Surviving Hitler in Poland: One Jew's Story

By George J. Rynecki

By the late 1930s Warsaw, Poland, was a vibrant city. It was home to a bustling business community and its historic promenade and outdoor cafs catered to the city's community of artists, writers, and intellectuals. It was a magnificent place to live and visit.

On 1 September 1939, the day the Nazis invaded Poland, that all changed--particularly for the Jewish population. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, Poland was home to the largest Jewish population in Europe. It is believed that prior to the war that more than three million Jews lived in Poland. It is thought that perhaps fewer than four hundred thousand survived the war.

In September 1939, George Rynecki was a Jew living in Poland. He was a new father and just starting his business. The life he had planned was suddenly and radically altered. Instead of focusing on his family and nascent business, he found himself scrambling to outsmart the Nazis and provide for his family. With a combination of courage, wits, luck, and bribery he survived the Holocaust.

Unfortunately, George's father, Moshe Rynecki, was not so lucky. Moshe, an artist who lived in Warsaw, refused to leave the city. While George was unable to save his father from deportation to the Majdanek concentration camp, at the end of the Holocaust he was able to retrieve many of his father's paintings. Moshe's paintings, which are realistic depictions of Eastern European Jewry, were obviously personally important to George, but are also of historic importance; they portray a people, a culture, and a community that was almost completely annihilated by the Nazis.

This memoir, read in tandem with viewing Moshe Rynecki's paintings, provides a more complete picture of the Eastern European Jewish community, and the Rynecki family in particular.

If you are interested in this book, you might also be interested in Jewish Life in Poland: The Art of Moshe Rynecki (1881-1943).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Dec 12, 2006
• ISBN: 9781412209106

George J. Rynecki

In 1945, at the end of the Second World War, George, his wife Stella, and their son, Alex, left Poland behind and moved to Italy. They lived there until December 1949 when they sailed from Naples, Italy, to New York. They eventually moved west and established themselves in Northern California. For many years George owned and operated a scrap metal recycling operation, distributed structural steel, and invested in real estate. George passed away in 1992.

Book preview

Compilation of this edition © Copyright 2005 Elizabeth Rynecki.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Note for Librarians: A cataloguing record for this book is available from Library and Archives

Canada at www.collectionscanada.ca/amicus/index-e.html

ISBN 978-1-4120-7398-1

ISBN: 978-1-4122-0910-6 (ebk)

missing image filemissing image file

Offices in Canada, USA, Ireland and UK

This book was published on-demand in cooperation with Trafford Publishing. On-demand

publishing is a unique process and service of making a book available for retail sale to the

public taking advantage of on-demand manufacturing and Internet marketing. On-demand

publishing includes promotions, retail sales, manufacturing, order fulfilment, accounting and

collecting royalties on behalf of the author.

Book sales for North America and international:

Trafford Publishing, 6E—2333 Government St.,

Victoria, BC V8T 4P4 CANADA

phone [phone] (toll-free 1 888 232 4444)

fax [phone]; email to [e-mail]

Book sales in Europe:

Trafford Publishing (UK) Limited, 9 Park End Street, 2nd Floor

Oxford, UK 0x1 IHH UNITED KINGDOM

phone [phone] (local rate 0845 230 9601)

facsimile 44 (0)1865 722 868; [e-mail]

Order online at:

trafford.com/05-2293

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE ART WORK

THE MOSHE RYNECKI VIRTUAL MUSEUM

FOREWORD

AN HISTORICAL NOTE

ZE KADOSHIM HAYOM!

(THEY ARE HOLY TODAY!)

MY STORY

GRANDPA MORDECHAI MITTELSBACH

1840-1924

THE COSSACKS COME TO SIEDLCE

THOUGHTS OF APRIL 18, 1985

CELEBRATING PASSOVER

A WEDDING NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN

TO CATCH A BIRD

A Lousy STORY

THE EXERCISE OF ABSOLUTE POWER

MEETING HAILE SELASSIE

TROTSKY: A RUSSIAN JEW RECRUITS FOR

THE BOLSHEVIKS

ISIA, MY GIFTED SISTER

A PARTNERSHIP TURNED SOUR

WHY DIDN’T HE LEAVE?

MY FATHER WAS A PAINTER

THE CRUELTY OF IT

HOW COME YOU DON’T WEAR AN ARMBAND?

I NEVER REACHED DACHAU

THE BERGSTROEM BOYS

GOLDEN PRAGUE WAS UNFORGETTABLE

ANARCHY IS WORSE THAN OCCUPATION

EVERYBODY WANTED OUT. NO ONE COULD LEAVE.

HE WAS BLESSED AND HE KNEW IT

THERE WAS NO HOPE

THEY CAME TO ARREST ME

TO CATCH A JEW

IT WAS NOW ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

LEST WE FORGET

THE DIGNITY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE WAS RESTORED

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ENDNOTES

ABOUT THE ART WORK

Painting titles and credit—

Moshe Rynecki, Rynecki Children, 1915 . Oil on cardboard . 32. 1 x 48.2 cm . (on the cover)

This painting shows George J . Rynecki, the author, and his sister, Isia . It was painted by their father, Moshe Rynecki .

Moshe Rynecki, Self Portrait, 1936. China Ink . 31. 5 x 48 . 8 cm . The author’s father.

Moshe Rynecki, Paula Rynecki, 1929. Oil on cardboard . 41 x 63 cm .

Paula Rynecki, George J . Rynecki’s mother, and Moshe Rynecki’s wife This shows Paula in her stationery store

THE MOSHE RYNECKI VIRTUAL MUSEUM

www.rynecki.org

Few images remain from the world of Eastern European Jewry which was destroyed during the Holocaust. Many survivors have tried, much as this memoir does, to vividly record their memories for future generations.

Moshe Rynecki, the author’s father, was an artist whose primary goal and focus in life was to be an artist of merit While Rynecki’s artistic merit is important, his paintings provide deeper insight into a culture transformed and nearly annihilated by Nazism . Through his choice of subjects he provides a realistic depiction of Jewish family life, work, religion, education, and recreation.

Moshe Rynecki’s life spanned many turbulent events: the partition of his country (Poland), almost constant political turmoil, and two world wars History turned him into an important witness who skillfully and intimately documented the atrocity and horror that surrounded him inside the Warsaw Ghetto.

Although the Holocaust brought great loss and a tragic end to Moshe Rynecki and many members of his family, the goal of The Moshe Rynecki Virtual Museum is to celebrate his life and his work. The Rynecki family built the commemorative virtual museum to share Moshe Rynecki’s works with the world. Our hope is that with the publication of this memoir there will exist a more complete picture of the Eastern European Jewish community, and the Rynecki family in particular.

The Moshe Rynecki Virtual Museum may be viewed online at www rynecki org.

FOREWORD

My parents and I are visiting my grandparents’ home on a Sunday afternoon It’s a casual, chatty sort of visit. Mom and I are sitting next to one another on my favorite couch, the long blue one with fluffy pillows, and I’m eating cookies and sipping apple juice. Grandma and Grandpapa share the red couch kitty-corner to the blue couch . Dad enjoys the solitude of the large overstuffed chair. Grandma asks me about school while Grandpapa, Mom, and Dad talk business and world news. There’s a pause in the conversation and Grandpapa turns to me and says he wants to tell me a story. A true family story, he says, unlike any you’ve ever heard. My family rarely, if ever, talks about the past, so I scoot to the edge of the couch and get ready to hear the story. Grandpapa begins the story in June of 1943. My father and my grandmother have been arrested by the Polish police on the streets of Warsaw. The story is about how Grandpapa managed, with luck, bribes, and bravado, to save them from certain deportation to a concentration camp (the story appears here in the chapter titled, To Catch a Jew). Grandma stands up and interrupts Grandpapa She tells him to stop Don’t tell this story Please, she begs, no war stories. Grandpapa says I’m old enough to hear the story, that it’s his home, and that he can tell his granddaughter whatever he pleases. He says I am the child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors and that it’s important for me to know my family history. Grandma shakes her head; the rush of wartime memories seem to fill her mind and appear to send her reeling. She starts yelling at Grandpapa in Polish I don’t speak Polish, so I have no idea what she’s saying, but her voice is shaking and trembling and she’s on the verge of tears. It’s clear to me that she does not want Grandpapa to tell this story. Grandpapa responds to her pleas with a raised and unsympathetic voice. Grandma starts crying and leaves the living room. She goes into the bedroom and closes the door behind her.

I’m torn about what to do. At eight years old I don’t really appreciate the significance of the story or the fact that the story is being told. I understand this is my family’s history, but this story doesn’t sound anything like the kind of family stories I’ve heard from my friends and their parents. I’m not even sure what war Grandpapa is talking about, and I certainly don’t know the whereabouts of Warsaw, Poland.

Grandpapa’s story almost got lost in history. He never told me the story again and when he passed away in 1992, I assumed there would be no more stories for me to hear or to know. Thankfully, I was wrong.

At the time of Grandpapa’s death, my father found a bound collection of vignettes in the trunk of Grandpapa’s car—his wartime stories. No one is quite certain when he recorded the stories, but all of the stories that he wrote appear in this memoir.

At times Grandpapa’s memoir is very easy to read—even poignant. At other times the stories are more difficult to follow either because he jumps around in time or he segues into a sub-story and derails the main story. Remembering the past isn’t a neat and linear process. As a result, these stories do not proceed in classic beginning, middle, and end manner.

The memoir, as it appears here, is true to the original manuscript. Only a few small changes were made. The stories were edited slightly to clean-up the text and correct misspellings. Additionally, all the vignettes were given titles; something Grandpapa did not do himself. It’s important to note that all of the titles were picked out of the text of the vignettes. Lastly, in an effort to provide a bit more clarity about some terminology and references, we inserted some footnotes. All of the footnotes were written by our family. What remains intact is the order in which the vignettes appear (Grandpapa numbered the pages of the original manuscript) and his style. While some sentence structures may seem odd or grammatically incorrect, Grandpapa wrote as he spoke and that is what is recorded here. Ultimately, his style gives context to and is an integral part of the story.

Grandpapa would be pleased to know that his memoir has been published. During his life he emphasized that he could try to forgive,