Return to where childhood ended

BY SUSAN KAHN Assistant Editor

JEWISH NEWS.COM

Cleveland, September 30, 2004

Cleveland survivors travel to Poland for 60th anniversary of the Lodz Ghetto's liquidation.

At Lodz Jewish cemetery, Jack Beigelman, far right, with, from left, sons Samuel and Mark, cousins Aaron and Simon, Aunt Gita (also a Lodz survivor) and cousin Riva place headstone on his uncle's grave.

The last weekend of August this year, 1,700 "children of the Lodz Ghetto," gathered in Poland to remember the terrible events that scarred their youth and robbed them of so many loved ones. Organized by Lodz's mayor, Jerzy Kropiwnicki, the four-day commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the ghetto's liquidation was an attempt to publicly atone for the city's long history of antisemitism.

For the survivors, now in their 70s, the event was an opportunity to gain a sense of closure on the darkest chapter of their lives.

The Germans established the Lodz Ghetto in February 1940 and, when it was sealed in May of that year, it held 164,000 Polish Jews in an area of .96 square miles, or 2.5 sq. km. Over the course of the war, Jews deported from Germany, Austria, Luxembourg and what was then Czechoslovakia, were added to the already overcrowded area. Tens of thousands died in the ghetto of hunger and disease, while many more thousands were shipped from Lodz to Auschwitz and other death camps.

Although the Lodz Ghetto was the first established and the last destroyed, there had never before been a gathering of survivors in that city. With the help of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum in Washington, D.C., invitations were sent to ghetto survivors throughout the world.

Four Clevelanders were among the 5,500 people who traveled to Poland to take part in the event.

Sisters Helen Potash and Marcia Krause, both of Beachwood, were the only members of their family of eight to survive. This was the first trip to Poland for each of the sisters since the war.

"Before we left, I was a nervous wreck," says Krause who dreaded having old wounds reopened. Potash, too, was worried about how she would fare emotionally.

"I never wanted to go back to Poland or Germany - too much of our blood was spilled there," says Potash. "I was worried if I could handle it, but I thought, if not now, when?"

Although Pepper Pike resident Herman Frank has traveled to Poland every year for the last 15 to say kaddish for his family, he says it is always difficult for him. Although he has taken his sons and grandson on previous trips, this time he went alone.

"Every time I go, I get anxious," he says. "It is always sad."

As a result of his regular visits, Frank has made friends with several non-Jewish Poles. One of them helped him locate his mother's grave and get a monument erected.

Jack Beigelman made the trip with his extended family, including his wife, Rose Kaplovitz (also a Holocaust survivor), his two grown sons, two cousins, one of whom brought her teenage son, and his aunt, also a Lodz survivor.

The Beachwood resident says he attended the commemoration, in part, to fulfill a promise. In 1999, while on a Journey of Conscience that stopped briefly in Lodz, Beigelman located the graves of his grandfather and an uncle in the city's enormous Jewish cemetery. Distressed to find the headstones broken and dirty, he promised himself that if he ever returned, he would restore those markers.

In anticipation of the August trip, Beigelman asked one of Frank's Polish friends to facilitate the restoration.

"When we returned to the cemetery, the stones were fixed beyond everybody's expectations," says Beigelman, adding that his Polish contact also helped him locate the grave of another uncle, for whom the family will now erect a headstone.

"We felt good for memorializing at last all the family members who had graves."

While Jews accounted for one-third of this once-prosperous city's pre-war population of 750,000, only 300 Jews live there today.

The public commemoration of the ghetto's closing began with Shabbat services at Lodz's only synagogue. The Lodz rabbi and Cantor Alberto Mizrahi, formerly of Park Synagogue, conducted the service. Participants then sat down to a Shabbat dinner.

After sundown on Saturday, participants attended a concert dedicated to the children who perished in the Lodz Ghetto, at Chelmno, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and other death and labor camps. A symphony orchestra and a 100-member children's choir performed, and young people read excerpts from diaries found in the ghetto while historic photos of the children of Lodz were projected on a screen.

"Seeing those faces - 3-year-olds, 5-year-olds - it just broke my heart," says Potash.

Sunday, Aug. 29, the day the ghetto was liquidated, began with a memorial service at the Lodz Jewish Cemetery, followed by a two-mile memorial march to the Radegast Station, the arrival/departure point for all the transports to and from the ghetto. Two cattle cars, reminders of those used for transporting Jews, stood on a siding. They stood as backdrop to the speeches by dignitaries from Poland, Israel, the United States, the European Union, Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic.

"All of the countries apologized and vowed that (a holocaust) should never happen again," says Frank.

After a performance by the Lodz Philharmonic Orchestra, participants visited the Radegast station museum. The day ended with another concert and a buffet dinner. To conclude the commemoration the next morning, trees were planted in the newly named Lodz Survivors Park.

In their free time, Beigelman, Potash and Krause sought out the apartments where they grew up in pre-war Lodz. All commented on how dilapidated the city, which currently has a 20% unemployment rate, appeared.

Although Potash and Krause hoped to discover someone they had known before or during the war among event attendees, they were unsuccessful. Frank and Beigelman, however, chanced upon a man, now residing in Israel, whom they knew from Auschwitz and the Gleivitz IV Labor Camp.

Beigelman calls this return to Lodz "a celebration of life over death," saying he thinks most survivors who attended feel they have achieved some closure. In addition, he was pleased to have his sons with him so he could help them discover their family's roots.

It is important to have events such as this to bear witness, Krause says. "We, the survivors, must tell the story, as difficult as it is, before