father had a premonition, suspecting that Gdynia would be one of the first military objectives of Nazi Germany. He wanted to be sure that nothing would happen to his wife and children. ‘It was decided that we should go to my grandfather. My father believed that we would be safe with his father. He said he would follow us in a month.’ So, one morning in August, he brought his wife Cyrla and his children Ita, Jakob and Janek to the train station. It was crowded with people: ‘Many were fleeing to the interior of the country.’ The Mandelbaums embarked on what was a long journey at the time, around 550 kilometres. They were to travel for more than twelve hours.
Janek’s grandfather lived in Działoszyce in southern Poland, 55 kilometres from Kraków. ‘It was a very Jewish town’, as reflected by the population: in 1899, 4,673 of the 5,170 inhabitants were Jews; in 1910, 6,446 out of 7,688; and in the mid-1930s, over 5,000 out of 6,700.40 The Jewish community had a large synagogue seating 800 worshippers, a prayer house, a Talmud Torah school with 80 pupils, and a 15,000-square-metre cemetery. There was also a Jewish library with 3,000 books.41
Janek’s grandfather was waiting for the family at the train station. He was a pious orthodox Jew in a ‘black caftan with a long beard and Hasidic headwear’. He was surprised, ‘if not shocked’, at Janek’s appearance: ‘I was wearing short trousers held up by narrow braces.’ He looked darkly at the boy and said to his mother: ‘I don’t ever again want to see my grandson leave the house without a hat.’
As they made their way back to his grandfather’s house, Janek stood out: ‘The town was full of Jews dressed in black. They all spoke Yiddish. There were lots of small shops with Jewish owners.’ Some were also to be found on the market square near his grandfather’s two-storey house. The boy felt at home in the large house, where the grandfather worked as a sign writer. To please him, Janek wore a kippa thereafter. He also went with his grandfather ‘for the first time before going to the synagogue’ to a mikvah – a bathhouse serving not for hygienic purposes but for cleansing ritual impurity.
Two weeks after the Mandelbaums arrived in Działoszyce, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Seven days later, on 7 September 1939, the Wehrmacht occupied the town.
We heard the tanks rolling from far off. The streets were empty. The Germans also came past my grandfather’s house. We hid behind the curtains. He finally mustered the courage to look out on the balcony. The Germans had not only tanks but also motorcycles with sidecars and trucks full of soldiers.
We heard that people from the town had been arrested. Our fear grew with every day of the occupation.
Janek hoped against hope that his father would finally arrive. But he didn’t come. Instead, the family received a card one day saying that his father had been sent to Stutthof concentration camp. He had been allowed to send a message: ‘I’m in Stutthof. Don’t worry. I’m fine.’
Janek Mandelbaum discovered fifty years later that his father had been arrested on 14 September at the age of 36 and transported to Stutthof, 18 kilometres from Gdynia, the family’s hometown.
The Nazis had already compiled lists of ‘undesirable Poles’ before the war. The deportation and murder of the Polish population, especially the Jews, was part of the plan to completely ‘Germanize’ Poland, including Gdynia and Danzig/Gdańsk. Polish leaders, including members of political parties and unions, were among the first victims. Jews who had not been shot when the Germans first invaded were arrested with non-Jews and interned in Stutthof. There, and in the thirty-nine satellite camps, the Wehrmacht interned around 110,000 people from twenty-eight countries, 63,000 to 65,000 of whom died.42
Mindla Czamócha, the youngest sister of Janek’s father in Słomniki, lived a good 30 kilometres from Działoszyce. She had given birth to a daughter eighteen months previously, on 15 February 1938, and asked Cyrla Mandelbaum if Janek’s 15-year-old sister Ita could move in to help a little after the birth. She and her husband owned a grain mill and promised ‘Ita will never go hungry with us.’ Janek’s sister and mother agreed.
Around three months after they arrived in southern Poland, Cyrla Mandelbaum decided to move with Jakob and Janek to her older brother. He lived in a small town called Sławków, 80 kilometres from Działoszyce. Because her husband was interned in Stutthof and couldn’t join them, she ‘preferred to live with her own family’.
There were around 960 Jews living in Sławków. The town had been occupied by German troops at the beginning of September. A few days later, 98 men were shot by German soldiers. They were all from Sławków and the surrounding area and had attempted to escape. The synagogue was also desecrated and the German occupiers demanded a high ransom from the Jewish inhabitants. They took hostages to press their claim. And – as everywhere in occupied Europe – a Jewish council was set up in the town, which, among other things, had to recruit Jews for forced labour.43
When the Germans occupied Sławków, they immediately forced the people to work on the roads. In winter 1939/1940 they had to shovel snow. The snow was lying higher than me. The Jewish council was commanded every day to provide 200 or 300 people. I was not on the list because I was only 12. But I replaced people who still had some money and paid me to work for them.
Janek thought up this idea himself because his uncle was ‘quite poor and had five children of his own’. They all needed to be fed ‘in those difficult times’, which was ‘not easy’. A package, ‘probably with valuable contents’, that his father had managed to send shortly before his arrest also never arrived – ‘And so I wanted to contribute to the living expenses.’ And it worked ‘quite well and I learned what hard labour means’. For a time he was assigned to an electrician as his assistant. From January 1940 to June 1942, he was conscripted for forced labour.
At the end of 1941 or the beginning of 1942, the Jews of Sławków were concentrated into a ghetto. It had no fence or wall, but they weren’t allowed to leave it. There was a strict curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., and all the Jews had to remain in their homes.44
Janek was very worried about his mother. She tried to be strong so as to be able to look after him and his brother. ‘But she was extremely worried – particularly about my father and my sister.’ They weren’t allowed to visit Ita. The place where she lived with her father’s youngest sister was now part of the General Government45 − the part of Poland occupied by Nazi Germany but not incorporated immediately into the Reich. The situation in Sławków, where his mother lived, was different: the town now belonged to Germany. It was impossible for her to get to the other sector. ‘This situation was intolerable for my mother. She was sick with worry.’ But Janek was also losing his joy and hunger for life. ‘I just wanted it to be over.’ He wanted to get back to his old life in Gdynia with his mother, his sister and his brother. ‘With papa to meet us there.’
Heinz Salvator Kounio In Thessaloniki, the parents of Heinz, Salvator and Helene Kounio (called Hella), were increasingly anxious at the news broadcast several times a day by the BBC. The family followed the fate of the Jews in Germany in particular, with great concern. ‘My sister Erika and I realized that something worrying was going on. But we didn’t know exactly what was happening.’ Erika was 12 years old and Heinz 11.
Their grandmother came from Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary) in Czechoslovakia. When German troops invaded in autumn 1938, practically all of the Jews living there, as elsewhere, fled. Over 15,000 Jewish children, women and men from the border areas left their homes, as did 13,000 non-Jewish German Nazis and 155,000 to 160,000 non-Jewish Czechs.46
Ernst and Theresa Löwy, the grandparents of Heinz and Erika, were among them. ‘My grandparents arrived in Thessaloniki as refugees. With two small suitcases. They were only able to take a few things with them. Just what they had on, plus a few clothes. They
