Re: [Cz-L] An excerpt from the memoir of Carl Hirsch

Dear Marianne,
I read with great interest the memoir of your late father. Except the
strictly family and personal aspects everything mentioned in the memoir is
100% correct. I was there and our family, which got a Calotescu permit,
witnessed all the events as precisely described in the memoir.
Many thanks,
All the best, Abraham K.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Marianne Hirsch" <mh2349_at_columbia.edu>
To: "Czernowitz Genealogy and History" <czernowitz-l_at_list.cornell.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2008 7:35 PM
Subject: [Cz-L] An excerpt from the memoir of Carl Hirsch


>
> 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.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Received on 2008-05-16 09:17:23