, one of Uncle Mayer’s brother-in-laws was injured in that blitz. He had to have physiotherapy every day and lost all movement in his arm.

The whole family climbed into this wagon and off we went, out of Piotrkow. We must have traveled about 5 or 10 km to a little village where we stopped overnight. In the morning, an attachment of Polish soldiers passed through and a German reconnaissance plane circled overhead.

After that little adventure, we gave up any thoughts of escape from Piotrkow. My grandfather said we should go back home. If we were going to be killed we might as well be killed at home.

h 26

Our Hero

The War Begins The Germans were already in Piotrkow by the Tuesday.

It was getting tighter and tighter, like gradual strangulation.

If you wanted to go across the other side of the street you had to watch out for patrols and then run to the other side. It was the same thing if you wanted to go to another street. The back streets became the main thoroughfares.

The Germans issued strict orders from the start. You couldn’t go into certain streets. You had to have special passes to get out of the ghetto. If you were caught without a pass, you could be in for a very severe punishment.

One Friday, they brought a man called Szinszinati into our apartment. I don’t know why. He died on our couch and was buried before Shabbat.

They told everyone to wear a blue Magen David on a white band on the arm. There was nowhere to go and it was becoming more and more difficult to live a normal life. All you could do was try and organize food. We had to smuggle ourselves in and out so we wouldn’t be caught. During the day I would sneak out to the villages and buy sacks of potatoes. One night, the Germans caught Uncle Pinya and put him in prison. Luckily, we were able to bribe them with a kilo of coffee and they released him. My father suffered terribly from the start and lost a lot of weight. He felt responsible for what was happening to us.2

2 See Prologue on page 7.

They imposed a 6 o’clock curfew. Fortunately, every house had a backyard and the Jews created a passage between the yards, making it into one big street. This made it a little easier for people to move around without being caught.

Piotrkow was the first ghetto in Poland. They brought in hundreds of people from neighbouring villages and towns and it became very crowded. People had to give up half their apartments to take in refugees. One Shabbat, a huge column of wagons, carts and horses (“podwodis”) brought in people from Lodz, including my father’s sister, her husband and their two little boys. They lived with us until the end.

Conditions became increasingly worse.

It was getting tighter and tighter, like gradual strangulation.

Our Hero

Then the Germans began shooting randomly at people in the streets, especially at night.

There were beatings too. We saw German policemen cut off people’s beards and break their glasses. It was a terrible thing to watch... and then see those people ashamedly wearing kerchiefs over their lower faces. We also saw the S.S. prowling around with fierce dogs and letting them loose.

h Thankfully, we had food. If you had money, you had food. But people who didn’t have money were dependent on the rations, which became fewer and fewer. A bigger problem was heating. Coal was a very scarce commodity. Fortunately, we had a very big cellar. We dug a hole where we kept potatoes and covered them with straw and soil to prevent them freezing. We also had a special oven run on wood dust. It consisted of two metal, bucket-like containers, one big and one slightly smaller. The big one had two bottoms, with a hole in the upper one. The second bucket was open at the top with a hole in the bottom.

Our Hero

You put a piece of wood into the centre of the smaller one, spread the wood dust inside until it was full, lifted the smaller bucket and put it inside the big bucket. You then lit a piece of paper and stuck it in a little opening between the two bottoms on the bigger bucket until the soil dust caught fire. The whole thing was red hot within minutes. It was very dangerous. It was so hot we used to be able to cook on the lid. You could walk around naked in the middle of the winter!

For example, one day a Pole called Paya came into our shop. He was a regular customer. He wanted to buy some special steel bars, about two or three metres long. I don’t know why he couldn’t buy them anywhere else but my father was able to get them for him, even under ghetto conditions. This fellow paid us with petrol, which we then sold for a profit.

Once somebody caught it, they had all their hair shaved off and were locked in their houses. Solitary confinement. People fed them by attaching food to a rope the victim would drop down from the window.

Whenever I reminisce about this period, I always think the Jewish people were completely disorganized. There was no organization at all. There was no one to speak up for the Jews. After all, there were three and a half million Jews in Poland before the war. From my perspective as a young boy I saw nothing. No demonstrations. No fighting back. Nothing.

h Jewish life did continue to an extent, albeit secretly. The shuls were closed so people made up small minyanim at home, but if you heard the Germans coming you had to stop. We blew the Shofar into the chimney so as not to make a noise. My Bar Mitzvah was upstairs. I was called up to the Torah and that was it. I made the Berachot on the Sefer Torah and then the Berachot on the Haftarah. That’s all. It was all done very quickly and quietly.

Leonie visiting my home in 2007

Despite the fears, restrictions, illnesses and deaths, people still did business somehow. I think my parents did some very good business.

And then there was typhus. The scariest thing you could think of. It was awful. The few that survived were very lucky.

The other terrible illness was consumption. I had a second cousin, my grandfather’s sister’s daughter, a young girl about 18 or 19. She died of consumption. It was a long death… you can’t imagine it. She was coughing her lungs out all day. It was heartbreaking to listen to.

“Jews are forbidden to walk on the pavement”

The back of my grandparents’ house in Piotrkow

Maybe it was because 90% of the people knew they were going to their deaths. Maybe people just didn’t believe what was happening. So they simply accepted it; not willingly of course, but they accepted it. People just went. Left their houses and went. They could have burnt down the houses. They could have left the whole town in flames. Instead of leaving everything to the cursed Poles. They could have said, “We’d rather die here”. Would that have done any good? I don’t know. It really bothered me. But who would listen to a 14-year-old boy? And what could I do anyway? There was very little anyone could do. We were trapped. I was always frightened in the ghetto. I knew my life wasn’t worth much. But there was one thing I could do… Survive.

Our Hero

C h a p t e r

Leaving the Ghetto “The turning point in growing up is

when you discover

the core of strength within you that

overcomes all hurt” Max Lerner

It wasn’t until the beginning of 1942 that the Germans began the Vishedlenya, clearing out the town and sending people to the gas chambers. I had survived three horrific years in the ghetto. We knew what was going on because we used to work with Poles and many of them had transistor radios. Although we didn’t know the extent of what was happening to European Jewry, it wasn’t hard to guess. People knew they were going to their deaths! We helplessly looked on as the trains took people away. And we lived in constant fear that we would be the next in line…

Just after Rosh Hashanah in 1942, in the middle of September, the Germans surrounded the ghetto. No way in and no way out. We had to stay in the house. A few days later, someone walked the streets with a megaphone, shouting, “Anyone who works in the Hortensia and Kara glass factories should come out and hand over their possessions”. So I went out, along with another 2-3,000 Jews. We were taken to our factories and slept in some sort of warehouse. That was the last time I saw my family. My father could also have saved himself, because he had a job in the glass factory too. But he didn’t. He chose to stay with his family… I can picture them standing there when I left the house. My father. My mother. My grandmother. My two brothers and my sister. My father was davening, wearing his Tallit and Tefillin and holding Simcha Yair in his arms. My mother, grandmother and Menachem Mendel were next to him. My sister was standing near the table.

Knowing what was coming, my father had prepared a secret bunker hideout in our cellar, which was quite large. I heard later that they were able to hide there for about a month before the Germans found them. Like many other Jews in Piotrkow, the Germans had rounded them up, put them in the shul for a couple of weeks and then sent them to the next town, Radomsk. From there they went to Treblinka…

h 1 After the war, the Piotrkow authorities issued a little booklet listing the dates particular streets were cleared

out. Because many people didn’t know the actual dates of their relatives’ deaths, they commemorated Yahrzeits based on this booklet.

Our Hero

I worked in the Hortensia. Uncle Mayer and Uncle Itzik worked in the Kara. The Kara made plain glass. It was sometimes dangerous work, like building an underground car park nowadays. Except now they use mechanical diggers. Then they used Jews… Uncle Mayer worked in the gas works under the factory, the Gaseches. It was very hard work because they had to keep it going 24 hours a day. They used special coal to make the gas and once the coal had been burnt, you were left with coke, which was also a very important fuel. The gas workers always came out absolutely black, like coal miners. When I showed up for the first time, the manager said I would never be on the list of permanent workers. Nevertheless, I ended up there. Apparently my father had paid a lot of money to get me in. My “Golden Thread of Luck” had begun…

Sometimes, I feel terribly guilty...

Looking for the “Piotrkow Stone” in Treblinka, the only symbol of my parents’ graves

The rumour was that if you had a job you would be okay. Fortunately for me and my uncles – Pinya, Mayer and Itzik – we had work. I started working in the glassworks in 1942. There were three glass factories in Piotrkow – the Phoenix, Hortensia and Kara. The latter two were owned by the same company.

Back then, before the hi-tech machines, glassmaking was very skilled and intensive work. We had special ovens heated to 1,000 or 2,000 °C. And a machine called a Czongownia. You put the glass in one end to be reheated and then it was pulled through to the other end, by which time it would be cold and people could pack it. We worked eight hour shifts and sometimes a lot more. When the Poles stopped for lunch after four hours, we kids could go to the ovens. We played around with the glass for hours to learn how to work with it. Consequently, after about two and a half years, I became a master glassblower. I had started by taking away the unwanted glass, then I became a glass blower, assistant glass blower and finally a master.

That was the last time I saw my family.

The Germans marched us to work in columns about an hour before our shift and eight hours later they marched us back.

Our Hero

d 35

They regularly counted us at the checkpoint just outside the ghetto. It was quite common for them to take people out of the columns and send them away. We never saw them again. Once I came back from a night shift very early in the morning. We got through the checkpoint and I went straight to bed. Suddenly, around noon, I awoke to see Uncle Mayer standing over me crying his eyes out. “What’s the matter? What happened?” I asked. He was sobbing with great relief, “The next column that passed through… they took a lot of the boys away… I thought you were there…” We knew many of them were taken to a massive ammunition works – SkarjiskoKarminha in Polish, Skarjiski in Yiddish – where they made artillery shells and large scale ammunition. They had to fill them with some deadly chemical. The Germans never fed them. They simply worked them to death and brought in a new workforce whenever they wanted.2

The Hortensia Glass Factory, where I worked during the war

Every so often the Germans organized “Actios” at the factory. They would round up the Jews, put them on the parade ground and pick them out: “This one, this one, this one”. I don’t know what happened to them but I conjured up all kinds of scenarios. That was terrifying, because you never knew. Any day you could be picked out and sent away, never to be seen again. One day we heard a rumour that the Germans were short of people to fill up the train. I was scared stiff because I was one of the newer workers. I hid in an old oven for about 12 hours until the trains had passed. When I came out from hiding I heard that Uncle Itzik had bribed someone to keep me safe. I don’t know how. We never talked about it. It was a very tough time. 2 We knew this from a few people who managed to escape.

Our Hero

h We had rations but they were never enough. The Poles who worked with us had lunch in a big dining room and we used to sneak in afterwards and eat the leftovers. My favourite food was spaghetti with a sauce made with some kind of fruit. It was like a jam soup and was absolutely delicious. I used to dream of having a loaf of bread, a knife and a big bowl of spaghetti and jam soup. Luckily, Uncle Mayer had a brother-in-law who imported tea and coffee. So my uncles had a stock of tea and coffee which was worth more than gold. They had left it with one of my grandfather’s clients. Every time we needed money, they told him to sell. He would then somehow send them the money which they would use to buy food. I also had a knack of ‘finding’ food, like potato peels, kohlrabi and things like that. I was lucky in that way. As a group of four, we always had food. Some people had it a lot worse than me. At least I wasn’t hungry. Until Buchenwald... And we had showers. So despite the constant fear, it was known as “one of the best concentration camps in all of Europe”. You had work, you had a bed and you had food... yes, you were under constant threat and they took a lot of people away but somehow we survived.

h Our factory was split into two – a small glass plant for glasses, jars, etc. and a plate glass plant. There was a tartak, a sawmill, in the plate glass area. In the winter, the Poles cut down trees and brought them into town, stacking them up by the thousands before making planks out of them.

Our Hero

One Sunday morning, the Jewish policemen3 were walking around looking for people to pick on to do some dangerous work in this log cutting plant.

It happened so quickly I didn’t have time to put my shoes on! I was walking in about 10 cm of snow in my socks!

One of these policemen – whose family owned a huge room that Uncle Mayer and Aunt Losha had rented – had it in for me. I have no idea why. His wife was actually very good to me. She worked in the kitchen and often gave me extra portions of food. But her husband chased me all over the place.

I had to keep my wits about me to avoid being caught. If they caught you, they would put you to work in the kitchens. More often than not, they didn’t know where I was so they couldn’t catch me.

With Uncle Mayer, Uncle Pinya, my cousin Natan (first on right) and their wives

Just outside the factory, four big houses had housed the Polish workers before the war. They were now converted into one house and three barracks. They put me in one of the barracks and Uncle Mayer and Uncle Itzik were allocated a room in the house, so I spent a lot of time with them. I sometimes slept there as well… when I wasn’t caught.

With Jeremy and Daniela at the Umschlagplatz in Warsaw, where Jews gathered before deportation to Treblinka

Until one day – just my luck – this policeman caught me. He pulled me out of Uncle Mayer’s room and dragged me to the yard where all the ‘volunteers’ were waiting, shivering in the cold. It happened so quickly I didn’t have time to put my shoes on! I was walking in about 10 cm of snow in my socks! I asked if I could go back upstairs and put on my boots. “I can’t work properly without boots,” I told him. “OK,” he says, and lets me go. (I don’t think he had too much intelligence that policeman) 3 P olicemen employed by the Germans to do their dirty work for them. They would abuse us, beat us and make our lives even more miserable than they already were. Some of them were worse than the Germans themselves. For example, a Jew called Hammer had a terrible reputation for beating his own people. In contrast, the chief Jewish supervisor there was Solomon Gomberg. He died in Buchenwald. He was very good because he tried to do a job for his people. He once persuaded Rabbi Lau to raise 100,000 zlotys to save Jews from ‘The Lublin Camps’.

Our Hero

Well, I didn’t fancy stacking heavy logs in the freezing cold so of course I hid again. He couldn’t find me. After about half an hour, all the groups had left the yard and I came out of my hiding place. Carelessly, I went to the window and there he was, staring straight up at me! He went nuts and came rushing up, banging on the door in a rage. “Kurnedz! Where are you?” He schlepped me out again and we went down two floors and out of the door by a kitchen. But he made another mistake. He was walking ahead of me instead of behind me.

Our Hero

Four very large barrels of sauerkraut stood at the right of that door – we used to call them the “American barrels” – close together in a square. By the time he turned around to see where I was, I was already safe in the little gap in the centre of the barrels. I was very small and thin so it wasn’t a problem to slide in there. “Where are you, Kurnedz, you little rascal!” He was fuming. When I thought the coast was clear, I went back upstairs to Uncle Mayer’s. But the policeman had obviously been on the lookout and caught me again. This time he took me to what they called the “postorunek”, the guard house. Two other kids were there as well, cowering with fear in this little room. Suddenly, one of the policemen pulls out a long stick, like a truncheon. He beat up the first fellow pretty badly and then the second. I was in third place and understood very well what they were going to do to me. So as he rushed at me, I jumped out of the chair and ran out. But one of the men there had a whip, cracking it

just fast enough to give me a very painful blow on my thumb. I remember it stinging for a long time. “If I catch you after the war,” I told him, stopping to look him straight in the eye, “I will personally kill you.” I didn’t have to. I saw him dead a few days later on the way from Czestochowa to Buchenwald. Sometimes you just had to take your own risks.

h In 1943, they decided to split the whole complex – every factory would be with its own workers. We were told, “Pack your rucksacks and come down to the yard at six o’clock!” Each factory had its own designated space and each shift sat together. From about eight o’clock onwards, two S.S men came around to pluck out their prey, “You. You. You. Go!” We were sitting there for hours as they took out 10 people here, five people there, 10 … and that was it. They took them away in lorries. We didn’t know where they were going. Some people said they were going to Sandoniesh and other places. We never saw them again. In order to avoid being chosen in these Actios, we (me and my three uncles) always tried to get as important a job as possible, because the more important you were to the job, the greater the chances they would leave you alone. It worked to a certain extent. Uncle Mayer worked very hard and so did Uncle Itzik. Uncle Pinya worked in the woodwork factory.

From left: Uncle Pinya and Aunt Franya, Uncle Mayer, Aunt Hella and Uncle Itzik

Gradually, they shut down different parts of the factory and disposed of the workers. By the time they’d finished there was only one small furnace left, which only needed a limited staff. As luck would have it, I was left with this last group of about 20/30 people. In the evening, I found out my three uncles had also been spared. 40

Our Hero

Once again, inexplicably, all four of us were still alive – albeit in different factories – but together nevertheless. What were the odds of that happening? I think the key was keeping up your own spirits. Keeping alert. Following your gut feelings. No one else could do it for you. You just tried to stay alive for as long as possible, hoping the war would end before they took you away.

The End of the Glass Factory

From left: Aunt Yadja, me, Aunt Hella with Channah and Ezriel and the little girl with the crown is Malka (it was her 5th birthday)

There were now two groups of Jews. I didn’t know which group was going to be sent away and which was going to stay… “Mi leChaim umi LaMavet”.4 But I had one of my hunches and I said to myself, “It’s no use standing here Pinchas. You’ve got to go to the other side”. So while the Germans and the Jewish policemen were talking, I calmly left my position and walked over to the other group. Miraculously, nobody saw me apart from one man, but he kept quiet. If he had said anything I’m sure I wouldn’t be telling you this today. And indeed, once again, I was tremendously lucky.

The glass factory worked until 1944. The Russians were already in Warsaw. The factory management could obviously see the writing on the wall. So much so they gave us a day off work that Yom Kippur! We had a special dinner before the fast and another one after it ended. We had a good Minyan with a choir. It was absolutely out of this world, something quite extraordinary.

The group I had originally been with was taken away, never to be heard of again…

As the Russians came west, they advanced to the eastern part of the Vistula and stopped in Warsaw. They were only 120 kilometres (about 80 miles) away. We thought they could possibly reach Piotrkow in another week or so… but they stopped.

In October 1944, they shut down the whole factory.

I was one of the master glassblowers left in the one small furnace still running in the factory. We ran it on our own for a time until the Germans closed the factory down completely.

Again, by some quirk of fate that seemed to follow me wherever I went, I found myself alive and on the very last shift in the glassworks. Not only that, but I was still together with my three uncles.

The last remaining Jews were taken out to an open space.

Coincidence? Luck? Miracle?

The S.S. ordered us to line up. We feared the worst.

Whatever it was, all four of us were together again. Four of the last Jews to leave Piotrkow…

“You! You! You! Over there!” The rest of us were left standing, shivering…

h 4 “ Who to life and who to death” – from the Unetane Tokef prayer recited on Rosh Hashanah.

Uncle Mayer and Uncle Itzik at Jeremy’s wedding 42

Our Hero

C h a p t e r

“ You gain strength, courage and

confidence by every

experience by which you really stop to

look fear in the face” Eleanor Roosevelt

Czestochowa We didn’t know where they were taking us. We stopped in Czestochowa where there were three ammunitions factories making bullets on special machines that constantly needed oil. The people who worked there looked like something out of a horror film. Full of blackheads and clothed in cement sacks. What was in store for us? First we had to register. They asked us what our jobs were. Glassblowing wasn’t in demand there but fortunately we knew there was other work in Czestochowa apart from bullet making, so we decided to register as betchers – barrel makers. Why barrels? Well, they used to make sauerkraut in enormous barrels about five metres high. A group of about 20-30 women would clean and chop the cabbages and put them into buckets. We would then take the buckets, climb up ladders to the rim of the barrels and throw in the cabbage (after taking a few healthy bites of course).

factory, where they used the rubber to repair shoes. Yankel earned some much needed extra cash. I think Uncle Mayer still had some things to sell as well. He had some double-bottomed jugs in which he’d hidden gold, diamond rings and watches belonging to my family. I have no idea how he managed to keep them after all he’d been through. However, despite our relatively ‘privileged’ status in Czestochowa, it was still the same constant fear of danger; the fear of the unknown, of being taken away at any given moment.

Leaving Czestochowa The Russians started their offensive again on the 2nd January. They were in Czestochowa within a day or two but in the meantime the Germans had evacuated the Czestochowa Janka. We didn’t stay in Czestochowa long. I think we were there until the beginning of January 1945. The conditions were awful. We lived in barracks at the “Czestochowa Janka” factory, which is still standing today. But like all these camps, if you were good at cheating, bribing and organizing (which we were), you could make some extra food. For example, Yankel ( Jack) – who later became my partner in the business – worked as a shoemaker. He teamed up with a real shoemaker and worked in a place full of rubber belts used to drive the machines. Wide belts about four, six inches wide. He was quite small so he could sneak in, pinch some of these belts and bring them to the 46

Our Hero

Once again, my uncles and I were in the last group. Surrounded by the Gestapo, we marched to the railway station. As we walked, we saw a lot of people running away, shouting, “The Russians are coming. They’re very close!”

Uncle Mayer

We came to a river. Suddenly, we heard a shot. All the guards disappeared for a minute or two, leaving us standing there in shock. If only there had been another shot we might have run away too. But before we could come to our senses, the guards were back again. They took us to the railway depot and shoved us into cattle wagons.

Uncle Itzik and Ezriel with a Sefer Torah in memory of our families, October 1965

We were on our way to Germany. Buchenwald…

With Susan and Daniela in Poland

Our Hero

C h a p t e r

Buchenwald “To respond to evil by committing

another evil does

not eliminate it. It allows it to go on forever”

Vaclav Havel

The journey to Buchenwald is now but a vague memory. I recall us travelling very slowly, perhaps stopping once or twice a day, when they would give us a potato or something else to eat. Many people died on the way. Apart from what they’d been through up to then and the crowded conditions in the wagons, it was also January and freezing cold. Nevertheless, miraculously, fortunately, somehow, my three uncles and I were still alive. We travelled for five or six days and arrived at Buchenwald. As we entered, I saw the words “Jedem das Seine” (literally “to each his own”, but figuratively “everyone gets what he deserves”) placed over the camp’s main entrance gate.

Susan, Itzik and Jeremy with me at Buchenwald

Where would I have been without my uncles?

We had to undress. They took our clothes away, cut off all our hair and put us through a shower-like contraption. Something like a sheep dip full of disinfectant. It wasn’t such a bad thing actually because it killed all the lice, which meant you could sleep soundly for a few days… The Jews had a ‘welcome committee’. When a new transport came in, they asked people for information, names. “Do you know where this fellow is?” “Do you know where that fellow is?” And they would take revenge on the Jewish policemen who had abused them back in the ghettos.

Such as Hammer, the brutal overseer who had been with us in the glassworks. He mysteriously disappeared overnight.

h We didn’t have to wear striped shirts.1 I received a pair of good trousers, a shirt, a French railwayman’s jacket and a pair of padded Russian soldiers’ trousers which kept me warm. The jacket was about three times my size! I also had a pair of shoes, which were useless. My feet froze up! My uncles clubbed together to buy me a pair of top quality boots with real leather uppers and a wooden sole. Nobody else had that. How did they manage that? Well, they got some dry leaves, cut them up and rolled them into paper to make cigarettes. They bought my boots with the money they made from selling the cigarettes. And that saved my life because wood is an insulator and doesn’t let the cold in so much. I saw other people’s feet freeze because they had no shoes.

h Again, astonishingly, my uncles and I were kept together and assigned to Barrack 65. I think it was the best barrack available because it was very small. There were only about 60-70 people in there as opposed to hundreds in the bigger barracks. They used to count us twice a day – Appels. Everyone had to go outside to be counted, even in the snow. Except Barrack 65, because they could easily count us inside. That was lucky.

Where would I have been without my uncles?

The comforts of Barrack 65 didn’t last long though. One day they moved us to Barrack 62, which was Hell on earth. 2,000 people in one small room!

1 To this day, I cannot wear or bear to see anyone wearing blue and white stripes.

The rain dripped in constantly. And we slept on ‘bridges.’ You could squeeze four or five people onto a bridge and they were three or four stories high. Every morning, they took out those who’d died overnight and left them outside for a wagon to come

Our Hero

d and take them to the crematorium. The people in charge of these barracks were all Russians and Germans – German prisoners. They would beat people all the time.

You literally saw them waste away… d

Once the camp guards asked for volunteers so I stepped forward. They took us to a huge warehouse full of suitcases, parcels and other belongings. We opened a few and found a whole treasure trove of clothes – trousers, jackets, shirts…

On another occasion, I volunteered again and they took us to the nearby town of Weimar. I found myself next to a bank. When no one was looking, I sneaked into the bank, found the workers’ cloakroom and grabbed about seven or eight sandwiches from their bags.

All belonging to Jews.

They were absolutely delicious. But far too thin!

Despite my luck with clothes, I still needed a coat. I left that warehouse with three scarves, four heavy coats, four pairs of gloves and two hats. Nobody stopped me. I walked back into the camp with all this stuff for my uncles. We were well insulated that winter.

A letter from an organization at Buchenwald officially confirming my arrival and my subsequent transfer to Colditz

That’s why Susan always says I eat too fast. It’s from Buchenwald.

h I didn’t do any work in Buchenwald. I just walked around and hid if I saw any Germans. There were some people who did work, in a quarry. They carried big stones from one place to another and then brought them back the next day. I was better off volunteering in the warehouses. The main problem was food. Whereas we had been able to organize food for ourselves over the past few years, we were now stuck. You couldn’t organize any food in Buchenwald and people just died of starvation. You literally saw them waste away… That said, at lunch time they did dole out something from big metal churns. We had to queue up for a chochler, a ladle-full of this stuff. But there was so much pushing and shoving you could easily get hit over the head with the ladle! You had to eat fast. Because if you pushed in as early as possible and ate fast you had the chance to come round again for another helping.

Our Hero

C h a p t e r

Colditz After five or six weeks in Buchenwald, we were taken to a place called Colditz, a huge ammunitions factory for assembling German Bazookas, Panzefaust.

“Hope is like peace.

It is not a gift from G-d. It is a gift we can only give to each other” Elie Wiesel

They counted us in the morning and put us to work. But again, somehow, just like in Buchenwald, I never went to work and nobody caught me. Maybe they just didn’t care. As soon as they sent us to work, I slipped away with another boy. We just carried this plank of wood around all day, eight hours, 10 hours... Sometimes he was in front, sometimes me. We were looking for food. Whatever we could manage to steal. Sometimes we found a potato peel, kohlrabi, that kind of stuff. We were very lucky the guards never caught us. They could have killed us on the spot.

Uncle Itzik (left) and Uncle Mayer at Jeremy’s wedding

One day, we were walking with this plank of wood. He was in front and I was behind him. Suddenly, a German guard walked past pushing a wheelbarrow full of kohlrabi on his way to the kitchen.

I turn around, trembling with fear. And he says to me in Polish, “Smakuye?” – “Does it taste good?” And without thinking, I answer him back in Polish, straight to his face, “Yes, if you haven’t got anything else”.

We followed him.

After what seemed like a lifetime, he just gave me a look and left me alone.

It all happened so quickly. The German had to open a padlocked door so he rested his gun against the wall and put his hand into his pocket to get the key. While he was doing this, the boy in front lowered the plank, ran to the wheelbarrow, grabbed a handful of kohlrabi and ran away, leaving me standing there holding my side of the plank!

He walked over to the big table where the workers were assembling the firing mechanisms and gave the foreman a good telling off for letting me get away from the table.

There was nothing I could do.

Another time, I heard on the morning grapevine that they’d brought in ‘white carrots’. Something like parsnips for cattle and horse fodder but not usually for human consumption.

I thought I would be in for it now but somehow, miraculously, the German just ignored me. So I did the same thing as my friend and snatched some precious kohlrabi. I hid, cut them up into pieces and smuggled them up to my three uncles who were all working at their machines in the ammunitions factory. Each machine had a little box attached to it, so I slipped them each a few pieces of kohlrabi.

That was a real miracle.

However, when you don’t have anything else to eat… I managed to climb up on one of the wagons and grab a load of these carrots, hiding them in my oversized jacket! Again, I dodged the guards and got away with it.

And then I was very lucky yet again.

It could have been the end…

And then I was very lucky yet again.

Behind Uncle Mayer’s machine was a huge pile of ammunition boxes stacked against the wall. Actually, there was a small gap between them and the wall. I managed to squeeze in there with a piece of kohlrabi. I’d found a shard of glass to scrape off the skin and I was looking forward to my banquet.

It could have been the end…

It was an Unteroffizier, a German corporal accompanied by two other soldiers. He was a real sadist. He would order his henchmen to take their guns and literally break your bones.

But as I start scraping, I suddenly feel a hand on my shoulder…

While we were in Colditz, the Americans were advancing from the west. We could hear the guns coming nearer and nearer every day. They told us the camp was about to be taken over by the Americans who would liberate us the very next day. What excitement! But, just our luck, the next day was 12th April, 1945, the day President Roosevelt died, and the Americans stopped for 24 hours as a mark of respect. The Germans didn’t waste any time and decided to evacuate the camp immediately. At least they gave us a loaf of bread each before they sent us on our way yet again. The horror was not yet over.

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C h a p t e r

The Death March to Theresienstadt There must have been about 2,000 people in Colditz, from all over Europe – Russians, French, Germans, Belgians, Italians, you name it. I think there were about 700-800 Jews. They separated us all into our ethnic/national groups.

“Although the

world is full of suffering, it is

also full of the

overcoming of it” Helen Keller

By the time we reached Theresienstadt a couple of weeks later, only a few hundred (and about 60 Jews) had survived.1 We were never told where we were going. We walked for about half a day and came into a small German town. They took us all into a park and within a minute, there wasn’t a guard left! All the guards had vanished. We were free! We could have escaped. But the Jews started arguing about where to go. The best thing would have been to turn around and go back. It would have taken about two or three hours had we gone as fast as 1 See “The Boys,” p. 247.

With Susan and the children in Kurnedz, a village near Piotrkow

we could. We could have walked towards the American forces. But we didn’t because some people wanted to go to Lodz, some to Warsaw and an almighty argument ensued. In the meantime, the Russians or the Poles went into the town and started a riot. They were setting the houses alight, breaking shop windows and looting.

We stayed in the forest overnight. No tents. No mattresses. No toilets. Just us, the stars and the pouring rain. What a wretched night! The Hungarians suffered the most I think.2 They were screaming and shouting all night. People were attacking each other for bread (especially the Russians, who were particularly brutal) because many of us didn’t eat it all at once. We used to save it. From there, we began a march that was to last two weeks. People were dying all the time, especially from the Jewish columns. If a person couldn’t walk any more, they just collapsed and an S.S. guard would shoot them dead. Amazingly enough, my uncles and I were still reasonably healthy at this stage. I was still only a small boy, skin and bones, but I was okay. But we were hungry. Oh so hungry! I know what it really means to be starving. If you pushed and fought enough you could get a small piece of bread in the morning and maybe a boiled potato in the evening. But to get a potato you really had to fight. I was so hungry I ate grass. My official identity card from Theresienstadt, issued on the 18th July, 1945

2 Probably because Hungarian Jewry was relatively “new” to German persecution. The first transports of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz had only begun on 15th May, 1944.

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I know what it really means to be starving.

I suppose it was partly because I still had my insulated wooden boots so I had warm feet. And we still had our coats and scarves from Buchenwald.

Then, towards late afternoon, the guards suddenly appeared again and the S.S. surrounded the whole park, kicked everybody back into line and herded us out of town. A lost opportunity.

I don’t know how I made it through those two weeks.

As we were walking through the little towns, people just came out and stared at us. They didn’t help at all. They didn’t throw us food or try to stop the guards. Nothing. One day, about midday, a huge squadron of airplanes flew over us. It took a long time for them all to pass. And when they came over, everybody jumped into the ditches at the side of the road because we thought they were going to bomb us. Uncle Pinya was feeling unwell and was quite hot. As he lay in this ditch, he took his shoes off and put his feet in a little stream of freezing cold water, catching a terrible chill. He could hardly walk. So my other two uncles supported him – one on each side under his arms – and they schlepped him along. I could see he wouldn’t survive another day like this. But then there was yet another miracle. It was a Friday. We stopped at what must have been a very big construction works, a factory full of sand, cement, etc. No windows, doors or anything. It was a huge place. The Germans said, “There’s a wagon on the way here. All the sick people will ride on this wagon”. That was quite scary because it had happened before and those people had never come back. We discussed our next move because my uncles couldn’t carry him any more. And then it started snowing. Everything became so slippery. It really was a miracle because we had to stop marching. Two weeks of starvation and walking were put on hold. Nevertheless, with no real choice, we decided to put Uncle Pinya on the wagon. Would we ever see him again?

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C h a p t e r “Most of the

Theresienstadt

in the world have

On the day before we came into Theresienstadt we stopped overnight at a Czech village called Leitmeritz. They made sure everybody had a potato. I can still taste that potato to this day!

important things

been accomplished

by people who have

When we arrived at Theresienstadt, there was a crowd of people on both sides of the gate, shouting, “Give them your name. Give your age. Below 13 and you’ll get extra rations”. Consequently, when I came to England, my age was 12 (I was actually 17!)

kept on trying when

there seemed to be no hope at all” Dale Carnegie

h Theresienstadt was a revelation. We thought that all the Jews in Europe had suffered the same fate. Yet here was a Jewish town complete with a restaurant, bank and everything you would see in a normal town. We couldn’t believe it.

My three Guardian Angels: Itzik, Pinya and Mayer

Afterwards we found out that the Germans had made this into a model town. If the International Red Cross or other organizations would inquire about the Jews, they would show them Theresienstadt and say, “What are you talking about? Look how we treat our Jews”. Of course, each time they brought in a new transport to Theresienstadt, another transport would leave for Auschwitz. By the time we arrived there, Czech police were patrolling the outside and Jews were in charge of the inside. We were about 10 people to a room, in three-storey buildings, which are still standing today. We were only there for a few days before we were liberated.

I met this man again soon after we were liberated and asked him where I could find a pair of Tefillin. He gave me a pair of tiny Tefillin – about a centimetre square but perfectly kosher, which I still have today. After traipsing all over the place, I finally found Uncle Pinya! They had brought him into a hospital in Theresienstadt and he had actually been quite well treated.

In the meantime, we still hadn’t found Uncle Pinya. I felt very guilty because I had persuaded my uncles to let him go on the wagon. I took it upon myself to try and find him. However, the Czech police wouldn’t let me out of the barracks, which were surrounded by a thick stone wall. Thankfully, because I was so skinny, I managed to squeeze through some bars without anyone catching me. I walked around for a day or two looking for hospitals or places where they brought in new people. While I was looking for him, I walked through some big gates into a yard and then down some steps into a smaller yard. I knocked on the door of a house and lo and behold, a Jewish man opens the door! I remember the black kippa he had on his head because it looked like a long boat.

He gave me a pair of tiny Tefillin – about a centimetre square but perfectly kosher, which I still have today.

I can still picture the scene today. Behind him on the table were a loaf of bread and a tin of sardines. He goes to the table, makes HaMotzi, cuts the bread and gives me a slice of bread and a sardine. Paradise!

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C h a p t e r

Liberation â&#x20AC;&#x153;Freedom is not the right to do

what we want, but what

we oughtâ&#x20AC;? Abraham Lincoln

On the 9th March, 1945, the Russian army came in early in the morning. I was one of the first people to leave the barracks. The Russians had allowed us 24 hours to do anything we wanted to the Germans but I was involved in more important matters. I had climbed onto the first tank I saw and a soldier gave me a bowl of thick Russian soup, full of meat, potatoes and cabbage, after which I fell into a blissful sleep. That was the most marvellous day of my life. A feeling of absolute euphoria! Looking back, I suppose it was our faith in the liberation that kept us going towards the end. Once we understood the Americans and the Russians were closing in, we knew that every day we survived was another day closer to liberation. We never had any thoughts about giving up. If you gave up, you died. It was as simple as that.

It was a bit chaotic. The Russians were supposed to be in charge but it took them time to get organized. We did receive rations though, and medical attention for those in need. They sent in a team of doctors and nurses and took over the whole camp. People were sick and dying like flies – typhus was rampant. People ate too much, which caused chronic diarrhoea and even death. They couldn’t reach the toilets in time so the stairs and corridors were full of excrement. Despite the euphoria of liberation, it was still a terrible time. There wasn’t a day they didn’t take out hundreds of bodies. Uncle Mayer became very sick too. They put him in a hospital. Later, I don’t know how, he was in charge of 70-80 German prisoners of war. He picked them up from their barracks in the morning and brought them into the camp where they worked in a warehouse. I took over from him occasionally.

h A few days after the liberation, I left my uncles and met up with a few boys I knew. We walked back in the direction of Leitmeritz. A battalion of Russian soldiers had set up camp there. As we were wandering around, we spotted a German Kapo we recognized from Buchenwald. His favourite pastime had been climbing up onto the beds and hitting people over the head with a chochler, a long ladle, as they woke up in the morning. We grabbed him and beat him mercilessly, leaving him lying in a nearby pond. Then we went into a little farm house. Three or four women and two very elderly Germans were preparing lunch. What a lunch! They were cutting up large chunks of meat and putting them into a huge iron pot together with some enormous potatoes. They were about to put them into the oven when we said, “We’re coming back at two o’clock to eat it”. And we did. They also had a churn of milk waiting for us on the table. It was wonderful at the time but it was the wrong thing to do. 68

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An item that appeared in the Evening News, Monday 11th September, 1978.

We ate far too much and became violently sick. We became so bloated we couldn’t walk. And we had to get back to Theresienstadt somehow. But once again, something just ‘happened’ at exactly the right time.

A wagon came along carrying bundles of straw. We all climbed on and made the driver take us back to Theresienstadt.

Despite the euphoria of liberation, it was still a terrible time. There wasn’t a day they didn’t take out hundreds of bodies.

That night, my stomach started exploding. O boy! It was absolute murder. But I didn’t let that stop me eating…

h One day we came to a big, isolated house. It must have belonged to somebody very important because it was two stories high with a huge cellar, divided into three parts. One part was full of lady’s clothes: fur coats, ball gowns and things like that. Another part was a man’s wardrobe full of suits, shirts and underwear.

d Our Hero

I became very friendly with the Sergeant in charge of the guards – a Mongol called Turkmann from East Russia. He had a beard of about 10 hairs and was very good to me. He always had lunch ready for me. Before I left for England, he said, “You will remember me, won’t you? Try to remember me”. Funnily enough, I do still remember his address. He lived in a place called Eskabateskioblask Rayon Garikala! All in all, I have quite fond memories of Theresienstadt. We just lived from day to day. We still didn’t know what was going to happen to us but the constant fear of death had somewhat subsided.

I found a treasure trove of clothes in that house. Hundreds of suitcases belonging to people from Austria and other places. I kitted myself out very nicely, eventually travelling to England in a nice suit and a beautiful pair of shoes. And every day I used to put on two or three shirts, a couple of jackets, a couple of pairs of trousers and I walked back ‘home’ to give my uncles something nice to wear. The third part of the cellar was like a pantry. I found an enormous earthenware pot of sugar, narrow at the bottom and wider towards the top. It was pretty heavy yet I managed to schlep it up the stairs. I found half a loaf along the way and I just sat there in pure ecstasy – cutting bread, liberally sprinkling sugar on top and eating it with a fine old slap of the lips! Did I enjoy that! Back in Theresienstadt I developed a little routine with these new ‘toys’. I would dip my bread in sugar, wash it down with a glass of tea or hot water and then go and lie down on the grass in front of the church. I must have blissfully snored there for at least two or three hours! When I woke up I wanted to do it all over again!

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After Theresienstadt d

People were talking about a commission coming and taking us away. Some said we were going to Switzerland, others said America. There were all kinds of rumours flying around.

We still didn’t know what was going to happen to us but the constant fear of death had somewhat subsided.

On 11th August, 1945, a commission actually did come. They announced that anyone under 15 would be going to England. Even though I was 18 by then, I was already registered as 12 years old and had the papers to prove it. I was so small and skinny that nobody questioned it anyway. In the meantime, Uncle Mayer was still in hospital. My other two uncles stayed and waited for him. When he recovered, they went back to Poland for about a week or so. I think they wanted to see if there was anything or anyone left. They didn’t stay very long because it was exactly the time of the Kielce pogrom, when the Poles killed 39 Jews.1

1 The Kielce pogrom was an outbreak of violence against the Jewish community of Kielce on 4th July, 1946,

barely a year after the end of the war. It was perpetrated by a mob of local townsfolk, including police and soldiers. Following a false tale of child kidnapping, including allegations of blood libel, violence broke out which resulted in 42 dead (39 Jews and 3 non-Jewish Poles) and 40 more injured.

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My uncles continued to a DP2 camp in Germany, where some time later the following incident occurred:

We stayed in Prague for three or four days because of the bad weather. We had to wait for it to clear before we could fly to England.

I think they had just come back from watching a football match. As they were making their way home, who should be coming the other way but my cousin Natan, who was then working for the Beriche, an organization that gathered Jews from the various camps and attempted to smuggle them into Palestine.

We didn’t mind at all because we had a wonderful time just touring the city. They’d given us vouchers – one for breakfast (sniadania), one for lunch (obiad) and one for wieciera, the evening meal. It was never enough for our deprived stomachs. But we could get a bowl of Brambolliv Polivko4 from restaurants. So we went from one restaurant to another until we were full. We spent the rest of the time in cinemas. As soon as one film finished we moved on to the next one. We used to sit in the best seats, next to Russian Generals!

Natan fainted from the shock of seeing them! Yet another coincidence? Meanwhile, I had gone to England. I felt very hurt at the time. We had all come through the war together and thanks to them I had survived. I thought of my uncles as surrogate parents and couldn’t understand why they let me go. Indeed, it must have been very difficult for them too but of course they did the right thing. Uncle Itzik, Aunt Hella and their children Ezriel and Channah, 1963

On the Way to England It was a dream. They took us from Theresienstadt to Prague by train. We travelled down the main Dresden-Prague railway line, the very same line along which the death trains had travelled but a few months earlier. We then walked to a hostel, in a column of about 300 boys and girls.3 Suddenly, one of the boys saw his father. He left the column, ran up to him and they hugged each other for what seemed like an eternity. It was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen. 2 Displaced Persons. 3 This group became known as the Boys, along with another 432 from other parts of Europe. Although there were about 80 girls in the group, they were also ‘Boys’. See the introduction to “The Boys”.

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The weather improved and we were taken to the airport where a fleet of Lancaster Bombers was waiting to transport us to England. It was an impressive sight and I was absolutely enchanted. It was the first time I had ever been in a plane and there were no seats. We sat on the floor and I sat in the nose of the plane, with a little suitcase full of clothes I had taken from that big house near Theresienstadt. I gaped at the navigator eating his white bread sandwiches. I closed my eyes and opened them again. Yes, it was real. I hadn’t seen white bread for five years. After a refuelling stop in Holland, where they gave us refreshments on the tarmac, we flew on to Crosby-on-Eden, a wartime bomber airfield just outside Lancaster.5 After all the bureaucracy, we boarded a single-decker bus to Windermere. It must have taken a few hours because it was already dark when we arrived. My English was practically non-existent of course but I tried to read all the signs we passed on the bus. A lot of the signs said “Wills Cigarettes.” I did not know that “Wills Cigarettes” was a company; I thought “Wills” meant to want a cigarette!

4 Bramboli means potatoes and Polivko is soup in Czech. 5 See The Boys p. 281 onwards.

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With Myer Hersh on a 500cc motorbike which cost me £90!

C h a p t e r

Windermere During the war, there had been a flying boat factory in Windermere at the edge of the lake. The factory workers had lived in a huge camp about 30 metres from the lake. The people who had brought us to England, the Jewish Refugee Committee of the Central British Fund, had taken it over. The facilities were absolutely fantastic. It was very organized. Remember, they were expecting 10-12 year olds. Here they had boys of 16, 17, 18. We weren’t children any more but they accepted us as we were.

“Let us go and pick flowers”

The first day was crazy. They took all our clothes and suitcases away for fumigation and gave us each a vest and a pair of underpants. However the weather was good – it was VJ Day1, 15th August. Imagine the sight – 300 bloated-bellied Polish meshuga’im2 running around the village in their underwear! Not a very English thing to do! 1 Victory over Japan Day. 2 Madmen.

The Four Musketeers: (from left) David Sommer, me, Mayer Bomstyck and Yankel ( Jack Aizenberg)

Elevenses, afternoon teas, churns of ice-cold milk in the afternoons, white bread, cakes twice a day… Ahh! The food at Windermere… The local villagers were marvellous and so kind. For example, there was a bus every half an hour or so from Ambleside to Windermere and Bowness. We would go out to the cinema on this bus and many of the locals would get off and let us go on instead. They were very good to us. Peeling potatoes at Windermere. I’m the one with the beret

The first film we saw was called “The Seahawk”, starring Errol Flynn.

h Each of us had our own room. I think there were 20 rooms in each hut. 18 boys plus two madrichim, a boy and a girl. It was certainly a master stroke that they kept us all together. We became family, a support group for each other. What a luxury it was to get my own room! I had a bed, a chest of drawers near the window and a narrow little wardrobe. Communal bathrooms and toilets (about three or four of each) were located in the middle of the barracks.

The dining room was huge but it could only accommodate 150 people so we had two sittings. We always tried to grab the places at the end of the long trestle tables. The food was passed down the table until the last person had. But if you sat at the end you could get three or four portions! We put one plate under the other so it wasn’t immediately obvious. Regular food was not yet a concept we were used to so we were still afraid there wouldn’t be any left for us. The truth was that we had an inexhaustible supply of food! If we wanted, we could sit down and eat all day long!

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There was no religious regime there although we did have our own Rabbi, Rabbi Weiss, who later became Chief Rabbi of Zurich. Whoever wanted to go to shul or discuss spiritual matters could do so. I did neither. I loved Shabbat though. It was beautiful and very heimisch, with all of us singing songs from our long lost childhood. We didn’t learn too much English at Windermere, although I do remember the immortal phrase, “Let us go and pick flowers”, from a woman in charge of our hut. She said it, we did it and the phrase stuck. I had my photograph taken there too. I looked at the picture but I couldn’t recognize myself at all.

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With a friend in London 77

h By the time we left for England, I knew there was nobody left from my family apart from me and my uncles, who I knew were in Germany. I started writing to them soon after I arrived but the post took forever in those days. Uncle Pinya was the official correspondent.

Instead of being scared stiff and afraid to die any minute, I learned to relish every single precious moment of life…

I also wrote to my family in Israel. I knew they were there because as I left our house in Piotrkow for the last time, my father said, “Remember this address”, and gave me the address of my great aunt, my grandmother’s sister – 44 Nachmani Street in Tel Aviv. I always remembered that address. He gave me his sister’s address too. I went to see them both when I visited Israel for the first time in 1952. That was very emotional.

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We did communicate for a little while after that but I was never a very good writer. Even today I would rather pick up the phone than write. I also found a distant relative in London, a Mr. Segal. When I started in business, I usually stayed with them when I was in London, practically every week. They treated me very nicely and I reciprocated. It was a good relationship.

Learning English at Windermere

All in all, I was in Windermere for three months. Lots of freedom and even more food!

One morning in Windermere, I received a little package. I was very excited. Who could possibly know who I was? It contained a bar of chocolate, a five pound note – a lot of money in those days – and a letter from a Mrs. Raiman, from London. She said she’d seen my name on a list and had remembered my mother from school!

It was a marvellous place. To an extent, it restored some of the childhood I’d missed. I was completely engaged there and just made it work for me. I think I enjoyed it so much partly because it was a complete reversal of my previous state of mind.

I visited her once. We never used to travel too far away but I did get to London a few times. I stayed in one of the hostels run by the Central British Fund. Some of the other boys had gone to live in London after Windermere and we kept in contact by post.

Some of the Boys

Mrs. Raiman offered me a drink. “Would you like tea or Russian tea?” At that time, tea was on ration and I didn’t know the difference between tea and rationed tea! What she meant of course was whether I wanted tea with or without milk (Russian tea).

Instead of being scared stiff and afraid to die any minute, I learned to relish every single precious moment of life…

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On holiday in Buxton, 1946, with Mayer Bomstyck (left) and Jack Aizenberg (middle)

C h a p t e r “Life is not a brief candle. It is a

splendid torch that I want to make

burn as brightly

Manchester Then came my first decision. Our group of 300 was going to be split up and sent to four different cities – London, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. A number of organizations, including Bnei Akiva, shuls and others, sent their representatives to Windermere. They spent a good few days talking to us about where we wanted to go or what we wanted to do and then they organized everything, laying on transport to the various places. Where was I going to live?

as possible before

Rabbi Hans Heinemann had come to Windermere and told me what there was in Manchester. It sounded like the Mizrachi-type background I’d been brought up with, and I liked him, so I chose Manchester. It was as simple as that. He later became a Professor at Bar-Ilan University.

generations”

There were only 12 of us who wanted to come to Manchester. I arrived there around the 4th or the 5th November 1945 and we had a bonfire.1

handing on to future George Bernard Shaw

1 5th November is celebrated as Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night in England.

I loved the environment, the people and the local youngsters who came to visit us every day. They came straight from school to play table tennis, study or just talk. It was a marvellous time. Whenever I look back, or whenever I speak to people I was with, we always say we didn’t appreciate it enough at the time. It was only afterwards that we appreciated what they did for us. They were fantastic people, really fantastic people who literally brought us back to life. Like Ruth Spear for example. She was the housemother and took care of us as if we were her own children. Even though we still didn’t know much English, “Let’s go and pick flowers” became “Let’s pick up on our education”. After all, we had had no formal education for six years. There was an organized system from the start. We used to get up, daven, have breakfast, do our Toranut2 and then sit in all kinds of lessons – English, Maths, anything you wanted. I had a wonderful English teacher, a young girl who later moved to Australia. I remember the first time I went to the films in Manchester. We could get free tickets at first because some of the cinemas belonged to Jews. You could go to the Oxford in town, the Shakespeare, the Green Hill or the Odeon in Cheetham Hill. We could even go twice a week if we wanted. Until the end of 1947 I studied and had a good time. No responsibilities and no concerns. Life was very good to me there. I believe I chose well. I always feel at home in Manchester and whenever I went away, be it on holiday or business, I was always glad to go back to rainy Manchester

With some of the Boys at Windermere

I lived for two years in the Bnei Akiva Bayit, the “Merkaz Limud Shel Bachad”, affectionately known simply as “The Merkaz”. It was really a residential school. People came to study there from all over Europe.

My National Registration Identity Card, first issued to me on 24th June, 1946 82

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h Benno, Ruth Spear’s future husband, looked after the boys at the Merkaz, especially at nights when he had to deal with nightmares and traumas. I also had them occasionally, but nothing very significant. I think I was relatively mentally stable. 2 Kitchen duty.

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I did have a recurring dream though. Uncle Mayer and I were clearing out a warehouse, full of schmattes and old iron things, like Aunt Manya’s3 parents used to sell. There was a boy there who took something and tried to smuggle it out. An S.S. man caught him and was about to kill him when Uncle Mayer stopped him. He killed a dog or a bird instead. On a similar note, I often find myself in a state of thinking back. Not dreams, but “What would have happened if I hadn’t done this or that? For example, what would have happened if I had gone to London instead of Manchester? America instead of England? Of course, it doesn’t do any good and there are never any answers. It is frustrating and self-defeating to try to change what cannot be changed.

‘Real’ Life After two years at the Merkaz, the time had come to move on. University wasn’t really an option for us. We were all 19-20 and lacking solid grounding in many subjects. My English was a lot better now and I was good at History (although my Geography left a lot to be desired!) I started looking for digs4 and work. The people at the Merkaz also helped us with the transition. I left the Merkaz with the clothes I was wearing and a suitcase containing a few more. I also had whatever I had saved from my pocket money, 10 shillings5 a week, which was a lot back then. A packet of cigarettes cost two shillings.6

3 4 5 6

Aunt Manya was married to Uncle Pinchas Ringort. Slang for accommodation, a place to stay. In those days, there were 20 shillings in a pound and 12 pence in each shilling, i.e. 240 pence to the pound. I stopped smoking in 1971.

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With the Sefer Torah in Israel donated in memory of my family, 1965

I always wanted to be independent but I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to do. My only vocational expertise was glassblowing but I certainly did not want to do that again. So I became a furrier, apprenticing in a little place at the bottom of Cheetham Road. I was a good cutter. However, you couldn’t really become independent in the fur trade because most of the people who owned fur coats would either revamp or restyle them, so there wasn’t much demand. My first accommodation was with David Sommer,7 in an upstairs room at 47 Bigham Street, home of the Sfas Family. Full board and lodging with three meals a day. Mrs. Sfas was a very hard-working lady. She made us sandwiches when we went out to work and prepared a different menu for every day of the week. She was an excellent cook. She also darned our socks and washed our clothes in a Bendix washing machine, which was quite a luxury at the time. Mrs. Sfas and her husband, Leon, looked after us very well. I was sorry to leave after a year or so but we only moved around the corner. I was still working at the furrier’s in 1949. I had saved up about £60 and went to see my Aunt Mary in Paris.8 One of my mother’s brothers had lived in France before the war but he was taken away to a concentration camp. My aunt survived, along with their son. They somehow reached Switzerland and returned to Paris after the war. I used to see her quite often. But on that first trip I stayed away longer than intended. When I finally came back my boss fired me. So I had to look for something else to do. It took me a while but I drifted into the bag business.

Outside the Merkaz. I’m standing at the bottom right

7 Who later became my business partner. 8 Aunt Mary was married to my Uncle Abraham.

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With Jack Aizenberg

I’d heard about a small factory which had just parted company with their regular cutter. I applied for the job as an apprentice cutter and was paid very well, £7/8 a week. Plus £3 for board and lunch. It was quite a good job but I didn’t stay there very long either, because I was itching to be independent. As soon as I became naturalized in 1951, I started off on my own, making shopping bags. Jack Aizenberg, my wartime friend who had gone to America, came back to England and became my partner. David joined us too. Taking the first letters of our names, we called ourselves Japinda Products.

Building the Business Japinda did very well. We started off slowly with some beautiful machinery. I recruited most of the clients and David and Jack were more involved in the internal manufacturing. We grew steadily but once we saw we couldn’t compete with the Far East, we closed the factory and started going abroad for the merchandise. I frequently travelled to Taiwan, Korea, China, etc. I think our success was due to three things: very hard work, a well-organized team and a lot of lucky breaks… For example, I once tried to sell bags to one of the big stores in London. We did do some business but for some reason we stopped. A little later, I was on holiday in Bournemouth and I went to the theatre on Saturday night. When the lights came on at the end of the show, the fellow sitting in front of me was the buyer from that store! We started talking and I found out that he had a son who was a buyer for Green Shield Stamps.9 And what did he buy? Luggage of course! So I took his name, called him up and appeared in his office on Tuesday morning. I left there with a big order and Green Shields became a very important customer. 9 Th e Green Shield Trading Company issued Green Shield Stamps as a sales promotion to encourage or reward shopping, by enabling the buyer to exchange stamps for gifts. Argos is the largest general-goods retailer in the United Kingdom with 750 stores, using catalogues as its primary sales tool. The same person founded both companies.

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A Mizrachi gathering in England, 1947

When Green Shields closed and Argos started, I was invited to the Argos inauguration. Argos became our biggest customer!

Our success was due to three things: very hard work, a well-organized team and a lot of lucky breaks…

Here’s another story: The telephone rings one day. “Hello Mr. Kurnedz. This is Mr. Jones, a supervisor from Littlewoods.”10 Littlewoods was doing a million pounds a year at that time. “Do you make handbags?” he asked. “Yes”, I said. “Good,” he replied, “Would you like to bring me some samples?” You don’t often attract such big customers – or any customers for that matter – from a simple telephone call, but I did. We sold them tens of thousands of bags – we’d copied the new Marks and Spencers shopping bag collection and by this time we were making them in a 1,500m² mill we’d bought in Ramsbottom.

10 L ittlewoods started as a shopping catalogue company, processing orders by post in the early 1970s. In 1981, it expanded to a call centre, processing orders via telephone. Now it has a massive Internet operation.

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Another time, a fellow called with a very urgent order for 60,000 bags and we made the deadline, which obviously put us in his good books. We worked steadily and very hard. Our business grew and grew. Japinda probably could have expanded a lot more but we weren’t interested. We were making a decent living and we weren’t greedy. And I can proudly say that in the 50 or so years I was in business, there was only one year we didn’t make a profit.

h About a year or two before they introduced the three-day week11 in England, an electricity strike was imminent. That would have stopped our business in its tracks. We had to have an alternative source of electricity. I had heard there was an old generator for sale which had once helped power an American battleship. I went to the junk yard on Sunday morning and bought it for £100. If I hadn’t, the person waiting right behind me would have snapped it up.

With Rabbi Hans Heinemann in Manchester Uncle Mayer and Uncle Pinya with Daniela

Buying the generator was one thing. Setting it up was quite another! I certainly had no idea how to do it. It didn’t matter though because the strike didn’t happen! So this generator stood in our yard, getting rusty by the day and I could see it from my office window. I kicked myself for putting in all that effort for nothing. However, some time later there was a strike and while all the other factories had to close down early, we had that generator working for us right through the day. It didn’t work straight away though. It needed a good clean and then someone broke one of the cylinders so we had to get a new one made. And we needed an instruction manual. The only solution was to call the manufacturers in the States. So I rang California although I forgot the time difference and called them at three or four in the morning.

11 One of several measures introduced by the Conservative Government (1970-74) to conserve electricity, the production of which was severely limited due to the coal miners’ strike.

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Fortunately, someone answered and, after hearing what I wanted, he shouts, “Hey Mack! There’s a guy here from Manchester, England!” Anyway we got it working and it served us very well because we could supply the goods our customers couldn’t get anywhere else. Things like this are always likely to happen over 50 years. You can attribute it to luck, coincidence, good fortune… or Hashgacha Pratit.12

May 1948 Israel meant a lot to me then. But I didn’t go there to fight like many of the Boys did. I felt a bit guilty but I was already working, making a living and I had no intention of leaving the business indefinitely. I went to Israel for the first time in 1952. David, Jack and I decided that instead of having a week’s holiday every year, we would have a longer holiday once every three years. I was the first to take advantage of the opportunity, coming to Israel for three weeks. I found all my uncles and aunts and met their families. I kept in touch and came to Israel whenever I could. Many of my friends used to go to Spain and other places but I always came here.

With Jack, Mayer and David at a wedding. Note the cigar! Dancing with the Sefer Torah we donated to Whitefield Shul. The covering is embroidered with the words “Do Not Forget”

The first visit was very emotional, especially with my father’s sister. She had come here during the thirties, married but had no children. She hoped I might possibly stay in Israel and she would bring me up as her child. But I was already an adult. Later on, after I was married, I used to come and see her with the children but she always burst into tears as soon as she opened the door. I found it difficult to cope with that. Unfortunately, she passed away in 1973, just before the Yom Kippur War. My great aunt had lived in 44 Nachmani Street, Tel-Aviv, from before the First World War. She had an exclusive restaurant, by invitation only. I remember her kitchen. It was very narrow, very long and full of old cooking machines she used to pump up and ignite. It was fascinating to watch her cook! 12 Divine Providence.

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C h a p t e r “This is what the

Holy One said to

Israel: ‘My children,

what do I ask of you? I ask no more than that you love one

another and honour one another”

Tanna D’Bei Eliyahu

Romance in the Air I first set eyes upon Susan at a youth dance called “The Blue Riband Ball” at the Sale Lugarno. A few of us men were sitting and chatting. I turned around and saw this lovely young lady. There was just something about her that made me say to myself, “I’d better have a closer look”. So I did, and although it sounds corny, I really did think, “That’s the girl for me”. I found out later that it was her 19th birthday. I suppose it was more or less love at first sight, at least on my side! 1 It took a while though. 1 Susan has a slightly different version: “I met Pinky at a dance on my 19th birthday. Suddenly this young gentleman comes up to me and says, “Would you like to dance?” Well, I had never seen him before. I didn’t know him from Adam. But I agreed and we started dancing. We were just talking a little bit when he said, “Am I making you dizzy?” and I thought… I couldn’t hear him properly with all the noise… I thought he was saying: “Let’s get busy!” I said: “Pardon? “Let’s get busy?” And he said it again, “Am I making you dizzy?” I could feel myself getting more and more annoyed. I said, “Pardon”, he said, “Am I making you dizzy?” “Oh!” I said, rather sheepishly. Anyway, we had a few dances and he was very pleasant. He offered to take me home but he didn’t come in. I didn’t invite him!”

And she has been walking with me – and often setting the pace – ever since!

One year, just before my birthday, I didn’t have a girlfriend and I thought of Susan. So I called her and said, “Look. I’m taking my four friends out to dinner for my birthday on Saturday night. Will you be my date?” Luckily for me, she consented. We went out once more and then she wouldn’t go out with me again. I would sometimes meet her when she was out with her friends. We would dance or chat and she would go back to her friends. I chased her for quite some time until I gave up. Then, out of the blue one Sunday, a friend of mine came to the factory and told me there was a dance at the country club. He asked me to come and who did I meet there? Susan! I asked her for a dance and then escorted her back to her blind date.

And then G-d must have intervened again, because after I’d said, “Thank you very much” and walked back to my friends, I turned around to see her walking after me. And she has been walking with me – and often setting the pace – ever since!

Wedding Bells I took her to London to meet my relatives, which was not a sensible move. Susan couldn’t cope with their Polish food, especially the sweet gefilte fish. She also said my family frightened her and broke into tears as soon as we were out of the building. Susan knew about my past in general. I didn’t talk about it much in those days. It wasn’t until later that I opened up and eventually started to give talks in schools, universities and various other forums. I’d also thought about anglicizing my name, like many of the Boys had done. My name gave me a lot of trouble – after all, I had to speak to a lot of important people and they could never pronounce it properly. But Susan would have none of it and she insisted I kept it as it was.

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Susan with Jeremy and Simone

Unfortunately – but maybe understandably – Uncle Mayer completely broke down under the chupah and had to be escorted out so he could calm down. I was scared that Susan wouldn’t turn up! I kept turning around to check and when I saw her on her father’s arm, I thought, “Wow! She looks gorgeous!” We loved every single moment of our wedding day. Even the sandwiches! It all started when I went to David’s house in the morning. It suddenly dawned on me that we had nothing to give the guests! So I went out and bought some bagels and salmon, giving them to Hinda, David’s wife, who made some sandwiches and wrapped them in a damp, red and white-checked tea towel. In the evening, at the reception, Susan specially wore a coat to cover the pack of sandwiches, but when we got to the door, the doorman took our coats and she was left standing there, the beautiful bride, holding this soggy checked cloth!

Susan’s mother thought I was wonderful. The expression in English is “the bee’s knees”. I think she actually fell in love with my coat! I had a beautiful Cashmere coat and I was always very well dressed, especially when I came to take Susan out. Susan told me that her mother said, “He’s the nicest boy you’ve ever brought home”. And so at age 35, I married Susan Hyman, 22. When two people are meant for each other, the age gap doesn’t matter. It was a lovely wedding. Rabbi Felix Carlebach married us in the South Manchester Shul in Wilbraham Road. Uncle Mayer came over from Israel, the only member of the family there apart from my London relatives. As we were driving to the shul in a taxi, he said to me, “Pinchas, “I can’t give you much, (he was living on German reparations money) but I can give you some advice. I can tell you that if you ever think about fighting with your wife, say to yourself that it can wait half an hour. If you do that, I promise you will live happily ever after”. Very wise and true advice. 94

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Religious Progression I had gradually drifted away from any religious observance after I left the Merkaz. I might have gone to shul on Yom Kippur but that was it. I stayed Zionist but was never active in any organization or events. The most important thing was work. Six days a week. Non-stop. We lived for a while on the top floor of a semi-detached house in Brooklands Road. This time there were four of us – David, Jack, Mayer Bomstyck and yours truly. We really only slept there because we were all working so hard. The only day we didn’t work was Saturdays. We would come back to the apartment at midnight on a Friday night and Yankel ( Jack) would start cooking. David, Mayer and I would be playing cards and at three o’clock in the morning we would have Jack’s chicken soup! On Saturday afternoons Our Hero

With Jeremy

we went to the match at Old Trafford. We had season tickets for Manchester United. That’s probably why Jeremy supported Manchester City!

I enjoyed the shul business and did a good job, collecting quite a lot of money along the way. But it got to a stage where Susan said, ““It’s either me or the shul”.

Later on, I only went midweek.

I think I chose well.

After I got married, I felt I couldn’t stay in the factory on Jewish holidays, so we always went away, either to London or Israel. I still wasn’t keeping anything although I felt there was something missing. Susan didn’t have any religious background whatsoever.

I’m still not 100% observant though. There are certain things I just can’t reconcile. I can’t see the point; a lot is very outdated. But in England I enjoyed my Shabbat off without telephones, cars, etc. Nobody used to call me. It was wonderful! Thank G-d we are doing the same thing here in Israel.

Little by little, I more or less came back. It took a while but I started going to shul, becoming a member, Vice-President and eventually President of Whitefield Shul, complete with top hat and the whole caboodle. That top hat cost me £15! I can’t believe I left it in England! I was still President when Jeremy was Bar Mitzvah.

Jeremy and

The Prince and Princesses are Born You can imagine the excitement leading up to Jeremy’s birth. I was in a dream. Everybody was just so excited to hear the news. It was a fantastic feeling and of course very emotional, because we named him Yechiel, after my father. On the day he was born, I was with Nana in the hospital outside Susan’s room. Nana asked me to go and buy her some cigarettes. When I came back, Jeremy had already made his entrance into the world. I went inside, took one look at him and was just so overwhelmed with joy and emotion that I almost fainted! Simone was named after my mother. Her Hebrew name is Sheindel. Sheindel Esther. Esther was my sister. Daniela is named after my cousin and my grandmother, Devorah Leah. My grandmother was called Rochel-Leah. My cousin Devorah (Uncle Pinya’s daughter) was a beautiful young girl. She was really gorgeous, with long blonde hair, the love of my life. Until she died with her mother. It was a very exciting time, especially when we came to Israel. All my uncles, aunts and cousins would be there lined up at the airport waiting to see our babies. They really enjoyed our children. Not just for who they are. But for what they represent…

At Jeremy’s Bar Mitzvah 96

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Simone

Susan holding Simone with Jeremy and Daniela at her side

Simone

Most of the Boys are in their 80’s now. I’m still in contact with a few of them, one or two here in Israel. I actually have a cousin who married one of the Boys. They live in Tel Aviv. I see them every so often. Early in 2009, we read in the paper that Martin Gilbert (author of “The Boys”) was coming to Israel. Susan and I invited him here to the house and we invited all the Boys who were in Israel. They came here for Sunday lunch and we had a lovely time. When Sir Martin launched the book, we were at the gala dinner in London. And there was another coincidence. For years I had been asking people, “Have you seen that fellow who first took us to the barracks in Windermere?” And would you believe it, when we sat down to dinner, he was sitting right next to me! I was so happy to see him and say thank you in person.

The 45s The 45s played quite a big part in my life when it first started. 2 It originated in London and we started a branch in Manchester. The aim was self-help. In other words, if one of the members needed help, we tried to help him out. We raised quite a lot of money. The first Manchester Chairman was Mendel Beal and David was the second. I took over after he passed away. I said I would do three years and that’s what I did. Jack followed me and Mayer Bomstyck after him. Now there is hardly anything although they still have activities in London. 2 I n London, the Boys had been members of the Primrose Club, a social club set up especially for them. In the mid1960’s, Issie Finkelstein – one of the three older survivors who had accompanied the Boys from Theresienstadt to Windermere in August 1945 – suggested it was time for the Boys to form their own society. They called it “The ‘45 Aid Society”, a reference to the year they were liberated. Its mission was to help any member who might fall on hard times and to make charitable donations of its own. Equally important, it would serve as an address for all those who had gone their own ways. (See Chap.23 in “The Boys” for further details)

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At Simone’s wedding

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Jeremy sitting on my Jaguar!

At Jeremy’s wedding with Daniela and Jeremy, Simone and Itzik and baby Leonie

“What there is for you in Israel is the experience of being here, of being

part of a Jewish people

living in its own land,

building its own society,

determining its own fate and desperately needing

C h a p t e r

Making Aliyah It was a hard decision to make. I didn’t really want to retire and I still miss my business. But Israel had always been a dream.

you, because that fate will

I had nobody left in England either, although I enjoyed the country. Until we came to Israel, I really thought of England as my home. English became my new mother tongue. I never spoke anything else. Not even Yiddish, my mama loshen. I don’t like it. I stay away from Yiddish altogether. I think in English.

other things – whether you

My father spoke Hebrew. He used to tell me, “Learn the dikduk1. The words will come by themselves”. I also had two very good teachers, Rabbi Heinemann and Benno

Hillel Halkin

1 Grammar.

be determined – amongst are here or not”

Penner, who came to Israel in about 1946/47 and was a member of Tirat Zvi. Fortunately, we bought the house in Ramat Poleg quite a long time before we actually came to live here. We would come just before Rosh Hashanah and stay till after Sukkot. And a week or two before Pesach. Shortly after we came, Jeremy bought me a Tallit that doesn’t slip off your shoulders. The first Shabbat I took it to shul, I got into conversation with a guest, a young doctor from Manchester, who was also a Mohel. Somehow the conversation came round to my Tallit and he was very excited. He said, “Tell me where I can buy one because my tallit always slips when I do a Brit”. So I said to him, “I’ll do a deal with you. I’ll give you my Tallit if you give me 50% of your Mitzva of doing the Brit”. And he agreed! He went back to Manchester and I forgot all about the deal. Some time later, he came here to visit family and told me, “You’ve already got 16 Mitzvot!” and he gave me a silver atara2 to put on my Tallit, a thank you gift for the Tallit I gave him.

As if someone has been holding my hand throughout my life and taking me from one place to another… from one situation to another. I make a split-second unconscious decision and then it’s taken right out of my hands. Hashgacha Pratit. I always believed in that. I used to call it luck. And it’s still happening today. Somehow or other, whatever I do is the right thing to do. If it’s the right thing to do, you are okay. Whatever I did from 1942 until the end of the war – and there were numerous incidents as I have described – and in whatever circumstances, it was the right thing to do. I often did the opposite to what I was told and yet I survived again and again. Someone has been holding my hand…

It’s a marvellous thing now, being here in Israel with the children. I feel like I’m on a perpetual holiday.

h When I look back at my life, I see a pattern. This is the truth. Without me consciously doing anything in particular, I seem to have always found myself in the right place at the right time.

2 Decorative band.

With Jeremy in his IDF uniform 102

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C h a p t e r

Susan

We have had a wonderful, happy and successful marriage. We have been very lucky in all sorts of ways. I came from a very poor family, a broken home. Pinky certainly didn’t marry me for money. He always says I brought him luck. We had a beautiful home to start with and not very much furniture. But slowly it all came together. We have been able to do all the things we wanted to do. I always appreciated it. I’m so grateful for all I have. Apart from a wonderful husband, I also appreciate the little things, like having my own car and having a shower. Yes, from where I came from, having a shower was a luxury. My parents separated when I was very young and I’m the youngest of a family of four by quite a long way. So my siblings were all much older than me. My father left us and my mother, who had never had to work in her life, was suddenly faced with the task of earning a living. She actually came from a very wealthy family but my grandfather lost all his money. We were never quite sure how. She was brought up in the lap of luxury, with maids, servants, a chauffeur and a gardener… the whole works. But all that changed drastically after she got married. And when my father left her, she had nothing. We had to move around from place to place and I attended eight different schools before I left at the age of 15!

h When I first met Pinky on my 19 birthday, I didn’t want to go out with him because I could see he was very serious. The thought of settling down at that age didn’t appeal to me at all. I was dating boys and having a great time, enjoying myself. I had a very nice life and I didn’t want to give that up. th

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But I was deeply in love with him before he asked me out again. One day I heard a rumour that he was engaged to somebody. He called me and I thought he was going to invite me to his engagement party. He wasn’t. He was asking me out. And that was it. He asked and I said yes.

With Derek and Maureen, Susan’s sister

That’s how you should get married. It’s a very bad start if you’re not in love because I don’t think you can give respect to each other. That’s what happened with my mother of course. My mother had a very bad marriage. She told me she realized she had made a big mistake two or three days after her wedding. And that was awful. She had five children. My mother lost a little girl of six a long time before I was born. I was always under the impression that I was a mistake. Born when my mother was into her forties. But my mother said, “You weren’t a mistake Susan. Let’s say you were a pleasant surprise”. She was wonderful but my father was not a good father at all. When we got engaged, Pinky wanted to meet my father and I didn’t want him to. But we did and I think my father was actually quite impressed by him. To my surprise, my father actually paid for the wedding. That was the only thing he has ever done for us. I still feel upset that he never fed and clothed us or educated us. He just didn’t care. Surely that’s a father’s duty. Ever since I’ve been married, I have done voluntary work. I was at the Citizens Advice Bureau for 18 years and served in the courts for 20 years. I saw all these separated families and fathers who wanted access to their children because they genuinely loved them. My father never did.

Nana, Susan’s mother, with Leonie

Pinky could never understand that. He used to say, “I can understand two people divorcing or separating but not wanting to see their children?!” On reflection, maybe Pinky was like a father figure to me. Maybe that’s partly why the age gap didn’t bother me either. If I ever said, “My father was... He wasn’t a real father”, he would say, “But you’ve got me”.

h I didn’t grow up with the Holocaust. I knew very little about it, unlike our children and grandchildren. I was born while it was happening.

Derek and Maureen

I knew Pinky was a Holocaust survivor and I remember an aunt of mine saying, “Darling, it’s just like you to marry an orphan”. When we got married, he didn’t talk about it a lot. I knew all about the three uncles though and when we came to Israel on our honeymoon they were so nice to me. It was very emotional for them as well. When we first got married, I innocently bought some blue and white striped sheets. When I put them on the bed, Pinky was horrified. He said, “Please take them off and never use them again”. We don’t buy anything with blue and white stripes unless they are very fine ones. Interestingly, after we had been married for about 20 years, quite a few of the Boys started to talk and open up. Some of them have written books. Pinky began to lecture in the universities and schools. I used to go with him and I found it very hard. I felt I had to protect him. I didn’t like anyone upsetting him. I thought it was like opening up a can of worms.

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The first time we went to Poland it was just Simone, Pinky and me. I think Simone was about 17. Pinky lost all his family in Treblinka so the day we went there, Simone and I got dressed up. We didn’t say anything to each other, we just got dressed up. It was as if we were going to meet the family. The strangest thing happened. Like in the films when a storm is blowing and it’s very eerie, there’s a flash of lightning and a clack of thunder. Well, that’s exactly what happened as we were walking into Treblinka. It was really weird. I’m not a particularly religious person but I thought, “Somebody has to be up there. There must be somebody. It can’t just happen”. That was a difficult trip but it must have been harder for Pinky because it was his first time back. He went to see his house and where his grandparents lived. It was fascinating but very emotional. After the second time, when we went with all the children and Itzik, Pinky said, “I don’t think I really want to come back here again. I have to lay the ghost to rest now”. But the nice thing is that our grandchildren have started to go with their schools…

I have always had tremendous admiration for what Pinky achieved and how he lived despite where he came from and what he’d been through. I was also very impressed how he started. I also knew he was very clever. With the right education he could have done anything he wanted. When we first got married I would go out with him to buyers meetings. I was very impressed by the way he negotiated. Very wise. So sensitive. Although he was married to me, he was also married to his work. In the early years, he would leave the house at half past seven and stay there all day till about six when he would come home for dinner. But then he went back again because there was another shift until about nine o’clock. This went on for a long time. Sometimes he would forget that his night shift workers were locked in the factory, for security reasons. We would be out together when he would suddenly say, “Oh my goodness, I have to go and let them out”.

And I’m very proud of Jeremy who takes groups there throughout the year. I don’t know how he does it.

We’ve been very lucky.

Different people react differently. For example, Pinky’s partner, Jack, used to go back every year. And I could never understand it. So I asked him once, “Why do you go so often?”

That’s the thread that runs through his Holocaust experiences too. He always seemed to find himself in the right place at the right time, even if he started out in the wrong place!

And he answered, “Because I can go in there. And I can come out. And I’m free. Freedom”.

It’s a miracle really. Even this last year. He’s had a dreadful year healthwise and at one stage we thought, “Well, this is probably as good as it gets”. But he is now so much better, thank goodness.

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Because he has a very positive outlook on life. He doesn’t give up. He’s a fighter. And he’s a wonderful father, a wonderful husband and a wonderful grandfather too.

h When Jeremy was born, I think I took it for granted. You know, you get married and have children. Perfectly normal. Perfectly natural. But when you’ve been through what Pinky went through, and lost your entire family in the process, having a baby is not just a natural event. He taught and still teaches me never to take anything for granted and to appreciate and enjoy what you have for as long as you have it.

h We don’t eat the same food. We don’t like the same food. We are actually complete opposites in many ways. But we are two opposites that get on so well together. If we go out for dinner, we take it in turns to choose because he doesn’t like what I like and I don’t like what he likes. Interestingly, the food thing is still very much part of him till today. For example, if we’re entertaining, he takes first and I’ll tell him later that the guests should be served first. But he says, “You know why I do it? I don’t really do it deliberately. I’m just frightened there won’t be any food left”. And he won’t have kohlrabi in the house at all because of the memories it brings back. 110

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h I have learned a lot from him and about him. I have also learned how to handle him. You have to know how to handle a husband. He is still learning how to handle me! For a successful marriage, I think you have to learn from each other. And have respect for each other. And if you want respect, you have to give it. We do have a lot of respect for each other. As an example of what we’ve learned from each other, I think his attitude to crisis and to life in general is amazing. We deal with things as they arrive. If anything happens, we deal with it. Without screaming and shouting but thinking sensibly how to deal with it. Don’t panic. Deal with it, learn, sit down and talk about it. Sort it out. Don’t keep it inside.

h Pinky invited my mother to come and live with us when we got married. And she stayed for almost 30 years! He loved her and misses her till this day. He was more tolerant than I was, because I often resented the invasion of privacy. But it was good for the children to grow up with a grandparent. And for her to grow up with grandchildren.

She once played in the same competition as Omar Sharif1, on the table next to him. She was so thrilled about that!

h I come from a completely non-religious family which had been in England for a few generations. My only connection to Judaism was that I knew I was Jewish.

She was a wonderful bridge player, competition level. She taught us and I should have taken more advantage of her. 1 Award-winning Egyptian actor who was one of the world’s most famous bridge players.

My mother didn’t keep a kosher home although she said her parents did. She wasn’t interested. So it wasn’t easy for me when my husband said to me, “We have to keep a kosher house, with milk and meat and all that”. But it turned out fine. I enjoyed doing that. It might not have been enough but it was enough for us at the time. I did it because he wanted it. As the children got older, the standards were raised and that was hard. One of the hardest things for me was keeping Shabbat.

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Before we got married, Pinky started going to shul on Shabbat. He liked that a lot. He didn’t go on Friday nights because he didn’t always get home before Shabbat. But then they asked him if he would be on the Executive and he said yes. So the Rabbi came round and said, “Pinchas, if you are going to be on the shul Executive, you really shouldn’t be driving on Shabbat”. Pinky was okay with that but he said to me, “You can do it. It’s fine. I don’t want to stop you doing anything. It doesn’t have to interfere with your life”. But I thought of the children who would grow up seeing one parent keeping Shabbat and one not. Is that right? I didn’t want to confuse my kids. So I went along with it but I never liked it all. Friday night was always a big ‘going out night’ with friends and I just wanted to be free. But that’s how it was and we began keeping more and more because that’s what he wanted and that’s what the children wanted. You can’t always have your own way. Family is more important.

“Oh my gosh!” he says. He immediately rings Jeremy. “Jeremy, bring my dinner suit. Call a taxi. And tell him to come quickly to this restaurant”. Jeremy arrives with the dinner suit and my sister says, “Don’t worry, we’ll take Susan home”. Thankfully, he got there in time to do the song. But that’s not the end of it. I get home and there’s another phone call, this time from one of our friends. “Where’s Pinky? He’s supposed to be playing bridge with us tonight”. I said, “Oh I’m sorry. He can’t do it. He must have forgotten about it, but he’s not here”.

“What a crazy evening this is!” I thought to myself, but even though it was getting late I had a hunch it wasn’t over yet.

Pinky really enjoyed being Chairman of the shul and Master of the Masonic Lodge.2 He had to work hard to make it to the top there. That’s who he is. He works his way up in everything.

Sure enough, the doorbell goes and it’s Pinky. “Where’s the car?” I say. “You won’t believe this Susan but when Jeremy came and I put on the dinner suit, I gave him my jacket with the car keys in. The car’s still in town!”

I can tell you a funny story about the lodge.

It was just one of those nights.

2 Freemasonry is a type of brotherhood that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. A Masonic Lodge is the institutional unit of Freemasonry. Organized with strict rules and regulations only known to the elected members, the masons are mainly involved with charitable work.

With Susan at a Masonic Lodge event. As Master of the Lodge I had to wear a chain of distinction

They had this special initiation song for new members and he would usually sing it because he had a beautiful voice. One evening, we were out for dinner with my sister and brother-in-law and the children were at home. Suddenly, he gets a message from the lodge asking where he was. He was supposed to be singing there that night!

It was quite unusual actually because he is pretty well organized, certainly where work was concerned.

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Susan, Nana and Daniela at her wedding

Another funny story. It was my birthday, a Shabbat. Pinky had gone to shul with the children. The doorbell goes just as I’m getting ready upstairs. It’s the local florist delivering a lovely bouquet of flowers – “To my darling wife, from Pinchas”. “How lovely. Thank you!” I go back upstairs. 10 minutes later the bell rings again. It’s the florist again with a flowerpot. I say to him, “Did you forget it?” And he goes bright red in the face and meekly says “yes”. “Thank you very much”.

He does lots of romantic things. He always buys me flowers on a Friday. I am a very lucky woman.

h I never thought I would come to Israel. I loved coming here on holiday but I never wanted to live here. I had no family here although we came every year and visited Pinky’s relatives. But then the children started to come to Israel. And then they had children and we were toing and froing an awful lot. I used to feel unsettled when I got home. And they said, “Why don’t you come and live here?” I said, “It’s not for us”.

10 minutes later this fellow is standing on the doorstep with two flowerpots in his hands. I thought to myself, “What’s going on here? Very strange. Should I ring the police?”

But it was the grandchildren. I felt I was walking out on their lives each time and not really watching them growing up properly. It was hard. And they would come to England and Simone would be heartbroken when they had to go back. All the traveling back and forth was hard. But we did it.

And he says, “I’m so sorry Mrs. Kurnedz. I’m so embarrassed. But your husband ordered all this for your birthday. And he said they mustn’t be delivered at the same time. I could see by your face you were getting a little het up so please just take these two and I’m really sorry”.

And then Pinky decided. “You know what? When I retire, we’ll go and live in Israel”. And that’s exactly what happened. But he didn’t want to retire. He would still be working now if he could. But we decided it was time. He was in his seventies and the time had come.

We had a good laugh about that. Pinky has always been very romantic. I remember the antique brooch he bought me on our first wedding anniversary. It was awful. And I looked at him and said, “It’s lovely. Thank you”. And he could tell. “If you really don’t like it, you know, we can take it back”. I chewed over it for a few days. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings but he understood and took it back.

We already had the house here so we didn’t have to come and look for a place. That was good. When we actually came I was quite excited about it. And interestingly, I don’t miss England at all. I did miss being on the Bench3 at first but I’ve created a new life for myself here.

With my cousin Natan and his wife Luba

3 An expression referring to magistrates in England. Laypeople who serve as judges in certain types of court cases.

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Four generations – Susan, Simone, Leonie and Tehilla

I volunteer with Ezra. I’ve set up a whole new project and I love it. It takes up quite a lot of my time. We’re about to open training for a new support group for people who have been bereaved and people who have experienced other types of loss – loss of employment, home, etc. We also care for people looking after their spouses. They need emotional help. And other people have lots of issues that sometimes lead to marital problems. Thankfully we have a marriage counselor in our group who can deal with that. I have tremendous backing from Ezra and I have four tutors, all professional people who donate their time for free. We have a wonderful social life too. Quite a lot of our friends have also made Aliyah and live nearby and we’ve made a lot of new friends too. But there’s nothing like having a longstanding history with your friends. It’s a big blessing. I’m very happy here. I’m happy we can see our children whenever we want. The girls are two minutes away and Jeremy is 2,000 miles nearer than he was before. And we are so lucky with the grandchildren. Leonie’s wedding was amazing. I felt so privileged to be under the chupah. I was watching my own grandchild get married. Not everyone is lucky enough to see that.

h Pinky thinks a lot about his parents and the past now. It could be that the older these Holocaust survivors are, the harder it is for them. He doesn’t actually have nightmares but he thinks and dreams about his family a lot. People said to Pinky, “You were the lucky one. You’re the one who survived out of all your family”. And he would turn around and say, “What’s lucky about that?” Our Hero

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Daniela and Jeremy at their wedding

Susan with Simone and Itzik

At Jeremy’s wedding

Of course it was lucky for us because we have had the pleasure. But for him it was certainly no pleasure to be the only survivor. But he has come through remarkably. He’s very strong.

h Perhaps Pinky’s greatest legacy to his children is the way he brought them up and seen how they are bringing up their children. They are all wonderful parents. And I think that’s a reflection on their own parents. Pinky has had a huge influence on the children. He has had an influence on a lot of people. They all love him here in the shul. They just love him...

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Susan with Daniela and Jeremy

Nana with Simone at her wedding

Susan with Jeremy and Michal

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Jeremy, Simone & Daniela

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Simone: There were two different types of survivors. Survivors who spoke, whose whole lives revolved around speaking about the Holocaust and those who didn’t speak about it at all. Daddy never spoke. Daniela: We certainly didn’t grow up with it although we never had German products in the house. Simone: The first time I really heard Daddy’s story was when I was 16 years old and sitting in the audience at Manchester University. But he never broke down or cried about it. At least not in public. It wasn’t until we visited Treblinka. It took us a long time to find the Piotrkow stone. That was the first time in my life I had seen Daddy cry. It was quite a shock. Daniela: And in Auschwitz he started talking about his recurring dream. He’s in the airport when a voice comes over the loudspeaker: “Could Mr. Kurnedz please come to the information desk”. And when he gets there, there’s another Mr. Kurnedz there. And it’s his father or his brother. As a child, I was desperate to find Daddy’s brother or sister. I remember reading a book. And it had a Kurnedz in it. So I wrote to the author. I just wanted to be able to find somebody for him. I really wanted to help him. Jeremy: He didn’t speak a lot about the Germans or the Shoah, but he spoke a lot about his family and pre-war life in Poland. To this day, that’s where he goes. On the other hand, we always knew we were children of a Holocaust survivor. As long as I can remember, we were always aware our father was something special. 122

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Simone: I remember being in Auschwitz and asking Daddy, “How could you want to live after what you had been through? And he turned around and said, “But everybody wanted to live”. He wanted so much to live and he managed to rehabilitate his life. We had a childhood just so full of love. We definitely weren’t brought up in a normal way. We were cocooned with love. Daniela: Both Mummy and Daddy are just so loving. We were very protected. Jeremy: He has a big, soft heart. My mother too. An unbelievable duo! Daniela: Family was always the most important thing. He kept his family together, everyone. He just has the ability to love every single member of his family, even if it’s a fifth cousin down the line. He just wraps people, enveloping them with love. Whenever I think about my childhood, I just think about this wonderfully warm, loving chapter in my life. Simone: In terms of inherited traits, family is the most important thing to us too. We try and get together as much as we can. And when we’re all together, we always sing.

Daniela: He never gives up. He can be feeling awful but as soon as there is somewhere to go, he’s off. It doesn’t matter where – a party, lunch, as long as Mummy arranges it for him! Daddy is who he is. He has never cared what other people think about him. Whatever he wanted to do, he would do. You couldn’t stop him from showing his love to you. He used to call us affectionate names in public, in shops. I remember going to the Luna Park here in Israel. He came to pick us up in his pyjamas and slippers! Simone: When you are genuine, everybody accepts you for who you are. That’s so true with Daddy. Daddy can do anything and people will just go along with him. That’s the type of person he is. For example, at Daniela’s wedding he just laughed when he lost his place in his speech and put everybody else into hysterics too. Jeremy: Daddy loves cars. He bought a second-hand Jaguar and had it converted. I think he was the first person in England to actually do that.

Daddy is the rock of our family. If we are in a room and all the family, all the kids are sitting around the table and everybody is there, I always think what an incredible zechut1 it is. Daddy was the sole survivor of his family and look at us now…

1 Merit.

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The most embarrassing moment I remember was when he came to pick me up from school in this Jaguar convertible. The roof was down and he was sitting there. When I saw it, I just said, “Let’s get out of here quickly. Don’t you ever pick me up in this again!”

h Jeremy: He is really special. Here’s an example. I went to Rabbi Balkin’s cheder. He wanted to teach us how to lein (read the Torah) but I told him I knew already because my father had taught me when I was nine. I was leining and davening in the youth service. I said to him, “I’ll show you I can lein”. The Rabbi opened the Chumash and said: “Lein that”. He couldn’t believe it. And then he said to me, “I heard you have a wonderful father who gets up in the morning to learn Chumash with you”. Daddy had a very strong background in Kodesh. In that respect, he knew more than most people. We grew up in a house which was very heimisch. My parents were very happy as a couple. We’re very much a kissing and hugging sort of family… we would jump on him and hug him… Daniela: Daddy loved nothing better than that. And to this day you can just sit on his knee and he’ll give you a big hug. Jeremy: When he came home from work he would always give Mum a kiss and a hug. And if we tried to push in he would say, “Never come between husband and wife”. Simone: My grandmother, Nana, lived with us for 30 years. That wasn’t always so easy. But Daddy never ever said a bad word to her or about her.

Maybe because he was used to extended family all living together, but still… He couldn’t understand why his whisky was disappearing so quickly. Every night Nana used to take some with her tea but he never said anything to her, never stopped her from doing it and never complained. He was fantastic to her.

h Jeremy: He worked very hard and built himself up. In his early days he would work almost 24 hours a day. Simone: Yes, the financial side, being independent, is really important to him. His motivation, the love of his life, was his work. He was passionate about it. Jeremy: He is quite stubborn. Very strong character. Doesn’t like anybody telling him what to do. He always wanted independence. It was always a big thing with him. You’ve got to work for yourself. You have to be self-employed. Don’t work for anyone else. And I’m like that as well. Daniela: I’m also like that. I only work for myself. I would never go and work for anybody else. I can’t bear people telling me what to do. He always used to say: “Thank G-d for Japinda Products”. That’s what we used to say too! Jeremy: But even with that determination and tenacity he never let it affect his relationships with people. He was in business for about 50 years and never fell out with anyone. He always says there’s enough for everyone.

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Simone: That’s the way he has always been. Always trusting and believing of people. Daniela: And everything for peace. He would rather lose out for the sake of peace. Jeremy: He would lend people money but he always told us, “If you lend someone money, don’t expect to get it back”. Simone: And “always try to be the giver”.

h Jeremy: It wasn’t a frum house when we were younger. We went to shul on Shabbat morning, ate some kosher food and that was about it. Later, we started going to Bnei Akiva and when Daddy became involved in the shul we started going on Friday night. Jeremy: It wasn’t a simple process. My mother came from a family which had nothing, certainly not a kosher home. My grandmother knew absolutely nothing about Judaism. Daniela: Mummy was unbelievable. She has done everything we wanted. Jeremy: When we started becoming more religious, she was much more accepting than Daddy. Simone: Yes. I think we tried very hard not to get into discussions with Daddy about G-d or anything like that. We just kept away from it. I do remember once or twice when it did happen and Daddy’s anger emerged. Jeremy: Here’s something interesting. For years and years, whenever he spoke about the Shoah, he would never say, “Hashgacha Pratit” – Divine Providence. That was never

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part of the terminology. It was always “Mazal” – luck. Whenever I asked him how he managed, he would always say “Mazal”. But recently he’s started saying Hashgacha Pratit. Simone: I’ll tell you what it is. You don’t necessarily reflect on your life until you get a little bit older. And so now, he is looking back and realizing, putting the pieces together. When you are 15/16, you don’t necessarily think about Hashgacha Pratit. Because Daddy was always working, he maybe never allowed himself the time to reflect on his life. He was always pushing himself forward – What can I do? What can I achieve? And that was really important to him so maybe he never allowed himself to reflect on what happened until now. Maybe he just didn’t want to deal with it.

h Simone: When we were in Warsaw, he turned around and actually admitted, for the first time ever, that he was proud of us making Aliyah and fulfilling his father’s dream. Jeremy: So when Mummy and Daddy made Aliyah it was very emotional. Jeremy: We grew up knowing he had a strong love of Israel. No religious significance at all but we used to come here every year. He often talked about coming to live in Israel but nothing happened till much later. The significance of them making Aliyah is huge. Over the years, sub-consciously, my parents were both very pro-Israel but Daddy was much more knowledgeable about it. Interestingly enough though, it was Mummy who pushed to make Aliyah. And she is so English, you can’t get anyone more English than Mummy. Our Hero

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Daniela: She is just incredible. Simone: I must point out that even with all his greatness, Daddy was only able to rehabilitate his life the way he did because of who he married. Jeremy: Absolutely. Daniela: She is the most unselfish person. Both of them are so unselfish. They would literally take the shirts off their backs and give them to their children or grandchildren, even if it was the last thing they had. There is nothing, nothing they wouldn’t do for us. Simone: Mummy also had a difficult childhood. Her father basically ran away when she was three. And my grandmother came from a wealthy family who lost all their money. So she had no father figure except for my grandmother. No money whatsoever. And that’s why she became a hairdresser, because she had to leave school at the age of 15. Jeremy: She built herself up through her own determination and hard work. Daniela: Yes. Even now, look what she’s doing here in Israel. She works with Ezra and she’s set up a whole counselling group for them. She set the whole thing up and she’s busy with it the whole time. Simone: She has been at Daddy’s side through thick and thin. She didn’t really know what she was letting herself in for when she got married. Or what Daddy had been through. Jeremy: She was just a kid. 22 years old. There is a very interesting part of the documentary, “The Boys”, when survivors talk about how they weren’t really accepted into the Jewish community in England after they 128

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left the hostels. It was very much a Kabdehu Vechashdehu – “respect but be wary” approach. People were wary of them. And when they started going out with girls, parents just didn’t want their children to get married to these survivors without knowing where they came from, what diseases they might be carrying, etc. Which of course was a great contrast to the warmth and welcome they got in Windermere. Daniela: But Nana loved Daddy from the minute she saw him.

h Simone: When it was Daddy’s 80th birthday, Jeremy and Netanel Yechieli found some books published by Daddy’s father and grandfather.2 Jeremy made a copy of one of the sefarim with his father’s and grandfather’s names inside and presented it to Daddy. The morning after the party, I went round to visit my parents. Daddy was very, very emotional. And he is not one to break down. But this time he was very emotional and he said to me, “Simone, you have no idea what this book means to me. It is the only proof I have that I actually had a family and a past. I had nothing tangible, nothing to actually touch, to say that I had a life before. Sometimes I go around thinking to myself: ‘Did I actually have a family?’ So this book is … it’s like you’ve given me back my childhood”.

h Daniela: Daddy always teaches us that if there is something to celebrate then celebrate.

2 They found them in the Yad Herzog library in Alon Shevut, right on Jeremy’s doorstep. Luck? Hashgacha Pratit?

I think that’s a very healthy outlook on life. Always live for the day. It was never an attitude of ‘we can’t do this because we don’t know what will be in ten years time’. It was always ‘do it now’, when you can. Jeremy: Yes, but he always saved up as well. He is very careful with money, very conservative. Daniela: He doesn’t like spending money on himself.

h Simone: I remember Daddy saying that life has to be happy. He said that if he had married Mummy and he had been unhappy, he wouldn’t have stayed with her. Daniela: He is only happy when he is with her. Simone: You are absolutely right.

h Simone: Food is extremely important to him too. Jeremy: Yes. Vusht sandwiches. White challa with vusht. Daniela: When we came to Israel, it was pupiks. Jeremy: When we were kids he used to buy one chicken. There was one pupik and one neck. And we used to fight over the pupik so Daddy cut it out and gave us each a quarter. He also loves fisnoge – calf ’s foot jelly. He eats too fast though!

Jeremy after his degree ceremony in London

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Simone: He would also make potato soup at Chanukah. He would take flour and margarine and then burn it. The whole house stank of burning. He put the potatoes on top of this burnt fat and absolutely loved it. We are not normal. Everything centred around food! Jeremy: When we came to Israel on holiday, his aunt had us over for gefilte fish and Pittekuchen. Daniela: They used to be waiting in the airport with food, chocolates and cakes. Jeremy with the Sefer Torah we donated in Whitefield

Simone: Yes. And if it’s on the table he won’t wait for anybody else. He always says he’s scared there won’t be enough for him. Daniela: When we went to Poland, he would have us go and find him all these different foods. Every type of food reminded him of his childhood. . Simone: He used to come to my house on a Thursday, when I was cooking. And I gave him things to taste. He would start reminiscing about his mother in the kitchen and always tell the same story, “I wonder what my mother would say to you now if she saw you with all this equipment”. Simone: It used to take them a week to make something because they didn’t have all the stuff we have today. He talks about them washing their clothes twice a year. He used to wear things for a week or two. Daniela: They used to boil everything at Pesach and at Rosh Hashanah. They just didn’t have the things we take for granted now. 130

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Simone: The three uncles living here were like grandfathers to us, especially Uncle Mayer, even though we couldn’t communicate with them. It didn’t matter. They just loved us.

h Simone: What made us different from other kids was that a lot of our friends would walk to their grandparents after cheder on Sunday. And they would get gefilte fish. I always dreamed of walking to my grandparents after cheder. Daniela: True. When I was a kid, I used to go with a friend to her grandmother who had this delicious gefilte fish boiling away. And all I wanted was grandparents to visit. I was desperate. Because Nana was more like a sibling, wasn’t she? Simone: She was. When the phone rang, we all ran to it. Nana too. We also didn’t have what our kids have. I always wanted cousins to play with and grandparents to visit. We didn’t have that at all.

In fact, I recently heard people talking about how our generation was that generation without grandparents. We also didn’t have friends whose parents were survivors. Simone: I think one of the Holocaust-related motifs in my life is a tremendous love for Israel, and wanting to protect my children so that what happened should never happen to them. Living here as a Jew is the place to be. Daniela: I always tell my kids that there should never be a time in our lives when we can’t protect ourselves. When I tell my kids about the way we grew up in England, I always say, “Never take Israel for granted. Ever”. People should realize how lucky they are. You know, they don’t realize what it’s like when you’ve got a father who lost all his family and was unable to protect himself. They had nobody to protect them. Simone: Daddy often speaks about his past to the kids. When our kids were little, he used to go to their schools and talk. He didn’t come with a message. He didn’t have to. He just told a story. He is the message. Simone: I think we’re all very aware of the need to pass on the message to today’s generation of Israelis. The problem is that many of them haven’t met many survivors alive today. Inevitably it’s going to become a historical event. So you try and keep it alive. No one should forget. Daniela: When Daddy gave a Sefer Torah in England, he wrote on it: “Do not forget”. And here, he donated the Bimah. When we asked him in whose memory he wanted it, he said we should just inscribe it with the words,” Urei vanim levanecha shalom al yisrael”.3 3 “And may you see children of your children, and peace upon Israel”. (Psalms 138:6)

h Daniela: He had been very respected and loved in his community in Whitefield. People knew exactly who he was and where he’d come from. And when they moved to Poleg, he captured the hearts of the community there too. They love him. Daddy makes people feel special. He always has Simchat Chaim.4 He cherishes people who are around him, no matter if it’s family or friends. He always carries a big smile and exudes warmth and affection. My parents have friends who say it outright – “We just love him”.

4 Joy of life.

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Conversations with the Grandchildren With all the family at Leonie’s wedding. Only Noam – the groom – is missing!

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Leonie and Adi

Leonie (age 21): I first saw Grandpa cry when he chanted the memorial prayer for those killed in the Holocaust. That was quite a shock for me because I had never seen him cry before. He doesn’t cry even when he tells his story. He is always strong. So when I saw the film Mummy and the others made in Poland and Grandpa sitting in Treblinka with his head in his hands, it really broke my heart.

Grandpa is no quitter. You see that all the time, throughout his life.

Because that’s not my Grandpa. It’s the complete opposite. Grandpa is so strong.

Yes, he started from nothing and built an empire and a family.

Elianna (18): Yes, it’s only the really big things that make him cry.

What is also amazing is that he never let his experiences ruin the lives of his children or our childish innocence and joy. He doesn’t speak about the Holocaust too much and yes, he is always smiling.

Whenever I think of Grandpa, I think of his smile. Whether it’s at a simcha or just a regular day, he’s always smiling. It’s always the smile you see first. And that reflects his whole personality. He is always smiling despite all he has been through in life. Adi (18): Yes, I haven’t seen him cry too much either. But look at him now. He’s not so healthy, serious back pains… I see him get out of the car, the car’s low down and it’s hard for him. It really hurts but he doesn’t say a thing. He’ll never say, “Come and help me”. Of course you help him because you want to help him but he won’t ask. 134

Grandpa is 84 years old. You think he would say, “Come Adi, can you help me a second? Can you take things out of the dishwasher?” Perfectly legitimate, right? But no, he doesn’t ask and he does it himself. You have to beg to help him. He won’t let you.

The world did not do him any favours. Not at all. He lost his entire family. He went to a different country, learned a new language and started completely from scratch.

Like the 80th birthday party we made for him. He is always so grateful for what people do for him.

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Ro’i, Matan and Eyal

Grandpa is happy all the time. At every wedding, he’s the first to get up and dance and he won’t stop until his legs give way!

Tahel, Amiel and Rani

Tahel

He can also teach us a thing or two about making the most of life instead of sleeping all the time. He goes for walks, sings and always wants to teach you things. For example, he told me once, “Do what you have to do to the best of your ability, because you only live once”. And you listen, because you know Grandpa is not a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He is a man who has been through life and had more than his fair share of bad experiences. Tzur (19): Once, my father had a spare ticket to England so I went and gave Grandma and Grandpa a surprise. It was Grandpa’s birthday and I suddenly turned up at his office! Our Hero

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From left: Tzur, Adi, Matan, Asael, Elianna and Leonie

It was only a few days but it was just me, Grandma and Grandpa. That was a really special time! Adi: What’s really special about our relationship with Grandma and Grandpa – which I don’t think many families have – is not only that we live so close but that they’re a real anchor for the family. They bring everyone together. There is a wonderful relationship between the siblings and the cousins and it’s the same with Grandma and Grandpa too. It’s like having another set of parents. I can call them all the time. That’s the feeling they give me. They’re here, they’re with us and they’re part of us. Asael (16): It’s always fun to be with them. Grandpa loves to spoil us and he never gets angry. Leonie: Yes, I agree completely. You can speak to them freely and they’re the first to pay attention if something is wrong. For example, when I was in the dorms at Kfar Saba and having a hard time, I always knew I could call Grandma and Grandpa and they would come and take me out for a slap-up meal. If my parents were busy or I wanted to be spoilt I just had to call them and they would be there for me. It’s all from pure, unconditional love. My friends always say, “Wow! You have such cool grandparents!” Because when they came to visit me, they would bring food for them too. I feel that everything Grandpa has in life, everything he does… it’s all for us. For example, Grandpa hates going shopping. He hates buying things for himself. But if it’s for us? He’ll come with us every day and buy us whatever we need. Driving lessons, birthdays, treats, love, love, love… Holding Matan

It’s like this long pipe full of warmth, love, kisses, talk, free time… all for the family, for the grandchildren. It’s so important to them we have everything we need and we’re happy, so they give us everything they can. Knowing you have a Grandma and Grandpa like them gives you a tremendous feeling of security! It doesn’t matter what you do, Grandma and Grandpa will always love you and care for you. And they’ll always accept you for who you are. Elianna: I really feel that Grandpa is our magnet. He pulls us all together. He makes us into one big family. There are many things we do around him or because of him. We’re always together because of him. We all want to be with him. I was born in America and when Grandpa came to visit he would always give me some great big hugs on the mattress. That was my special time with him. Just me and him.

I still feel that connection now. I can’t describe it but it’s as strong, secure, natural and warm as those very first hugs. Tzur: Yes, Grandma and Grandpa were always the link that connected us all, even when they used to live far away. The thing is, they do it so naturally, willingly, with all their heart. It’s not like, “OK, it’s family so you’ve got to put in the effort.” Not at all. It’s their greatest joy in life. They just live it. Here’s a typical example. I might not see them everyday, but we speak every week. And if I don’t call, they’ll call me. That’s their pleasure. You can say, “Well all grandparents are like that because they want to keep contact with the family,” but that’s not true. If I want a quiet Shabbat, I just go to Grandma and Grandpa. I relax, they spoil me. With all their heart. And they’ll invite me too and say, “Sure. Bring some friends”. That’s their greatest pleasure in life. Just giving, giving, giving… Our Hero

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Standing in the back: Leonie, Elianna, Matan, Tzur, Adi, Ro’i. In front: Amiel, Susan, Rani, me and Omer

Leonie: Grandpa has no airs. He speaks to you on your terms. He used to come and visit me at the Ulpana1 in shorts, turn up at events just as he was, no showing off. There are people who put on a show but not Grandpa. He’s the personification of simplicity. He comes as he is. What you see is what you get. He’s genuine. Asael: He says what he thinks, even if it might not always be pleasant to hear. Leonie: He doesn’t need to pretend because he’s a great man. It’s his personality that gives him the strength, not the outer trappings. And he doesn’t pay attention to those things in other people either. Both he and Grandma are very accepting of people as they are. Very open and giving, especially to the family. But I’m sure it’s not easy. My wedding for example. Men and women were totally separate. I was really scared what Grandma and Grandpa would say. I didn’t hear a word. They were so happy for me and I felt enveloped and supported by their genuine love. I know they’re not used to separate weddings. It’s just not their reality. One day we were talking before the wedding and Grandma and Grandpa said, “So, how will we walk down the aisle? How will it all work?” It really wasn’t what they were used to at all but they accepted it all with joy. They don’t try and raise you up to them. They come down to you. Plenty of grandparents expect respect, expect the family to listen and take their advice but they didn’t say a word, complain or express any type of disappointment at all. They just said, “What a beautiful wedding” and heaped their praises on us. Noam and I are amazed how they always see the good in everything. They only speak positively and that’s the way they look on life. That’s what they see. Adi: I have a very strong memory of a photo of Grandpa I saw once at Daniela’s. It must have been taken 40, 50 years ago, with him sunbathing in shorts by the pool. 1 Religious high school for girls.

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Eyal

That sums Grandpa up for me. Living life. Enjoying every moment.

Leonie and Elianna

Leonie: My first memory of Mummy telling me about Grandpa was when I was quite young. In children’s language she told me that Grandpa had had a very difficult childhood and that he was very hungry as a child.

Elianna: Definitely. I notice that Grandpa doesn’t talk without purpose. He talks wisdom. When I sit with him and talk about the Holocaust, he gives me lessons for life. Even when he talks about his family, there’s always a message there.

I found it hard to make the connection between that description and the Grandpa I know. Was it really hard for him? Didn’t he have parents? Because it was just so much the opposite of Grandpa. He is the absolute antithesis of suffering and sadness. He is all about loving life and giving and is not a hard man at all. He’s so sweet.

And he’s the perfect gentleman too. For example, If Leonie and I are walking outside in the rain, he’ll tell us that women should walk on the right side, away from the kerb, so we won’t get splashed. He’s always concerned we look smart and he’s always giving us things to think about.

Grandpa is the “Big Hug” man! We all love to get a special hug from him. It’s hard for me to grasp how it was possible for him to have gone through such suffering. I always wish I could creep up behind the reality and just wrap him in hugs and take him away from the bad places. It’s so much part of his life yet if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t notice. Because he is just so good and giving, that’s all there is to it. Tzur: We always knew Grandpa had been in the Holocaust. It was always in the background yet it isn’t something you are aware of when you’re with him. There are survivors whom you can tell had a hard life. You can sometimes see it on the people who come and speak about their experiences. But Grandpa didn’t talk to us about it very much at all.

Even after I’d worked on my Bar-Mitzvah project and I’d been to Poland,2 it was still very hard for me to make the connection. To make the link between that reality and the person.

Leonie: Mummy always told me that “Grandpa is a hero”. And that has been with me all my life. Grandpa is not just Grandpa – he’s a hero. Eyal, Asael and Tzur

He’s a hero who was in the Holocaust. He’s a hero who rebuilt his family. He should get a medal for every day that goes by… a medal for his joy of life… I always think… What does Grandpa dream of at night and then how does he get up the next day? What is he thinking? Does he go back to his past? He must do! How can he give us so much love? He’s such a hero… Before I flew to Poland, I interviewed him and I asked him what was it that helped him get through the Holocaust? 2 Most Israeli high schools offer a Poland trip in the final year of school.

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His reply was, “A lot of siyata dishmaya (Divine help) and hard work”. So much faith… so much. It gives us all so much strength. So when I see Grandpa, I see a hero. Tzur: I often think of those years after the Holocaust and before he got married. We don’t know too much about what he did. But one thing I do know. He worked hard. Even when he was a kid, he worked hard. And when he came on Aliyah, he still wanted to carry on working. He still does. That’s something I want to learn from Grandpa. The value of effort. Of getting up to work in the morning. I see Grandpa and he’s not working now so I think, “Here, you have a free day so why not get up at 12? Sleep in. Live the good life”. But I’ve seen Grandpa in action and it was never just work for him. He loved what he did. So it’s both those things – the value of the work and loving it at the same time. It’s not enough just to have a strong work ethic because if you don’t love what you do it will become a burden sooner or later. And yes, sometimes you just have to learn to love it… Adi: I was always unsure if Grandpa was religious or whether he believed in G-d. And Mummy always said, “There are some things you just don’t ask him”. Our Hero

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So any time I’m up against difficulties in my life and I start whining, “Oof ! Homework, exams,” or on a fast day when I’m hungry, I often find myself stopping and thinking about Grandpa. Grandpa spent five years fasting. And you’re getting annoyed about three hours!” This gives me strength to face up to my own problems. It always works. Leonie: I notice that Grandpa talks a lot about family. The stories he tells are not about the horrors but about the family before the war. How they were so close, festivals together, eating in one house.

Adi, Elianna, Leonie and Tzur in Liverpool

That’s something that guides me today with all Holocaust survivors I meet. I don’t pry and I don’t judge. As far as I’m concerned, these people are going straight to Gan Eden.3 But it was always strange with Grandpa. On the one hand he goes to shul, on the other he doesn’t always wear a kippa and he’s also a Chazan.

Ma’ayan in the back and Amiel, Rani and Meir

He said there was no organized method in the Holocaust. It wasn’t Mathematics. “If I was in the right hand column, I would jump into the left. It was all really Hashgacha Pratit (Divine Providence)”.

I really felt it just before the wedding when I stayed over at Jeremy and Michal’s. You feel as if all our houses are your own.

Elianna: I want to take the idea of acceptance from Grandpa.

I didn’t understand what the catch was.

That’s when it hit me that Grandpa does believe. That was a very powerful epiphany.

But then, last Pesach, he said something.

Another thing I take from him is the strength to persevere.

For example, all his children went in different directions – Bnei Akiva, becoming more religious and all sorts of things that Grandma and Grandpa really didn’t have a clue about. After all, they didn’t live like that.

He always says things you just can’t ignore but this time it hit home.

I read a lot about the Holocaust and it always amazes me to think of Grandpa as an 11-year-old kid who was abruptly left alone to fend for himself in those conditions.

3 The place reserved for righteous people in the World to Come.

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Leonie and Adi

And I think that’s due to Grandma and Grandpa. It’s because of them we feel so at home in every single one of our houses.

Grandpa said that.

And he came through.

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I think we’re very similar now. When we want to be spoilt and eat some good food, we go to Daniela’s. When Tzur’s in town, he has no problem calling me and asking if he can pop round. It’s a great feeling of one big happy family.

But Grandpa accepted it. Even today, we’re all very different. Each grandchild has their own path. But Grandpa never sits you down and says, “Listen, you should be this or that”. He accepts you for who you are.

Swingin’ with Leonie

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And that makes for a closer relationship because you know you can tell him what you want and he’ll listen with all the seriousness in the world.

There was no one in Grandpa’s old house but when you’re there, at the building, you can picture the extended Kurnedz family all sitting around telling stories, singing songs…

This is something I want to adopt – being able to accept other human beings however different they are. Learn how to identify their good points and see the positive in every single person.

I can’t picture Grandpa and Grandma in England. It’s strange. I can picture their house, their street, in typically grey English weather but I can’t place Grandpa in that picture. He always pops up here, in Israel, in his house or outside, on the way to shul… smiling, singing, cap tilted slightly back… that’s how I picture Grandpa. He’s in the here and now.

Adi: You can’t mention Grandpa without talking about Grandma. She comes straight out of a fairy tale – an English Queen, diplomatic, always polite, always beautiful and always calm… you’ll never manage to annoy her. Always smiling and always young at heart. Always ready to do the craziest things with us. And we love her! I often think of Grandpa’s recurring dream about the airport, when he hears a “Mr. Kurnedz” being called over the PA system and goes to the desk, where he finds another man who is his father or brother. When I went to Poland I thought, “I’m going to go to his house. Maybe I’ll find someone who survived, and just as I get to the house, I’ll meet him right there”. And then I could come back to Grandpa with some gift, some memory… That feeling was so strong that when I was in the house I wanted to stay longer, on the off chance this long-lost relative might turn up. I was so disappointed. Tzur: I always knew I would go to Poland. However, my group was not scheduled to go to Piotrkow but I persuaded them to pass through. They said, “Listen, you can get off here for three-four minutes, take photos and then we’re out of here!” It was a Friday and we were going to Lodz for Shabbat, but they stopped for me. I had to do it. It was very important to me. 144

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Grandpa has managed to really distance the past from us all and that’s a good thing. You can’t dwell in the past. You have to keep going forward. Yes, of course you have to learn from the past, remember, but never get stuck there. Grandpa has done that with great success. Elianna: We all grew up knowing we had to visit Poland. We had to see what Grandpa went through. One of the toughest decisions I have ever made was deciding not to go. I always knew I couldn’t bring myself to go but I hoped something would happen to change the situation. I was afraid Grandpa would be disappointed in me that I wouldn’t see what he went through. I really wanted to see his house and show the Poles that we’re alive and so is he. I didn’t want to be any different from the other grandchildren. But I didn’t go because I know I couldn’t handle seeing what Grandpa went through. The emotional side is just too strong for me. It makes me cry just to think about the Holocaust let alone knowing that my wonderful Grandpa went through such tough times. Despite my fears, Grandma and Grandpa fully and lovingly supported me throughout this difficult time.

With new additions Noam (next to Leonie at the back) and Tehilla (in safe hands!)

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With Susan and Leonie. Behind us are Adi, Ro’i, Omer and Simone

Holding Elianna and Leonie

them that Grandpa survived but rebuilt his family in the Jewish homeland. As the eldest grandchild, I also felt a responsibility to honor my great-grandfather and to thank the Almighty. People who knew my great-grandmother say I look exactly like her. I wanted the Poles to see me and be shocked. I wanted them to say, “Wow! You look just like the lady who lived here”. Like Adi, I also had a film that constantly played itself in my mind. I knew that Grandpa’s family had hidden in a bunker before the Germans found them and deported them to Treblinka. They had all sorts of documents, photos, candlesticks, etc. and I dreamt of finding them and bringing them back here.

I went on the school Israel trip at the same time as the Poland trip. Grandma and Grandpa and Mummy wrote a letter to me before I left.

Asael: I’m more sensitive to the Holocaust because of Grandpa. I think it’s important for me to go to Poland and see where he lived and the places he visited.

They told me I was fulfilling my great-grandfather Yechiel’s dream of living in Eretz Yisrael. At the time, I kept saying to myself, “What if I’d gone to Poland instead?” but when I look back, I spent a fascinating week learning how the State of Israel came about.

Leonie: Once, Daddy had to go to Miluim (reserve duty), and I was really scared, I didn’t want him to go.

Suddenly, I saw Grandpa’s story in a different light. And it turned out that I felt the same feelings as my cousins did when they went to Poland. Grandpa always makes time for me and has a special place in his heart for me as I do for him. I have a special connection with him and a lot of my tears are for him. I only cry when I talk about him. I love him. 146

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Grandpa took me aside, gave me a big hug and said, “Leonie, you know that when I was a little boy, we didn’t have an army to protect us or a country we could fight for. What a privilege you have. If only I had had such a thing. But I didn’t and here your Daddy is serving in Israel’s Defence Forces, the Jewish army. You don’t need to be afraid”. I too always wanted to go to Poland. It was something I always dreamed about. Coming to Poland from Israel, carrying the Israeli flag… I believed it would be a big Kiddush Hashem (sanctifying G-d’s Name). I wanted to go to Grandpa’s house and show the Poles that the Jewish people are alive and well. Show

Or finding Estusha, Grandpa’s sister, and bringing her back to Israel with me. But when I actually got there – and I also made the group go especially for me – we searched for the house. Jeremy had drawn a map for me but after asking all sorts of people, they all said, “It’s not there any more”. I think I cried all day. The whole reason I had come to Poland was to go to Grandpa’s house. The rest didn’t really interest me. My friends had come to see and understand but I felt it was already a part of me. I didn’t need it. I just came for the house. Just to be there. Just to show the Poles that the Jewish people are eternal… to show Grandpa’s father – I always wanted to show him… But we didn’t find the house.

That ruined the whole trip for me. I saw and listened but I hadn’t come for that. I live the story of the revival of the Jewish people. And then Treblinka. I had come to the cemetery where Grandpa’s family were buried. I cried my eyes out at the sight of such natural Divine beauty contrasted with the death and destruction that happened there. I spoke to Grandpa’s family… I told them we were believing Jews, that we live in a country of our own…and I really felt I was speaking to them. And I left there with a feeling of strange elation, singing, “It is good to thank G-d”. What a miracle! The tree had been cut down but it had sprouted new branches and grown again, against all the odds.4 But still, I had this burning desire to go to the house. It must be there! So after much discussion, special authorization from the Israeli Ministry of Education and my parents’ permission, I took a special taxi with Rav Yossi, the Head of the Ulpana, to Grandpa’s house. It was a five-hour journey and on the last day too. It was snowing, 7 o’clock in the morning and the place was closed. We didn’t want to start knocking on the door so we just stood outside. The house looks as if Grandpa just left it yesterday. I showed Rav Yossi the hole in the doorpost where the mezuzah had been.

4 See the full text of Leonie’s speech at Treblinka on page 162.

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With Tzur shortly after his IDF enlistment

I had been studying Mesillat Yesharim5 with Rav Yossi back in Israel. So while we were waiting, we just opened the book where we had left off – a passage about not taking revenge or bearing grudges – and began to study. As we’re reading, I spot someone come up from the cellar with buckets full of wood for the fireplace and go into Grandpa’s house! I said, “He went into the house!” Rav Yossi stopped him and tried to explain that I was the granddaughter. “We want to come in”. At first he pretended he didn’t understand. He called his wife and they let us in… They didn’t mention that anyone from my family had lived there. That was hard. But when I was in there, I felt Grandpa’s family was there too. I felt all I had wanted to feel, what I had dreamed of all my life… and I felt a strange calm… a very powerful feeling of content… That trip added so much meaning to my life. Those feelings accompany me wherever I am. Adi: When Mummy told me about the Holocaust, she would always say how important our country is. And I would ask her, “Why didn’t you stay in England? You could have had a much better, more comfortable life there. Why come here?” And she would say, “It’s not good to be a Jew outside of Israel. There’s no army, no country that will protect you. Think about Grandpa… My dream is to stand proudly at the end of some army course or ceremony and see Grandpa looking on with his great big smile. I want him to see he has a grandson in the Israeli Army…

5 A classic book about ethics and self-development by Rabbi Moses Chaim Luzzatto (1707-1746).

Tzur: You know how friends talk about the army, how we always mention our mothers, “My mum doesn’t sleep at night,” and then we talk about the grandparents, “My grandmother doesn’t sleep anyway”. And I say, “I’ll always have my grandparents, my father’s parents. They’re not worried”. I speak to Grandma and Grandpa and they ask me, “When are you going to the army?” And I explain to them about the yeshiva and the army. Three years… and they say, “Great. Cool. Easy… it doesn’t phase them… it’s a different reality. It’s “Great. Another stage in life. You have to go through it, like kindergarten, school… I like that attitude. Ro’i (15): Every time I go to Grandma and Grandpa, they always ask me about my music or “When’s your next concert?” They show genuine interest in what I’m doing. Grandpa loves music and I love it that they’re so interested.

Daniela and Jeremy with their family Leonie and Adi in my office in England

And they do that with all of us, whatever we’re doing. You can see they genuinely want to know. Tahel (13): Grandpa is loving, accepts everyone and listens to you without being critical. Matan (15): For me, Grandpa symbolizes family. He told me how he survived the Holocaust with his uncles. How they looked out for each other, like family, always concerned for each other. He’s always with the family. That’s his life. Eyal (15): I don’t think I’ve ever really heard the whole of Grandpa’s story from beginning to end. Just bits and pieces. But still, I think it’s amazing he managed to stay with his uncles all the way through. He never gave up on them and they never gave up on him. Yes, family is number one for him. I cherished the holidays we spent with Grandma and Grandpa in England. They knew how to spoil us all and have a fun time

Tahel and Alon

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Adi and Elianna

Elianna

together. These moments really bonded us, deepened the connection. Ro’i: When I went to England a few years ago, Grandpa took me to his factory, where he showed me a huge conference room and an enormous wooden table. And I thought to myself, “How could he have been in the Holocaust and yet achieved all this?” He told us, “Take any bag you want!” Wow! How did Grandpa do that? You come from nowhere, you have nothing, arrive at some transition camp in England and you build from scratch… until you get a huge conference room and a mahogany table! I fondly remember the little Coca Colas he gave us on that trip. He truly spoilt us and I loved it!

Omer

Leonie

Once he told me how he took some parsley from a neighbour and just spent hours chewing it because he had never tasted it before. Grandpa knows how to enjoy the simple things in life.

Matan: Food and Grandpa go together. If you want good food, you go to Grandma and Grandpa. Ro’i: Grandpa eats the weirdest stuff, like calf ’s foot jelly, gefilte fish, even the juice! And he loves pickled cucumbers! Just give him gefilte fish, bread and pickles and he’s in heaven. He’ll never eat chicken without pickled cucumbers either! Matan: One thing I learn from Grandpa is his ability to persevere. He never stops. Always looking forward. No crying over spilt milk or resting on his laurels. He was at rock bottom and simply built an incredible life. Ro’i: I admire his tremendous inner strength. Take his heart operation for example. He had 90-95% artery blockage yet he never gave up and pulled through the operation.

I love his style too. His cool hats and his shirts monogrammed with PK.

When we came to visit, he managed to sit up, hug us, say hello with a smile… you need to be strong to do that after the kind of surgery he had.

Eyal: Yes, all my friends know I have a Grandpa with a PK ring and PK shirts. Some of them even call him, “The Gangster Grandpa”!

Eyal: Yes, I remember that too. Grandpa, despite the pain, making a huge effort to get up and welcome his children and grandchildren.

Whenever he comes to us for the Chagim and my father is Chazan, they sing together. And people ask, “Who is that up there with your dad? What? Your Grandpa? Wow! What a voice!”

So I learn from Grandpa how never to give up and never lose hope. He’s a fighter. He went through the Holocaust, raised a family, saw his kids leave and come to Israel and then came himself. Even though it couldn’t have been easy to leave the place that gave him a life for 60 years.

He always puts everything he’s got into his singing.

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Ro’i: Yes, whenever he prays Mussaf he always does it so movingly. And he prays as if it’s the first time he’s ever done it. With all his heart. It’s really uplifting.

Tahel: I’m amazed at his ability to be so happy.

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I admire him for his ability to cope and get out of difficult situations. I also love his warmth. Whenever we’re together he radiates such a warm feeling and he loves that togetherness. I love that too, when everyone helps everybody else, when we all like being together. Although I sometimes think, “How strange it is to think that my Daddy never had a Grandma and Grandpa like I do. How lucky I am!” Ro’i: I love the story about the Tefillin Grandpa was given at Theresienstadt. But even more so, the fact he wanted to give them away to a poor person. If the Sofer6 hadn’t persuaded him to keep them because they were so special, he would have given them away without a moment’s thought. That’s who he is, always giving… Omer (12): I like Grandpa because he loves to hug, he davvens beautifully and he has lots of stories to tell. Rani (11): I admire Grandpa because he survived the Holocaust and he’s still happy. He’s never sad and he always helps you if you’re sad. I also love it when he sings with Jeremy on Rosh Hashanah. That’s really moving. Amiel (8): I love Grandpa because he is never sad or angry. He’s always happy. Even when I do something he may not like, he tells me off with a smile on his face. Rani: I love it when he sings Chad Gadya7 in Yiddish! How does he remember that? Omer: When I fasted on Yom Kippur and it was hard, I thought of Grandpa in the Holocaust and how they would eat less in a week than I do in a day. That helped me get through it. 6 Scribe. 7 The song sung at the very end of Seder Night.

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And every time I hear the song, “Ani Ma’amin” (I Believe), it reminds me of Grandpa. There are those who have been through what he went through and don’t believe any more. Grandpa is different. He continued to believe, continued to hope. Just look at the family he’s built!

With Susan and my boys!

Alon (7): Grandpa and Grandma always let us have anything we want. For example, they always let me have a chocolate egg if they have one. Omer: And why would they have one? So they can give it to you! Amiel: And when we go shopping with Grandma she always likes to spoil us. Omer: Grandpa’s story always thrills me. He always seems to have been in the right place at the right time. For example, he was in the line that received more food than the other line, the group that stayed to work while the other group was sent to their deaths. He always came out on the good side as if Hashem was looking after him, right by his side all the time.

Asael

And we’re very lucky to have both Grandma and Grandpa. Some children – like Mummy for example – only had one grandparent. So we’re really lucky. We shouldn’t take it for granted. If Grandpa hadn’t survived, we wouldn’t be here. Rani: I learn from Grandpa that dreams can always come true. You must always believe in yourself. Grandpa always finds the strength to do things. He’ll never say, “I can’t be bothered”. I remember how he never stopped dancing at Leonie’s wedding. Elianna and Tehilla

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Amiel: I think Grandpa is always laughing because he’s happy with what Hashem has given him.

Adi

Meir (10): He’s still happy even after the Holocaust. Rani: I feel like Grandma and Grandpa are extra parents. I think the thing that makes him most happy is seeing the family happy. And singing together. Amiel: He loves to see us and come to our house. Meir: I’m amazed how he learned Hebrew so quickly. Alon: I think he loves hugs and kisses best. Meir: Yes, he’s lovely and he’s honest.

Elianna, Matan, Rani and Amiel

Omer: I sat next to him at his 80th birthday party and I noticed that when Daniela, Jeremy and Mummy talked about his Holocaust experiences, he was happy in some places and cried in others. I felt as though I was part of that. It’s the same when I see pictures of him as a child, I see myself, as if I was there too. And when I see Holocaust films, I think how it must have felt to be there…

With Adi, Tzur and Leonie Picnic with Omer, Adi (in car), Ro’i, Leonie and Itzik

Rani: Grandpa always knows what we want. He wants us happy. Alon: He is a Tzaddik Nistar. 8 Editor’s Note: Ma’ayan, 4, was unavailable for comment but agrees with all of the above!

With Leonie, Noam and Tehilla

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8 An undiscovered righteous person.

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C h a p t e r

Michal, Itzik & Jeremy

All the boys (apart from Asael) plus Uncle Jack, Susanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s older brother (behind me on the left)

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Jeremy & Jeremy Ltd. At Adi’s Bar Mitzvah

Michal: As all the children have mentioned, family is very important to him. But when you think about it, he himself didn’t experience that much family. After all, he lost them when he was 11. How did he know what it meant to raise a family? To be a husband? A father? Yes, his childhood experiences were very strong but all the same, it’s still amazing. I think we take that too much for granted.

Pinchas and Susan simply make you feel at home. Literally one of the family.

The issue of faith doesn’t bother me. One day Pinchas can attribute his narrow escapes to Divine Providence and the next to luck. There is no consistency and that’s fine.

And I think that’s been passed on to the younger generations too.

That is something we shouldn’t take for granted. It really is a tremendous blessing. To a large extent, it’s that welcoming, non-judgmental attitude that keeps the family together.

What is true though is his relationship with G-d. He is truly grateful for everything he has. Every festival starts with a ceremony in which he declares how fortunate he has been and how much G-d has given him and his family.

Apart from his ability to live the moment, I have learnt something extremely important from Pinchas. I even quote him to my friends. He always says, “If you have a chance to be happy, don’t hold back. Don’t start weighing up… Enjoy life to the full!”

On the other hand, he is angry with G-d. Not so much personal anger but more of a lack of understanding about how He runs the world.

It’s not easy. You have to work on it but Pinchas teaches me by his very own personal example.

You see him deliberating with this duality all the time.

Another important point for me is that recurring dream of his that Adi mentioned. That constant, ever present hope that maybe, just maybe he’ll meet someone from his family…

Because no matter how much you try, he will always remain alone with these thoughts. And that really pains me. Because there is nothing we can do. The family knows this and just leaves him to get over it. Nevertheless, I see him in constant dialogue with the Almighty. Maybe that is the mark of the greatest believer – someone who is always speaking to G-d – frankly, truthfully, from the heart, no matter what happens to him in life. On another point, he has an opinion about everything. No, he’s not always politically correct but that’s fine because he says what he thinks and you know exactly where you stand. At the same time, he is a man with an insatiable capacity for unlimited love.

I even find myself saying, “Wow! I would really like to meet them too one day”. I recall reaching the age at which they were killed and thinking about the unthinkable decisions they had to make… Pinchas is always happy when we tell him we’re going to have another child. Always. There’s no show one thing and feel another with him. If he’s happy then he really is. Each new grandchild is a very meaningful and emotional event for him, because it is continuing the chain of the Jewish people and of his family in particular. Because Pinchas was the only survivor, I didn’t let Jeremy change his name to a Hebrew equivalent, just like Susan didn’t let Pinchas do it when he wanted to shorten it to Kay. As Susan says, “He’s the only person to perpetuate the name. I thought it would be a shame to change it”. When I was at Treblinka, I said to Pinchas’ father … “Don’t worry Saba Yechiel. You have offspring – beautiful, happy and healthy offspring. All living in Eretz Yisrael”.

And I can’t help thinking, “The man is over 80. He left his family when he was 11 and he still wants to see his parents. He still misses them and that’s what he dreams about at night”.

Itzik: Whenever the whole family is together, and no matter what his physical state is, his spiritual state is on a different plane altogether. Every event, every festival he’s like an overflowing spring. He’s always discovering new strength…

That’s unbelievable.

His legacy exists in his actions.

I think about his family a lot and what they managed to instill in him so he would turn out like he is. They must have been very special people because if you don’t inherit these traits when you’re very young, it becomes extremely difficult to acquire them later.

In how he educated his children, let them go their own ways and build their own families. I never heard any objections or opposition to how or why they did things.

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There is no doubt that Pinchas is my compass in everything related to business. For example, integrity is paramount for him.

Jeremy and Michal and their family

Jeremy and Matan

Everything is by the book. If you have to pay tax, you pay. Don’t try to find roundabout ways to do things but take things as they are and respect that. He is always the one giving the concessions and moving on. It doesn’t matter if he is right, or he didn’t receive what was due to him. He’s on a different plane. His slogan is always, “If no one is hurt, that’s the main thing”. If anything material is lost or broken, it’s no big deal, as long as no one is hurt. Another thing I love about him is his largesse.

The freedom of choice he gives to each and every one of us is truly amazing. He’ll have his say but in the end it’s you who decides. And he accepts that. Because he accepts you for who you are. Nevertheless, in his own way he will use his experience and wisdom to try and help you grow and develop. It is very clear that the joy of seeing his family grow and succeed is his purpose in life. Take my army service, for example. It was largely for him that I stayed on to earn promotion as a Lieutenant Colonel.

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And it was Pinchas who actually gave me the rank at the ceremony in Tzfat. That was special. It is very symbolic for him to have his family serving in the Israeli army after all he went through in the Holocaust. He is the drive that still propels me to do things like that and it’s really important to me to please him, to give him pleasure, because he has given us so much. He and I have a very special relationship. I can sit with him for hours, even if neither of us speak. Often he will call me and say, “Itzik, What are you doing today? Maybe we can go out together?” And we’ll go for a walk or perhaps have lunch together.

He’s a man of great generosity. When I go with him to the Kotel, Pinchas asks me to cash a 100 or 200 shekel note into coins. And he won’t leave there until he’s given them all away… He also gives compliments all the time. He’s very wise and sometimes you don’t quite know just how spiritual he is. On the one hand, deep faith and knowledge and on the other, searing questions about G-d in the Holocaust that leave us speechless, with no answers. He’s a giant of a man. And when you try and define such greatness you automatically limit it. So however much we tell or write, we are bound to miss out on so much more. That’s just the way it is.

Cheek to cheek with Leonie

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With Simone, Leonie and Adi

I hear about his greatness wherever I go. Back in Herzliya for example, his tunes are famous. I have a friend there, Moshe, who always sings Pinchas’ tune for “V’Al Kulam” when he is Chazan on Yom Kippur. And there’s Rabbi Ades, who always asks after Pinchas and tells me what a great and kind man he is, even though he didn’t know him very well at all.

Enjoying a drink with Itzik

Because anyone who comes into contact with him is touched. Even one short encounter can leave a lifelong impression. He’s that type of person. It comes from his soul. There’s an innate and constant joy bubbling away in there all the time. I don’t think you can extinguish it – the flames are always burning, the happiness and joy of life are always evident, the childlike excitement and emotion… the giving. Simone and Itzik with Tehilla Michal

With Leonie

And all we can do is emulate that. I think the three families are doing just that. Trying to live our lives in the same way, whether in financial thinking and strategy, education, responsibility, concern for others, giving… And that is surely his greatest reward... Jeremy: Pinky has a very big influence on our lives. I am constantly awed by how he built a family of love, an atmosphere of acceptance and welcome to all. For example, even before I was engaged to Daniela, I was left with nowhere to go for Seder Night. The Kurnedz’s adopted me that Pesach and really made me feel like one of the family.

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I can also picture the scene at “Top o’ the Hill”1. Pinky is sitting in the armchair by the piano with Daniela on his knee, looking into the fake fire. But that fire was never fake. That house just blazed with the glowing flames of love and generosity. I was amazed how he treated the never-ending stream of charity collectors who came to his door almost every night. Despite the constant interruptions, he received them all with a smile and never turned anyone away. With Daniela and Matan

Daniela and Elianna

Similarly, I have never heard him say a bad word about Manchester or England. He is eternally grateful for the shelter and opportunity they afforded him to rebuild his life. Nowadays, there are far too many parents who don’t speak to their children, brothers who won’t have anything to do with each other and cousins who barely know each other’s names. Thanks to Pinky and Susan, our family has always been blessed with the warmth of that blazing fire at “Top o’ the Hill”. We all speak freely to each other and the relationships between siblings and cousins are a real joy to see. And that is an enviable legacy.

Enjoying myself with Tahel 1 The name of the Kurnedz’s house in Manchester.

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Leonie’s Speech at Treblinka th 25 Iyar, 5767 - 13 May, 2007 I am standing here and trying to imagine… What were you feeling? What were you thinking? What did you say to each other when you got here? I have heard many stories about you and now I am here, visiting you. Grandma Sheindele, they say I look very much like you. Grandpa misses you so much and loves you. If only we didn’t have to meet in this accursed place. If only our people didn’t have to go through all that suffering. But the ways of the Almighty are hidden. Everything has a purpose and we do not and will never understand the ways of G-d. I have come here today to tell you that Grandpa rehabilitated his life after the war, lived in England and married an amazing woman who loves and supports him through thick and thin. They have three children, all of whom, thank G-d, are active, believing, Zionist Jews living in Eretz Yisrael.

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And Grandpa now has 15 grandchildren, thank G-d. Grandpa and Grandma made Aliyah to Israel just over a year ago… Yes Grandpa Yechiel, we are following your path, fulfilling your vision… we always mention your activities in the Mizrachi and your own unrealized hopes to come to Eretz Yisrael.

They understood the ghetto was about to be wiped out. My grandpa did not want to leave the house that day. He was 13 years old and did not want to leave his family. But his parents knew it was his only chance of survival and told him to go. His last memory as he left his house was seeing his father wrapped in his Tallit, carrying his younger brother, Simcha Yair, in his arms. His mother was behind his father with his brother Menachem Mendel and sister Estusha by her side. This was in a house that is no more.

I hope it warms your heart to hear and know that we are continuing your dream.

A house full of joy and devotion. 13 Pilsudski Street, Piotrkow.

The Germans tried to cut down the tree and indeed they did. But we “arose and steeled ourselves”. We did not despair and even though you are here, you do have descendants. Yes the tree does have a gaping wound – and yes, we cannot comprehend the enormity of the destruction – but the strength of its roots continues to keep it alive and blossoming.

And that is why it was so important for me to go to my Grandpa’s house and show them all that the Jewish people are alive and well.

Despite everything, your family is alive… The last time my grandpa saw his parents was in 1942, just before the Germans performed the Actios in the ghetto.

May their memories be blessed. “Thus said the Lord G-d, “Behold, my people, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves and bring you to the Land of Israel”. (Ezekiel 37)

Grandpa worked in a glass factory in the ghetto and one day the Germans told them to report for work somewhat earlier than usual.

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From generation to generation...

The Grandchildren’s Song at Pinchas’ 80th Birthday Party Based on a tune by Johnny Prill Chorus: Oh Grandma, Grandpa, you know that we love you, We love all those little things that you say and do. Coming to Netanya, to Ramat Poleg, Always having ready a chocolate egg. Going to a ball game, watching us dance Coming up to Alon Shvut, just to get a glance. Always there to support us, no matter what we do, Darling Grandma, Grandpa, we love you. Chorus: Oh Grandma, Grandpa, you know that we love you, We love all those little things that you say and do. A hug and a kiss, a ride home from school, Oh Grandma, Grandpa, we love you. Spending time together, talking on the phone, Happy birthday presents, chocolate ice cream cones. Photographs and memories, picnics, shopping days, Saying that you love us in so many ways. Chorus: Oh Grandma, Grandpa, you know that we love you, We love all those little things that you say and do. The stories you tell, things we never knew, Oh Grandma, Grandpa, we love you. Oh Grandma, Grandpa, we love you, we love you, we love you… Our Hero

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