The Shtetl Marriage Fairy Strikes – Twice

Rose and Sam – wedding

[Phtos: Left – Sam and Esther Goldberg.  Right – Sam and Rose Treiger]

Happy Chanukah!

Chanukah is a time we celebrate miracles. So, here is a tale of the miracle of the Shtetl Marriage Fairy.

Sam Goldberg and Esther Wisznia grew up in the small towns of Bagatele and Stoczek, just 28 miles away from each other. But they didn’t meet until the Shtetl Marriage Fairy (and Adolf Hitler) intervened. It boggles my mind how these two, who grew up “next door” to each other met only after Sam escaped Treblinka, ran to the forest and found Esther hiding there. They “lived,” together with Chaim Kwiatek, in a pit and a fake haystack for a year until they were liberated by the Red Army. Three months later, Sam and Esther were married in Stoczek, with Shmuel Rajzman, one of the heroes of Treblinka, officiating.

But I have discovered the Shtetl Marriage Fairy didn’t restrict her activity to the Holocaust. She smiled on my side of the family as well.

My grandparents, Sam (Shimon) and Rose (Rashe) Treiger are Shtetl Marriage Fairy poster children. Sam Treiger was born in Dzyamidawka and Rose Steinberg was born in the Shtetl of Shamki (pronounced by the family as Samke and as you can see in the photo below – the Shtetl is no more).

I have discovered that – wait for it . . .

Dzyamidawka and Samke are 30 miles from each other!

Their journeys didn’t take them to Treblinka or to a pit in the forest, but across the ocean in steerage as poor immigrants escaping a harsh life, the Czar’s army, and antisemitism. Sam and Rose came to the United States as children, with their families, to the goldene medina around 1910. The Steinberg family came ashore in Montreal, Canada, took the railroad across the continent and settled in Seattle, where they had relatives. I believe the Treiger family landed in Ellis Island and made their way across the continent by train to Portland.

The Steinbergs, an orthodox family, settled in the “old neighborhood” of Jewish Seattle – capitol hill – walking distance to the Bikur Cholim Synagogue on 17^th and Yesler. My great-grandmother, Chaya Tzivia, for whom I am named, was the ultimate balebuste (housewife), cooking for her children and gathering all five of them, with their families each Shabbes after Shul for kugel and cholent. My great-grandfather, Chaim Leib Steinberg, who was short with a full black beard, began in the best of Jewish traditions, as a peddler. He grew his business into a store, involved his children and called his new business, Steinberg and Sons (though the daughters also worked in the business).

The Treigers settled in Portland. My grandfather, Sam Treiger, grew up in an orthodox home, with his mother Ethel (until her early death) and his father, Yisroel Aryeh, who had an even longer beard that Chaim Leib Steinberg. Sam was in the National Reserves and attended the University of Oregon studying accounting and loved to hike – as displayed in the many photos as a strapping young man, hiking in the Oregon forests.

When Rose and Sam reached marriageable age, word went out. The Shtetl Marriage Fairy intervened and the families of these two nearby American Shtetlach, Seattle and Portland, were introduced to each other. Sam came up to Seattle, met Rose, and the rest is history. They married on June 10, 1928 and settled in Seattle, walking distance to Rose’s parents and most importantly to the Shul. Sam started out as a bookkeeper for Steinberg and Sons and then later, he and Rose bought a “ten cent store” from our cousins the Ketzlachs. Papa Sam (as we called him) made a living working 72-hour weeks and falling asleep at the Shabbes table Friday night during benching (grace after meal).

They had two sons, Ray (Raphael Levi) and Irwin (Yisroel Aryeh -named for the Zeide with the long beard), who both studied hard, worked hard and succeeded in their professional and personal lives. Ray moved to New York, married and had three children. My father, Irwin (Z’L), married Betty Lou Friedlander, of 5^th and Pike jeweler fame, and, like his father before him, worked hard and raised a beautiful family, of which I am blessed to be part. Now, as a Bubbi of a three-month-old who carries this name – Yisroel Aryeh – I am so thankful that the Shtetl Marriage Fairy intervened to bring the Steinberg, Treiger, Friedlander and Goldberg families together for generations to come.

[Photo: Rose and Sam Treiger with me and my brother Louis]

HAPPY CHANUKAH AND MAY THE SHTETL MARRIAGE FAIRY VISIT YOUR FAMILY SOON!

Sztajer in the Forest and beyond (the frozen turkey strikes again)

[Photo: Polish Forest near where Sam and Esther Goldberg hid]

After escaping Treblinka during the uprising, Chaim Sztajer ran to the forest. He stole some food and found a couple of other Jews. They built a “bunker” under a tree and crafted a “timber ceiling made from strong branches, covered in a decent layer of insulating earth, then layers of dead leaves and snow. Inside, their combined body heat was trapped within the space, and contributed to keeping them warm. Each time they entered or exited their bunker, they used a nifty broom that Chaim had devised, made from twigs and branches bound together with twine, to hide all their footprints” (83) They survived for the next 11 months with the help of villagers and peasants in the area. Like Sam and Esther, they were liberated by the Red Army in June or July of 1944. (96)

After liberation, Chaim traveled to Prague, Lublin, and then home to Czestochowa to see if any relatives had survived.  He did not find anyone.  But he met the sister of a friend. Her name was Chana Sztal. Chana told Chaim that her parents and some of her siblings were murdered in Treblinka in September of 1942. (108) Chana’s hand had been disfigured by machinery and her clothes were rags. Chaim took her the next day to buy new clothes and to see a doctor.

Chaim told Chana he didn’t want to stay in Poland any longer. “There was nothing left for him anymore,” Zylbersztajn writes, “only too many sad memories and much too much pain. Chaim asked Chana if she wished to come with him, as his wife. That was his marriage proposal to her. At that moment in time Chaim and Chana were both very lost souls, both wanting and needing to belong.” (102)

Chaim and Chana got married around September of 1945 and moved to the DP Camp Föhrenwald, in Germany. (112) They must have moved there just about the same time as Sam, Esther, and Faiga. I imagine that Sam and Chaim met each other in the DP Camp and talked about their time at Treblinka, the uprising, and surviving in the forest.

[Photos of Föhrenwald]

In February of 1946, Chana gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Chaim went to a nearby town to find a Mohel to come and circumcise their baby on the eighth day. Upon his return, Chaim was greeted with the news that his baby was dead.

“It was later discovered,” Zylbersztajn recounts, “that a German nurse had decided that she was going to take it upon herself to finish off what Hitler had started, which was to wipe out the Jews from the face of the earth. The nurse had used a pillow to suffocate the baby while he slept peacefully in his cot.” (120)

That is devastating; just too much. After all they lived through, their baby was murdered by a German!

I am not sure how they went on, but they did, making their way to Israel. After several years they moved to Australia. They had two more children, a daughter, Malka (the author) and a son Zev.

It was Zev, as a five-year-old boy living in Australia, who continued the tradition of Sam Goldberg’s frozen turkey punch. Zev was attending school – kindergarten – when his mother, Chana was summoned to the Principals office.

“As Chana got herself comfortably seated,” Zylbersztajn writes, “the headmaster informed her that at the morning recess, her five-year old boy, Zev had punched a boy in the face. The eight-year-old boy, two grades higher than Zev, had then fallen against the corner of the school brick building and split his head wide open. He was rushed by ambulance to [sic] hospital just as Chana had arrived. The headmaster turned his attention toward Zev and asked him, ‘Why did you hit this boy who is much taller and older than you are?’ Zev answered him loudly, and in a matter-of-fact way said, ‘This boy came up to me and called me a bloody Jew, so I hit him.’ The headmaster got up very slowly from behind his desk and walked around until he faced little Zev, still seated in his chair. He then bent down, planted a big kiss on Zev’s forehead and said, ‘If anyone ever calls you that again, you have my full permission to sock them one right in the nose, and make sure you give them an extra punch from me.’ And that was the end of that episode.” (151)

I love it.

 

Chaim Sztajer’s & the Treblinka Uprising

[Yad Vashem Archives: Smoke rising over Treblinka on August 2, 1943]

The Treblinka uprising was planned to begin at 5 PM on August 2, 1943. The signal to begin the uprising was a gun shot or an exploding grenade in the Lower Camp. But something went wrong. Each of those who retell this event have a slightly different story to tells. Here is Chaim Sztajer’s version, as told through his daughter, Malka Zylbersztajn, in L’Chaim: The Exceptional Life of Chaim Sztajer.

Chaim was in the Upper Camp (gas chambers). It was such a hot day that Stangl, the Camp Kommandant, had ordered the prisoners in the Upper Camp not to work. Chaim and his people had organized themselves and the revolt activities around the work schedule for a usual day. This order messed up their plans to be ready at 5 PM. Chaim retells that Jankiel Wiernik (a carpenter – one of the few who passed between the camps) came to the Upper Camp and informed him that the revolt was changed to begin at 4 PM.

I will allow Malka to tell the next part of her father’s story:

“Despite these precise plans, what actually transpired was totally unexpected. By coincidence, two youths in the first [i.e. lower] camp, who had not been privy to any of the revolt plans, decided that they were going to escape that day, but they were either discovered or informed on. As the Nazi guards dragged them away to be shot, the men who were waiting to initiate the uprising jumped the guards, which caused a shot to ring out at 3 pm. Chaim heard the shot and took it to be the signal. When the sound rang out, he was next to a Ukrainian guard. Chaim turned on the guard and killed him with a half shear that he had hidden under his jacket. From that moment on, everything moved at lightning speed, and events became extremely chaotic. Prior to the start of the revolt, Chaim had stationed his five men close to the perimeters of the camp, where the guard towers were situated.

He had even given them orders to cut the electrical wires and phone lines when the first shot rang out, and they did hits like clockwork. Chaim also told them to try to coax the guards down off their tower. Fortunately for the prisoners, some of the guards were curious enough to want to investigate what was happening, and also to join in on the fight. Some of the guards were able to be coaxed down, but some were not. Their plan had been to stop the guards shooting down form the towers at the prisoners, and this worked to a small degree. The guards that came down were quickly ambushed and killed. Chaim killed a Ukrainian guard near the well. . . . He threw one of the Ukrainian guards down the well, which was over one hundred feet deep. It seemed to take forever for the guard to hit the bottom of the well. In the chaos of the uprising, the prisoners were seen running wildly in all directions, trying to elude the bullets, the fires, and ultimately trying to find a way to escape Treblinka. As he did not believe he would live through the uprising, Chaim did not run; instead he continued his rampage of revenge.

This was to pay back the Nazis for the murder of his beloved wife and daughter, for the slaughter of his brothers and their wives and children, and all of their wives’ extended families, as well as all his friends, and his whole community from Czestochowa and elsewhere who had been massacred in Treblinka. This revenge was for all the atrocities he had been forced to bear witness to and be immersed in. During the uprising, Chaim killed two Nazi guards and three Ukrainian guards, but he always vouched that he ‘never harmed a single human being.” (68-69)

If you want to compare Chaim’s version to Sam’s, see pages 100-102 in My Soul is Filled with Joy.

But before we leave, I must mention something that Ms. Zylbersztajn may have misstated in the book:

“Yankel Wiernik,” Zylbersztajn writes, “was the architect and builder of the gas chambers at Treblinka” (Zylbersztajn at 65).

I didn’t think this was correct, so I reread Jankiel Wiernik’s writings about Treblinka.

“Our group of workers grew; additional workers arrived,” Wiernik describers. “The foundations were dug for some sort of building. No one knew that kind of building this would be. There was in the courtyard one wooden building surrounded by a tall fence. The function of this building was a secret.”

“A few days later,” Wiernik continues, a German architect arrived with an assistant and the construction work got under way.” (Donat at 155)

Of course, this secret building was one of the gas chambers at Treblinka.

Jankiel Wiernik was one of the few prisoners that slept in the Upper Camp (gas chambers) and worked in both the Upper and the Lower Camps.   Because of this, he was a critical go between as the uprising was planned. Though he was forced to help build the gas chambers, he was not their “architect.”

Back to Chaim. He got out of Treblinka alive and ran to the forest. That part of the story is for the next blog post.

Sources:  

Zylbersztajn, Malka, L’Chaim: the Exceptional Life of Chaim Sztajer, Jewish Holocaust Center, Elsternwick, (2108).

Donat, Alexander, ed., The Death Camp Treblinka: A Documentary, New York: Holocaust Library, 1979.

The Lalkes and More from Chaim Sztajer

 

The laughter, oh the laughter.   Kurt Franz, the Lalke, would laugh each time he sent his dog Barry to attack a Jewish man’s genitals or a Jewish woman’s breast. It’s the laughter that Chaim Sztajer recalls as he told his daughter of the “excruciating pain, torture and humiliation these unfortunate people had to endure while awaiting their deaths.” (41) It was also the Lalke who, after a failed attempt by some prisoners to escape Treblinka, strung the prisoners up by their feet.   He left them there, hanging in the open reception area, until blood poured “out of every orifice: eyes, ears, mouth and nose.” (40)

I learned from L’Chaim: The Exception Life of Chaim Sztajer, that Kurt Franz was not the only Nazi Lalke. The word means doll and this nickname was given to Kurt Franz of Treblinka because he was handsome. Well, Chana Sztal, who married Chaim after the war, worked in a German munition’s factory. She got very little to eat and would save a small piece of her moldy bread for later in the morning when her stomach, yet again, grumbled with the pain of emptiness.

“She had just placed the morsel into her mouth,” the book tells, “and was about to chew it, when she found her body being propelled towards the machine and at the same instance, felt a bolt of excruciating pain go through her back and her hand. Chana watched in slow motion as her left hand went straight through the machine. The pain was beyond description as the machine quickly released her hand. Lalke had indeed seen her put the piece of stale bread into her mouth, and had belted her between her shoulder blades with the full force of his hand. The machine smashed the bones in her hand and her entire hand had caved in like a crater.” (107)

This Lalke was not Kurt Franz, but another handsome, doll-like Nazi, who found pleasure and satisfaction in the torture of Jews. I wonder how many other Lalke’s there were in the Nazi ranks?

But we should get back to Treblinka.

Chaim began devising methods of escape and/or uprising in his head soon after the shock of Treblinka subsided a bit.   As he worked sorting clothing and piling them into the now empty cattle cars, he thought: one way of escape is to hide in the clothes that are put into the empty cattle cars and sent to Germany. I’ll make a well in the piles of clothes and help some of these young men to escape and I’ll jump in right before the doors are closed.   He grabbed three young men and threw them into the mounds of clothes in the train, quickly covering them.  He was about to jump into the final pile when a Nazi guard was walking straight towards him, screaming, “make it quick.” As the doors of the cattle car closed with the three hidden men, Chaim lost his chance for a quick escape. (41)

Many years later, in Australia, Chaim was at a Yom Haatzmaut program.   Chaim was asked to give someone a ride home.   He was a fellow survivor and Chaim was happy to make room in his car. They began to chat about their wartime experiences and the man told Chaim that for a short time, he was a prisoner at Treblinka. The man explained that he had been working at sorting the clothes. When someone, whom he did not know, “grabbed him from behind, lifted him up onto the cattle car and shoved him into the middle of a huge pile of clothes and covered him up.”

Chaim’s reaction was swift and dramatic.  

He “swerved off the road and drove straight onto the nature strip. He stopped the car, turned around with tears rolling down his cheeks, shocked and with difficulty in getting the words out, pointed to himself and said, ‘That was me! I put you into the clothes.’ There was a deafening silence as the two men faced each other, in total disbelief, as they both attempted to digest what had just been discovered.” (157)

[photo:  Micha Hacohen at Treblinka – June 2016]

Soon after helping these young men escape, Chaim was moved to the Upper Camp, and forced to work with the corpses after the gassing was complete. He worked in the Upper Camp for the rest of his at Treblinka – until the Uprising on August 2, 1943. Chaim tells many gruesome stories of life in the Upper Camp. But the story I want to share is his telling of the death of a group of women who had fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

It was May 1943 and this group of young fighters marched down the Road to Heaven. They were chanted in powerful loud voices:

“Take revenge! Take revenge! Let the world know what happened here!”

As they entered the gas chamber, they stood “[p]roud, strong and undefeated, they stood together in a circle in the middle of the gas chamber and, at the top of their voices, recited the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. It was so moving and inspirational for men like Chaim, who stood outside the gas chambers waiting to remove the dead, that they temporarily forgot where they were and stood up a little bit taller with pride.   When at last there was that same total eerie silence coming from the gas chamber, the door flew open and the group of young men and women who only moments before were so full of life, were now still and silent, entwined together in their circle.” (58)

This description is as heartbreaking and moving as any I have encountered.

Source:   Zylbersztajn, Malka, L’Chaim: the Exceptional Life of Chaim Sztajer, Jewish Holocaust Center, Elsternwick, (2108).

Next blog post:   Chaim’s and the Treblinka Uprising.

[photo:  Goldberg and Maleszewski families walking towards the site of Treblinka, June 2016]

 

Chaim Sztajer’s First 90 Minutes at Treblinka (warning – this is not pretty)

Oct. 3, 1942 – Treblinka

“Don’t be afraid, you men are going to work, while the women will go to the kitchen or the laundry to work, and your children will all go to school. But before you can start your new life, you all must have a shower to delouse. Leave your luggage here.” (30)

These are the words that Kurt Franz (the Lalke) spoke as he greeted Chaim Sztajer, his wife Hela and their two-year-old daughter Blima at Treblinka. They had just arrived on a transport from Czestochowa. The Lalke stood at the large reception area with his dog Barry.

Chaim described the scene to his daughter, Malka Zylbersztajn, who, in 2018, published a memoir of her father’s life, L’Chaim: The Exceptional Life of Chaim Sztajer. It was published in Australia and my friend Chad Gibbs, who is currently working on his PhD thesis about the Treblinka uprising wrote and told me of this addition to the Treblinka literature. Chad is especially interested because Chaim was involved in Treblinka uprising on August 2, 1943. He is in the iconic photo (below) taken of those Treblinka survivors who planned and executed the uprising. Chaim is the man sitting in the front row, on the far right.   Sam, of course is the short guy, standing in the back row – center.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

The first 90 minutes at Treblinka mean death for most. For those who survive, it means an introduction to a world that they could never have imagined – hell on earth.

Chaim tells of the first 90 minutes at Treblinka – when he was separated from his wife and daughter. Hela and Blima were taken inside the women’s undressing barrack to remove their clothing and have their hair shorn.  Chaim and the other men undressed outside. They were given check claims for their luggage and string to tie their shoes together in order to retrieve them after the mandatory delousing shower. They were each given a zloty to “pay” for a bar of soap they would receive upon entry to the shower.

In an unusual twist, Chaim was reunited with Hela and Blima, after they undressed. Together they walked down the flower-laden, narrow “Road to Heaven,” with comforting music played by prisoners. This family reunion was not a usual occurrence.   Most often male and female family members were separated after disembarking the train and never saw each other again. With Chaim holding Blima in his arms and Hela standing just in front of him, they waited their turn to enter the shower. Chaim noticed the beautiful Parochet (curtain that usually covers an Ark in a Synagogue) that hung at the entrance. The author does not mention it, but I know from other accounts that the verse on the Parochet was from Psalms: “This is the gate of G-d, the righteous shall enter here.” What Chaim did recount was that the Parochet was placed as a deception so that those standing in line could not see into the building itself.

Finally, it was their turn to shower. Chaim watched as his wife entered. At that exact moment, the shower was declared to be full. The thirty to fifty naked Jews still waiting in line would have to wait.

“As the doors were closing,” the author writes, “a Ukrainian guard who Chaim would soon learn was named ‘Ivan the Terrible’ grabbed Blima, aged only two and half, out of her father’s arms, doubled her up head to feet, and flung her through the closing gas chamber doors, over the heads of people inside. All Chaim could hear was his beautiful Blimale screaming, ‘I want my daddy, I want my daddy.’” (33)

After Blima was ripped from his arms and thrown into the shower, Chaim was shocked, but he thought, I’ll find her after my shower, and I will comfort her then. But it was not long before Chaim’s brutal introduction to Treblinka got more graphic. As he was waiting his turn to enter the shower, Ivan the Terrible grabbed a teenage girl and attempted to rape her. She fought back. Ivan then “slit her belly right open. Her piercing screams of pain, as she suffered a very slow tormenting death, were utterly harrowing to hear and to witness.” (33)

Then out of nowhere, Chaim was pulled out of line by a guard who told him to run to where the piles of clothing were being sorted and help with the work. This happened because a neighbor of Chaim’s from Czestochowa, who was a slave laborer at Treblinka, like Sam, saw him in line and told the guard that Chaim would be a good worker. So, Chaim was pulled out of the death line and sent, naked, running to the Lower Camp. Those who were working there, saw a naked man running from the gas chamber. They immediately encircled him, created a well in the center of a pile of clothes and instructed him to quickly put on pants and a shirt and start working. He did as he was told, but naively asked someone when the women and children would be coming out of the showers? He was told by another worker to “shut up” and keep working. (35)

It was not long before Chaim figured out on his own what was really going on at Treblinka. In those early days of the camp, the fence between the Lower Camp (working area) and the Upper Camp (the gas chambers) had many gaps and one could see through.   Chaim saw with his own eyes how dead bodies were pulled out of the “shower” building and thrown into a massive pit. (35)

Thus, passed Chaim Sztajer’s first 90 minutes at Treblinka.

Treblinka Sign

Source;   Zylbersztajn, Malka, L’Chaim: the Exceptional Life of Chaim Sztajer, Jewish Holocaust Center, Elsternwick, (2108).