Out of the Shoebox Read online

  The next morning I got another reply from Hanna. This time her email contained files of memoirs written by her mother, Tonia. The content was horrific, it shed light on that dark period of persecution and extermination of the Jews of Chortkow as experienced by a nineteen-year-old girl. Tonia's accounts and memories were a stark contrast to the pastoral peace of the photos. A contrast that only heightened the tragedy.

  Within Tonia's memoirs, I found the horrifying description of her brother's murder. I might not have included this account, but I found two contradicting details referring to the same events. In one account, Tonia's sister appears to be the one who helps to bury her brother's body, but at other points she tells her family that her close friend, probably Pepe, is the one who helped. I chose to include this account, without any additional attempt to confirm who helped Tonia, for it’s clear to me that even if Pepe was not there in person, she was there in spirit, her closest friend, sharing everything Tonia went through. They were good friends and shared this terrible tragedy. Tonia wrote:

  "A few weeks before Passover, in March 1942, the Seret River overflowed from the snowmelt and flooded Mr. Weiser's new flour mill. The grain in the storerooms on the ground floor got wet. Jews were ordered to remove the wet sacks of grain and carry them to the upper levels. My brother volunteered for this task. The German SS men supervised the Jewish workers, abused them and made them run as they carried the sacks. Those who struggled were beaten half to death. My brother was a strong, healthy man and he excelled at this chore. He and his friends would help other Jews. Mr Drohowicer told us that my brother carried his sacks as well. Two SS men, who saw my brother at work, were impressed by his abilities and his willingness to help so invited him to row the boat they used to cross the surging river. When, in the middle of the river, one of them bent over and rocked the boat. The SS men then accused my brother of trying to drown them and one of them shot and killed him. When everyone came back from work, and my brother still had not returned, my mother had a feeling that something bad happened. She was so wracked with worry that she had a heart attack. She kept mumbling "my son is gone, my son is gone..." That night we learned my brother was one of three victims who were murdered that day. Early the next morning Frimka (my sister) and I went and pulled my brother's body out of the water with great difficulty. Not only was he a large strong man, but his body was waterlogged. We carried him together, off the beaten track, and buried him in the cemetery.

  “His death was a harsh blow. He was a gentle man, always willing to help his fellow man and, around there, were many people who needed help. That was the reason he had volunteered, in the early days, to the Judenrat Police..."

  It was Friday, December 28 2012. As I was driving, back from an early get together with friends, I heard the horoscopes on the radio. It said Virgos are experiencing an improvement in their health, and they are at their best. I smiled to myself and decided to change my morning plans. I went to visit my mother. As I was driving, I thought it was time for her to say a few words, after a silence of a year and a half. When I arrived at the nursing home I found my mother looking at me, her eyes open. When I said "Hi, Mom," she responded clearly "I'm happy to see you." I led her in a wheelchair to a quiet corner and tried to get her to talk. When I got home I wrote to Hanna and Miri:

  "I visited my mother today at the nursing home. She's been unresponsive for a year and a half. Most of this time she just sat there with her eyes closed, and hasn’t spoken a word. She is a hundred and one years old and three months. I told her how you told me about your mother Tonia, and that for the first time I'd heard of Pepe Kramer. I asked her, "Who was Pepe Kramer?" She opened her eyes and lucidly answered, "Pepe was Tonia’s best friend. She lived with my father and mother after we left... she was a little girl." We talked in the dining hall where the morning activities take place. The nursing staff present were all surprised. I loaded a picture of Pepe, your mother and another friend from the Chortkow website on my iPhone and asked my mother to try and recognize the people in the photo (her eyesight is fine). When I pointed to Pepe my mother said her name, and when I pointed to your mother she very clearly said "that's Tonia." She did not recognize the third girl in the photo. I then showed her the photo of Pepe and Tonia in the boat and asked her where it was taken. Without a moment’s hesitation she replied "the Seret River." Long story short, it was an amazing, totally unexpected experience. I thought you might like to know..."

  On August 6th, 2012 I received an email and photo from Miri.

  "I'm enclosing a group photo of my father's friends who went out to the woods together to have this picture taken before he left for Eretz Israel in the fall of 1936. Among the people in the photo is your uncle; Moshe Kramer. My father is in the back row, third from the left. Moshe is wearing the Polish high school uniform. Jewish students in Chortkow were slowly being pushed out of the Polish school because of the numerus clausus law (a limit on the percentage of Jewish students in Universities). This means he was an excellent student and the family had the money to pay the outrageous tuition Jews were charged. For that reason the Jewish school was founded a year later in 1937. In 1938 it was recognized by the authorities as a Jewish public school with its own public school uniform and badge. I think classes stopped with the Russian occupation, but I'm not sure. My father didn't study at the Polish school, which is why he did not wear the typical uniform. My father told me, as it also says in your mother's memoirs, that the Kramer family lived across from the bus station. I currently don't have any photos of it, but when I come across one I will send it along. My mother translated some of your postcards, the parts written in Polish. If you go into Letters at The Kramer Family on the website you will find her translation..."

  Moshe Kramer, front row third from the right. 1936

  I could easily identify my uncle. A smiling, good looking boy who looked exactly as he did in my mother's photos. The hard part was reading the partial translations of the postcards my parents received after returning to Palestine. Chortkow had already been under Soviet rule for a year when the postcards were sent.

  The return address had changed after the family business was expropriated and they were cast out of their home and had to move to Szkolna St. The letters are in Yiddish and Polish. Mendel Kramer wrote in Yiddish, and Selka, my mother's sister, wrote in Polish. Here is the translation of the Polish:

  January 1940: "My dears, since our dear father left me no space I simply send kisses. Sela"

  March 1940: "Dearest ones, last week we received your postcard and we were delighted. Thank you. We are grateful that you are well. We are the same. Our lives continue and that is all. Why do you not write? Tell us whether Junio has work and what kind of work it is? Is he making any money? How is our dear Ilana? Does she miss us as we miss her? Write to us at length and tell us all about it. Wishing you a happy holiday and sending kisses. Sela. Have a kosher Passover."

  The last postcard from July 10th 1940: "I thank you for the photos, thank the lord... we are lucky... you are lucky that you made it to Palestine. We are all healthy. Junio, I ask that you write to us about everything, how Ilana is growing, and what she says. She is our great joy and comfort. Kisses. S Kramer. Chortkow."

  This partial translation was enough to make the family's feelings abundantly clear. The despair they felt, trapped under a hostile Soviet regime that saw them as enemies of the revolution. These were the last words from Chortkow. Then there was only silence. Infinite silence.

  My parent's visit to Chortkow with Ilana 1939, from right to left: Ilana, Rivka Finkelman, Dr. Sima Finkelman, Mom, Selka Kramer

  ***

  The Lot, Part II

  On April 25, 2012 I received a letter from the office of the Custodian General:

  Re: Property registered to Shlomo Zvi Finkelman

  The authorized committee in our office discussed the release application submitted by you and decided to grant your request and release said property.

  The property, half of parcel 40 in b
lock 11398, was transferred to the State’s hands in 1996 – attached is a copy of the order.

  In order to release the property, you must apply to the Israel Land Administration, Acquisition & Expropriation Department, 15 HaPalyam Blvd, ground floor, P.O.Box 548, Haifa 33095.

  For your information, the number of the parcel was changed several times, and at present it is part of parcel 197 in block 11398 (it was combined with another parcel, and its area is 3,121 square meters).

  Sincerely,

  Shira Gordon, Atty.,

  Attorney for the Custodian General

  I felt great. I succeeded in doing the impossible. I completed the circle; an action begun by my father and Mordechai Liebman in 1935 has been completed by me. Part of the lot purchased by my father is being returned to its legal owners. My euphoria was somewhat dampened by the fact that Mordechai Liebman apparently had no beneficiaries. I still hope that when this story is published, it may lead to finding any remaining relatives of Mordechai’s.

  The first thing I immediately did was try to locate the lot. With the help of my partner, Hanan, and the Land Administration website, we located the lot within minutes. The original lot had been combined with other lots in this block and re-divided, but the actual location had not changed: in Kiryat Haroshet (“industrial town”), an area of Tivon on the southern slopes of the hills facing Mt. Carmel along the Kishon River. Just coming across the name Kiryat Haroshet set the bells ringing – it was so similar to the name I recalled from my mother’s stories and my childhood memories. I’d remembered it as Kfar Haroshet (“industrial village”), as I wrote in the declaration submitted to the Custodian General, but it turned out the accurate name is Kiryat Haroshet. Also, from my mother’s stories, I remembered the character of a crook; as it turned out, there was a rabbi involved in the history of settlements in that region, but judging from the information I now found, he was a tragic figure, far from a crook.

  Location of the lot in Kiryat Haroshet (marked by a pin)

  Rabbi Yehezkel Taub of Yablona began selling the Kiryat Haroshet lands in 1933 for 37 lira per dunam (1000 m²). On Lag Ba’Omer (a Jewish holiday occurring around mid-May) of 1934 the cornerstone to Kiryat Haroshet was laid, named after the biblical “Harosheth Hagoyim”, the dwelling place of Sisera, captain of the army of Jabin king of Canaan (Judges 4:2). Opinions regarding the location of the biblical Harosheth Hagoyim are divided; some think it was at present-day Amakim Junction or near Yokneam. Other scholars think Harosheth Hagoyim was an early name of the forested mountains in the north of the country rather than the name of a single city involved in industry or craft. According to these scholars, Harosheth Hagoyim is the woodland that used to stretch from Jezreel Valley northward to the Galilee.

  The young rabbi, living with his followers in Yablona, Poland, wanted to become a Zionist entrepreneur and bring his followers along to Palestine, to take part in redeeming the land. In 1924 Rabbi Taub established in Warsaw a company to sell land, called Nachlat Yaacov. Through the mediation of Zionist leader Yehoshua Hankin, Taub bought some land on the Sheikh Abreik hills from Hachsharat Hayishuv (The Jewish Palestine Land Development Company). The original land owner was a Lebanese Christian named Sursock. After the purchase, Rabbi Taub began selling plots of land to his followers, and established a Hassidic agricultural settlement called Nachlat Yaacov. But the settlement could not cope with the day-to-day hardships. Security and financial difficulties proved to be too much for the Hassidic settlers, so they turned to the JNF (Jewish National Fund) and asked them to exchange the treacherous land for other lots more suitable for settling. The swap took place: Rabbi Taub returned to the JNF all the land he’d bought to sell, and in return received new land on which his followers established an agricultural village called Kfar Hassidim. This stretch of land was both more fertile and further away from hostile Arab villages, which enabled the new settlement to flourish.

  However, despite his obligation to JNF, Rabbi Taub did not return all the Sheikh Abreik lands to JNF, but kept for himself a lot of some 900 dunam (~222 acres) on the slopes of the hills opposite Mt. Carmel, along the Kishon River. The rabbi, who had a shrewd business sense as any modern day real estate developer, felt that despite the inhospitable topography and marshes in the land he held, it was worth his while hanging on to it and trying to sell lots for the construction of a new, urban-rural settlement. He believed that the railway, the western route of the Jezreel Valley railway, would enable people to live in a rural environment yet work in the city of Haifa, which was only a half-hour’s train ride away. In his vision, he saw a place where people would grow and consume their own fruit and vegetables, strengthening the rural aspect of their lives, while being employed or owning a business in Haifa. The rabbi also tried to attract light industry to the area, such as metal workers, textile and upholstery workers, and so develop a town based on the model of rural towns in central Europe.

  Rabbi Taub succeeded in selling dozens of lots for building, but still the settlement did not flourish. The new immigrants, scared of the nearby Arab and Beduin population, preferred living in the big cities. The tension reached its peak after the murder of two Jewish guards who were guarding a pool nearby, close to today’s Yokneam, and the development of the settlement came to a halt. But Taub did not give up. He imported two shiploads of lumber, had some forty portables built, and embarked on a new marketing campaign: Buy a dunam of land and receive another dunam, a wooden cabin, a grant of two lira a month, and free transportation to Haifa. This campaign was a success, the settlement developed, and by the end of 1937 comprised of 460 families. In addition, there were two small factories; one for hats and one for shaving brushes, kindergartens, where a school and synagogue were built. Reality came even closer to Taub’s vision when the railways opened a special commuter line, with two trains; morning and afternoon, providing residents working in Haifa with convenient transportation to work and back, all for a monthly ticket costing 40 grush (0.40 lira). It seemed like a huge success story, until all hopes were dashed tragically. On the night of June 20th, 1938, a gang of Arabs raided the settlement shooting everywhere indiscriminately, burning down the school and the synagogue, and torching houses with their residents inside. Three of the Gutterman family and two of the Spiegel family were burned alive. The residents immediately started fleeing. The Valley train stopped at the settlement every half hour, picking up the fleeing residents and their baggage. Forty-eight hours later there were only a dozen people left in the settlement out of eight hundred. Kiryat Haroshet did not recover for sixty years.

  Rabbi Taub got in over his head financially. The clerks working under him may have stolen what was left of his money. He couldn’t make his loan payments, and in 1938 the Magistrates Court in Haifa ordered that his assets be sold to cover part of his debts. Taub escaped to the US, abandoned religion, changed his name to George Nickel and worked as a real estate developer and contractor in Los Angeles. In 1980 Taub returned to Israel, went into a retirement home in Afula, and re-adopted religion. In May 1986, at age 91, he died and was buried in the section of the early Hassidim in the cemetery of Kfar Hassidim, the village which he had established.

  The correlation between my childhood memories, the discovery of Father’s and Mordechai’s ownership of the lot, and the info I gathered about Kiryat Haroshet were fascinating and shed light on my father’s actions in buying the lot. I have no doubt that Rabbi Yehezkel Taub’s initiative to build a rural-industrial community connected to Haifa by rail was the talk of the town among town planners, architects and pioneering settlers in the Haifa region of 1934. Though there was a construction boom in and around Haifa in those days, this project was definitely unique.

  A notice in the daily Davar: the bailiff’s notice regarding the auctioning of Taub’s effects to cover his debts.

  The official notice states the place and date of the auction, the sum of the debt 24.646 Israeli Lira [Palestine pounds], and the terms of sale. The items listed: a Hebrew Remington typewriter
; a calculating machine, two office desks, and five chairs.

  Rabbi Taub, originally from Poland, marketed the lands especially to the Jewish middle class of Haifa and Poland. The idea of combining rural living with commercial enterprise and setting up industrial plants was very attractive to people who saw this model as one enabling them a lifestyle similar to what they had in their homeland. Father, who left Palestine for Poland that year in order to propose to my mother, must have told his close friends and Betar activists in Chortkow about Taub’s enterprise. Father and his good pal Mordechai Liebman then decided on jointly buying a lot for the purpose of building an industrial plant of some sort. Father returned to Israel with Mother, and bought the lot jointly with Mordechai.

  As pleased with myself as I was for completing the puzzle, I was rather shaken by certain thoughts that pervaded my consciousness. Thoughts about the residents of Kiryat Haroshet, many of whom had recently arrived from Poland, weighed on my mind. They’d come to start a new life, only to go through the trauma of attacks complete with the burning of schools, synagogues and houses with their inhabitants. But, this time, the attackers were not Poles, Cossacks or Ukrainians, but local Arabs and Beduin. I have no doubt that in the subconscious of many of these residents there lurked a post-traumatic experience of persecution and attacks, which they were now re-living. That may have been the reason that most of the settlement’s residents never returned, and the place was deserted for decades.

  I never found the plans for the structure Father had designed for that lot, and it is obvious it was never built. I can’t be sure why, but I can well imagine. My father probably put all his energy into designing apartment buildings in Hadar Hacarmel neighborhood and never got around to that project. Or maybe Taub’s failure to sell the other lots during 1935-36 cooled Father’s enthusiasm. Later, once the place was deserted due to the attacks, the lot lost its value, became irrelevant and was forgotten over time. The copy of the official papers I received from the Land Registry after the Custodian General confirmed my ownership of the lot and provided the exact location, showed that only in 1954 was the lot registered to my father and Mordechai Liebman in equal parts. What I couldn’t understand was why the Custodian General registered half the lot to my father and the other half to the name of a person who died in the Holocaust. I never considered the possibility that my father wasn’t aware that the lot was officially put in his name well after the actual purchase -- in fact, only about four years before his death.