More chapters coming soon.
CHAPTER 1: SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 WWII BEGINS
Friday morning, September 1, 1939, the Nazis crossed the border into Poland and there was a surprise aerial bombing in Oświęcim. The siren wailed, and the earth trembled while my father, my 4 sisters[i] and I rushed into the cellar. I was 15 years old and not frightened, just excited by the frenzied energy all around.
The previous week, my oldest sisters, Sabina and Ita, who were living in Chrzanów, a Polish city 12 miles to the Northeast, had come home to Oświęcim with Sabina’s baby, Pearl, because their husbands had been drafted into the Polish army. That same week, there were notices posted in town that we must start gluing paper strips onto the windows to prevent a bomb from shattering the glass. At that point, nobody in town really believed the Nazis would attack Oświęcim because during The Great War nobody came to attack us.
The bombs killed my friend, David Schnitzer, as he was trying to get down to his family’s air raid shelter.[ii] It was my first taste of war. His death left a huge impact on me and the other young people who remembered going to cheder, or Hebrew school, with him. We saw that this War was for real; it no longer felt like a game.
We could hear the cannons all day, and by evening, just as we were about to sit down for our Shabbos dinner, there was a notice from the city government that there will be a battle in town imminently. The notice instructed the civilian population to leave and go eastward until the Nazi army could be pushed back. Then, we could return home. I went out into the marketplace before we left and saw the Polish Army retreating in a terrible state. I saw wounded horses, wounded soldiers, wagons going eastward running away from the Western front. The retreating Polish units exploded part of the bridge that crossed the River Sola to slow down the onslaught of the Nazis.[iii]
That night, my four sisters, one baby, myself, and my father set out on foot, attempting to escape the chaos of war. We left the chicken soup standing on the table. There was no time to eat anymore. We packed up food for the baby and left.
The Oświęcim railroad station was to the west in the nearby village, Brzezinka, (later known as Birkenau), but we could not go there because the Nazis were already there. We left eastward on foot pushing the baby in a stroller. There were thousands of people walking with us and we walked 12 miles to the station near Zator. We boarded a freight train there. There was no roof in the railroad car, and it was overloaded with people. By morning, we arrived in Kraków, another 30 miles further from home. When we arrived at the station, the Polish army boarded the train and said that all the men had to get off the train because the train was too heavy for the locomotive to pull. I was 15 years old, so I could have stayed with my sisters on the train because I was considered a child, but that would have meant that my father would have to go walk the highway without any of us. I remembered my father could barely walk across the marketplace in town due to painful hemorrhoids, so I decided to get off the train and walk with my father. I figured my four sisters could help each other.
Everything was moving eastward, away from the Nazis. There were a lot of people walking the streets with their goods, including their cows and horses. There were Jewish people and non-Jewish people of all different ages. We did not know that the Russians had attacked Poland from the east, so everyone was moving eastward day and night to stay ahead of the Nazi army. We slept in the fields and ate whatever edible food we could find on the ground. Sometimes, we went to a local farmer to buy something to eat. [iv] I saw people trying to help each other. It didn’t seem to matter if you were Jewish or not Jewish. Some farmers gave us food and let us sleep in their barns. We walked eastward all day and most of the night. Past Bochnia. Past Tarnów. Past Rzeszów. Past Kolbuszowa. And past Sokołów Małopolski.
One night while walking, we were attacked by Nazi fighter planes. We hid under a railroad car and the bullets were bouncing off the steel wheels of the railroad car. It was no longer safe to walk in large groups. It had been seven days and seven nights of walking. Finally, my father and I arrived at the village of Brzóza Królewska on the banks of the San River, more than 150 miles away from home.
When we arrived at Brzóza Królewska, it was the first time I saw a Jewish farm village. Jews were chopping wood. Jews were growing crops in fields. In Oświęcim, where I had grown up, the Jews were the businesspeople in the City, and the non-Jews were the villagers and farmers. I was amazed that there were Jewish farmers and Jewish workers in the village. They gave us food, and it was the first time I experienced eating from one dish in the center of the table. There was a big dish of milk soup or some kind of soup and everybody stuck their wooden spoon in there and ate. I noticed that life was getting more primitive the further east we moved. I was young, and to me it was not that terrible. To me, it was exciting to travel and not have school. I didn’t realize, like my father did, or any older person would, the danger that we were really in. I ran around there in the village and finally I went to the main highway, and I saw there were some soldiers there with swastikas on their trucks. I went back to the village to tell my father that the Nazis are on the outskirts of the village. At that time, they didn’t come into the villages; they just stayed on the main highway.
We slept in a barn near the river listening to the water flow and thinking about what to do next. The river had become a natural border line between the Nazi forces taking over Poland from the West and the Russian forces taking over Poland from the East. At night it was possible to cross the river to the Russian occupied side. I was in favor of fording the river. It wasn’t an orderly passing with passports and stuff like that. You just waded through the water if you wanted to get to the other side. At some places they laid down a big board as a makeshift bridge for the people to walk across. The Russians weren’t that friendly, but some people, especially the younger ones, figured it would be better on the Russian side.[v]
[i]Sisters: Sabina, Anna, Ita, Karola
Ita
[ii] Drawing of house where first bomb fell in Oświęcim
[iii] Broken Bridge
[iv] Polish paper money 1929-39
[v] Tauba Bochner nee Hennenberg – Siberia
Rachela Silberberg nee Bochner
