MEMOIRS
OF SHERESHEV
By MOISHE KANTOROWITZ
The empty stomach was the best incentive to make us return to the camps on the Italian heel. The trains ran very irregularly and the trip took two days. Arriving in Otranto the last station closest to my camp, I had to continue on foot the last eight kilometers to St. Marina De Leuca, carrying a knapsack on my back. Walking through the twisting short streets, I became aware of the noises coming from the open doors or windows of the surrounding houses. Coming into the house in which I shared a room with BLISKOWSKI and BLUESTEIN I passed through a room occupied by a few other boys. They seeing me jumped at me with yells of joy as if a long lost real brother had returned. Half following and half carrying me they came into my room where my primitive cot or bed was still waiting for me and so were my two roommates. What struck me at once was the loud conversation and what seemed to me a bit crude, even vulgar use of the language. I had to stop and think for a moment until I realized that they did not change, it was the language they and I used before my departure. It was I who has been exposed for some ten weeks to a different environment, that I have forgotten what it was like earlier. The ten weeks where I have spent eight hours a day at school and the rest of the evenings doing home work, constantly conversing with people who were trying to improve themselves and learn something from their teachers, who are trying to impart knowledge, where one tries hard to be worthy of the education one received, where utterance of a rude or coarse word would be an embarrassment or loss of face to say the least. One easily can, if he tries to, improve oneself in such an environment. We tried and we did. I noticed the impact the ten weeks away had on me and began to have regrets for leaving the school.
After the excitement of my return quieted down and the three of us roommates remained to ourselves, we began to exchange news. My friend Libel BLISKOWSKY had good news for me. In my absence a letter arrived for me from my Uncle Shloime (Solomon) AUERBACH, my mother’s oldest brother. Here I would like to go back a few years to January 30th 1943, on the Saturday morning in ghetto Pruzany when I left my family never to see or hear from anyone again. They were getting ready for the Germans to come for them, and my mother went out with me on the porch to say good bye to me. Almost the last words she said were, “Go my son". Hide. Maybe by some miracle you will succeed to avoid the Nazis and survive the war. If with G-d’s help you will; make sure to get to my two brothers in N.Y. and tell them what transpired. How we lived and how we died.” Here she told me the address of her oldest brother Shloime (Solomon), 2133 Daily Avenue, Bronx. During my stay in Auschwitz and the other camps, the name Bronx was replaced in my memory by Brooklyn and the couple letter wrote after the end of the war either got lost or one was returned to me back in Italy. While there were some American troops in Europe, many of the Jewish soldiers used to visit the refugee camps and take names and addresses to relatives in the U.S. I am sure I gave my uncle’s name and address too. Somehow my uncle Shloime (Solomon) found my name in a Jewish paper and sent a letter to me to the Milano Jewish community. They forwarded it to St. Marina Di Leuca. My good friend Leibl BLISKOWSKY, knowing the importance of such a letter for me, opened it immediately. The exact contents of the letter I no longer remember. However, I remember what BLISKOWSKY told me; according to the letter, it was not the first one my uncle wrote to me. After expressing his joy that at least one of the entire family survived, he can not wait to see me, but in the meantime I should let him know what I need. BLISKOWSKY did not bother to write me. But instead answered the letter on his own. As for my needs, he wrote: He can use everything that starts with an “A”, meaning everything. In the beginning of 1946 mail traveled slowly across the Atlantic. I am not sure if air mail existed in those days for civilians. It took a couple of months until I got a reply from my uncle to my letter sent to the correct address this time.
Not all of us survivors were willing to sit in the refugee camps and exist on the meager food ration allotted by the UNRRA, nor was it pleasant to walk around day after day and month after month in the same pair of pants or the same shirt on your back. Like in my case, when I washed my pants I had to wear my swimming shorts for a few hours until the pants dried in the hot Italian sun. Some, and I would call them the more ambitious ones, began to look for ways to supplement their diet as well as to try and earn a few liras to buy something to wear. As the saying goes “Where there is a will, there is a way.” Some found a way. At the very end of 1945 and early part of 1946 there developed a net of petty dealers from among us who specialized in mostly used clothing. It originated in Italy where those young men used to buy up German marks, considered by the Italians almost worthless. With the marks they used to make their way into Germany and buy up used clothing. Packing it into knapsacks, they used to get as close as possible to the Austria-Italian border and at night cross it through the mountains on foot. It is difficult to understand now, how those young men worked to cross guarded borders on top of the Alps in deep snow with a heavy knapsack on their backs. I have heard rumors that some of them got lost or froze to death in those mountains. Sadly, there was no one to miss them or to mourn them, as they too were sole survivors of entire families. Once they made it across the border, they used to proceed to Bolonia or even Milano where it was sold to others who used to travel to different towns and sell it there in flea markets. In the early spring of 1946, I got together with a couple other guys to travel to Milano to buy some of the used clothing and try our luck in selling it. I had to come up with fifteen hundred liras, seven and a half dollars at that time, to become a partner, that I borrowed from BLUESTEIN (for some reason he always had some money) and we set out for Milano. There was no trouble finding our guys who used to bring the used clothing from Germany. After buying what our money could, we set out to go back stopping on the way at a town by the name of Lecce, some forty kilometers north of our camp. Lecce was known for its flea market. I guess we were poor businessmen, for after deducting our investment we were left with nothing and this was the end of my business career.
A few weeks later I received a notice from a bank in Taranto that there is some money for me. I set out early the next morning. First I had to go on foot to the railway station in Otranto, a walk of eight kilometers up hill. From there I took the slow moving train to Taranto. In the bank I found out that my uncle Shloime AUERBACH sent me ten dollars for which I was given twenty two hundred liras. I was rich. Getting on the train which consisted of two railway cars of pre world war one vintage, the car was empty except for an elderly Italian woman. Shortly afterwards, a man of about thirty got on holding in his hand a cheap suitcase. Just before the train began to move, another young man got on. Shortly after we began to move, the two Italian men introduced themselves to each other. After a little conversation, the man with the suitcase took out from his suitcase, three small look alike wooden blocks. Each block had an equally looking elastic band around it. Putting a small piece of paper under one of the bands and turning the block with the paper down, they began to play the guessing game of under which block is the piece of paper. Ignoring for a while their game, I eventually began to look at them and came over closer. Soon I could not resist and pointed to a block under which I was sure was the piece of paper. The man told me to put up a hundred liras. Before I realized I was in the game. To my surprise, it was not the one that operated the game that was the winner but the other fellow. In fact he seemed to be even compassionate, appealing to the winner to give me some money back, to which he answered that he could have just as easily been the looser. During the game I noticed the Italian woman motioning with her head to me and biting her forefinger, indicating that I should get away. At the next station, the two men got off. I made myself a promise there and then; never to gamble again. Coming back to my roommates I was too embarrassed to tell them what happened and never did.
I find it odd to call the refugee camps in southern Italy “camp”. After all they were not like other camps with the typical barracks or even converted military accommodations, some with fences and so on. We lived in supposedly former villas. True, we slept on so called beds, primitive bunks with no furniture what so ever, outside plumbing and not too much too eat. Yet we could move around freely. Travel right across Italy. The blue Mediterranean was at our feet and even a bluer sky above. In those early months of 1946 the camp was beginning to take shape. We elected a so called committee that ran the internal affairs of the camp from a Jewish point of view. True, there have remained a couple dozen non Jewish families, and they were true families, mostly Russians, but amongst them were also Yugoslavians and Spanish. Whoever they were, it seemed that they had a clean past regarding participation in persecution of Jews. There was a communal bath house, open certain hours of the day for men and certain hours for women. However, spending many hours a day at the sea shore, the bath house was empty a lot of the time. Next to the bath house was a cultural center where we could come in any time of day or evening to read old Israeli (Palestinian) Hebrew papers as well as a newspaper printed in Rome by the Jewish agency, by the name of “Baderech” (on the way). In the evenings we had dances, where an orchestra made up of survivors played. As the large majority of us were men and there were not enough girls to go around, boys used to dance with boys. We knew how ridiculous we looked but it was either a boy or nothing. The evenings had to pass somehow. There was a cultural circle, a theatrical circle and of course each Zionistic faction had its own group of sympathizers and their own activities. All those mentioned above groups welcomed new comers, in fact soliciting members. From it we can conclude that one could keep ones self busy if one wanted to. Yet I will admit that the majority did not belong to any particular group, preferring to attend activities without any obligations, or commitments.
Yet there were activities, some in which we were involved directly. Some quarter of a million Jews, survivors of the Holocaust and returnees from the Soviet Union languished in all kinds of refugee camps waiting for a country to open its doors to them. The majority wanted of course to go to the land of Israel, Palestine then, but the British closed the doors to Jewish immigration. The only way to get there was by running the British blockade. The two main reasons that brought us to Italy was our desire to build and live in a Jewish homeland. The second was to try to rebuild our shattered lives after the experience of the Holocaust. Attempts were being made to smuggle individuals from the camps to embarkation points from where boats used to leave for the land of Israel. Those privileged ones or fortunate ones were informed a bit earlier and taken secretly to a collection points. From there, on the designated hour, they used to be trucked to the boats. We used to envy those individuals. From my personal experience, I would say that families or partial families that miraculously survived were given preference, and single men or women were left to wait.
In spring of 1946, I succeeded to establish a contact with my father’s first cousin, in Netanyah, Israel. Someone I have mentioned much earlier. It was Chaim SHEMESH, the very first commander of “Beitar” in Shershev and who left for the land of Israel in1932. His girl friend, Sonia PINSKY, followed him three years later. After they married, she came for a visit to Shershev with a year old baby girl “Lau”. Mother and daughter were permitted to return to the land of Israel. The second family was the family Zeev (Velvel) and “Sheine-Rachel” CHMELNITZKY. Sheine-Rachel was my mother’s cousin. They moved to the land of Israel in 1935. I remember receiving a letter from Sheine-Rachel telling me to get in touch with a member of the Jewish brigade by the name of KIRSHENBAUM who was stationed in Milano. KIRSHENBAUM hailed from Pruzany and came to the land of Israel as a “Chaluz” (Zionist pioneer) some years earlier. Again, we went on the long trip to Milano and finding the base where members of the Jewish brigade were stationed. I did find him. I am not sure what I expected from KIRSHENBAUM. Maybe by magic he will pull out from his pocket a permit to go to Israel. This was not to be. Instead he showed me a letter from the CHMELNITZKY’S asking him to get in touch with me and help me financially. I still remember the wording: “Give him as much as he wants if he will only take it.” I felt proud of such a recommendation and I thought to myself, after all, they are my second cousins only. They left Pruzany in 1935, when I was only 12 years old. Besides, they did not even know me personally, as they, lived in Pruzany and we lived in Shershev. In the ten years since they left, I could have grown into a crook, cheat or worse. Yet they had so much trust in the family tradition that they were giving me a blank cheque. I could have used then a few pounds, dollars, or liras. Still I was so overwhelmed by their trust that I refused to take anything from him. KIRSHENBAUM looked at me not with so much astonishment as with incomprehension, saying; so what am I going to tell them?
In one of the letters I received from the SHEMESH family, in fact their letters were usually written by both of them, each had something to say. I was told that in my camp, that is in St. Marina de Leuca, there was a family by the name of BIRGER and that they have five British pounds for me. I knew the family BIRGER. Rather of them, so had everybody else. Firstly, they were an intact family, a father in his fifties and a wife and a son about thirty with a wife and child. But this was not the main reason for their reputation. It was the son. Built like a wrestler. It was said that he was the pre war heavy weight boxing champion of Lithuania. The family survived in the forest or hiding. I do not remember. The older BIRGERs, had a son in Netanyia where the SHEMESH family lived and through him they sent that five pound over. Once the money was in the camp, I swallowed my pride and accepted it. For lack of anything better to do, I tried to pick up a few English words, as well as to go back to my childhood violin playing in which I did not have much success. Sometime in May or June 1946, my roommate Berl BLUESTEIN, coming from a meeting of the camp committee, in which he was a member, tells me that the camp store needs a man who knows some English and that maybe I should go over to apply. The camp store was the warehouse where all the supplies for the camp used to arrive and be divided up amongst the different groups. In charge of this storehouse was an American sergeant who did not seem anxious to go back home and transferred himself to the service of UNRRA. We believed that he was born in some province of Yugoslavia and came as a teenager to the United States, for he spoke some sort of Yugoslav dialects, even a fairly good Italian. He was not known as a sympathetic person and was quite abrupt, at times outright rude. Continuously in need of a few liras, I went to apply. The warehouse had a little office for that American and in front of the office a line of people was formed, applicants for the job. When I finally came in, he spoke to me in English. The whole interview took maybe five minutes and I was sent away. Next morning I was told by a messenger from the community, that he wanted to see me. This time he started to explain what is required of me by showing me the books and how it is done. He realized shortly, that half of what he was saying went right over my head. He switched to Italian using some Slavic words as well as German. I must have shown some signs of comprehension for after a while, he called in the man whom I was suppose to replace and told him to teach me the rest. That man remained with me for two weeks in which he taught me the bookkeeping needed in the warehouse. He was a German, one of the two in the camp. He was very polite, in the mid twenties and very helpful. One can imagine the questions we had regarding those two, but their politeness (which we certainly lacked) and willingness to help was so disarming, that we could not muster the courage to ask them point blank what was their roles in the war. He, the one whose job I was taking over, could talk about anything. On my question where he was during the war? He told me that he studied in Greece. In fact he spoke a fluent Greek. He used it in dispatching the truck drivers among whom there were some Greeks. In answer to my second question; why he is leaving the job, he answered that he can not put up with that American ignoramus any longer. Even now, I can not believe that those two Germans, in the mid twenties, healthy specimens, were studying during the war. Yet they were too intelligent and educated to be ordinary soldiers. I wondered what secrets they carried.
The warehouse had two sections. The larger one was the food department, where half a dozen trucks belonging to the warehouse used to travel some forty-fifty kilometers daily to a place called “Maglie” to pick up the food supply for the camp. The other part was for everything else but food, like soap, cleaning articles, brooms, mops, left over articles yet from the U.S. Army like tents, coats, even bags with chocolate bars that were so old nobody would take them, yet were kept under lock and key. This, the second part, I was put in charge of. The first, the food part was supervised by a friend of mine, Emil ETTINGER, and the responsibility to look after the dispatching of the trucks, was another friend, Zygmunt SUCHTER. The building itself was made of stone and was cool in the summer, facing the Mediterranean. In the middle of the building was a large gate, which must have served as an entrance for a vehicle, but now it was the only entrance to the storehouse. There were some 8-10 workers in all. Some I can still remember: Moishe PENCAK, Max POTASHNIK, Chaim SHINDLER, a certain LOLEK, a certain LIFSHITZ and a certain FEINBIR. Our job consisted of receiving the daily allotment of food and dividing it up according to the number of souls in every group or unit. Like the so called “Kibuzim”, religious groups, day care centers whose two cooks and managers were girl friends with whom we used to spend time together. Their names were Zena HERMAN and Irka PIEKARCZYK. Afterwards the trucks used to deliver it to its destinations. Special rations used to come for the allied employees of the camp, which were a whole lot different than for us refugees. We, who worked there could only look at it and feel our mouths water. Our initial pay was three thousand liras per month, some fifteen dollars. Just for comparison one could get a pair of U.S. army pants for a thousand liras, or a pair of shoes for fifteen hundred liras, or a kilogram of bread was one hundred liras. This way one can assure himself of a full stomach all the month round.
There were many possibilities with three thousand liras a month for us survivors,
whose dreams for years was the immediate full stomach and second, to come out alive. There were other fringe benefits. Not the most honorable in normal times and years of plenty, but before one decides to pass judgment, let one put oneself in our shoes and go to that time, if one really can. Those benefits were; if a shipment of fresh fruit or vegetables arrived and those working around it tasted or eating some, which was against the rule, we, the supervisors, not only condoned it but joined them. At times we used to receive shipments of fresh meat. We, not only the workers, but everyone in the camp, suspected some irregularities concerning the meat. At the beginning it used to be the well known Australian sheep, which used to arrive frozen. But later on, instead of the sheep, we began to receive half carcasses of slaughtered local oxen. Those oxen were used in southern Italy as beasts of burden, and after they have out lived their usefulness at the end of their lives, they would be slaughtered for meat. I have never in my live seen meat like it, nor ever since. It was like chewing rubber literally. No matter how long it was cooked in the camp kitchen, the small pieces that we received in our soup had to be thrown out. I know for a fact that it used to be cooked for 6 hours but to no avail. Keeping in mind that this meat was being fed to young people with good teeth and huge appetites who have only recently eaten grass, clover leaves, rotten raw potatoes, water logged coal and alike, (here I am speaking for myself), yet could not chew it after 6 hours of cooking. Nobody will convince me that the Italian ate it, unless it was ground up and used in some sort of sausage or bologna. It was our belief that, somewhere along the way from the port or ports to the distribution centers, the Australian sheep were substituted for the local unfit for consumption oxen carcasses. We were also sure that some in the high ups of the UNRRA organization in Italy, who were Britishers or Americans, were involved in that switch. We, as refugees and survivors did not dare make a fuss over it. As the saying goes; “You do not look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Sometimes we used to get in a truckload of fresh fish from the distribution point in Maglie. They were supposedly freshly caught, but by the time they used to be delivered from the net to the distribution point in Maglie, where they waited for the trucks from the fifty kilometers away refugee camps to come to pick them up and the actual trip to the camps, all this without any refrigeration and in the southern Italian summer sun, I think the best way to put it would be that “we could smell the fish before we could hear the approaching trucks.” In my writing I put in several events that have nothing to do with my story. I mention them, for they are part of the events of that time, regardless of their insignificants or importance. One day, an acquaintance of mine tells me that there is a woman in a certain house who wants to see me and if I would not mind to come over. I was curious to know why would a complete stranger want to see me. In the evening I came over. In that big house with many rooms all occupied by refugees, I was directed to her room where I found her alone. A woman of about thirty, average in physical appearance, medium height, not thin nor fat, not beautiful neither ugly, an average woman. After asking me to sit down she says to me; are you from Shershev? Yes. Did you know the Family KRUGMAN? Yes. What were their children’s names? I started from the oldest who was my uncle Eli’s age, was drafted in the reserve in March 1939 and who did not return to Shershev but during the Bolshevik era, kept on writing to his parents from Warsaw asking them to send parcels to his former boss in Lodz, now in Warsaw. I said; Sloime, Mulick, Chaiya and the youngest Tevyeh. Then she says: Do you know what happened to Shloime? As far as I know I said, he was in Warsaw in 1939 to 1941, and that is all I know. Did you know that he was married? Yes, I knew, as far as I remember he married in 1938. After a minute’s silence, she said to me; I was his wife.
I must have spent two hours there that evening. I found out that with the capitulation of Poland, he, Shloime, came for her to Lodz and shortly afterwards they moved to Warsaw where he became a policeman in the ghetto. A couple of months later, his former boss and family moved from Lodz to Warsaw, where Shloime, her husband, began to visit them very often. Unknown to her there developed a romance between him, Shloime, and his former boss’s daughter. Now it became clear to me why Shloime kept on asking his parents to send parcels to his former boss and not to himself. Eventually she found out about the affair between her husband and the boss’s daughter. Life between the two of them became strained. It got so far that they decided to commit suicide together. However, he backed out at the last moment. They split up. She succeeded to get out of the ghetto in the fall of 1942. He remained as a policeman up to the ghetto uprising and apparently perished with the rest of the ghetto’s police when the Germans had no more use for them. I mentioned the above episode for I feel that the family KRUGMAN deserved to be noted when one speaks about Shershev. For the above episode about Shloime KRUGMAN, who was the son of Chatzkel KRUGMAN who initiated the thought, the concept of a Hebrew school in Shershev right after the First World War, and saw it come true in 1925. He remained the school’s main person of authority up to 1939 when the Bolsheviks came and closed the school, as Hebrew was forbidden in the Soviet Union. I am writing about a period in time in an era when the world, in particular Europe, was trying to come to grips with the after math of the Second World War. For us Jews, it was a calamity from which the Jewish people of Europe would never recover for with the destruction of central and eastern European Jewry, we have last the users of our Yiddish language and what’s more, the creative source of the rich and diverse Yiddish literature. It is as if the womb of our people was wrenched out.
Jews all over, or what have remained of our people across the sea or in the land of Israel, have united in the attempt to ease the pain of the quarter of a million surviving Jews, who were languishing in hundreds of refugee camps across Germany, Austria and Italy, by trying to find for them permanent homes. The liberators, or conquerors or allies, whatever one wished to call them, were quite content to let them be where they are rather than to open their own doors to them. For appearances sake, the United States let a trickle of survivors in with no effect on the total sum what so ever. The majority of the survivors were trying to get to the land of Israel (Palestine at that time) but, as I mentioned earlier, the British were dead set against it. Abandoned by the world, all we could do is beg, but nobody heard nor listened. So we became vocal by marches and protests. It started a period of protest marches in every refugee camp including ours. Not a week went by without one. There was no shortage of leaders from among us. Capable, intelligent, educated and dedicated survivors of the older groups. People of the age from thirty to fifty who managed to get an education before the war. Yet we got a boost from another source, from the land of Israel. Some of the former members of the Jewish brigade who volunteered to stay behind to prepare us to the coming struggle with the British in entering the land of Israel, as well as to the life there. Others came from there as volunteers for the UNRRA, to help out the refugees, but also with another secret mission to organize and work with the “Bricha”, the secret organization whose mission was to smuggle us refugees into the land of Israel.
The British knew the purpose of their being in the camp and were not happy with it, but as volunteers, they did not get paid and as qualified counselors and educators, they replaced highly paid UNRRA employees, thereby saving the UNRRA money. I recall the first one, named Arye, a young man of 27-28 years, and well built, an excellent athlete, who used to take out a large group of us every morning for exercise. In reality, he had much to do with the illegal activity “Bricha” (smuggling of survivors to Israel). He used to come to me at work asking what was there new in my department, so he could write out requisitions for it, supposedly for the camp, but I knew that truck used to come and take them away to the embarkation points for use on the boats carrying the illegal refugees to the shores of Israel. His replacement, by the name of SHWARTZ, was always dressed in his military uniform. He was in his thirties, an exceptionally bright and smart man, besides a good conspirator. I know for a fact that when four Italian sailors were arrested by the British at an embarkation point and put in an Italian jail near Maglie, he, dressed in a British officer’s uniform, came to that jail with forged papers and took those four Italians with him. The British conducted an investigation but never found the impersonator or culprit or the four Italians. There were rumors of other such feats attributed to him but the one I mentioned I know for a fact. That fellow SHWARTZ, was replaced by another Israeli with the name of NISHT. Born in the eastern Polish shtetl “Krinky”, he went to then “Palestine” as a pioneer where he studied and became a teacher. When he came to our camp he was in his fifties, to old to perform the feats of his predecessor. However, we soon found out that he possessed other qualities that made up for the disadvantages of age in comparison to the two previous ones. Up to that time I have never met a smarter, more intelligent, more understanding and above all, a wiser man than he was. When he spoke, one would not dare to interrupt the flow of wisdom coming out of his mouth. I often used to think that if I had the time and would not be embarrassed, I would follow him with a notebook, taking down everything he would say. Despite the fact that he and I were on the opposite poles of the Zionistic movement and I never won an argument with him, I loved to listen to his sensible articulation of his convictions.
His wife joined him shortly after his arrival. She was an erect, tall woman with a handsome face. Together they made an attractive and imposing, to us, elderly couple. They too, did not remain more than a few months in St. Marina di Leuca. It was a year and a half later that we have heard that their only child, a son, was killed by the Arabs in the battle for “Gush Etzion,” the four Jewish settlements some five kilometers south of Jerusalem. Shortly after this news, I was in Rome to pick up my visa for Canada. As I was coming out of the Canadian council that was situated in a large office building, right across the hall on a door I noticed a metal plate saying, “Director NISHT.” It gave his first name, too, but I no longer remember it. My first impulse was to go right in. Then I remembered that only a month ago he lost his only child in defense of a Jewish homeland. How could I, single young and fit Jewish man with no responsibility for and to anybody, who have lost his entire family because we had no home to run to, can abandon his dream, his belief, all his slaughtered family stood for, and go to Canada, while his brethren in the land of Israel are getting ready for the onslaught of five Arab armies, who not only want to prevent the creation of a Jewish homeland, but getting ready to annihilate the entire Jewish population there? I could not face him. With a feeling of deep shame; worse, betrayal, I turned away.
It was only on our first visit to Israel, as Ruth and I sat at a sidewalk café on Disengoff that I said; “I was sure that I would recognize many faces passing by. There were so many people I knew that went to Israel, yet we are sitting here half an hour and not a single familiar face.” No sooner did I say it, when I see a couple walking by. The woman was a stranger but the man was very familiar. I grabbed Ruth and we followed them for a dozen meters. Assuring myself that this is the man, I overtook him, but before I had a chance to open my mouth, he said “Moniek” (the name I was called in the refugee camps.) It had been nineteen years since we saw each other last, yet this man, now in his seventies remembered my name. The woman by his side was not his wife, so I concluded that his wife passed away. I have found out that he was an Israeli ambassador four years in Poland and as many in Romania. He spoke with pride that he personally handed over to Jews of those two countries 40 thousand papers to go to Israel, and remembered most of their names. We use to see him on later trips to Israel but this too had to end; this deserving, devoted son of Israel. Rest in Peace.
Let us return to the year 1946 in St. Marina di Leuca. There we were introduced to a five work day week. As the camps on the heel of Italy were almost 100% Jewish, all offices and warehouses were closed on Saturdays. The same was applicable to the Christian leadership and administration, as the top executives were former allied officers and the administration employees were mostly Italians. All of them were Christians, so everything closed on Sundays. That gave me two full days of free time besides the evenings. The house keeping did not take up any time as our morning coffee used to be picked up by one of us with the bread for the day. Lunch time on the way to our room, I used to pass the kitchen and get our three portions of soup. In the evening, one of us used to go for coffee. I can not say we dirtied many dishes, so there was nothing for me to do after work. Having received during that time a couple of parcels with clothing from my uncle Shloime AUERBACH from New York, I was reasonably well dressed for a refugee. In the beginning I did my own laundry, if one can call it so. That is washed one pair of underwear, while the other pair I would be wearing. But with the receiving of parcels, I had clothes in reserve. I even found an Italian family, a mother with grown children, among many who lived around the villas, who used to do my laundry for a minimal pay. One of her daughters, aged nineteen, used to wait for me often after dark in the bushes that grew around their houses, waiting for a bit of affection.
As the camp took roots, the theatrical group began to put on performances more often. We even used to be visited by traveling Italian theatrical groups. The “joint” sponsored a traveling group consisting of survivors, whose performances were of good quality and they were close to our hearts. There were a couple professional artists who somehow managed to survive and who were sponsored by the “joint” too. They used to travel from camp to camp to entertain us. At that time, there was no greater delight. Sometimes in the middle of 1946 we, the workers of the warehouse became qualified as civilians and started to receive a civilian pay, which meant for us, that from three thousand liras per month, we began to receive thirteen thousand and five hundred liras monthly. I started putting away money, but not liras. Instead, I used to convert them into American dollars. St. Marina de Leuca had a couple of so called restaurants where one could buy all the cheap table wine one desired, but to eat, all that could be found was fried to a crisp, fish or almonds. As the price for wine ran between thirty five to fifty liras a liter, we could afford to go in there for a glass of wine and a half kilo of almonds once a week. The fish was impossible to eat. These, so called restaurants were part of a dozen or so small enterprises owned by the local Italians. The others were some small grocery stores, an out door movie house and a “café” as elegant as the restaurants. As admissions to the movie house was very cheap, we used to go there every time a new film used to arrive, which happened about every week. The “café house” was near the movie, and the few of us who could afford used to go there for ice cream, which was made on the premises. I, too used to go in there for a treat once in a while, and after finishing my dish of ice cream, wished I could afford another one.
Many of us survivors during that time found and established contact with relative over seas. Like myself, they to began to receive parcels and money from them. No longer was one rich if he had two pairs of pants or three changes of underwear. Some of the parcels contained too small or too large clothing items, which were of no use to us. People began to sell it and in time it became a full time occupation for some of us, by buying it from us and peddling it in the surrounding villages. Mail service in the after war Italy had finally established itself and I started to receive regular mail, mostly from my uncle Shloime AUERBACH, but often from my father’s cousin Chaim SHEMESH and his wife Sonia, my mother’s cousin Sheine-Rachel and her husband Velvel. Both those families lived in the land of Israel. I also established contact with my only aunt from my father’s side. She was Sara KANTOROWITZ, my father’s brother Shalom’s wife. They emigrated in the mid or late twenties to Argentina, got married there and in 1930 Shalom went with his wife to the Soviet Union, where he died in 1933. She, his wife Sara, returned to Argentina with her infant daughter shortly afterwards. She found me via my father’s cousin Yaakov-Kopel NISELBAUM, who left his shtetl, Malch for Argentina in the late twenties. Another one I started corresponding with was my only relative that survived the Holocaust. It was Menachem, now Melvin GOLDFARB, the son of Yosel (Joseph) who was my mother’s first cousin, who lived in Pruzany. He, Menachem, like me, was the sole survivor of his family.
Meantime, we had been sitting in Italy for over a year with no hope of getting into the land of Israel. The British blockade was getting tighter. The few barely sea worthy boats that tried to run the blockade had little chance of making it. Some of us began to lose hope, some courage and some both. A fair amount of us who succeeded in contacting relatives across the sea began to be tempted to join them. I tried to resist the temptation, holding on to that hope that eventually, I will get somehow to the land of Israel. I can still recall a letter which I received from my uncle Shloime (Solomon) AUERBACH in which he wrote among other things; Remember Moishele, you are all that remained of our family in Europe and all that is left. We want you to be with us. You have suffered enough. As far as defending the “Yishuv” (the Jewish population in Palestine) I had three sons in the U.S. Army during the war and they came back alive, Thank G-D. If need be, I will send them. You have paid your dues. Come to us.” It was not the eloquence of the letter as much as his love and concern for me that moved me and triggered a thought that maybe I should think my plan over. In the same fall of that year 1946, I recall receiving a letter from Chaim and Sonia SHEMESH from Netanyah, Palestine, in which Sonia wrote apparently with some concern for me and my safety; the situation here is getting worse and more dangerous by the day. There is no peace or tranquility here now and we can not promise it to you in the near future. Should you decide to come, do not expect much, so family and friends will not disappoint you. Without waiting any longer my uncle Sloime began to look for a way to bring me to the states. It was necessary to make papers with a guarantee that the potential immigrant will not be a burden on the government, the richer the guarantor, the better the chances of the prospective immigrant. My uncle being himself a poor man could do nothing in this case. So he turned to his nephew Irving ABERBACH for help. Irving was a son of my mother’s youngest brother “Lippah” who died as young man in the states, leaving behind a wife Becky (Rebecca) and a young son. In our family in New York, Irving was the “rich” man. He jumped to the occasion and began working on papers to bring me over.
Life in camp became very routine for me and, I suspect, for others too. The only thing that changed was the weather. November and December, the beautiful blue sky was covered with clouds. Heavy rain at times became a daily occurrence. The inviting sea turned rough and 3-4 meter high waves were pounding the rocky shore continuously. Nobody wanted to challenge the huge waves and be thrown onto the sharp protruding spike like rocky shore. In those evenings we used to sit and talk about the situation in the land of Israel. About the injustice committed by the world and still being committed towards us. About the open anti Jewish policy of the British government, of hanging Jews in the land of Israel if caught with a weapon, while Arabs get off with three months in jail, or not even being arrested. And so, in such cold cloudy, rainy and depressing days we said good bye to the year 1946 and welcomed the year 1947, wondering what it held for us. Already in January rumors began to circulate that there will be changes made regarding some refugee camps in southern Italy. In February, some of the neighboring camps were being transferred. Neighboring camps like St. Cesaria, St. Crocce, St. Marina De Bani, were being slowly moved further north. Two camps that housed non Jews were being emptied. In fact were already mostly empty. Their occupants, non Jews found the doors of democratic countries open to them. Most of them left for the U.S. and Canada. Many went to South America and Australia. To enter those countries, a statement that they were anti communists or anti Bolshevik sufficed to be let in. That they were Nazi sympathizers or Nazi collaborators, even worse, that many were murderers who served in the Nazis organized battalions that took part in the slaughter of Jews did not matter. The two new camps for us Jews were near the port city of Bari. The closer one, only 3-4 kilometers away carried the name “Transit Camp No. 1.” The second one, 8 kilometer south of Bari, was called “Palese.” Yet our camp, St. Marina Di Leuca, remained intact. There was talk that we will be left in place.
By the beginning of April, all the neighboring camps were empty. We, in the warehouse were told to make room for a large shipment of food, which began to arrive a few days later. It came from the distribution warehouses in Maglie. As the camps were closing up, there was no need for a distribution center. The food was non perishable, consisting of canned goods and dry foods, like sugar, flour, cereal and alike. The warehouse was filled to capacity. Excluding perishables, we had enough food to last for the one thousand people in the camp for months. We were given the impression that we will remain in St. Marina Di Leuca for a long time to come. From our warehouse, the main distribution centre of food to the different groups or “Kibbutzim” as some were called used to take place on Wednesdays. Other items, like vegetables, sometimes fruits and fresh meat were distributed whenever available. Only one week after we have received that huge delivery of food, which could have lasted us for months, on a Thursday morning, a day after we distributed the weekly rations to the camp, there suddenly appeared two military jeeps with 3 British officers in each. Following them, was a convoy of about three doze heavy trucks and escorted by several dozen “Carabiniery” Italian police. Lining themselves up along the street in front of the warehouses, the half dozen British officers came into the warehouse and asked for the manager. We pointed to the office door behind which they have all disappeared. We remained in the warehouse trying to figure out what all this means. After an hour they all come out, including our boss who tells us that those trucks came to take back all the food delivered last week, and that during this week we will all be transferred to the two camps near Bari. The convoy of trucks came well prepared. Not only with their own police protection but even with their own porters, who started to load the trucks right away.
Seeing the loading is progressing smoothly, the British officers left to look around St. Marina Di Leuca. After all, it was a nice spot if looked after. As soon as they left, my boss, the manager calls me into his office. Asking me to sit down, which did not happen too often, he says to me: Do you see what is happening? I answer, yes. It seems that the story of us remaining here is not true. Impatiently, he says: No, I do not mean this. These thirty odd trucks with food are worth in Italy over a million dollars and maybe much more. The whole pretext of this camp staying on was to have been a farce. Those people, pointing with is head to the door, needed an excuse to write off all this food supposedly as distributed, so they sent it here. Now since there is no more food in the distribution warehouses in Maglie, and the papers are showing that all has been sent to camps, the slate is clean and now they have come to collect the spoils. I had been looking after this warehouse, he went on, and guarding it to the best of my ability, never touching anything or taking anything that wasn’t mine and I hope that you did the same, but to look at this outrageous theft they are committing, makes me feel like a sucker, as if they are looking at me and calling me to my face; You fool!! For my own self esteem I have to get something, even if it is only crumbs. Go make up a list of one or two groups of “Kibbutzim” that supposedly did not get their rations and come to me with the list as soon as they are back. Claim that you did not have time to do it yesterday. I have never expected to hear such words from my boss, knowing how he used to check and double check every item that used to arrive. Then after distribution he used to add up every item to make sure that it corresponds with the amount received. It happened on a few occasions that we were short a couple of kilograms of fruits, to which we used to help ourselves while on the premises. I can still remember the accusing looks he used to give us, especially me, for I was in charge, and had to have kept an eye on it. I made up a list and as soon as the Britishers returned and went into his office, I walked in and handing him the list, I said; those people did not get their weekly ration yesterday, what am I supposed to do if everything is being taken away? I said it loud and clearly enough that they could understand. He looked at me and asked; why didn’t you do it yesterday? You know how busy we were yesterday, there was no time, I said. He looked at me, then at the list and then at them. They looked not so much at me, as at him and at each other. Their faces could not hide the puzzled or the suspicious expression, but nobody said a word. He shoved the list almost into my face saying: Go make it up and fast. I do not know if those British officers believed the charade or not, but even if not, they threw him a bone and did not make a fuss over it. We put the supposedly order on a side. Before dark, all the three dozen trucks were loaded.
The entire camp came to watch as our hope of remaining in place was evaporating. Despite the fact that we wanted to get out of the camp, we wanted to go to a permanent place where we could start to rebuild our lives, but to be dragged to another camp, which we were sure would not be as good as this one, did not appeal to us at all. There were some among us who suggested that we should stop them from doing it, but the majority was not too enthusiastic about it. After all, why attack the Italian police that are obeying orders, and who, in general, were benevolent toward us Jews, and secondly, we are not fighting for our lives, but for a chance to put our heads down. For this it is not worth getting arrested. Certainly not worth getting shot at. Before dark yet, they all left. After everybody left work, my boss called me in and told me to sell the food we put aside and we will divide the money. Next morning when we all came to work, I let the workers in on the secret, for I had no idea how or where to sell it. I told them that I am getting half the money and will share it with them. Next day it was all sold and after giving half of the money to my boss, I divided the rest among us. It came to five thousand liras for each of us, some twenty five dollars. Meantime our camp was being transferred. We, that is my two roommates, BLISKOWSKY and BLUESTEIN and I, were being transferred to transit camp No. 1 in Bari. My boss asked me to stay on a couple more days to clean up the papers. My two roommates went ahead with a letter from our camp commandant stating that I will come soon, to please get a room for the three of us together. The camp commandant’s name was Pringle, a Torontonian. Some eight or ten of us remained in St. Marina Di Leuca to clean up our affairs. Three or four days later a truck came for us to take us to the new place.
The new camp; Transit camp No. 1 Bari, was quite a different camp from St. Marina Di Leuca. It consisted of a dozen cement block barracks covered with asbestos roofs. Each barrack was partitioned into half a dozen sections by stone walls, and each section was divided into four parts, by a sail cloth like material to the height of two meters. It left the entire upper part of the walls open to everybody and of course carried every sound right across the barrack. The sail cloth partition did not offer any private conversations and at night, if you closed the light in your part, you could see what was going on at your neighbor’s section. Each group of three or four was assigned one such partition. My former roommates BLISKOWSKY and BLUESTEIN got a room and held the space for me. The camp must have been a former military base built in a hurry. The dozen barracks were built in two rows, six on either side of the dusty unpaved road that led from the barracks to the entrance of the camp. The camp was surrounded by a barb wire fence and had one entrance. Very much like a camp. Besides the barracks, there was a kitchen, bath house, a larger building that served as the camp’s main office and part of it served as a post office. Yet another building was used as a cultural center, where one could find a daily local Italian newspaper or some Hebrew papers from the land of Israel. A small building served as a canteen which was run by the camp community. Into this camp were sent part of each of the camps from the Italian heel. Here I met some men who hailed from Pruzany or were in that ghetto. Some were from shtetls around Pruzany like, Maltch, Bialowieza, Gajnovka, Kamienietz-Litevsk, who were sent by the Germans into the ghetto and with the liquidation of the ghetto, they came to Auschwitz. Some of them I knew personally, some by name only and some not at all. Coming from the same ghetto made us sort of “Landsleit” compatriots. We were around 15-20 men including us three. We made our own circle that got in touch with the "Pruzaner” association in New York. Here again I must compliment the Pruzaner Association for their help and generosity. Just like the ghetto in Pruzany responded warmly to the plight of refugees that were brought in there, so did the Pruzaner Association in New York respond generously to all the “Landsleit” (towns people) in the displaced persons camp, regardless if they were native Pruzeners or were there only in the ghetto. During my stay over a year in that transit camp No.1 Bari; I have received twice parcels from the Pruzener community. I cannot make such a statement about the Shershev community in New York.
Our life style changed quite a bit from the previous life in St. Marina Di Leuca. Many of us used to spend a good part of the day at the sea shore. True, not the sandy beaches one sees in pictures, but the jagged rocks of the Italian heel. Never the less, it was a sea shore. We had the privacy of our room and the extent of the entire village to roam in. Here we were confined to the oppressive heat of the crowded barrack or, if one preferred, to stay out of the sun, or walk back and forth on the dusty so called street that lay between the two rows of barracks. Yes we were free to go out of the camp, but we were 3-4 kilometers from Bari, a long walk on a hot day. And what does one do in the city? Air conditioning was unknown in stores or restaurants in the year 1947. Besides, to go into a restaurant, one needed money. I did manage to save a nice sum since we began to receive the higher pay. In fact I came to Bari with almost three hundred U.S. dollars in my pocket. But without the monthly pay cheque and the temptation of the big city, Bari, it became easy to part with it. Never the less, we used to go and sometimes get a ride with the trucks that used to supply the camp or even a few of us used to go together and take a “Carozza (carriage) into the city. The city had a theater by the name “Teatro-Petruceli” where we used to go to see performances and operas for which I developed a taste. In no I time got hooked on it and among my peers became a sort of connoisseur. For this honor, I am indebted to a certain Isaak (Itzik) CHOPPER from the town of Wolkovisk. He was a man twenty years my senior, who was a friend of my two roommates who were closer to him in age than I. He came to Auschwitz a couple of months before me and despite his age, he managed to survive. We got acquainted with him in St. Marina Di Leuca. It seemed that he was a man of means before the war, for he used to tell of his frequent trips to Warsaw where he used to attend theater and opera. If I ever was skeptical about his stories, I was proven wrong going with him to the opera. He knew every bar of each aria, and used to notice immediately any wrong note, to which the Italian audience used to react instantly.
Bari, as a city of close to half a million people had its share of movie houses, an amusement park and some nice parks. One I remember was a nice park near the water front, where we used to walk in late afternoons and early evenings. The center of Jewish activity was on Via Garuba, the number I no longer remember. Hardly ever did I go to the city without making there a stopover. One could find friends and acquaintances, catch up on the latest news from the land of Israel, find out the black market price of the dollar, which I was in process of exchanging into liras, in order to spend it. From there all official and non official orders regarding the displaced persons camps for Jews used to come out. It was there that the decision of who goes on the next illegal boat to Israel was made and it was there that one could donate a weapon to be sent to Israel. Like myself, who shortly after arriving to Transit Camp No. 1, got a hold of a colt but no bullets. I gave it there, and some months later I donated a twenty two caliber Italian Beretta, which I have bought in St. Marina De Leuca, this time loaded. One of the big shots there was one from our ghetto Pruzany, who also was a survivor of Auschwitz and was in the beginning in one of the refugee camps in south Italy. Because of the crowding in the barracks of our new camp, one did not have to go far to look for company. In my barrack, some half a dozen rooms were occupied by a group from a shtetl by the name of Siemiatycze. All former partisans, among them two families, that somehow managed to survive. They had an inexhaustible amount of stories to tell.
I wish I had the talent and time to write about some of their experiences. I sincerely hope that some of them have been recorded somewhere. One of those in my barracks was Hershel SHABAS, whose name is mentioned in the book “The Holocaust” written by Martin GILBERT. Not from GILBERT’s book, but from those very men from Siemiatycze in my barrack did I hear of their exploits under Hershel SHABAS’s command. They succeeded in placing some families or part families on scattered farms, away from preying eyes. Some of them survived. Among them was a woman by the name of Shifra, with two daughters, beauties, the older one a girl of about twenty two who was already married to that Hershel, the younger one by four years still single, was taking violin lessons and used to come to me to tune the fiddle. In fact almost all of those in our barrack were former partisans, having belonged to different groups, some strictly Jewish and some mixed groups. Who can attempt to tell all their stories that were so full of suffering, persecution, fear, bravery and heroism. In our camp one of the barracks, the only one that was occupied when our people started arriving, housed people of different nationalities which made no sense to us. There were Spaniards, Britishers who claimed to have lived on Gibraltar and who had British passports, a Russian professor who spoke two dozen languages, even a black American, or at least he claimed to be an American. His story was that while in the army he struck a white officer and therefore is not allowed to return back home. He could make himself understood in several languages, like Italian, German, French and of course English. When ever he head a group of people around him, he used to like singing for us that popular then song, “Chattanooga Choo-Choo”, which had a nice rhythm and sounded to us so American. He was also a good dancer and girls liked dancing with that exotic stranger at the dances that took place in the camp every month.
Because St. Marina Di Leuca was a refugee camp in name only but, in reality, it was a former summer resort and we lived there in houses next door to the local Italian population or among them, it was impossible to know every one of us refugees. But in transit camp in those crowded premises, we kept on “bumping” into one another and unavoidably met people which I never met before in my previous camp. Besides, there were many from previously other camps. As my friends and acquaintances in Leuca were mostly former concentration camp inmates, I never had the chance to meet survivors of another category, namely those that survived in hiding, or Aryan papers or better still, in the German uniform as soldiers on the front lines. Yes, two of them in transit camp survived as Germans. Raised in the same Polish shtetl, they parted ways at the outbreak of the war. Each of them somehow made their way into Germany, claiming to be of German descent. They jointed the German army. Neither one knew of the other, until by coincidence they bumped into each other at some train shuttling on a forsaken station. This meeting might have saved both their lives. Why? I asked. Their biggest danger lurked not so much from the fact that they were circumcised as much as from the fact that they did not receive any mail. As expected, the soldiers in his or their detachments used to receive every so often mail but neither one of them did. Understandable, neither had any family alive. They were killed in some death camp or somewhere else. In time, they began to run out of excuses, but since they met, they began to correspond with one another and their problem was to a great extent solved.
There were individuals, part families and whole families, true, very few that survived in hiding on their own, or with gentiles help. Some were hidden in dugouts, cellars, attics and what not. Some spent, in such hiding places, two, three or more years. No wonder that some of them were affected mentally or physically or both. I used to see almost every day, two women, a mother and a daughter walking by in front of our barrack. The girl of no more than twenty used to attract attention because of her beauty. Her mother who could not have been more than fifty looked liked seventy. I was curious as to why such a beautiful girl would always walk with her mother and never with a male companion. After a little inquiry, I was told that she and her mother spent three years in a closet and it must have affected her. Interestingly, about a month later in the “main” street of the camp, I was approached by the mother of the girl with these words; I have heard good things about you. May I speak to you confidentially? Sure, I answer. She took me aside and began to tell me all her history and all that happened to them during the war, telling me about their being hidden in a closet for three years and how it affected her daughter; her fear of people and crowds and her distrust of everybody. After telling all this, she turned to me with a favor: Would I mind going out with her daughter one evening, at the same time hoping she is not imposing her daughter on me. She only hopes that by being in the company with a young man, she will come out of her shell. I gladly agreed, looking forward to spending an evening in the company of a very pretty girl. Now, her mother says to me, having arranged with me the date, she will have to persuade her daughter to go with me by herself. She said that she will let me know when to come for her. A few days later, the mother came to tell me to come that evening. I came to their little partition in the evening not knowing what to expect. To my surprise, everything was quite nice and, to my invitation for a walk, the girl got up like an obedient student and walked out with me. We walked for a couple of hours up and down the main track of the camp, from the gate to the back fence, which served as the walking promenade for the camp inhabitants. I soon found out that despite the fact that by my side is a beautiful twenty year old woman, I am dealing here with a naïve, sincere, fifteen year old pre war, very innocent girl, with whom I had no intention of getting involved. Here I mentioned a couple of the large variety of actors or shall I say broken lives and souls that made up the diversity of the denizens of the post war refugee camps.
The second refugee camp, to which many of us were sent from the Italian heel, was “Paliese”, eight kilometers to the south of Bari. This camp was larger than my “transit camp”, both in number of refugees and in space. Unlike my camp that must have been built shortly before or early in the war for Italian servicemen, “Paliese” was put up by the allied forces after taking over southern Italy. Those were small barracks of about three meters wide by ten meters long, divided half way in the middle, forming two rooms of five by three meters in size. The entire barrack was made from corrugated asbestos sheeting, and dispersed in a large olive tree plantation, like cabins in a small forest. In its favor was the fact that it was situated on the shore of the blue Adriatic with its clear inviting waters. To “Paliese” went quite a few of my friends and acquaintances, among them Zygmund SUCHTER, Max MONETA, his then girl friend, Irka PIEKARCZYK with her married sister and husband, Moishe PENCAK, with his pregnant wife, who gave birth to a son there and to whose “Brit-Mila” (circumcision) I was invited. My first attendance of such an event since the beginning of the war and I might add, one of the very few that took place in Italy among the survivors in those days.
Sometimes in the middle of 1947, the “joint”, the American Jewish Benevolent Organization began to supplement our food ration. As it was not practical to do it every week, we began to receive it once a month. The supplement consisted of a can of evaporated milk, a half a kilogram of cheese and half a kilogram of salted beef. As we three shared our ration, we drew it together. Not having where to store the meat, we used to cook it on a borrowed “Primus” stove at once. It used to take many hours for the beef to cook and three quarters of it was fat. So our meat supplement lasted for one meal. We have not seen milk in years so we treated ourselves to a feast by pouring the three cans of milk in one large can adding some coco, and boiled up a one time a month royal drink. With the cheese, we were more frugal and it used to last for a week. I am not sure how it fell into place, that my roommate Leibel BLISKOWSKY became the housekeeper in our room. He undertook the responsibility of keeping it clean. Well, there is a reason for it; the important job was to keep the tiled floor clean as it used to get covered with a fine dust every day. The only way to do it is by wiping it thoroughly with a wet rag that had to be rinsed several times while wiping the floor, in order to get the sand out of it. Otherwise, that is if not rinsed, the sand used to be smeared all over the floor leaving marks. That is exactly what our third roommate BLUESTEIN used to do and no amount of teaching him helped. Eventually BLISKOWSKY got mad and told him not to wash the floor. He will rather do it for himself and for him that is BLUESTEIN. It was only shortly before BLUESTEIN left for Canada that he admitted doing it deliberately in order to get out of this job. In transit camp BLUESTEIN became the buyer for the camp canteen. His everyday job was to go to the fruit market in Bari to buy fruit for the canteen. Unlike the nearby camp “Paliese”, there were no stands or small stores in our camp. The only outlet where one could buy the few elementary necessities was the canteen. It was considered a good job. Besides for the wages, it had some fringe benefits.
While yet in St. Marina Di Leuca somewhere around the end of 1946 or beginning of 1947, I received a letter from a Mrs. Liba ZBAR from Kingstone, Ontario, Canada, in which she wrote me that she hails from Shereshev. She was a friend of both of my parents in their and her childhood and adolescent. She left Shershev for Bialistock at the end of World War One, where she married and immigrated with her husband and two children to Canada in the twenties. She left behind in Shershev a mother, and a sister who married in the twenties to Abram KOLODITZKY. They had a yard good store. In the later twenties, her sister gave birth to a daughter Dvora. (Deborah). She concluded by telling me that she got my address from my Uncle Shloime (Solomon) and asked me if I know anything about her family she left behind. I knew them well. They lived not more than forty meters from us. They shared half a big house. The other half belonged to an elderly woman and a daughter of marriageable age The house, like all the houses in Shershev was built of wood, but their store attached to the house was made of brick. He, Abram KOLODITZKY, was a tall man and as he had a good voice, used to conduct the prayers (Baal-Tefila) in the synagogue next door to us. Their daughter and only child inherited her father’s voice. During the two years under Bolshevik rule, she won the prize as singer to represent Belarus in Moscow. As delicately as I could, I wrote to her telling her how and when they were killed in Drohychin. After some time I received another letter from her in which she asked if she could be of any help to me. By then I had the papers for American that my cousin Irving ABERBACH sent me. According to the information I received from the American consulate in Napoli, I would have to wait to come to the states for at least 3-4 years. At my uncle Shloime’s suggestion, I asked Mrs. ZBAR to try to bring me to Canada and from there I could decide later if I wanted to come to the states or remain in Canada. At least I would be out of the hopelessness of the displaced persons camp. I would be closer to them and try to rebuild my own life. By that time my two roommates had their papers to go to America. Leible BLISKOWSKY got his from his uncle, Mr. BLISS and BLUESTEIN from his uncle in Philadelphia, whose name I no longer remember. As I was writing to Mrs. ZBAR to see if she could help me get to Canada, my roommate, BLUESTEIN asked me to write Mrs. ZBAR if for the same effort she could also help a friend of mine, namely him. I wrote. Shortly after, I received an answer from her that she will do whatever she can to bring us over.
At that time the displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria and Italy were bursting at the seams. Millions of people, many displaced during the war by the Germans in central and Eastern Europe, and many more from inside the former Soviet Union and now the extended Soviet borders, like eastern Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, the Rumanian provinces of Bessarabia and Buccovina. Let alone the countries of eastern Europe that suddenly found themselves under Soviet control, like Poland, east Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia. Many of those nationals did not cherish the idea of living under Bolshevism, but many more that sympathized or collaborated with the Nazis out of fear of retaliation sat and waited to go somewhere else. The few countries that were letting in some refugees, among them Canada, were under constant pressure to let in more and more The then Canadian government, traditionally anti-Semitic and smelling the prevailing mood of French and Waspish Canadians, did everything in its power not to let in Jews. To come out openly a year or two after the Holocaust and say, “ We do not want Jews” would be too embarrassing for the Canadian government, using the euphemistic excuse of needing certain skilled workers, tried not to let any Jews in. It is generally accepted that there are no Jewish miners, so Canadian immigration was looking for miners. It is just by coincidence that many smaller camps around Auschwitz, but affiliated with Auschwitz were coal mines in which only Jewish prisoners worked. A case in point was a camp near Auschwitz by the name of Swientochlowitz, where some three thousand Jews worked in the coal mine, under inhumane conditions. The mortality was high, but the number always stood at three thousand, being replaced immediately by new arrivals. Those that did not succumb under those conditions left the camp in January of 1945, in those infamous marches. How many of those three thousand and thousands from other camps that supplied cheap and disposable labor to the mines, survived to the end of the war? No one will ever know. But some did and they did work in mines. I hope that some of them did succeed to get into Canada. They certainly deserved it much more than those Nazis collaborators who served in Nazi uniforms as their guards.
Having exhausted the displaced persons camp of miners, Canada was looking for lumber jacks hoping that there were no Jews among them. But I knew some that came and worked in the forest as lumberjacks, hiding their Jewishness from their co workers, employers and even government officials upon arrival in Canada, feeling as if they are committing a crime by coming to Canada on what is conceived to be a non Jewish trade or profession. It took many of us some time to shake off the shackles of fear and unworthiness instilled in us by the Nazis and European nations during the German occupation. Having finished with lumberjacks, Canada began to look for farm hands. Knowing well that Jews were not permitted to own land in most east European countries, there was not much of a chance that there are Jewish farmers. There was a big demand for farm hands in Canada, especially in the western provinces. Christian benevolent associations collected names of farmers willing to sponsor refugees to come and work on their farms. It meant that any farmer in Canada could sponsor a farm hand or as many as he wishes providing he will give him employment for a year. There was in Kingstone, Ontario a Jewish man by the name of ABRAMSKY who besides being the owner of some department stores in and around the neighboring towns of Kingston, had a five hundred acre farm near a small town by the name of Picton, some thirty three kilometers from Kingston. Mrs. ZBAR asked that Mr. ABRAMSKY if he would sponsor two survivors, to which he agreed. The wheels of process for my coming to Canada began to turn.
The summer of 1947 was passing by, highlighted by frequent demonstrations against the British anti-Jewish policies. Those demonstrations were held in front of the British consulate in Bari. It used to provide a sort of entertainment for the local population, whose sympathy lay with us. From the two nearby camps, my transit camp and the other, Paliese, we used to come marching, a couple thousand strong, with large placards in hand through the main streets of Bari. We stopped traffic as we marched in the direction of the British consulate. The Italian police never interfered with us until we got to the consulate. By then the consulate used to be surrounded with a heavy cordon of Italian police. Coming into the square in front of the consulate, our marchers used to swell to twice its size having been joined by many local on-lookers and curiosity seekers. Having come face to face with the helmeted and heavily armed lines of Italian police, we used to yell all the “downs” that came to our minds. After an hour or so of yelling, our delegation used to be admitted into the consulate to deliver a petition and we used to disperse. We never confronted the local police with violence. It was a mutual understanding. They let us march unopposed through the streets, disrupting traffic. We in turn, behaved civilized in front of the consulate.
What we missed most in transit camp was the sea. It was bad enough to be cooped up in the crowded barracks, but under a constant summer sun of about 35 degrees Celsius, fenced in, in the middle of a dusty and rocky plain, after almost two years in Leuca, was very difficult. True, the city, Bari had its own beach, but for us, it entailed a trip to the city and from there, a tram ride to the beach. A luxury like this was too expensive for the average refugee. As many of us from the former camp in Leuca were sent to Palesie, it was more convenient for us in the transit camp to come on a visit to our friends in Paliese and spend there a day or more, which, of course, was much cheaper. The rocks on the Paliese beach were flat, clean and smooth, the water clear and transparent. There were even sweet water showers on the beaches. All made to serve the allied soldiers and who now left it for us. Several times during the long summer of 1947 I, too went to Paliese where I used to sleep over a night or two at my friend Zygmund SUCHTER’s place. We would spend the days in the water or at the sea shore. In return I used to play host to Zygmund SUCHTER when he used to come to the transit camp where he had his girl friend Zena HERMAN, his present day wife. As we had no spare cot in our room, I used to let Zygmund sleep in mine while I slept on the floor.