as many were uprooted from their homes and still have no nation to call home. All these events have left major scars that need to be acknowledged, understood, taken seriously, and addressed.
The story of Josef and Yacoub offers hope for all of us. It shows that once history and narrative are mutually recognized, there is indeed a way forward. It will require courage, openness, deep learning from life experiences, and a desire to move forward for the sake of a new generation. But like these two men, who rose above their own suffering, we too can find freedom and healing through repentance and forgiveness. May their act pave the way for many in our society.
Salim J. Munayer, PhD
Director, Musalaha, Jerusalem
1.
Earliest Memories
I WAS BORN IN JULY 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany. My parents were Eastern European Jews who had come several years earlier from Poland. Unlike the Jews who had lived in Germany for generations, they knew little or nothing about its culture – for example, about Goethe and Schiller. Most German Jews were wealthier and better educated. They were also patriotic; they considered themselves part of the country’s middle-class society. But we did not feel so much at home.
At the time of my birth, my brother Leo was already eleven and my sister Lena ten. So for a year and a half, I was the baby in the family. Even after my younger sister, Judith, was born, I received a lot of attention, because I was often sick. My parents had established a fairly comfortable living by then, so I was pretty spoiled as a child. We shared a house with several relatives from my mother’s family, and I used to play with my cousins.
My parents had a kind of warehouse together with my uncle, Chaim Simcha. In Germany at that time, young Jewish women often used the income from their first job for an Aussteuer – a set of sheets, pillows and blankets, and maybe even a featherbed – for the day when they would marry. My father and uncle sold such sets of linens to be paid off in monthly installments. The business went well, and our extended family acquired several properties in Frankfurt. So we were fortunate that we had the means to escape Germany when the Nazis came to power.
My memories of Frankfurt are varied and scattered: an exciting visit to the zoo, dreadful throat examinations in kindergarten, and a fantastic candy shop around the corner from our house.
My first encounter with anti-Semitism was my mother’s horror when I came home and used, in front of her, the expression Dreckjude – “dirty Jew.” As a three-year-old, I must have picked it up from playmates without understanding what it meant. A short time later, we watched from the windows of our house as the Hitler’s S.A. (Sturm Abteilung, or “Storm Troops”) marched through the street singing, “When Jewish blood spurts from our knives…” More than my own fear, I remember the look of terror in my parents’ eyes.
When Hitler came to power in January 1933, my parents were convinced that we needed to leave Germany. In April, Father went to Palestine to find a home for us there. We waited anxiously for news; eight months we waited. But in the end he could not secure permission from the British authorities for us to enter Palestine. He sent word that we should meet him in Poland, because he felt it was unsafe for him to return to Germany. After a joyful reunion at the train station in Rzeshov, we made our way to my mother’s hometown of Rozwadów, where we were to spend the next six years.
2.
Rozwadów: Life in the Shtetl
ROZWADÓW WAS A SMALL TOWN, maybe around five thousand people. In the middle of town was a square – huge, in my memory – where a market was held once a week. A busy road went right through the square. Very occasionally we saw an automobile go through, but the main bustle was the constant traffic of horses and wagons. I had a good friend, a man who delivered goods for my father. He had fled the Communists in his native Georgia and was quite poor. I loved to spend time with him and with his family. It was fascinating to watch him as he made ropes. He also told wonderful stories in his unique Yiddish dialect.
We lived in a terraced house along one side of the square. At the back of the house was a yard stretching one to two hundred meters out to a dirt road. We shared a well with our neighbor. A wood stove heated the house. There was no running water, and we had an outdoor toilet. It all sounds quite primitive now, but at the time it was normal; everyone lived like that.
My father ran a wholesale business in sugar and other commodities. He bought in big quantities and supplied shops in a large area around Rozwadów. The goods were stored in the ground floor and cellar rooms of our house. We lived in the upstairs rooms. I often listened to him discussing business with my mother. They didn’t think I understood it, but I was very curious and took it all in. The problem was always cash flow. People bought things on credit and then couldn’t pay. It was a constant worry for my parents.
Occasionally, my father also had stores of candy. At such times I was frequently in the shop at the front of the house asking for some, or begging for money to buy some from another shop down the road. I was a finicky eater, and my parents would sometimes pay me for eating my meals. Father was fairly strict with money, but after Alte Chaiya, my grandmother, came to live with us, I usually got what I wanted. She had first stayed on in Germany, but as we began to hear more and more about what was happening in Germany, my mother finally convinced her to come and live with us.
Alte Chaiya’s death was a real blow to our family, although she was well over eighty. She was frying eggs one morning for Leo’s breakfast. Suddenly she called our mother over and told her it was time for her to go. Mother couldn’t believe she was serious; she hadn’t been sick or anything. But Alte Chaiya simply lay down on her bed and peacefully passed away.
Rozwadów was probably half Jewish and half Catholic, and we lived in a mixed neighborhood. The butcher’s shop two or three houses away from us usually had pork hanging in the window. One of our close neighbors was Polish, but we had very little contact with them.
There was a strong feeling of community among the Jewish townspeople, in spite of all the differences between rich and poor; in spite of gossip, intrigue, and all kinds of similar things. Jews did not have full rights in Poland, but we were not restricted in our contacts with Poles. I’m sure my parents dealt often with Poles in their business, but as a child I didn’t have any contact. In fact, I only learned Polish when I started school. We avoided the Catholic Church, where we heard that they worshipped idols. And we were always afraid of the Christians, especially at Easter. After their church services, they would often go out on pogroms, vandalizing property and trying to break into our shops. So at Easter time, or any of the Christian holidays, we would lock up our shops.
Very soon after we arrived in Rozwadów, my father said to me, “Well, Josef, you have to go to chaider.” This was the traditional school for Jewish boys. There we learned Hebrew, starting with the alphabet. The melamet (teacher) led us in chanting the letters together in a sing-song voice, and he was not afraid to use the stick to keep order. Later, we learned parts of the Pentateuch by repeating after him. We must have learned something there, because I picked up Hebrew quickly when I later arrived in Israel.
We boys were quite a handful for our teacher. The boys had found out that if they formed a line and one touched the live wire in the circuit box, the last boy in the line felt the shock. So that shock was my rude introduction to chaider as a four-year-old. If the teacher left the room, bedlam broke out among the fifteen to twenty boys. Even if he was there, some risked beatings to play cards under the table. I remember one older boy who collected money from the other boys by selling each one a tree in Palestine. I never saw my tree, but I certainly learned a few business tricks from him!
When
