פון צאנז קיין קאראקאס, פון חסידות ביז שפאנישע זשורנאליזם

[מיללער]

איך בין נאך אלס גערירט פון דעם ארטיקל וואס איך האב נארוואס געענדיגט לייענען אינעם 'מיאמי העראלד' וואס דער אידישער זשורנאליסט דניאל שואר-ראטה האט אראפגעשריבען אלס די ערשטע פון האפנטליך עטליכע נאכפאלגענדע ארטיקלען.

דניאל איז אויפגעוואקסען אין קאראקאס, ווענעזואלע אויף די שויס פון זיין זיידע עלייאס, וועלכער ווי פיל אנדערע אין זיין גלייכען האט קיינמאל קיין ווארט נישט גערעדט פון זיין פארגאנגענהייט אין פוילן, אנטווערפן ביז ווען ער האט זיך נאכען קריג געצויגען קיין ווענעזועלא.

עלייאס שואר-ראטה איז געבוירן אין שטאט 'צאנז' בשנת תרע"א ולמספרם 1911 אלס אליש ראטה, צו זיין חסידישען פאטער ר' יצחק ראטה, די ראטה פאמיליע האט געוואונט אויף די רעינעק גאס נומער 9 און ווי א גרויס חלק פון 17,000 אידישע קינדער וואס האבן דארט געוואונט ביז ווען דער ארכי-אשמדאי האט אפגעווישט 90 פראצענט פון די ארטיגע באפעלקערונג, איז אליש געגאנגען אין חדר און געלערנט אויף לשה"ק און אידיש די תורה הקדושה און רעליגיעזע וויסענשאפט.

דאס אלעס האט ער אבער נישט מיטגעטיילט מיט זיין באליבטער אייניקל וועלכע איז געווען נאנט מיט אים ווי א חבר, פארברענגט מיט אים געשמועסט מיט אים, אבער נישט מיטגעטיילט זיינע ליידן וואס זיין גאנצע פאמיליע איז דורך בשנת ת"ש איידער זיי זענען קאלטבלוטיג אויסגעקוילעט געווארן דורך דעם דייטש ימ"ש ולא נשאר רק אליש לבדו, און אפי' זיין פערזענליכע גשעעניש וועלכע האט שוין יא געהאט א גונסטיגע ענדע נאכדעם וואס האנדלענדיג מיט דיאמאנטן האט ער זיך געצויגען קיין אנטווערפן אין די תר"צ יארען וואס א דאנק דעם האט ער באוויזען דורכצומאכען די דייטשע בארבאריזם.

פארן אייניקל דניאל האט אבער יא געצויגען צו וויסען מער פון זיין זיידנס עבר נאך וועם ער האט לזכרו אדאפטירט זיין משפחה נאמען (אלייעס איז זיין מאמענס פאטער) אלס זיין זשורנאליסטישען פעסוואדנים, וויסענדיג אז דער זיידע אליינס האט צוגעשטעלט דעם 'שוער' פארזילבע פאר זיין אריגינעלע 'ראטה' נאמען, אלס אנדענק פונעם 'שואה-האלאקאוסט'.

לייענט דא ווי צום צענטן יארצייט פון זיין זיידען, האט דניאל באשלאסן אונטערצונעמען א נסיעה קיין 'צאנז', א שריט וואס האט אים נאך מער פארבינדען מיט זיין פארשטארבענעם זיידע און פארניכטעטע עבר און שפרעכט פאר צו ברענגען נאכפאלגענדע שריט צו פאראייביגען זייער נאמען.

ונקיתי דמם לא נקיתי

(קרעדיט פאר זשואיש-זשען פארן צושטעלן דעם לינק אין זייער טעגליכע בולעטין)

[שעפטיל]

שקוח מיללער, א נקמה אין היטלער ימ"ש. דאס דארף איך שוין האבן צייט צו ליינען, אבער מיטן קעפל האסטו מיך גוט געמאכט שפרינגען..

[farshlufen]

א ישר כח הרב מיללער, סאמהאוי האב איך נישט געקריגן דעם היינטיגן אימעיל.

דאס איז דער ארטיקל בשלימות:

Posted on Sun, Jul. 19, 2009
Going back to Poland: a grandson's quest for answers
By DANIEL SHOER-ROTH
[email protected]

My grandfather Elias and I were always very close. More than grandfather and grandson, we were friends.
In Venezuela, where I grew up, we had created our own little world. We would go get haircuts together at our favorite barber shop, even though he was practically bald. We used to sit side by side to read three newspapers and comment about them. From time to time, he taught me words in Yiddish, his first language. And behind my mom's back, he rewarded me with Swiss chocolates.

However, Opa (the German word we used for Grandpa) never wanted to talk to me about his life in Poland. I couldn't draw from him a single anecdote from his youth. Nor did he want to say a single word in Polish. Almost his entire family died in the Nazi death camps. That was all the information he was willing to share.

This spring, on the 10th anniversary of his death, I traveled to Poland to learn more about his story. I wanted to understand the things that forged his personality and character -- for instance, what made him so sensitive to other people's suffering and why he always left behind money, anonymously, for those who needed it.

At the same time I went to face the ghosts of the Holocaust.

PIECES OF PUZZLE

Although the Nazis often managed to erase their macabre tracks in places like Belzec, the concentration camp where my relatives were exterminated, I managed to rescue during that trip some of the loose pieces of my grandfather's life puzzle.

At the majestic, neo-Renaissance City Hall on Nowy Sacz's main square, I demonstrated to the Civil Registrar that Elias Roth was my grandfather by providing the exact date of his birth, the names of my great-grandparents, my passport, the passport of my mother Karin and our respective birth certificates. I also carried my grandparents' Venezuelan marriage certificate, dated 1941, and Opa's death certificate.

In a brown book, wrinkled by time, that listed only the births of Jews, I found his name -- Elisze, in Yiddish -- recorded in cursive Gothic lettering. I also found the date of his bris, or circumcision, his address, the occupation of his father, Ytzjak, the names of my great-great-grandparents and the date of my great-grandparents' marriage.

The registrar gave me proof of his birth registration but forbade me to photograph the original listing. I ran to Reynek 9, where Opa had lived, on a corner of a public square. The building had been completely renovated. I went up and down the stairs, leaned out the windows, touched the walls and transported myself to the era of his childhood. Finally, I had arrived in a place so remote -- and so close -- that was part of my heritage.

THE ORIGINS

My grandfather arrived in Venezuela in 1942, fleeing Nazism. He was intent on forging a new future so we, his descendants, could grow in a free society where Jews were respected and granted the same rights as everyone else.

That equality was unknown to him. From childhood, he had witnessed anti-Semitic attacks in Poland. His community suffered considerably under Russian occupation during World War I and later, as a consequence of the anti-Jewish policies instituted by the Polish government. Numerous families -- particularly religious ones, like his -- became destitute.

He was able to get out of Poland in the mid-1930s when he was around 25. Along with an older brother, he moved to Antwerp, Belgium, to join an uncle in the diamond business.

The move saved their lives. In 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. The Jews of Sandz, as Nowy Sacz is called in Yiddish, were shoved into a ghetto and deprived of their rights and properties. They were subjected to humiliating forced labor. In 1940, the first public execution was carried out.

Between Aug. 25 and 28, 1942, more than 90 percent of the Jewish community of 17,000 in Sandz and neighboring towns was transported to Belzec. Among them were my grandfather's parents and siblings.

In a way, my grandfather's story resembles that of thousands of survivors of the Nazi barbarity who lost everything in Europe and never reunited with their loved ones. They found it difficult to adapt in the Americas, not only because of language and cultural differences but because of the deep wounds they carried with them from the old country.

My grandfather divided his time between Caracas and Ciudad Bolívar, the gateway to the Amazon, where he traded raw diamonds, a business he kept up until his retirement, long before he died at age 88. After learning that his sweetheart Sophia, whom he had met during the war, had also survived and was living in Curacao, he invited her to Venezuela and asked her to marry him.

Venezuela had opened its doors to the war survivors. A Jewish colony had already been established, but the Venezuelans' acceptance and tolerance of Jews went back a lot further, to Simón Bolívar's quest for independence.

Opa did not take long to prosper. My mother and my aunt benefited from a solid education, both secular and Jewish, that decades later was transferred to us. Like all grandfathers, Elias was proud of me.

He had had much trouble learning Spanish while I wrote it with ease, being a native Spanish speaker. When I began to publish my first articles, at the age of 17, I added his surname to mine -- hence Shoer-Roth. I knew that, to him, that was one of the fruits of having escaped the Holocaust.

PERMANENT HOME

In a Europe where Jews had been at the mercy of monarchies for centuries, Poland had given them a permanent home since the 11th century. Before World War II, the Jewish community totaled 3.3 million, the largest in the Old Continent. That is partly why Polish Jews constituted the majority of the victims of Nazism. Of the six million Jews who were exterminated, three million were Polish.

Sandz was built in the 13th century in a valley surrounded by the Carpathian mountains near the border with the present Republic of Slovakia. The first Jews settled there in the 15th century, but it wasn't until the early 17th century, when epidemics and invasions by enemies ruined the local economy, that they were officially allowed to establish a community.

The history of Sandz illustrates the history of hundreds of shtetls, or Jewish hamlets, that existed in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. The Jews were merchants, lenders, farmers, manual laborers. Their taxes represented an important source of revenue for the local governments. They lived in a world separate from that of their neighbors. They spoke a different language and competed in business with the Gentiles.

My grandfather was born on April 13, 1911, to a Hassidic family. Like every other religious child at the time, he studied at the cheder, where he was taught only Hebrew studies. His father manufactured material for shoes. In his teenage years, Opa had to abandon his studies so he could work with his father.

No family photos, no letters, no souvenirs of that period remain. The most youthful image of my grandfather I have -- a photograph dated 1944 -- shows him wearing black knee-high boots outside a hut somewhere in the Amazon jungle.

THE LEGACY

Jakub Müller does not want the story about the Jews from Nowy Sacz to be forgotten. At age 88, he is one of the shtetl's last witnesses. He visits it every year, resuming contact with his past so that he can preserve what, to him, is his most sacred treasure: the Jewish cemetery, restored with his own hands.

Müller is energetic, charismatic and intense. He likes to recall anecdotes from his youth. As he tells them, his blue eyes moisten. He survived the Holocaust by hiding during the German occupation. In 1969, he emigrated with his wife and children to Sweden, fleeing a harsh anti-Semitic campaign by the Communist government.

When he returns to Sandz during the spring, the descendants of other Jews from the area come to ask if he remembers them.

''I think I knew the Roths,'' he said to me in Polish, through an interpreter.

Why didn't my grandfather ever want to talk to me about this place?

''Maybe because he didn't feel connected,'' he answered.

I accompanied him to the small Sandz Synagogue, where he is the only parishioner. The synagogue is in a room in the first floor of a residential building. It has wooden benches and a simple altar with the Torah scrolls.

I'm curious to learn why, if he lost his family here, Müller keeps coming back to Nowy Sacz.

''I am accustomed to this place,'' he says. ``My heart is here.''

To end the trip, I knocked at the door of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, where 10 centuries of Jewish presence in Poland are documented.

''Why are you here?'' Anna Przybyszewska, director of the Genealogy Project of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, asked me.

''I came to find out what my grandfather never told me about his past,'' I answered.

``And what did you find?''

``I found his birth listing, visited the house where he grew up and got an idea of what the Sandz shtetl was like by talking to one of its last witnesses.''

Przybyszewska looked at me with skepticism.

''Is that all?'' she asked.

Suddenly, I felt a sense of emptiness. I realized that I had only seen the tip of the iceberg. I could have examined the state archives of the Polish government. I needed to better recreate the atmosphere of Opa's childhood by collecting more testimonies.

''You came for a very short time,'' Przybyszewska said. ``You need at least a year. It all depends on how important this is for you.''

I felt frustrated. It is very important for me, I told her.

Not only because of my closeness to Elias but also for the commitment I have as a Jew -- and a journalist -- to the history of my people. Hundreds of relatives of my four grandparents died during the Holocaust. I have a moral obligation to work so their memory will not also perish.

In retrospect, the visit made me even more aware of my responsibility.

I know that my grandfather is still proud of me. Not only because I am his only male grandchild, because I know how to write in Spanish and was his inseparable friend but also because I'm trying to rescue his story. This is only the beginning.

Daniel Shoer-Roth is El Nuevo Herald's Metro columnist.





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