Dear Czernowizers, I paste below and excerpt form my father's memoir.
He wrote it in the years after his retirement from his work as a civil
engineer in Rhode Island and he essentially wrote it for his
grandsons. It is unedited. Here is his account of the ghetto and
deportation days that mention his vision of Popovici. We have many
other oral and written accounts of this period an they all agree.
Pearl Fichmann's memoir that many of you have read has a very detailed
account of how the authorizations were dispensed.
best, Marianne
From Chpt 7, Carl Hirsch "A Life in the Twentieth Century"
Change came on Oct.11, 1941.On my way to the office in the morning a
lady neighbor of Lotte's asked me to read a new order of the
Government pasted during the night on the walls. It warned citizens
not to shelter Jews, not to help Jews to flee with the threat of
immediate capital punishment for whoever will contravene this order.
In my naivete I said that this does not concern us as we do not
intend to flee and went to work. In the afternoon, when I went home
for lunch I saw many Jews carrying backpacks on their shoulders and
some other luggage or simple sacks with their belongings. I found out
that the Government had requested all Jews to move to a part of the
city as a kind of ghetto as a transition to being shipped to camps
located in the area that was given by Hitler to Rumania as a
compensation for part of Transylvania which they had to return to
Hungary in 1940. They called it Transnistria as beyond the river
Dniestr called Nistru in Rumanian in order to remind themselves that
they were compensated for Transylvania. When I arrived home everybody
was packed to leave but they still didn't have a flat to go to. I went
across to Lotte and found out that she had an aunt and a cousin
living in the area designated and we all left our homes and carried a
few belongings to Lotte's cousin Blanka. The area designated for the
ghetto was much too small to house that many people and we just got
room to sleep on the floor, we were 11 people between Lotte's family
and mine and Lotte's sister's fiance Eduard Bong and his mother. At 6
p.m. gates were put at the entrances to the ghetto and we saw German
officers taking pictures from the outside. It was quite a full house
at Blanka Engler, Lotte's cousin with her daughter and husband and 11
intruders.
Next morning we met friends and aquaintances outside,
nobody knew in detail how the deportations will proceed, we compared
our fate to that described by the writer Franz Werfel in his book
"The 40 days of the Musa Dagh", in which he was telling the story of
the Armenians chased by the Turks from their homes in Anatolia during
World War I, most of whom perished in the desert into which they were
left exposed by the Turkish army. After 3 days we were told that a
number of streets including ours will be evacuated. Peasants with
their carts were ready to bring us with our luggage to the railway
station. We were supposed to bring only as much luggage as we could
carry ourselves. We packed this meager luggage on a peasant's cart
and waited to proceed to the railway station. While we waited in line
a lady aquaintance told us that a number of professionals and
technicians will be able to stay in Czernowitz. I asked a passing army
captain if as a railway engineer I should leave or stay and got the
answer not to move. I and Lotte took the cart with the belongings of
the 11 of us out of the line leading to the station and we brought it
to the house of another relative in an area supposed to leave in
later days. We had to bribe a soldier who guarded the exit from the
streets scheduled to leave in order not to allow people supposed to
leave this day to stray away from their departure. This night we had
only a shed to sleep in but we slept better because we started to
have hope not to be evacuated. In the evening there were more good
news. The mayor of the city Traian Popovici visited the Jewish
hospital with the news that the Jews will continue to stay in
Czernowitz. Next day this changed that only part of the Jewish
population will be able to remain. On this day a shift in the outline
of the ghetto was announced. The streets which were evacuated the
first day were opened for the rest of the population and a few more
streets opened for the ghetto. In one of these streets was the house
of Lotte's uncle Dr. Jacob Rubel. We all moved to this house which in
a short time got a population of 30, rather than the original 4, the
parents and 2 daughters and presently only two, the daughters having
been married in the meantime. We slept on the floor of the living
room, approx. 20 people.
On Friday Oct. 17 in discussing the situation with Lotte
we decided to get married whatever the alternative, leave together or
stay back together. We inquired with a rabbi we saw across the street
but he said that Friday after 2 p.m. it was too late according to
Jewish law. Next morning Oct. 18 we went to the commandant of the
ghetto, a major of the Rumanian army, to allow us to leave the ghetto
in order to get married in City Hall. He gave us a soldier as escort
who accompanied us to the court in order to get a dispensation from
the required publication of the banns (2 weeks). In the afternoon we
went with the same escort and two witnesses to City Hall, the
witnesses were Lotte's sister Fritzi and her fiance Eduard Bong, also
a high school teacher. We left a bit earlier and visited first the
Railway Administration, where I found out that they had obtained from
the Government authorization to remain for all their Jewish
employees, then we went to my brother's place of work, a school in
course of rehabilitation (he was supervising the reconstruction) and
the headmaster promised to intervene for him in the same intent. In
the Marriage Registry Office the employees were very nice to us and
the registrar, a university professor, told me before officiating the
marriage that he hopes to celebrate many more happy occas ions for the
Jews, "here in Rumania". All these signs of sympathy confirm that the
majority of the population were not in agreement with the measures
taken against the Jews. The friendly atmosphere in City Hall was also
created by the mayor who as a former Austrian grew up with the fellow
Jews and was later to be instrumental in helping a substantial number
of Jews without authorizations to remain in town. His name was Traian
Popovici and for his deeds he was awarded a plaque in Yad Vashem in
Jerusalem as a righteous gentile. He is also listed as a rescuer in
the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington. When we came home to the
ghetto our cohabitants celebrated the occasion, each took out of his
food provisions prepared for the trip some cakes and other goodies
and everybody wished us a happy marriage, only Lotte's mother was
surprised, she said: "nobody has told me anything".
In the next few days the leaders of the Jewish Community
prepared lists of the Jewish population arranged by professions and
the Govern ment issued to part of the population authorizations to
remain in the city. I got two, one as a civil engineer from the lists
of the Jewish Community and one as a railway employee, my brother got
one as a mining engineer and one from his employment, which having
been issued without a Christian name on it was used by another Hirsch
family. Many got authorizations with bribes given the department
heads of the provincial government. Many were not that fortunate and
were put into trains to Transnistria, two aunts of ours with their
families, my friend Lulziu Chalfen who though a doctor didn't have
the right connections and many others. A few thousands continued to
hide while the others went to the trains and after the shipments
stopped got temporary authorizations from the mayor, they were called
"Popovici authorizations". From the approx. 50,000 Jews in the city
in October there were approx. 20,000 left a few weeks later. The
deportees were brought in trains to the river Dniestr in Bessarabia
and then brutally chased across a bridge into Transnistria. Some
staid in the first town Moghilev and others had to go farther into
other towns. They were left in the open without shelter and food.
There were no camps but most didn't find adequate shelter and because
of the approaching winter many died of cold and hunger. My estimation
is that less than half survived the two and a half years they staid
in this province. My aunt Fritzi Wurmbrand and her son Yochanan
stayed in Moghilev and survived but my other aunt Lotti Roth and her
husband Leon perished in the first month together with their son in
law and grandson from cold and hunger, only her daughter Rosa (now
Zuckerman) survived and returned to Czernowitz in 1944. From the
other towns of the Bukovina all Jews were sent to Transnistria
without exception, it seems that because they came earlier in the fall
they got better conditions and a greater percentage sur vived. Some
job opportunities were created (mainly through the inven tiveness of
some professionals like the engineer Jagendorf, who des cribes his
experience in his book about the foundry in Moghilev) and some help
sent through the Jewish communities of Rumania and relatives made a
great part survive the ordeal. Anyway these were not exterm ination
camps and except for some cases at the eastern border of Transnistria
adjoining the German occupied areas (where some were transferred to
the Germans and murdered) bread, shelter and sanitation were main
problems in their survival. It seems that originally the authorities
intended to deport all the Jews from Czernowitz but the big number of
the Jewish population in Czernowitz caused some delays and within
this time there were interventions from the side of the Queen mother,
the papal nuntio and the industrialists who would not have been able
to manage their plants without Jews. The Jews from the other towns
were shipped off within a few days.
I have mentioned above the Jewish Community as an agent
of the Government in establishing lists of Jews by professions.
Officially there was no Jewish Community as before with different
activities (religious, social, welfare, education, etc.) related to
the Jewish residents. This was rather a council of a few Jewish
leaders (doctors, lawyers, a.o.) selected by the Government as a
contact with the Jewish population. They had to transmit to the Jews
the orders of the Govern ment like to assemble on October 11 in the
ghetto or which streets to prepare for evacuation a few days later.
They did not have any police like in Germanoccupied territory, they
probably had to select from the professional lists the people to stay
according to a percentage figure given them by the Governor. They
definitely helped their friends, but there is no comparison to the
Jewish councils in the areas under German occupation. They did not
profit personally and there are no cases, for which they could be
accused of treasonable behavior.
Approx. 12 days after we left our homes we returned.
Lotte came at first to our appartment (with my mother and the four of
us) because she was on my authorization and so were my mother and
sisters. A few weeks later we moved to her parents place, where there
was more room. Next day I returned to work and was received with
friendship. I cannot forget good deeds, the assistant manager kissed
me when I came back, his name was Boris Gretzov. A few years later
when we moved to Timis oara we met again in the Railway Administration
where both of us worked and became friends, I was able to be helpful
to him when he needed it. We were not in the best mood in the
following months because of the fact that so many Jews had to leave
their homes for a hard winter without resources, we did not know
details in the beginning. As my workplace was in the main railway
station I could see from the window the operation of filling and
moving the trains with deportees. Though Czernowitz was on the main
railway line between Poland and the Balkans we never saw any other
trains with deportees passing through, because Rumania joined the
alliance with Germany voluntarily and kept some independence in it's
administration. The trains with the Jewish deportees from Greece were
sent first NorthWest through Hungary and the NorthEast to Poland on
railways under German administration. Eichmann never set foot on
Rumanian territory like in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia or Croatia.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This moderated discussion group is for information exchange on the subject of
Czernowitz and Sadagora Jewish History and Genealogy. The Czernowitz-L list
has an associated web site at http://czernowitz.ehpes.com that includes a
searchable archive of all messages posted to this list. Please post in "Plain
Text" if possible (help available at:
<http://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/PlainText.html>).
To remove your address from this e-list follow the directions at
http://www.cit.cornell.edu/computer/elist/lyris/leave.html
To receive assistance for this e-list send an e-mail message to:
owner-Czernowitz-L_at_list.cornell.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Received on 2008-05-15 16:35:13
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : 2008-10-17 22:48:13 PDT