In May 2012 we travelled to Poland to be present in the town to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liquidation of the Bzezin ghetto.
The plane was struck by lightning. We think we flew through the same storm as Francois Hollande. We had to divert to Budapest, so missed supper with everyone and arrived around midnight.
It was quite amazing, cousins and landsmen from all around the world all back in Brzezin.
Around 40 descendents of Brzeziners jews from France, Belgium, Switzerland, USA, and England, including two survivors who lived and grew up in the town, attended the commemoration. Nechama Libfeld (my second cousin) came from Paris aged 104 and also present was Sol Bekermus from New Jersey.
Other participants included Petje Schroeder, a professional genealogist who carried out family tree research for us and also a number of other participants.
Brzeziny is pretty drab and run down but it has retained some traditional character. The town was bombed in 1939 and many of the gaps were filled with drab communist-era concrete apartment blocks, but quite a lot of the earlier, often Jewish-built tenements, wooden houses and original shops still stand. There are efforts to restore and improve the town; the town square was being landscaped during our visit.
The program was organised by the local museum and the town council. The new Mayor and Vice-Mayor of Brzeziny were present and it was all organised by the Museum Director.
There were some interesting lectures about the ghetto and its liquidation. Sol recounted how aged 13, he was moved first into the Brzezin ghetto and then later force-marched on foot to Auschwitz aged 13. He was fortunate to be given a job there, and later became a slave worker at the Continental Rubber company in Hanover. He survived and went to the US after liberation. When the ghetto was liquidated in 1942 some people were sent to the Lodz ghetto, but many more were transported to the Chelmno concentration camp. 233,000 Jews from around Poland were gassed there.
In another talk a researcher at Lodz University had found the architectural plans for the elaborate Synagogue and built a computer reconstruction.
This short clip was shot by a German soldier of scenes in the ghetto, shows the bombed synagogue ruins and ends with the hanging which all the ghetto inhabitants were forced to watch – the clip ends just before they are hanged. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5Qe4xBRF10
At the end of the first day was a very moving ceremony of remembrance at the cemetery. Rabbi Shudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland attended and a Catholic priest also. A troupe of scouts and local children also participated. It was filmed for Polish TV.
The location of the synagogue is now a builders yard, it was burned by the Germans in 1939, and then blown-up and demolished in 1942.
However much of the erasure of Jewish life in Brzeziny occurred after the war had ended. Only one grave remained after the war, there is a picture of a ceremony there in 1947 but even that has now gone. The cemetery was used as a gravel pit for 20 years and the whole ground level of the cemetery was lowered by extraction as much as 2-3 meters (6-9 feet) and it is said that probably many if not all the remains were removed with the gravel which was used to build housing in the town.
There used to be a small sign to say it is the Jewish cemetery, last seen a few years ago but has now disappeared. We asked the Mayor to place a new sign in Polish, English, French, Hebrew & Yiddish. There are a number of new signs around the town explaining what had been at various sites, including the synagogue. Opposite the synagogue is a small sign that was placed there in 1962 and was the first and only acknowledgement that Brzeziny had lost half of its population.
We had a walking tour,
A guided tour was given around the town by a local guide with Sol adding his personal recollections. We saw where the ghetto was, and Sol showed us where the 10 Jews were hanged by the Nazis to instil terror in the Jewish population. The whole community including him was forced to watch. Petje translated the Polish into English, and other people translating into French.
Sol said that the Bet Hamidrash building was still standing eight years prior when he last visited but it had now gone. We found some granite fragments in a pile of stones which may have come from the building. However the municipality just 3 days ago gained control of the land containing the fishponds which are lined with headstones from the cemetery. There is also a bridge in the park said to be made of stones as well, and there’s a pile of broken stones in the Museum. The vice-mayor said he even had one in his garden which his father found and kept for safekeeping. We saw the museum’s large collection of mostly broken gravestones which has been found around the town. Often local people hand them in as and when they are discovered.
The recently-elected mayor of Brzeziny invited the participants to a semi-formal lunch in the Town Hall and made us all welcome. It was somewhat awkward for some as no provision was made for Kashrut (and it wasn’t even vegetarian).
The mayor said that he was newly elected and had only been in office for a short while. He said that many wrong things had been done in the past and that he was committed to improving the town both for the inhabitants and for visitors. He said he hoped we would return again to visit and that he would work with us in partnership and invited our input to decide sensitive issues such as the relocation of the tombstones. He is aiming to dismantle the bridge and to recover the stones from the fish pond.
However it became became uncomfortable again when the Mayor, in paying tribute to the richness of the former Jewish life of the town and the contribution of the Jewish population had made to the town’s political and cultural character and its economic development, but went on to declare that no Poles were responsible for the shoah, only the Germans.
(The same disclaimer of any Polish responsibility has been prominent subsequently in recent Polish declarations including at the national level, and even enacted in law, leading to strained relationships with the State of Israel. On one hand the rich Jewish life of Poland and its brutal end are acknowledged which is good, but on the somewhat questionable basis that it wasn’t us – it was the Germans.)
To his credit, rather than sitting in polite silence, Sol stood up and countered this assertion at some length. He said by no means all, but nevertheless more than a few local people assisted and supported the Germans, often with enthusiasm. He said that many families had lost all their property where others now lived. A fitting repayment would be to return the grave stones and he also asked for a commitment that remaining buildings would be protected. Rosette Rozenberg pressed the mayor to commit to a date for the return of the stones and surprisingly he said within two years. However he explained that the work had to be funded by central government and there were various administrative and possibly legal hurdles to clear, but they had already expressed their intention to proceed as quickly as they could.
Apparently there was a delegation from Israel quite recently and the Mayor and Museum Director asked that the survivors and descendants of Brzeziners should keep in touch and visit again, but I don’t know if I would go back again.
The lunch was followed by a musical / dance presentation by local performers but the star turn was Nechama showing us the courtyard and tenement block where she lived, the stairs on which she played as a child. The buildings were built by the magaziners for the jobbing tailors. They were great improvements when they were built a hundred years ago or more, but they looked pretty unimproved since then.
