IN SPITE OF IT ALL

By Hanna Wechsler

Hanna Wechsler's journey began in a small town in Poland and took her to Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Auschwitz, Germany, Israel, and, eventually, the United States. Her story and that of her family is one of courage and determination. Emerging from World War II, the darkest period in recent history, her family resolved to create life anew. In her book, In Spite of It All, Hanna tells the story of their rebirth, hoping that all readers, young and old alike, will see that in the face of adversity, one can persevere and prevail.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669816768

Hanna Wechsler

to be followed

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 by Hanna Wechsler née Kleiner.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/09/2022

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CONTENTS

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Epilogue

Addendum

Acknowledgments

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In memory of my beloved husband,

Harry Wechsler Z"L

PROLOGUE

And I ask: For the depths of what use is language?

—Edgar Lee Masters

Before World War II, European Jews were much like you. Children attended school, and adults held jobs. We went to restaurants and theaters. Some of us were rich. Some of us were poor. We had families: parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles. The war put an end to all of that, and changed who we were forever.

My father, my mother, and I lived through the Holocaust. Many survivors have told their stories, and I have decided to tell you mine. Survivors tell similar tales of uprooting, loss, survival, and renewal; but since each survivor is different, each tale is told in a different voice. My story covers a period of about sixty-five years: it begins with the loss of our home and much of our family and continues with our survival and the rebuilding of our lives.

Survivors have different responses to their war experiences. There are those who tell their stories again and again, whenever an opportunity arises. There are those who remain silent, for they feel that the Nazis took away their voices. Others feel that there are no words to describe the horrors they witnessed and experienced, so they are mute. There are yet others who feel that they do not wish to burden their children with their experiences, wanting them to live a life free of terrifying images and fear.

I fall somewhere among those people listed above. I never talked about my war experiences as I was growing up in Israel and, in fact, resented it when I felt my parents harping on those years. I felt that they dwelt too much on the past and should have been living in the present. Once I was married and had my children, I chose not to discuss my story with them. My daughters learned about the Holocaust in public and Hebrew school, but my parents were their main source of information. They had no trouble discussing their experiences with their grandchildren.

About twenty-five years ago, I began to share my memories of the war with my family and my students in the Hebrew school where I taught. I participated in Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Project and began to speak to children in local public and private schools. I addressed gatherings of adults in synagogues and a university alumni group, describing my Holocaust experiences.

The more I spoke, the more I realized the importance of what I was doing. Half a century had passed. My parents’ generation was dying off, and we who were children during the war would soon be the only ones left who could give firsthand accounts of our lives during that time. If we didn’t talk, who would? How would the world learn the lessons of the Holocaust if no one spoke of it?

I decided to commit myself to telling my story, so that those who heard it could learn something that might compel them to participate in tikun olam, repairing the world. They might learn that in spite of terrible events that could befall them, they could survive and go on to tell their stories.

This is my story. Take from it what you can. Take from it what you will, and, by all means, be an agent for good in your lifetime.

Most important, never forget. Never let the world forget.

1

My mother gave birth to me every single day.

—Hanna Wechsler

Hannale is a grownup, I remember my family saying during the war. But I wasn’t always. Born in Nowy Korczyn, Poland, in 1936 to Ruzha and Mordechai (Mordche) Kleiner, I was Moishe and Feigl Zucker’s first grandchild and Pinchas and Ester Kleiner’s first granddaughter. For a short time, I was a little girl, doted upon by very loving grandparents.

Moishe Zucker was an intelligent, successful, well-traveled man who owned two large wood storage facilities. He had no sons to share his responsibilities, so his wife and daughters—Ruzha, Hindzha, Manya, and Chava—capable and devoted women, worked with him. Before joining her siblings in the warehouses, however, my mother had received a secular middle school education, and a religious one at Beys Yakov, an afternoon Jewish school.

My recollections from before the war are derived from photographs taken when I was a very young child—some faint, some clear. I know, for example, that the Zuckers’ home was elegant. One photo that has survived shows them sitting in their grand living room, surrounded by beautiful paintings and gazing into a lovely garden. Their house proudly displayed an emblem of Pilsudski, the Polish general and a hero to both Poles and Jews, who had once stayed at their home. Moishe Zucker’s sister and brother-in-law, owners of a successful liquor store, lived across the street in a charming house. I can tell from the photographs that my parents dressed me beautifully and that they took me for walks in the neighborhood and down the side streets to the river. I can clearly remember being terribly spoiled and loving it.

My father and my mother made a good-looking couple. He was handsome, and she was beautiful. Before they became a couple, Mordche would proudly ride up on his fancy bicycle to court my mother. The courtship lasted a long time; she played hard to get while he persisted. Everyone adored Mordche and couldn’t understand Ruzha’s reluctance to marry. Eventually, love blossomed, and Mordche and Ruzha wed, settling in a small town called Bendczyn.

Mordche had four brothers (Sender, Yakov, Zalman, and Shmuel) and two sisters (Ruchele and Reisele). Although his formal education ended after middle school, Mordche was a talented carpenter, which allowed him to successfully pursue a career in furniture design and manufacturing. He, Zalman, and Shmuel bought a small workshop in Bendczyn, where they began to manufacture fine furniture. I remember very little from the time spent in Bendczyn. By the time I was three, we had moved.

Our lives were peaceful until 1939. Soon after we had moved to Proszowice to live with my father’s parents, the Nazis entered the town and ordered all the Jews to meet in the town center, the marek. My family met at my grandfather Pinchas Kleiner’s home. To this day, I vividly remember his instructions to his children: Do not give up and do not to give in! He told us, Each and every one of you must save his own life. God willing, we will meet again after the war. In front of everyone, he said, Ruzha, you must save yourself and Hanna. He gave us the addresses of certain gentile Poles who, he hoped, would be willing to help us through this terrifying time. He instructed us to take whatever valuables we could, thinking that at some point, we might need them to trade for our lives. My father then told my mother and his sister, Ruchele, to flee at once.

Only two weeks earlier, Ruchele’s husband, Gershon Wolf Grundman, had been taken away and murdered while she was giving birth to Dora, their first child. My mother grabbed me, Ruchele grabbed her baby, and we ran into the fields outside Proszowice, where we found shelter in a cave. All of a sudden, Dora began to cry. My mother and Ruchele froze. Ruchele had two choices: she could either cover her baby’s mouth and possibly smother her, or let her cry and have us be discovered and murdered by the Germans. Similar choices faced many Jews throughout the war. Miraculously for us, the Germans had gone in the opposite direction, and Ruchele did not have to choose.

All of a sudden, everyone was running, and somehow, we were reunited with my father and the rest of the family. We approached a farmer, whose name my grandfather had given us, and thank God, he took us in.

The farmer and his wife let us live under their horse barn where food, fertilizer, garbage, etc., were stored. This area was covered with wooden planks, which, when we looked up, reminded us of s’chach covering a sukkah. A ladder led from our hiding place to the floor above. During the day, we had to stand completely still and silent. Every noise frightened us, even those made by the horses moving above us or by the hay falling through gaps in the planks. At night, the farmer’s wife brought us whatever food she could. I don’t remember any bathroom facilities or how we all slept. Bathrooms, sleeping, food, or accommodations were not our main preoccupation. Will be alive tomorrow? When will they find us? When will they kill us? These were our only concerns.

Food in Poland was scarce and, therefore, rationed. Those who bought more than usual were suspected