Hanna Kleinberg, born in 1936 (2)
A maimed tree
I come from a very large Jewish family that settled in Kraków generations ago. There were many families like that in Kraków and other cities and towns in Poland. They were part of the community of these cities. Jews lived and worked among Poles; this was their homeland. And this could have continued if it hadn’t been for the horror of the war. Some families were completely obliterated, others decimated. The Holocaust survivors mostly scattered around the world. Few have stayed in Poland.
My family also suffered great losses. Close and distant relatives were murdered. I would like to describe and commemorate it in the form of a family tree. The idea to develop a family tree came about when I was sorting through pre-war family photographs that had been preserved by my parents’ kind friends. This family tree was to explain to my children and grandchildren the photographs found and described in the album.
The inspiration and model for the construction of the “tree” was the family tree of Joanna Olczak-Ronikier’s family, placed at the end of an incredible story, In the Garden of Memory. It would have been much harder to comprehend its stories if it hadn’t been for this tree. I was able to develop the family tree of the Pasters family, from which my mother came, and of my father’s family, the Kleinbergs, thanks to the notes from my conversations with my mama, to the drafts and materials collected while preparing for the interview which I gave to the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education by Steven Spielberg, and to the stored documents, which my sister and I had collected for the memoir that was included in volume II of Children of the Holocaust Speak.
Other crucial and important information was passed on to me by my sister Ewa and our cousins Aleksander and Ada. The internet proved to be of great help in my work. The first entry, which I put in the search engine after installing the internet, was my father’s first and last name, Roman Kleinberg. I was hoping to learn more about my father than what I already knew from the previously collected information.
My curiosity was rewarded, because the Brenners family tree came up, and it included my father and mother as well as my father’s siblings and parents. This tree was developed by Dan Hirschberg, a professor of Informatics at the University of California. As part of his hobby, he has reconstructed over 300 family trees of Kraków families. Thanks to my “internet discovery,” I could backtrack in the “tree” by two generations to the year 1792.
I was hoping I would find out more about my ancestors from the author. Unfortunately, Professor Hirschberg doesn’t know anything else about the individuals in the “tree,” beyond their dates of birth, death, and marriage.
Let me get back to the main subject of my recollections. It will expand on the family tree and bring back the memory of my father’s and mother’s family members who had the misfortune of living during the war and, because of their Jewish origin, became the victims of this war. This is my way of illustrating how the family tree of our large family became painfully maimed by the Holocaust.
The Pasters and Kleinbergs had many children. The children of the grandparents had already started their own families when the war began. I remember and know from the preserved letters, Mama’s stories, and the living family members that the family ties were exceptionally strong. Most of the family lived in Kraków and had stayed close for years. And it could have continued this way if the war hadn’t broken out. Desperate moves were made to save lives. The less resourceful were locked in the ghettos and concentration camps; some fled east, while others managed to escape abroad to the countries not occupied by the Germans.
Some, not many—like myself, my mother and sister—were miraculously whisked from the ghetto, and survived on so-called Aryan papers. All of them were the victims of the Holocaust: not only those who suffered horrible conditions in the ghettos, separation from their families, tortures in the camps, who were hiding in fear that they would be given away, but even those who were fleeing east from the Nazis. There, too, they fell into the claws of tormentors as evil as the Germans.
Here are the stories of the individual members of our family
My grandfather, Wilhelm Kleinberg, was a photographer. He had a studio in Gertruda Street in Kraków. Recently, thephotographs taken bymy grandfather, among others, have been presented at the exhibition Taki Kraków zapamiętaj [Remember this Kraków]. These photographs—as the exhibition’s reviewer puts it—are “an invaluable document of the history of Kraków.” They were reproduced in the form of foldable postcards and were quite popular.
When staying in Kraków became more and more dangerous, my mother decided to bring my grandfather Wilhelm Kleinberg and his wife, grandmother Antonina, as well as her mother, and my other grandmother, Laura, to Rabka. We had been living in Rabka for a few years. My father was the town’s first dentist.
Instead of a safe haven, Rabka turned out to be a tragic trap. The Gestapo, which had been stationed here—in the building of St. Teresa Middle School—began “liquidating” Jews in a planned and systematic way. The first ones to go were the elderly and the disabled, and later everyone who hadn’t managed to escape. Our two grandmothers, Laura and Antonina, and our grandfather, Wilhelm, were shot in the forest, after having been kept in a cramped cell in inhumane conditions.
What unimaginable tragedy did my mama experience when she was accompanying her mother, knowing she was going to die? My sister and I wrote more about this tragedy in the second volume of Children of the Holocaust Speak. There is a small cemetery in the place of this horrific crime, with a memorial and large concrete slabs covering mass graves. I visit this place with my family and see signs that the local community is looking after the graves. There are also distinctive blue tin lanterns lit by Jews from Israel.
Before the war, my grandfather, Jakub Paster, the husband of my grandmother Laura, had been a clerk in a Viennese bank. He died of natural causes in 1940 at the beginning of the war. You might say that this was a kind fortune. He was spared the horrors that his wife Laura and the Kleinberg grandparents experienced.
The fate of the second generation of the Kleinbergs and Pasters were equally tragic although, fortunately, not everyone died. When my papa, Roman Kleinberg, was drafted into the army, he was going to war but couldn’t find his unit. Wanting to join it with others who were in the same situation, he marched to the east and reached Lvov. There he was captured by the Soviet army and arrested as a spy.
My papa, having gone through hell in work camps, was released in 1942 as a result of an amnesty and went south to Uzbekistan hoping to join Anders’ Army. At the time, Uzbekistan was being swept with a typhoid epidemic. Emaciated by slave work and life in the terrible conditions of the camp, he caught typhoid and, in August 1942, he died at the age of 40, so close to his goal! Papa’s life in exile is recorded in the book Łagry—Przewodnik Encyklopedyczny
Łagry… – Labor camps: An encyclopedic guide book, KARTA Publishing House. Prisoner number 1023, page 103 (the text is in Russian).
My papa’s brother, Juliusz Kleinberg, was a clerk in Kraków and a sportsman, the vice-president of Kraków’s Athletics Association as well as a judge of track and field. Juliusz, his wife Sabina, and their young son Eryk were shot on the road when they were being herded to Nowy Targ for execution, along with other Jewish prisoners from the Podhale. The reason the entire family was shot was because Juliusz had stood up for his wife, who had been slapped on the face by a Nazi! They were both 42. This is how I lost my aunt and uncle and my cousin, who was slightly older than me. He was only 11 years old.
My father’s sister, Zofia, the wife of the attorney Izydor Minder, was shot in the concentration camp in Stutthof in the last days of the war when the Germans were liquidating the camp. At the time of her death, she was 48 years old. Prior to this, she had been imprisoned in the Kraków ghetto and she was even offered a chance to leave the ghetto by her kind Polish friends. However, devastated after her separation from her husband and son, she refused.
Before the war, Aunt Zosia had run a fashion house. She was a stunning woman; the National Museum in Kraków possesses her portrait painted by Mehoffer and her bust by Dunikowski. Her husband Izydor Minder, an attorney, and his son Jerzy fled to Lvov. My uncle, who was arrested in Lvov and transported to a labor camp, couldn’t endure the horrible conditions there and the separation from his wife and died in 1940.
Jurek slipped out of Russia with Anders’ Army, made it to England through the Middle East, and just after the war ended in 1945 he died there due to an illness he had caught in the camp. At the time of his death he was 24 years old. Jurek was a promising young writer and poet. He published in the Polish émigré press.
My papa’s brother, Edward Kleinberg, who was married to a Pole, Maria Rembisz, and christened before the war, wasn’t at as much risk as other Jews. He had Aryan papers and an Aryan look. He survived the war with his wife and daughter, Ewa. My cousin Ewa currently lives in Canada.
It was my uncle Edek who asked a relative of his wife’s, Marian Sikorski, to help save his nieces – that is, Ewa and me. Mr. Sikorski, risking his and his family’s lives, took us to the deep countryside, near Jasło. Our mama joined us after she obtained Aryan papers. There, thanks to the kindness of friends and local people, we miraculously lived to see the end of the war. For his great heroism, Mr. Marian Sikorski was awarded the medal of “The Righteous Among the Nations.”
Papa’s sister, Paulina, was the wife of Fryderyk Keiner, a doctor of law, who had died before the war and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Jordanów. Aunt Pola with her son Aleksander and her second husband Leopold Goldman survived the war in a Soviet labor camp doing slave work at clearing a forest. After the war they returned to Poland. My aunt was a nurse, and her son Aleksander Ziemny is a writer and a poet. At this moment, he is the eldest member of our family.
My papa’s third sister, Irka, was a music teacher. She fled Poland through Romania to England, and that is how she survived the war. Concerned about the fate of our family, after the war she searched for the missing family via the Red Cross. We got the terrible news that our papa was dead from her. She helped her sister Pola for the rest of her life.
The fate of the Paster family was equally tragic
I mentioned my grandfather Jakub Paster and grandmother Laura at the beginning, when I wrote about the mass “liquidations” of Jews in Rabka.
Zygmunt Paster was a doctor. Before the war he lived in Kraków with his wife Mala and young daughter Anita, and during the war in Nowy Targ. I know nothing of their fate; probably they all died in 1942. Anita was 6 years old at the time. One day, my mama wondered whether Anitka, like many Jewish children, had been rescued and adopted by a Polish family. We will probably never know.
After Papa had left, my mother, Alicja Kleinberg née Paster, was evicted from our apartment by the Gestapo and wandered with me and my sister Ewa around various places in Rabka. She finally ended up in the ghetto, from where the aforementioned Mr. Marian Sikorski rescued us. After the war, my mama married Władysław Nogala, whom she met while we were hiding in the countryside. Mama’s and our story is described in volume II of Children of the Holocaust Speak.
Irma Laksberger née Paster, Mama’s sister, along with her daughter Ada first arrived in the labor camp in Płaszów near Kraków, and from there they were moved to the camp in Częstochowa. She would tell us that thanks to their cooking skills, they both ran a canteen for the camp tormentors and that theirs was a “very good” situation in comparison to the fate of the remaining prisoners. At the last assembly, when it was clear that the camp would be liberated by the Russians and the Germans were preparing the “liquidation” of the prisoners, Irma, with immense strength and bravery, stepped forward, took Ada by the hand and together they headed for the latrine block. Surprisingly, the Germans didn’t stop them. There, they waited in the latrine pit for several, or maybe a dozen, hours. Before fleeing, the Nazis liquidated the camp and murdered the prisoners. They stayed put and that’s how they survived. It’s an unbelievable story but it’s true. The widow Irma was remarried after the war to Ludwik Broder, a doctor of law and a teacher of humanities. Together they left for Israel.
At first, Irma’s husband, Maksymilian Laksberger, a doctor of law, was with his wife, their daughter Anzia, and son Jerzy in the labor camp in Płaszów. When women were being transported from this camp to the camp in Częstochowa, men were taken to the concentration camp in Buchenwald. Maksymilian and his son Jerzy were among them. From Irma’s account, I know that Maksymilian died in the arms of his son the day before the liberation! He was 48 years old. Jerzy Laksberger is alive and lives in the United States.
Rudolf Paster, my mama’s brother, much like his sister, Irma Paster, worked in the camp in Płaszów. Irma said that when the camp was being liquidated and the prisoners were being moved in trucks to other camps, he didn’t make it to the truck and that was the last time Irma saw him. It’s unclear how or when he died, he was 29 or 30.
As you can see, three branches of our tree were completely severed: first, the family of Juliusz and Sabina Kleinberg with their young son Eryk; second, the family of Zygmunt and Mala Paster with their young daughter Anita; and the third, the family of Zofia and Izydor Minder with their son Jerzy. How many more branches this “tree” of ours could have had… Out of twenty-six family members, fifteen died due to acts of war.
As for our family, Hitler implemented his plan of exterminating Jews by over 60 per cent! The surviving family members also suffered greatly: some were cruelly bereft. Their psyche was permanently scarred by the horrors they had experienced and by the loss of their loved ones. At this mo- ment, only “children of the Holocaust” live with this trauma, the people who were children during the war. Their parents passed away, often prematurely. It may put some people off that I insert numbers into such painful mem- ories. However, I couldn’t help but include these tragic statistics. It is only meager proof of the sea of misery caused by the Holocaust.
I realize that there are families who were completely wiped out, who didn’t leave a single trace. There are also people who know nothing of their relatives and continue to search for their roots. I feel a lot of humility and compassion for these people. You could say that I’m in a better situation because I have survived the war with my own mother and sister. Can you evaluate or judge these war tragedies, though? Categorize them into bigger or smaller? Or can you say that there is nothing to write about because there have been worse tragedies?
I believe you should speak and write in order to pay this small tribute to these loved ones, and millions of others murdered during the war. When my generation is gone, no one will remember them.
Post Script
After my recollections had been sent for editing, the book entitled Mroczne sekrety willi Tereska [The dark secrets of the Tereska villa] by Wojciech Tupta, Michał Rapta, and Grzegorz Moskala was published. This book recounts in detail the tragedy of the occupation in Rabka and other towns in the Podhale, where my relatives were murdered. This is the most insightful publication on this subject so far, based on eye-witness accounts and numerous collected documents.
It is noteworthy that the authors of this book are two students (when they were writing the book, they were still middle-schoolers) and their young teacher, a historian. The dedication of such young people in saving the Nazi crimes from oblivion and the commemoration of the victims of these crimes deserves the utmost recognition. The authors are working on the second edition of the book and would appreciate any information regarding the crimes in the Podhale. You can contact them by e-mail: rapta@interia.pl or telephone (018) 33 16 323.
