Helen and Sol Krawitz Holocaust Memorial Education Center

EDITOR’S NOTES: The following extended biography is adapted from Fannie Brenner’s memoir, “The First Part of my Life” originally written in Yiddish and translated into English by Rivka Chaya Schiller.   Each section of Fannie’s memoir is highlighted in boldface and the editor overviews each section in chronological order. Refer to Historical Notes referencing events.

Refer to Translator’s Notes on Polish/Yiddish to translations following Historical Notes.

Dedications:

Fannie Brenner dedicates her memoir, “The First Part of my Life” as follows: “For my sons, Shlomo and Benny – with love.

Refer to Shelly Brenner in Voices of the Descendants for remembrance of her grandmother, Fannie Brenner.

Introductory Word by Dr. Y.Ch. Biletsky

Fannie Brenner’s published book in English begins with an “Introductory Word” which underscores the book’s historical importance and Fannie’s courage and fortitude as a survivor refugee.  Biletzky has only praise for Fannie and this book. 

“The book of a woman who saw and heard, and like a turbulent stream, there was a beat within her, the will to live, the ‘desire of life’ to arrive somewhere, where she would be able to live, breathe, study, attain. A juicy Yiddish. The language buzzes like a beehive. This book looks sharply at the surroundings. And therefore, these pages are an important document for our Holocaust period. One should read this book and breathe in with all of one’s senses the struggle of a Jewish woman treading along the Holocaust’s path. The Vale of Tears of our life, where blood runs like rivers and tears flow like oceans. Temptations and actions and the urge to live, that is the sort of material about which this book relates. 

Translator, Rivka Schiller’s Excerpted Note:  

“My introduction to Fannie Brenner’s autobiography dates back to at least a decade ago, when I was first contacted by one of the author’s grandchildren about translating Di ershte helf lebn (The First Part of My Life) for her family. I was glad to undertake the translation assignment, as the book looked compelling. My association with Ms. Brenner’s town of origin, Bereza Kartuska prior to reading the account was that it was the site of a notorious prison established by Polish authorities in 1934 for radical political organizations–particularly communists. Many left wing Polish Jews were incarcerated there prior to WWII under harsh conditions. I also appreciated the fact that a woman had authored this book, something one should not take for granted when it comes to a Yiddish language monograph. Of additional interest to me was the fact that while Ms. Brenner (1923-1993) resided in post-war Communist Poland, they were active in the relatively small Jewish ‘recovered territories’ from Germany in the wake of the Second World War. Indeed Ms. Brenner even taught Yiddish and other subject matter in a Jewish school there. But ultimately, although she and her husband were well educated and had good professional positions, the reality of persistent anti-Semitism and absence of vibrant pre-war Jewish life, was definitely not lost on them. Incidents such as their young son being picked on by fellow Polish peers and singled out for being a ‘Zyd’ continued to take greater significance and perhaps foreshadowed worse times ahead.

As a result, the Brenner family, which grew to four members, made the weighty and consequential decision to leave their Polish homeland for the Jewish homeland of Israel in 1950…Gomulka’s government finally permitted the family to leave Poland at the end of 1956. This was the beginning of what Polish historian Dariusz Stola refers to as the ‘Golmulka aliyah.’ Between 1956 and 1960 close to 51,000 Polish residents obtained emigration permits to Israel.” Refer to Related Media for photo of Fannie’s family in Israel. 

As a disclaimer. . .of my choice of transliterated  human and place names . . .I admit to a lack of consistency throughout my English translation of Ms. Brenner’s first-person account. I employed the YIVO system of orthography when encountering Jewish given names and surnames. However, if I happened to know that a given name or surname was spelled a particular way, I made a point of employing the accepted spelling or transliteration of that given name or surname. In the case of place names, one should bear in mind that Ms. Brenner employed the names that were used during the time when she resided in or near these various places. Thus for example, she refers to her then Polish hometown as Kartuz-Bereza, Bereza-Kartuska, or simply Bereza. Yet today, this region is part of Belarus and is presently known as Byaroza. This information is useful to individuals interested in utilizing Ms. Brenner’s memoir for genealogical purposes.

My Hometown:

Kartuz-Bereza or Bereza-Kartuska. We, Jews, referred to the town intimately as -Bereza.

Fannie describes her childhood “hometown” with great longing, love and awe. Her memories are filled with friends, the beautiful landscape and monuments. She begins with “Summertime. “As a bunch of children, we would often go for a walk among the ruins of the old fortress–the monastery of the people of Kartuz, searching for treasures beneath the weeds and moss and broken bricks. Every discovery of a sparkling little stone or  piece of colored glass appeared to us like a jewel. In the winter evenings, Chanukah time, in the hot, heated house, one plucked feathers and fried schmaltz (chicken or goose fat). We children would listen to various stories regarding the monastery in the 17th century. The monastery was like a fortress surrounded by high stone walls and a watchtower.”

Fannie says, “my hometown had wooden houses with shingles, only a few double-storied walls, and some ten-score streets; in the middle a broad long street–the  road that begins in Warsaw and reaches all the way to Moscow. We would have a warm summer in the old hometown. Winter, however would be cold, with lots of snow and ice. In between, much rain. It always turned out that we would be stepping on mud on the unpaved streets.”

“It was only in the 1930s that arrestees from the concentration camp, which was established in our town, paved portions of several streets. And in fact, on account of the concentration camp, our town became infamous in Poland and even beyond. Fannie describes in several pages the formation and history of the concentration camp in Bereza. “The camp existed mainly for Communists, who according to the majority, were punished “administratively,” without trial. No dearth of Jewish girls and boys fell into this place for distributing communist leaflets or in demonstrating against the regime. This Fannie attributes to the anti-Semitic fascist Polish ‘Sanaja’” who mimicked their ‘brothers in thinking’ in neighboring Germany…They transformed walled barracks remaining from the Czarist period to actualize a concentration camp with barbed wire and institutions of torture…The arrestees were guarded by hundreds of police officers…The police officers brought ‘prosperity’ to the town with shoemakers and tailors for uniforms. But the town itself was poor. Peasants would come to the town once a week on market day. The center of the town was the marketplace. 

Fannie says the Jews in her hometown consisted of five hundred families, more than three fourths of the town population. The remainder of the population consisted of Poles and white Russians. In the Jewish homes, Yiddish was the leading language. Jews in town were involved in commerce and trade.–shopkeepers, tailors, shoemakers, and blacksmiths. Some Jews had stalls of cows and goats. Also some had dairy products and vegetable gardens which made the situation of alot of families easier. There was no construction in town. Married children lived with their parents. Fannie says that “just like in all towns in Poland, Lithuania and Bessarabia following the First World War, Jewish cultural and social life pulsated. Jews always

stood out in their awareness for the needs of their fellow Jews and created social establishments to help the needy (Linas ha Tsedek, charity fund). 

Jews were always concerned with their childrens’ education. There was a Tarbut School in Hebrew and a seven-grade in Yiddish.There were theater groups, a choir and zionist youth groups. Religious Jews had cheders (religious schools) for Jewish children prior to high school.

Fannie says,”I do not hail from a Chasidic family, but it was precisely the Chasidic shtible (small synagogue) that drew me in and became etched in my memory. There was an additional reason for this. Simches Toyre (Simchat Torah) would fall on my and my brother, Berele’s birthday. Our friends would come over to our house and each of them would receive a present–a flag and an apple which would be placed on a flagstick and a candle, placed inside of the apple. People sang and danced. It was very jovial. Reb Osher, whose painting reflect the former Jewish way of life in the small town, as well as its tragic demise–would always outdo himself with his singing and dancing. They not only represent kaddish (the Jewish prayer for the dead) for

our hometown of Bereza, but they are a Kaddish for all the Jewish communities that were obliterated by the Nazi murders.”

Our Home:

“We lived in the house of my grandfather, my mother’s father, Meir Yossel Zalevsky. It was typical of a small town; There were five rooms, a kitchen, lobby, and a small storehouse or granary whose roof opened up in a corner and was covered with schach (the coverage frequently from conifer trees used to create a roof for a sukkah. There was a cellar and attic beneath the shingles. In the yard was a stall for keeping firewood for heating the ovens. One in the middle of the house to heat the rooms and the other in the kitchen to cook and bake. Behind the stall was a rather large garden, beds for planting vegetables. I loved to help plant the radishes and onions at the sides of the beds, carrots and beets and cucumbers in the middle of the beds  and we planted potatoes from above. Cherry and plum trees, the shrubs of gooseberries, raspberries and currants near the fence that surrounded the garden. 

In the anteroom leading to the house stood a large metal barrel, where Michael the water carrier would pour in the two buckets of water, which he had drawn from the river and carried over a yoke. There stood a ladder to climb up to the attic where one dried laundry and kept storage. I used to love climbing up to the attic and resting among the scattered objects there. And how great was my joy when I found a treasure of Yiddish books, mostly plays. At the little rooftop window I would greedily read them and would laugh at the comedies and cry at the tragedies. Why were these books kept in the attic? Of course on account of the crowdedness in the house. There was no place for a bookshelf.”

“In the kitchen in the large oven, one would bake challah for shabbat. Under the oven was an enclosure to hold potatoes. To go down the cellar with a candle to collect the potatoes in a basket for grating was for me the worst work. As I said this was my grandfather’s house. He and my step-grandmother had their own room.  On the door, my uncle, my mother’s brother, Leizer, engraved: ‘Madame Krupnik Varenya’. She was terribly stingy. In her bed she would hide eggs in her cap. Grandpa’s daughter, Chaya, and her husband Dovid Goldberg fled to Leningrad in the 1920s. Grandpa’s eldest son, Dovid, immigrated to America and became an active leader in the union of hatters or furriers in Philadelphia. Grandpa’s second son, Moyshe, died tragically while at work at the town mill cranked into a machine’s transmission. In this manner, grandpa’s youngest daughter, Vichne, my mother, continued to live with him.

My grandfather, an old Jew with a short grayish little beard and good smiling eyes would sew caps and sell them in his little shop in the marketplace. People called him the ‘the Hatter frin Shereshev’ due to the fact that he hailed from a small town next to Pruzhany. He died before my very own eyes from a heart attack. He returned home one evening very tired, sat down on a large chair…suddenly let out a snore and fell off of the chair, dead. Following my grandfather’s death, they delivered me to the neighbors, the Resniks, although the children there all had measles. Our family now remained in grandpa’s house–my parents Viche and Elye-Motye Botstein, I Faigele, and my two little brothers, Berele and Leizerke. My mother took over the inheritance–the house and the shop. It turns out, my parents must have been strapped for cash, because they rented out my grandfather’s room, first to a teacher and his wife and child. He would sing to his child nice little songs. I would listen to him and mimic him.”

Fannie concludes this time in her life recalling listening to a music teacher who lived nearby. ” For hours at a time I would sit beneath his window and listen to the most beautiful opera arias and melodies which were carried from his gramophone or played entirely from his fiddle…The teacher Rochel would play the accordion…I used to really like sitting on the floor at the neighbor’s house–the shoemaker, Kagan,–listening to his sons with their lovely singing and guitar playing. Their sister, Machlye, was my best friend. I would always go to their home and listen to the singing and playing of her brothers.”

Friday Night Sabbath:

Friday Night by us was chaotic–(Erev Shabbat)

Fannie describes her excitement and love of shabbat as follows:

Nadia, the yiddish speaking maid, would clean the house. She would help my mother bake and cook. I was a huge nosher and needed to taste all the baked goods just after they emerged from the oven. Until today, I still taste the blueberry cake and those cinnamon cookies. I also did not hold back from getting the large flask of vishniak (cherry liquor) from the cabinet and having a good sip. We were combed out and festively dressed ready to usher in the sabbath. On the table, two candlesticks. My mother would light the sabbath candles. She would make the blessing…Two covered challahs. We would eat gefilte fish, broth with noodles, chicken with carrot tzimmes and compote. We would be happy and I would kvell, literally from pleasure.

At the Yiddish School:

“I recall: I turned five years old, and I was taken from the Kindergarten and was guided to the Yiddish school. I was dressed in my festive pink dress with pleats, wearing new shoes. A pretty pink band in my hair. I was serious, tense. My heart beat more strongly. My eyes gaped with wonder and curiosity at everything. The school, a single story brick walled building, one of the few brick buildings in a ‘wooden’ town, as Bereza was…rich in timber. I was led to a room. There were rows of long wooden benches. Sharpened pencils and notebooks were distributed to us. It was a fiery moment. We were going to learn the alphabet. (Alef-Beys) Learning took quite along time. But then there was a ring and then recess. We played in the schoolyard. Then again there was a longer ring which called us back to class. Once again I was seated upon a worn bench and listened patiently to the teacher talk. She won over my heart….I remember my teachers up until today.

Fannie loved singing, and learning Hebrew and Yiddish. Fannie especially praises the Yiddish seven year-year grade school in Bereza for having a ‘good name throughout the entire area for its high educational results and pedicalogical results.

 Fannie states how the Poles ‘sought a reason to close this important Jewish insitution of learning.’ One day before the end of the school year in 1934, a commission appeared and decided the building was not appropriate for a school. There needed to be a longer corrider with doors to each classroom. The classrooms were too small and needed bigger windows. ‘They would have to rebuild everything; otherwise, the commission would close down the school.’

Fannie describes a ‘commotion’ developing in the town. The Jews held a public meeting and decided on a plan to rebuild the school. They only asked for free labor and building materials. Fannie says, ‘And indeed this is how it happened.’ Adults did the unqualified building work. Children also helped to unload building materials. Carpenters, locksmiths, bricklayers, roof-layers all worked until midnight after their normal workday hours. Jewish housepainters painted all the rooms free of charge.

Fannie says with pride, “everything was complete for the new study year–the school was rebuilt with two extra classrooms. The dedication was turned into a true public holiday…Lo what could be achieved with united efforts. The work had been a successful enterprise just for the sake of angering the antisemites.”

When the Polish commission arrived before the beginning of the school year for inspection, all of its members shrugged their shoulders, literally not wanting to believe their eyes: How had they managed in such a short time to complete such a building effort? Not having any other choice, they signed off on an act–a permit for the school board to begin teaching.”

Sweet Childhood Years:

Childhood years, sweet childhood years,

You remain forever awake in my memory. (Mordechai Gebirtig 1877-1942)

Editor’s Note: Gebirtig was a Yiddish poet born in Krakow, who was murdered by the Nazis in 1942 while being deported to Belzec death camp.

Fannie describes through the seasons her “sweet childhood years” filled with friends, the lush countryside of summer, swimming, playing with boys, pranks, childhood games, chocolate treats, Jewish holidays, holiday foods, and bicycle riding. Summer brought time with her best friend Machlye and Mirele down by the river to the beach on the right side of the river. Fannie learned to swim, she ate ice cream in town and met a boy who attached himself to her, Volvik Levinson. Other boys began complimenting her saying ‘someday I would be a pretty girl.’ and Fannie says she began to feel that “the whole world was mine.” In the evening the girls and boys would stroll together. Fannie comments that Vovik took her hand. Later on, Vovik sent her heartfelt letters from Vilna where he was studying. Fannie describes autumn as gray and depressing. The skies were always cloudy and it rained alot. “We children lived it up with the coming of winter. We would stomp in the snow, throw snowballs and build snowmen. I did not own my own skates, At the river, we used to sled downhill. Winter had two joyful holidays–Chanuka–playing with dreidels and eating latkes, and Purim with the hamantashen and shalach-mones. Purim shpils (plays) evenings in synagogue, with dancing, singing and good food. Yet one longed for spring, for warmth and sunshine and riding our bicycles. I learned how to ride my bicycle well.  Thanks to this, it saved my life while fleeing from the Germans during the war. 

Cultural Life in Bereza:

Since an early age I have always loved to read. The books that I would receive as a present were unable to sate my thirst for reading. The town library where I was registered, helped me out. 

Fannie says she “gulped down works of Yiddish literature and world classics translated into Yiddish. She read Victor Hugo, Tolstoy, and Jules Verne. In town there were literary evenings and lectures with guests from Warsaw that she attended. The best Yiddish theater artists would come with their troupes. Fannie’s parents were socially active in theater matters and would invite actors to stay at their home. Her father was chairman of the Yiddish theater building. Fannie would always participate in the traditional annual children’s performances at the Theater School. She would dance and also sing in the choir. There was also organized sports and competitions in town. Soccer was played on the ‘wygon’ a green meadow,  swimming and kayaking contests took place on the river. For their achievements in sports, Jewish youth received prizes. 

Fannie sums up cultural life in Bereza this way: “And so, I finally finished school. The commencement evening of our graduation took place. We sang, we danced, and we feasted upon tasty food which the parents had prepared. The mood was joyful. I received my first kiss from a boy. The twelve year old children already had to consider work regarding their future. Not everybody had the opportunity to go study in the gymnasium (secondary school) and in technical institutions…But what next? 

Purpose? Here in town there did not appear to be any solution or way out.”

Suddenly a solution appeared for Fannie. Tsyho, the Central School Organization in Warsaw was offering a stipend to study in the Yiddish gymnasium in Vilna or Bialystok. Given that Fannie was such a prize student she was granted the stipend. Because she had wealthy relatives, the Babitish family  in Bialystok, Fannie and her parents decided she should go to Bialystok.

In Bialystok:

Before even beginning the school year, Fannie went with her father  to visit Bialystok and get a look around. Fannie got introduced to her relatives. She says her aunt was in “an exalted mood. She had decided to visit her children in Paris. When she was already standing on the landing of the wagon, my father said I would be coming to Bialystok and that I would be living with them. She closed herself off and did not react.” Fannie says my father visibly weighed not telling her everything; that he had chosen to ‘abandon’ me at their home.” Fannie says she grew afraid that nothing would come of her further studies. “Until today, I do not understand my father. Why he did not accompany me to get me settled in a foreign place. However, I had decided to begin the struggle with life’s hardships. This contest was addictive; it ignited my fantasy and my desire to overcome temptations. And the hardships began right away for Fannie and her travel companion Machlye. The trip to Bialystok took a long time. They needed to transfer in Brisk and shlep themselves with their packed belongings to another train. Finally they arrived in Bialystok. 

“Amazed, small town girls that we were, we took in the large walled houses, the broad noisy streets and sidewalks. We past Kosciuszko Place with the clock on the historic city hall. The Yiddish language was heard in every corner. On the signs of the Jewish shops–Jewish names. We were not in a foreign place. Our hearts grew warm…Finally we finished the long trek from Sienkiewicz street to the Babitshes. They ran a large grocery store and had a yard with double storied residences. They took me in coldly and immediately placed me in the kitchen to wash dishes. They wanted to make a delivery girl of me in their store.

The following morning Fannie went with Machlye on foot to our gymnasium. The were given tests in German and Latin and 
they “survived the difficulties of the examinations and were accepted by the gymnasium, and thus we found ourselves in class later that day.” At the gymnasium Fannie was interested in her studies from the first day onward.” But her living conditions were difficult to say the least. Fannie says the landlord of the apartment where I slept was an older Jew and his wife. The wife right away asked Fannie to clean, wash and scrub the apartment  which stood empty while they were away at their country home. They put aside a little bed in the kitchen for Fannie to sleep on. Insofar as providing food, there was nothing to speak of. ‘Apparently it was my relatives decision to take advantage of me as a maid, as a charity for allowing me to sleep on the hard little bed in the kitchen.’”

With impatience Fannie would wait for the mail, the sabbath package from home that her brother Berele would prepare for me. It was already winter. In the package I would find a piece of chicken, a piece of gefilte fish, white cheese, a jar of preserves, a piece of cake, a piece of chocolate with a zloty. For that zloty one could purchase five black rolls instead of four white ones…On Wednesday one could consume a lunch at the home of one of my teachers: lentil soup with a matzoh ball and a cutlet. I recall that from Passover until summer vacation I allowed myself such luxury three times.” I did not write my parents about all of this. I was afraid that they would call me back home. I preferred to go hungry, rather than go eat at the Babitshes where they viewed me as a nuisance or affliction.” 

The last several pages of Fannie’s memoir is devoted to her serious studies, and Fannie’s heartfelt acknowlegement of her “dear school chums” and what happened to each as the war loomed. She describes her “good fortune” to the student Naomi who introduced her to the  Mr. Reisner the editorial assistant at the Bialoystok Yiddish newpaper. Mrs. Reisner would make her tasty meals and Fannie adds that the “uprising of the Bialstok Ghetto was latter organized at their place at Chmiel 2.” Fannie notes that their two children were murdered “during the Nazi murders. Reisner survived. The Germans dragged him off to do labor in their secret printshop for counterfeit banknotes.” Fannie says she later read his book regarding the destruction of the Bialystok ghetto” (Refer to Historical Notes below) 

Fannie concludes Bialystok with “we had already reached the end of the school year.” She recalls fondly Itzel Stam, one of the students she would take strolls with in the evenings wearing her “one and only festive dress.” She describes Itzel as a “well built pleasant natured young man wearing his gymnasium uniform and ” In a dark corner beneath a tree, I received my first kiss from him. Thanks to him on our walks, I got to know Bialystok, which bustled with Jewish cultural life.” Itzel completed the school year and received his Matura (final exit exam needed to continue studies at the university). Itzel intended to immigrate with his family to South American. “I do not know if he succeeded. I never saw any more of my dear school chums again. I said my farwells at the Bialystok train station in the summer of 1939, on the eve of the frightening Second World War.”

The Second World War Breaks Out:

Frannie arrives in Kartuz-Bereza before day. “I crawled tiredly into mother’s bed. I rested up very well and already I was running out into the street to meet with my gang which had returned home from Vilna, Pinsk, and Bialystok…My parents were proud.” Neighbors wanted Fannie to teacher their children. Her parents urged her to do so. She taught eight children who got together to learn with her. She earned some extra spending money. Then summer “vacation” ended for Fannie. The beginning of her school year was postponed. September 1, 1939 “Nazi German plundered Poland. The Second World War broke out. We listened with tension as the radio conveyed the bombing of Warsaw. Jews were terrified.” A group of Jews including Fannie’s parents decided to leave town as quickly as possible and go to the village of Sporevo, outside the country of crabs. Fannie relates that two weeks later word arrived that the Russians, not the Germans were taking over our area. (Refer to Historical Notes). Fannie and her parents returned home. Fannie says on the way peasants beat us with sticks and threatened them with knives. “The population, especially the Jews, greeted the Soviet military with flowers.” Frannie says the Soviets “extended a brotherly hand to us.” Life in their town had now changed. The shops were closed. Our little shop was liquidated. The marketplace grew empty. No more fairs or business transactions. The Soviets forced well off people to give away a portion of their residences and be satisfied living with crowdedness and common labor. The concentration camp was transformed into barracks for army units, now Soviet ones.

Under Soviet Conditions:

Nazi Germany occupied Poland. Sorrowful regards came to us concerning the Jews. On the Western Front it was calm. With the Soviet Union the Germans has a non-attack, non aggression pact. In Bereza, which is situated in the other portion of Poland taken over by the Soviets, life functioned under new conditions. Red flags,  placards, propaganda…people spoke of freedom and arrests were made of ‘enemy or hostile elements.’

Fannie says that it grew increasingly difficult with food products. Nearly all merchanise vanished from the stores. “But Jews were happy, at least not the Germans. People live for the present day. We youth certainly did not think about tomorrow. We sang the new Soviet songs full of encouragement and joy…” Fannie’s parents were scarcely home. Her friends enjoyed gathering in her room. She comments she was popular with the boys and enjoyed singing and dancing. She had to think about “practical matters.” That is, studying further. In Bereza there was no high school or further education. The decision was made: I would go to study in Pruzhany a district town with several Polish or Hebrew high schools. Under the Soviets it became a Jewish high school. Fannie’s uncle, Yosi Babitsh resided in Pruzhany. The move cost her to loose a year of schooling. Under the Soviet system they demoted her to the eighth grade instead of placing her in the 9th grade. “I left Pruzhany in a bad mood. When the Germans captured the town a year later, they engulfed it within the Third Reich. A year later the Jews were deported to Auschwitz and only a few survived. The following school year of 1940-1941, Fannie went to study in Kosava, a town close to Bereza. In Kosava she attended a White Russian (Belarusian) school….”Here in Kosava I completed nineth grade of the ten-grade high school, received my certificate with ‘excellent’ in all areas of study, took my bundle of bed linens, and after saying goodbye to my male and female friends, I went home to Bereza for summer vacation, not realizing we were saying goodbye forever.”

War: (The 22nd of June 1941)

Fannie recalls it was Sunday, a beautiful summer day, June 22, 1941. “We were all in a state of suspense. What was happening? Perhaps war? At twelve o’clock the Soviet Minister of the Exterior, Molotov, in his radio speech declared that Nazi Germany had fallen upon the Soviet Union and declared war…” Frannie had previously gathered with her summer vacation chums and their bicycles heading out for the woods. Their excursion into the woods ended. Her friends disperssed in a ‘downtroddened mood.’ Frannies says that she never saw her friends again.’Suddenly, a German airplane flew through and dropped down bombs on our town. We learned that there were victims. Our family hid in the garden beneath the trees. At 10 o’clock at night  my father decided to leave Bereza, after seeing how the Russians were leaving the town in a state of chaos. And just as we were deciding to flee, a neighbor advised me to put on a silk summer dress and upon that my gymnasium uniform and upon that my summer coat and my mother’s winter coat. I heeded her advice. I put on my nicest shoes with the lowest heel. In my bosom I placed a little jewelry, my school certificate and several photographs. Our father distributed 100 rubles to us as well as a slip of paper with the address of our relatives in Leningrad. Our mother was already there visiting her sister. We said goodbye to our neighbors as we left behind our entire belongings. We never looked at our home again. Just then a wagon of Russians passed by. Father stopped them and through my bundle of bedding from Kosava into the wagon. He placed Leizer therein. Berele he took on the edge of his bicycle and I sat down on my bicycle with the broken pedal. At 10 o’clock we fled not knowing how close the Germans were. Later on we learned the Germans entered the town at dawn. Fannie and the other refugees searched for the former Polish-Soviet border  along the periphery of the road heading east. They slept of the road for a few hours in the town of Stolpce. During the day, from time to time, a German plane would descend lower and shoot down upon the road. Fannie recalls: “We threw away our bicycles and hid ourselves in a ditch. I remainded alone huddle in my winter coat. My father was not there. My little brothers were not there. ” By day Fannie says the road was even more full of Soviet Army people and civilian refugees. Fannie became on the road begging from peasants for something to eat and drink. Russian soldiers treated her to some hard bread biscuits. On the way she encountered a young man she knew from Bereza. They road together and arrived at the former Soviet Polish border. Officers were detaining the refugee masses and “would not let anyone into the Soviet Union.” Fannie begged the officer and he allowed “me and my little brother to keep going.” Fannie says “we schlepped ourselves exhausted and arrived in Bobruisk. The local Jews sweetly took us in and gave us something to eat. They allowed us to bathe and stay overnight. A truck was ready to take us. My goal was getting to Leningrad and to my mother. None of the refugees were going there. They demanded Fannie go in the direction of Orsha. When she got there, the city was in flames. “I wanted to flee this hell as quickly as possible. I was fortunate and encountered a truck along the road with refugees from Bereza. They helped me climb onto the vehicle and all of us rode to Smolensk. We only remained there a few days because the Germans began bombing the city. It was clear we had to flee further. I departed on foot to the train depot We climbed into a freight wagon and later into a train going to Moscow. Fannie later switched trains and entered a wagon with mobilized men heading towards her goal of Leningrad. 

In Leningrad and Across Russia: What a Coincidence! In Real Life Such Things Do Happen.

Slowly the train drew closer to Leningrad station. I was tense anxious; I was afraid that they would once again arrest me as in Smolensk, saying that I was a spy…I cut open my navy blue shoes, on account of my swollen feet. One heel had broken off the other one in order to be able to walk. How did I look? suspicious? I turned around and looked for my aunt….

Fannie then states “an unbelieveable thing occurred: suddenly an older, good-looking  woman approached me. She looked me over and asked me in Russian: Was perhaps my name perhaps Fania? I responded that in Russian  people called me Fania but in Yiddish Faigel. And this is where the unbelieveable thing occurred. The woman grew pale and said she was my aunt Chaya or as she was now called, Clara, my mother’s sister. What a coincidence! 

Fannie’s aunt and her husband Dovid Goldberg had fled from Poland for political reasons to the Soviet Union and settled in Leningrad. My mother hadn’t seen her sister for twenty years. After the war broke out, my mother could not return to Bereza. At this point, Fannie says “another miracle occurred. When my mother saw me she nearly fainted. Could she have ever imagined that the war was taking place and her daughter set out alone to come to Leningrad?” Then Fannie relates what happened to the rest of the family during the war. “As understood, I did not know where my father and my little brothers had gone to. I had indeed remained alone on the road. They immediately informed my grandparents and his relatives who also lived in Leningrad about me. Until now, I had never met my new family before. They took me in with a great deal of love. My relatives lived on Saltuhov-Shchedrin Street, in the former house of a count, which had been divided into several apartments….Fannie says that In the meantime a letter arrived from my father. He wrote that in the chaos he lost both children. Somewhere in a forest he found my brother Leizerke, by some miracle. One cannot imagine his joy finding his ten year old son. With him, on the edge of a bicycle, on trains and also wagons, he relocated to a kolkhoz (collective farm) in Tambov Oblast region in central Russia. Once we had my father’s address, we decided with my mother to go to him and leave Leningrad. We said our goodbyes. My grandfatherr gave me a present of several gold coins. I never said my grandfather or grandmother again. They were found having expired from hunger in their beds during the blockade surrounding Leningrad that the Germans maintained for several years.”

Everyone escorted us to the train, which was heading north. For several weeks we wandered about  across stations, exhausted and hungry. Remaining without a groschen of money, without a roof over our head, we–together with mother–tasted the true flavor of wartime’s migration and wandering.

Fannie says as a means of transportation, we had one possibility–freight wagons. We sat on one of mother’s suitcases.So it was day and night. When a train came to a halt, everyone would jump onto a field to relieve oneself. We had nothing to eat. We begged for something to eat from Russian officers. Whatever I received, I brought to mother. Finally Fannie says they arrived at the Kolkhoz. Father was in the fields working. “Great was the joy when we saw each other. We fell down kissing. In the village, a family of peasants gave us a room. There was no furniture. Only bundles of straw upon which one sat and slept. My mother and I went to work in the fields. There we would steal peas. At night we would cook them in a conserve can.  At the Kolkhoz we worked hard from dawn until dusk. But the joy was not complete. Where was Berele? He was missing. Fannie relates how the family waited for Berele. Via the Leningrad relatives Berele learned of my father’s present address. After remaining alone, fleeing from the attacking Germans, Berele schlepped himself with a stream of refugees to the city of Penza. And there he arrived at a trade school. He studied, had a roof over his head and food.

The Moscow radio reported the Soviet cities the German’s had conquered. So Fannie’s family decided to move eastward, deep into the Soviet Union. At the train station Fannie recalls seeing military troops freight wagons propped with people. So we pushed ourselves into one of the wagons. The train left for the east. At nearly every station my father would jump down and return with full buckets of food which he got at evacuation points distributed among refugees. Among them were many Soviet Jews. Fannie reports, “Finally we schlepped ourselvesto Tashkent, the main city of Uzbetistan, Middle Asia. Thousands of people wandered screaming and crying in front of the train station. They would not allow refugees into the city.” Fannie reports: So seeing this, we decided to search further for a place of shelter. We got into a train, and after a night of riding, arrived in Samarkand, the second largest city in Uzbekistan.”

In Samarkand:

Fannie relates the state of the family upon arrival in Samarkand.  “We found ourselves at the depot spot. Inside they allowed only women and small children. Hundreds of refugees sat on the worn out grass outside, mostly Jews, a small number of Russians and Ukranians. Not far from the depot was an evacuation point where refugees received a plate of soup. My father would bring a bucket of borscht from there. Berele, my brother, did not want to eat despite being hungry. I was dirty, hungry and unkempt. They sent me to a tuberculosis dispensary. There Fannie saw a do-gooder doctor,Aminov, who gave her a letter for a tuberculosis sanatorium to be accepted in their childrens’ division. This Fannie says saved her life. The diagnosis was a means to enable Fannie to benefit from humane living conditions. “I received a roof over my head, a clean bed, a lot of food, and medical aid. The doctor also arranged jobs for my parents–in the kitchen of the same hospital. The days they worked they had something to eat. My mother would take food to my brothers in bandages around her neck pretending that her throat hurt her. Being clean and satified, I quickly returned to my old self and my wounds healed. Until the end of 1941, I was in the hospital thanks to my so called serious illness. They allowed my family to remain in Samarkand.”

Fannie says, “Berele grew ill. My mother cooked up potatoes and fed them to him. Ten year old Leizerke went outside to get sick so he could get a potato too…Again Dr. Aminov visited to assist us. He took our family to a new workplace in a kolkhoz where he was approved to work in a hospital. In the meantime, my father was mobilized to the labor front, and was sent to Chelyabinksk to the Urals. I remained alone in Samarkand and worked for neglible pay sorting raisins. But I was able to work to fill up on raisins.”

Resumed Studies: I was steeped in studying…I had one goal for myself–to study!

I would sit on the three bricks, my ‘stool’ for hours, next to the rusty barrel, my ‘table’ and by the light of the oil lamp, I would study and write.

Ultimately, I received my Matura (diploma). It did not come easily to me: Bialystok, Pruzhany, Kosava, and Samarkand…Nowhere did I lick any honey. From where did I draw this strength? The endurance? The strong will? In general,

I was not a young girl then.

On route to Samarkand Fannie met a Jewish girl from Kiev named Nellie Polishuk who told her that she had been accepted as a student to study at an institute and that they had summer courses for external Matura (higher education) students. Fannie comments: “I did not consult anyone; I took a pen and in my broken Russian wrote a request letter. I went off with Nellie to the institute, and how great was my joy when I was informed that I had been accepted to this course. 

Fannie says the studying didn’t come easily to her because her Russian was poor. Nonetheless, she passed all the exams with excellent. Only in Russian did she receive a ‘good.’ Fannie says with such a good diploma, they would not allow her to leave the institute. She was advised to become a student in the Department of Technology and Economics. She agreed and began studying in a Hochschule (German for an institution of higher learning. Literally, high school, but more closely aligned with college or university). To her surprise and joy, professor Matinian selected Fannie as the “best student” to be awarded a stipend in the name of Stalin which only the best student could receive. All the professors had to agree with Fannie’s selection. And they did. Fannie says, “I had received the stipend! What an honor and what a good fortune! I was to receive 500

rubles, later 700 rubles every month. I would hand over the money to my aunt, and we had three times enough with which to purchase bread, potatoes and noodles…It turned out with my stipend I supported three people.”

With much impatience, Fannie would always await for the postal carrier. She was always waiting for a letter from her father from Chelyabinsk; later on from her brother Berele. Fannie learned that they had mobilized Berele just at the end of the war. He had remained studying in vocational school, or “had my father taken him to Chelyabinsk, I believe, the war would have already ended before they mobilized him at the age of seventeen. He served in a regiment eight kilometers from Samarkand. I accompanied him when his unit left for the front. With his unit he marched through nearly all of Poland. I will never forget The letter which revealed that Berele had fallen in battle beyond Warsaw–the letter my parents hid from me.”

 I will never forget my dear little brother. A good soul, a blossomed bloom that was cut down before its time. He gave up his young life to avenge the cruel murder of the large family  of Polish Jews. 

Vacation and Further Study:

During the summer vacation the students had to help out the Kolkhozes where there was a shortage of farm hands. Our group was brought to a far flung kick town from Samarkand. We were quartered in a forlorn structure spread out on wooden cots with blankets. Professor Tatar accompanied us. He told me that he had not imagined that among the Jews there were so many capable types as I. That’s how well he knew the Jews… 

Summer passed. A new year of study  began for Fannie. She studied hard. She was required to read the first part of Karl Marx’s “Kapital” which she read “in a single breath.” The professor who led the seminar heard Fannie’s prepared lecture on the subject and gave her an astonished face and a good grade. Fannie also mentions she liked chemistry very much. As a recipient of the Stalin stipend Fannie needed to be an active Komomolka (female member of the Communist Union). Fannie says she participated in all the cultural events and helped students prepare for their exams. When they ended the school year and summer, once again Fannie and others were sent to work in the field in a sovkhoz (state owned farm of the Soviet Union). Fannie got sick with jaundice. Then later Malaria, which was raging in the area. Later on in Samarkand spotted typhus raged. 

Fannie concludes recalling her many school girlfriends and boy friends met along the way from Bereza and while studying at the Institute in a section of her memoir entitled: Jewish Youths from Poland and Samarkand.

The most important Jewish youth for Fannie was a boy named Fredek “who came to Samarkand to register at our Institute and came to live in the student residence.” Fredek followed after Fannie and accompanied her home one day from the Old Town. And when saying goodbye, he gave her a kiss.”  Fannie describes Fredek as thin, having a good smile and beautiful eyes. He invited Fannie to the movie theater and treated her to candy. The second time he treated her to bread and butter. Both hard to come by. 

I Get Married: Jewish Youths from Poland and Samarkand

Fredek told me he was already twenty-six years old and it was time for him to get married. Furthermore, he was asking for my hand in marriage…For me, I was young, incredibly young. I thought only about studying. Gradually, he convinced me that yes, I should marry him. He was very dear to me, worrying about me. During frequent attacks of malaria, he would take me to the doctor to get injections against the sickness. It didn’t bother Fredek that with the sickness Fannie did not have hair on her head. She always wore a black beret on the street among people. Gradually, the hairs on her head grew in, and “for my wedding I already had short hair.” For the wedding Fedek bought two gold rings. For the wedding ten people gathered together in our kibitka: friends, neighbors, my aunt and uncle and the landlord, the Uzbek. My aunt prepared gefilte fish and strudel. We drank wine. Tipsily, I walked with my husband into his room on Lenin Street in the New Town. Into our new residence we took my aunt and uncle. We brought two beds, a table and stools, my aunts sewing machine and a small table with a kerosene lamp for cooking. We all together rented a place of residence. It cost us little.

Fannie says time flew by. The difficult war years were nearing an end. With joy they heard the radio speaker who let it be know that the Red Army was progressing and liberating new cities. “The names of newly liberated cities in Poland stirred our longing for home.” 

The 8th of May 1945, when Germany capitulated, people danced in the streets, and also us Jews, in the celebratory world…Almost no one knew precisely what happened in Poland and in Europe in general. And of course, we did not know how great was the woe of our people. 

Fannie says Fredek sent a letter to his parents in his hometown. The reply came from the Magistrate that his family was not here, and that there were no remaining Jews in his Polish hometown. Fredek cried bitterly. “Later on he learned his father died in the Warsaw ghetto; his youngest sister was taken downtrodden and apathetic to the ovens in Auschwitz; his mother, a sister and brother were taken with the death transports. Before Fredek fled from Poland, one of his sisters was killed before his eyes in a line for bread during the bombing of Warsaw. This was the sum total of his family.” Fannie concludes: “Now we  saw that thanks to having fled from our homes, we saved ourselves from certain death.” 

Post-War:

 Fannie says that none of the war refugees wanted to remain in Middle Asia. “Our being here we considered only a temporary stage and hoped to return to Poland.” During summer vacation just after the war she went to Chelyabinksk to my parents and Leizerke. The journey by train lasted several long days. Initially she stayed in Tashkent at a friend’s place. There had been no news of her family. Eventually she found them serving as commandants of barracks where mobilized workers lived. Chelyabinsk was a big industrial city. Fannie describes her time with her family as “pleasant.” She reunited with Fredek back in Samarkand. Fannie requested from the authorities a “propsuk” (special permit) allowing her to travel by train back to Bereza.   The journey was arduous. The trains and wagons were of people fleeing, mostly Jews. Fannie reports “they waited in line for two days for tickets to travel further. In the end, the cashier sold us tickets to Lvov–Lemberg. Their baggage was sent off to the address in Bereza.” 

In Lemberg:

Fannie explains “we decided to go to Lemberg because there we had somewhere to study further and complete our high school education. Our friends from Samarkand Institute with whom we establish a correspondence also lived there. We rode in the direction of Kiev…We arrived in Lemberg and only then did we see the ruined depot. Individual houses and the entire quarter had been destroyed. Only in the marketplace could one freely buy food. A truly post war mood.” Fannie registered for a trade institute whose department was commodities and marketing. Given that the city was incorporated within the borders of Ukraine, Fannie needed to master Ukranian and pass the language exams. Ultimately, Fannie completed her studies and received her diploma. She was advised to remain an assistant at the Institute. She turned down the opportunity with the “excuse”  that “we would be leaving here possibly for Palestine.” Fannie comments that her graduation ceremony felt like a new beginning.

Her father came to visit from Chelyabinski for a few weeks. He also went to Bereza and sent Fannie and Fredek their baggage. Fannie recalls her father returning “totally depressed and broken. I noticed that he had literally  turned grey. He went about depressed and silent and did not want to relate what he had seen in Bereza. Gradually he began to open up: part of the town had been burnt–the houses on one side of the marketplace and avenue were no longer there, After the Germans set fire to the stunning Kadish house of religious study, the fire spread across town and consumed the small wooden houses. “Beneath the trees of Bereza there were no more Shloymeles or Moysheles. Not a Yiddish word.”

Fannie’s father learned of “the horrifying burial grounds in the forest, Bronna-Gora.

Now the trees hovered over mass graves of the Bereza grandmothers and grandfathers, of mothers and fathers and sweet little children whom the Nazis shot in October 1942, after having tortured them for a year behind ghetto fences.

Fannie concludes the post-war chapter with the demise of the remainder of her Bereza family. “My family was from the fortunate ones of Bereza, although we paid a dear price–Berele, who fell in battle with the Nazi Germans. My parents merited dying in Israel at the age of eighty some years. They departed the world with a clear understanding; they did not become a burden to anyone. They worked until the last minute in their store, together with my brother Leizer, and my son, Benny. The double headstone of my father and mother stands in the cemetery in Kirat-Shaul, Tel Aviv. 

Back on Polish Soil: Post-War Aftermath

With a choked up heart, we ride across the Polish soil. We do not see any Jews. We, however, were still unable to accept the terrifing Holocaust that we Jews had encountered. Gradually, we understood: millions of Jews disappeared. The small towns were erased from the surface and would never be resurrected. A period of our Jewish history had vanished–forever. Who would we encounter? The emptiness enveloped like a mourning shawl–the Polish soil. The animalistic anti-Semites could not bear the fact that here and there Jews were showing up. They were raging the Polish murderers. Jews were yanked  out of trains and murdered on the spot. In Kielce there was mass murder of Jews. ( referring to the progrom of July 4, 1946) This agitated Jews who had hidden in all sorts of holes and survived death camps. This included return Soviet Jews. “God, God! Why are we so punished I thought to myself.” 

According to Fannie, few Jews returned to their hometowns because their homes no longer existed. Foreign people or enemies were living in their homes if the structures still existed. Rescued Jews tended to resettle in larger cities like Lodz, Warsaw, Lublin, and lower Silesia where there was population growth. Fannie says “we were repatriates in search of work or simply to earn some business. Our homes no longer existed and nobody was waiting for us. We searched for relatives with the hope that somebody from the family survived. Many Jews felt the wandering had not yet ended. Others registered their names on lists and searched for relatives in Canada, America, South Africa and Australia. Fannie’s husband discovered that several of his acquaintances were in a small town Reichenbach in lower Silesia. They relocated there “they and did not have any regrets.” The place name change to Richbach and afterwards to Dzerzniow. Fredek and Fannie move into a two room apartment there. Then the Jews there experienced murders from the locals. Young people forming a kibbutz were murdered. Fannie says, “This strenghtened the embitterment of the Jews against the Poles and Poland. We saw only one way out: to leave this bloody soil as quickly as possible.” Fannie says a lot of people decided to emigrate as soon as possible to America, Canada, France or to make Aliyah to Israel. But there was only small legal emigration allowed. Polish powers gave out a limited number of transit permits.” 

Fannie and Fredek presented a request for a permit to leave for Israel. They were afraid to leave in a precarious manner because Fannie was pregnant with their first child. Fannie’s parents and their son having left Bereza decided to join Fannie and Fredek. Fannie says, “They moved in with us and with the packages they brought of noodles and pig fat and gold coins. It was tight but pleasant to be together: father and mother, a son, a daughter and her husband and a grandchild on the way. There were few such families following our terrifying Holocaust.” 

Fanny says, “A lot of Jews began moving into our city. As a result, a Jewish school of eight class grades was established. At the Jewish Committee, it became known that Fannie was a professional teacher. They hired her to teach a class of difficult students. None of the students had a common language. They all came from traumatic wartime backgrounds. Some spoke Polish. They came from holes, woods, camps, and monasteries where they posed as Christians. Some spoke Russian from the Soviet Union. Fannie decided to teach them all in Yiddish. Fannie says “the children became tied to me and even lovingly received ‘their young female teacher.’ When Fannie had her birth vacation (maternity leave) the delegation came to see her and asked her to return to school as quickly as possible. They wrote down their request on a bar of chocolate. She returned a month early so the students could complete a year of work.

I Become a Mother:

It was the end of February 1947. I came home from school and slipped on the ice, fell in the snow, stood up, and moved on. When I related this to my mother, she gave me a strange look because I just was about to give birth. And this indeed is how it happened…

We were sitting at the table eating sausage and playing cards and suddenly I felt pains. . .my mother said I must go to the hospital. It was a black cold night. In the hospital there was not a single doctor. When I started to hemmorage, she placed dirty snow on me from a window sill. I was fortunate. I endured and in addition, I had a son! My beautiful thriving fellow brought me much joy.

In the morning the joy disappeared. They took my temperature…I had a high temperature, nearly 41 degrees Celsius. In the end my exam showed malaria. I was seriously ill again. My parents and husband sat by my bed day and night. My husband knew of a healing means of penicillin which one bartered for on the black market. He told the doctor and they decided to try. Every couple of hours the nurse gave me an injection of penicillin. And see the wonder—in the morning the fever had fallen. Until this day I wear the jewelry that my husband gave me  on the occasion of Shloymele’s birth—a bracelet and a medallion.

 At home by us, we prepared ourselves for the delayed Brit-Milah. Friends and family assembled. Our first born we gave the name Shloyme, for my husband’s father.

My brother, Leizerke became one of my students for the eighth grade. I taught him chemistry and Yiddish. My husband left for Wroclaw, formerly Breslau, Germany, and registered at the university to complete his studies in economics. He would come home only for shabbat and Sunday. We lived together with my parents and they helped me raise my child and tend to the household duties. Although our life flowed normally and there were a lot of Jews around us, we indeed felt ourselves to be foreigners in the environment. Once again we requested to leave for Israel, However, they still refused us.

Fannie says her husband decided to go to see his hometown of Ciechanow and see the details of the fate of his own. I went with him. Their home remained intact. In it resided Poles on the beds slept once upon a time strangers. And this was the same in all the Jewish houses. From my husband’s parents, sisters and brothers, nobody remained. This was a family of distinguished grain dealers. His father an active Mizrachi Zionist in the Jewish community. Until today, the surviving refered to him with respect. The sum total was sorrowfully clear. “We sold the house and the granaries dirt cheap and with grieving hearts said farewell to the hometown for good.” Fannie concludes this chapter recalling Jewish survivors that they reunited with during their return. 

In Wroclaw:

Fannie says that in Wroclaw she and Fredek purchased a residence of a professor who renovated a beautiful apartment that was damaged during the war. It had four rooms with parquet floors and large windows and balconies. “Shloymele rode on his little bicycle across the large hall. We purchased for ourselves porcelain, silver spoons, forks, knives, new bedding and towels. All at once I became a homemaker.–oversaw the household duties, went shopping, and cooked.”  Fannie says “for a full satisfying year I became busy with my child and stopped working. There was plenty to live on. My husband, an economist with a diploma, worked for a large trade enterprise and earned well.” Fannie says she tried to raise her child to speak Yiddish. But his sentences were half Polish and half Yiddish. None of the Jewish children in Wroclaw spoke Yiddish. 

Fannie recalls: “When my second son Bebus (Bebush a Polish diminutive) was born, other apartment tenants moved out. Fannie says “Our second son, Berele, (named for my brother) –we called him Bebus for short was born a lovely dark little fellow with curly hair like a Yemenite. (Refer to photo of Fannie and sons in Related Media)

Fannie reports that “there was great improvement felt in the life of the residents in the Polish cities on the former German territory. But for Jews…The anti-Semitism could be felt at every step. There were instances when a Jew would speak Yiddish on a train and get beaten up by Polish hooligans. We were increasing convinced this was not our place, although materially, we were not lacking for anything, and lived a once upon a time, in prosperity.”

For Israel:

We knew our existence in Poland must come to an end.

Fannie says that they bombarded the Polish government agencies with letters to allow them to leave for Israel to go to her parents and brother who had gone there in 1950. However, they constantly refused us. Fannie suggests that they were not allowing Jews with higher education to leave. Only at the end of 1956, when Gomulka once again came into power did “we suddenly receive  permission to immigrate to Israel. “Our joy was great upon this good news, although we knew from family letters that the situation in Israel was difficult, both politically and economically, and that they barely earned a living while we were living very well–easily and fullfilled…After years of waiting, we left to unite with our nearest.”

For understandable reasons, few Jews in Poland openly declared themselves Zionists, but ….we strenghtened our national consciousness and the conclusion that as long as we were destined to live, it must be in our own home, in an environment of Jews as free citizens of our own country, where we would hand down to our children’s children that which our generation had lived through, and the conclusion that we must deduce from that. (Refer to Related Media for photo of  Fannie’s Family in Israel)

• Refer to Extended Biography Above

History of Bereza Kartuska Concentration Camp:

Bereza Kartuska Prison (Miejsce Odosobnienia w Berezie Kartuskiej, “Place of Isolation at Bereza Kartuska”) was operated by Poland’s Sanation government from 1934 to 1939 in Bereza Kartuska, Polesie Voivodeship (today, Biaroza, Belarus). Because the inmates were detained without trial or conviction, it is considered an internment camp or concentration camp.Bereza Kartuska Prison was established on 17 June 1934 by order of President Ignacy Mościcki to detain persons who were viewed by the Polish state as a “threat to security, peace, and social order” or alternately to isolate and demoralize political opponents of the Sanation government such as National Democrats, communists, members of the Polish People’s Party, and Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalists. Prisoners were sent to the camp on the basis of an administrative decision, without formal charges, judicial sanction, or trial, and without the possibility of appeal. Besides political prisoners, starting October 1937, recidivits and financial criminals were also sent to the camp. During the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the camp guard fled on the news of the German advance. (Source Wikipedia).

Ghetto Established in Bereza:

In July 1942, a ghetto was established in Bereza, then under German occupation. Bereza, a town located in present day Belarus, was initially occupied by German forces on June 23, 1941,

The History of the Treaty of Non-Aggression (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact)

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with a secret protocol establishing Soviet and German spheres of influence across Eastern Europe. The pact was signed in Moscow on 24 August 1939 (backdated 23 August 1939 by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.

The treaty was the culmination of negotiations around the 1938–1939 deal discussions, after tripartite discussions between the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France had broken down. The Soviet-German pact committed both sides to neither aid nor ally itself with an enemy of the other for the following 10 years. Under the Secret Additional Protocol of 23 August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to partition Poland; Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia were allotted to the Soviet sphere, while Lithuania – apart from the Vilnius region, whose “interests” were recognized – lay in the German sphere (Lithuania – including the Vilnius region, but excluding a strip of land – was only transferred to the Soviet sphere by the 28 September 1939 Boundary and Friendship Treaty). In the west, rumored existence of the Secret Protocol was proven only when it was made public during the Nuremberg trials.

A week after signing the pact, on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. On 17 September, one day after a Soviet–Japanese ceasefire came into effect after the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union approved the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin, stating concern for ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians in Poland, ordered the Soviet invasion of Poland. After a short war ending in military defeat for Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union drew up a new border between them on formerly Polish territory in the supplementary protocol of the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty.

History of Bereza Kartuska Prison:

Bereza Kartuska Prison, “Place of Isolation at Bereza Kartuska”) was operated by Poland’s Sanation government from 1934 to 1939 in Bereza Kartuska, Polesie Voivodeship (today, Biaroza, Belarus). Because the inmates were detained without trial or conviction, it is considered an internment camp or concentration camp.

Bereza Kartuska Prison was established on 17 June 1934 by order of President Ignacy Mościcki to detain persons who were viewed by the Polish state as a “threat to security, peace, and social order”or alternately to isolate and demoralize political opponents of the Sanation government such as National Democrats, communists, members of the Polish People’s Party, and Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalists. Prisoners were sent to the camp on the basis of an administrative decision, without formal charges, judicial sanction, or trial, and without the possibility of appeal.[Prisoners were detained for a period of three months, with the possibility of indefinite extension.

Detainees were expected to perform penal labour. Often prisoners were tortured, and at least 13 prisoners died.

Besides political prisoners, starting in October 1937 recidivists and financial criminals were also sent to the camp.During the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the camp guards fled on news of the German advance. (source Wikipedia)

History of Bereza Ghetto (June 23, 1941)

. 

Life in the ghetto

• The ghetto was divided into two sections: Ghetto A, for Jews considered “productive” (those employed by the Germans), and Ghetto B, for “nonproductive” Jews.
• Several hundred Jews from neighboring villages, such as Małecz, Siehniewicze, Błuden, and Piaski, were forced into the Bereza ghetto. Additionally, several hundred Jews from Sielec were moved to the ghetto on May 25, 1942. In total, the Bereza ghetto housed over 3,000 Jews.
• Life in the ghetto was harsh, with residents facing inadequate food supplies and harsh treatment from the guards, according to one survivor. 

Liquidation of the ghetto

• The inmates of Ghetto B were transported to Brona Góra and killed on July 15, 1942.
• The Germans commenced the liquidation of Ghetto A on October 15, 1942.
• In defiance, some Jewish residents set the ghetto ablaze during the liquidation action. Some members of the Judenrat (Jewish Council) committed suicide during their final meeting.
• Many inhabitants were murdered within the ghetto, and around 1,800 were killed outside the town.
• A small number of Jews managed to escape to the forests or the Pruzhany Ghetto, which at that time had not yet faced deportations. Young people from the ghetto also joined Soviet partisan groups, and several survived the war to see Bereza liberated.
• After the war, the Jewish community of Bereza was not reestablished. 

CREDITS:

The Holocaust Memorial and Education Center gratefully acknowledges the donation of Fannie Brenner’s  memoir, “The First Part of my Life” and historic family digital photographs therein. The Center especially acknowleges the efforts of Rachel and Shelly Brenner to bring this historic, family memoir to light and translation in English by Rivka Chaya Schiller giving a precious gift to their family and generations to come. The Center especially acknowledges Rivka Chaya Schiller’s permission for rights to publish adapted and excerpted biographical information and digital photographs from the memoir donated by Shelly Brenner and family.

All historic, digital photographs courtesy of Shelly Brenner and family.

Book Cover Design by Rachel Kolokoff Hopper.