Weeks 12-15
Final Project
An Interview with Elias Weissman; Holocaust Survivor
Shaindle Braunstein
My husband's grandfather, Elias Weissman, was born November 14, 1920 in
Czechoslovakia. He was the eldest of seven children, two of whom died in
early childhood of disease. He was born and raised in the
town of Humina, where life was peaceful until 1930 when
everything began to change. On September 29, 1930 Czechoslovakia rapidly
came under the rule of Adolf Hitlerand life as
the residents of Humina knew it came to an abrupt end. Hitler, through
international blackmail, forced France and England to sacrifice
Czechoslovakia for the sake of peace. In the "Munich Pact," these countries
agreed to the annexation of the Czech-Sudenland. In return,
Hitler agreed to discontinue planned aggressions and invasions of additional
countries. The country was divided into three separate districts:
Czech-German, Slovakian-Quashian and Karpatia. Hitler
made no attempt to continue his facade of peaceful intent, and immediately
began to destroy Czechoslovakia, seizing land, people and possessions.
By early 1934 the anti-Semitic laws already in place in Germany were
instituted in Czechoslovakia, and Jews found themselves banned from
attending school and restricted to their homes by a strict curfew. Elias,
only 13 at the time, was forced, along with all other Jews, to
wear a visible yellow star on his clothing at all times. As the years
passed, new laws governing Jewish businesses, ownership and employment were
instituted, but in spite of the tightening legal and financial
nooses and rampant anti-Semitic feeling, survival, if not prosperity,
was still possible for the Czechoslovakian Jews.
On March 15, 1939, German military forces occupied Czechoslovakia.
Conditions worsened with dizzying speed. Between 1940 and 1941, most
Jewish-owned businesses were seized. The Jewish businessmen who escaped
this seizure were obligated to have a gentile
partner, as the business was then considered to be "Aryan Controlled."
Elias' family owned a textile business, and in order to stay viable, they
took on a gentile woman as partner.
In January of 1942, all Jews between the ages of 16 and 35 were required to
register with the government; the penalty for non-compliance was death.
Elias, 16, and his parents were able to predict that new
horrors were close at hand, and realized that their only hope
for escape was anonymity. Although if discovered, they would die, the family
did not register, and the decision was made for Elias, who by virtue of his
age was conspicuous, to go into hiding. The fears of Elias and his family
were confirmed when the registered Jews were rounded up and taken to the
town of Zilinia, which had a large central train station, under the pretense
of working on the tracks. Instead, they were loaded into shipping boxcars
and taken across the border into Poland. Upon arrival, everyone was sent to
concentration camps; the women and young children went to Auschwitz-Birkenau,
the men to Madoneck.
Elias, meanwhile, remained safe in hiding in the attic of the gentile woman
who, prior to the Nazi regime, had done the family's laundry. After a few
months, his family realized that they, too, needed to disappear, before
their identities were discovered. Elias'
mother, sister and youngest brother were hidden in a cellar bunker, the
space and secrecy bought with his mother's diamond ring. His father and two
other brothers were hidden in a cellar in the home of gentile friends,
people who risked their own lives to protect their Jewish friends.
Survival was the only goal. Gentile friends brought what food they could,
but food was scarce and strictly rationed; with no national identities,
Elias and his family received no ration cards. The situation was so
desperate that Elias had to sneak out at night to
scavenge for food. News filtered to the family in their various hiding
places. Elias learned that his grandparents, his uncle Beresh and his
cousins were deported in 1944. Another aunt and uncle were
deported shortly after. Not one was ever heard from again. Every day, there
were more disappearances, and rumors about the death camps, though initially
difficult to believe, gained credence with every terrifyingly report.
But by mid-1944, a bit of hope appeared with reports that the Russian troops
were at the border of Nazi territory, and that the Russian invasion was imminent.
Elias knew that this meant he could begin to anticipate an end to the war
and defeat of the Nazis. In the
interim, though, he continued living his imprisoned, makeshift existence,
haunted daily by the threat of discovery, starvation and disease. Less than
a year later, his country liberated by American and Russian troops, he was
able to emerge from his hiding place in
daylight and begin the long process of finding the fragments of his life and
family that remained.
The war was over, but the horrific toll was only beginning to be discovered.
Through incredible luck, Elias, his parents and his siblings had survived in
their hiding places. The remainder of their family was largely annihilated.
Uncles and aunts, cousins ranging
from infant to adult, never returned. Most of their community, friends,
neighbors and childhood friends were gone, with most of their fates never
known. The survivors of Humina waited, hoping that the
missing would return, and a few did. For the most part, sketchy accounts of
the missing were uncovered, and those not confirmed dead were assumed so.
Elias' family learned that three cousins, Eli, Pessi and Suri, had survived
the camps and ended up in Yugoslavia. He helped to arrange special visas to
bring them to Czechoslovakia before the impending Communist rule of
Yugoslavia trapped them permanently.
When the cousins arrived, Suri and Elias fell in love and married in short
order. Suri, along with her family, had been sent to Auschwitz. Suri,
holding her infant sister, had the baby taken from her by a guard upon
arrival at the concentration camp. The baby was handed to her mother, Pearl,
who was then hustled into one line while Suri was sent to another. This
seemingly casual separation was the last time she saw her mother and sister,
who, along with the others in their lineup, were immediately gassed and
cremated. Of the dozen family members deported with Suri, only she and the
two other cousins remained.
The newlyweds, along with most of the Jewish Holocaust survivors, had no
reason to stay in the homelands that had betrayed them. Their first choice
was to emigrate to Palestine, where a Jewish homeland was rapidly being
established, but immigration papers were very difficult to obtain, and most
immigrants were being held in Cyprus at that time. Instead, they boarded a
ship bound for America. In June of 1948 they stepped onto American soil at
Ellis Island, New York, eventually settling in nearby Williamsburg. Their
first child, a son who was the first American citizen of the family, was
born a month later. Elias found work at a tie factory. He labored equally
hard in attempting to
bring his family to America, but the immigration glut made visas scarce, and
he was forced to settle for obtaining their visas to Canada, where if not
nearby, the family was safe. After the birth of their fourth child, he and
Suri, prospering in the postwar boom economy, moved to the Jewish Brooklyn
neighborhood of Boro Park, where they opened a clothing store. Elias and
Suri ran the business together until Suri's death from cancer in 1942, not
quite 50 years after she survived the most widespread and brutal genocide
campaign in recorded
history.
Once again, Elias belongs to a large family. Ultimately, his brothers and
sisters were able to come to America and they live in close proximity, with
children, grandchildren and great-grand children
scattered across the United States. My son, Seth, is one of Elias' eight
great-grandchildren. "I was one of the lucky," says Elias. "I came away
with
my life and the chance to rebuild." To Elias, his
large family is the only, the perfect, revenge on the Nazis; not only did
they fail to kill him, his family will continue on after he is gone. But he
is haunted by memories of his lost relatives and town and the millions of
nameless, faceless dead. He has told their stories to his children, who have
told their children, as I will someday tell my son about the boys just like
him who were destroyed for no reason but hatred. Keeping these stories alive
is Elias' only way of warning the future, even after he is gone, that they
cannot allow this to happen, ever again. That, to Elias, is his obligation
as a survivor: to keep the stories alive; to honor the spirit of the dead,
long after their names are forgotten and their graves can no longer be
found.