Read The Other Schindlers Online
Authors: Agnes Grunwald-Spier
The Other Schindlers (12 page)
146
. Jane Marks,
The Hidden Children: the Secret Survivors of the Holocaust
(Bantam: London, 1997), p. 251.
147
. Tom Tugend, ‘French village honours “hidden child” survivor of Holocaust’ in
Jewish Chronicle
, 24 November 2000.
148
. Marks,
The Hidden Children
, p. 252.
149
. Ibid., pp. 252–3.
150
. Josie Martin, e-mail to author, 11 March 2001.
151
. Janine Morant-Mestradie, privately produced memoir of the Institution Saint-André in Angoulême, dated June 2001, pp. 5–7. Translated from the French by Prof. Hamish Ritchie.
152
. Tom Tugend,
Jewish Chronicle
article, 24 November 2000.
153
. Josie Martin, e-mail to author, 11 March 2001.
154
. Marks,
The Hidden Children
, p. 258.
155
. Josie Levy Martin,
Never Tell your Name
(1st Books Library, 2002), p. 197.
156
. Bernadette Landréa, letter to author, 18 November 2003. Bernadette has translated Josie Martin’s book into French,
Ne Dis Jamais Ton Nom
.
157
. Louis Lacalle, letter to Madame Landréa, 10 December 2003. Madame Landréa translated the author’s letter into French and then Louis’ reply into English. I am deeply indebted to her.
158
. Lacalle, letter to Madame Landréa, 10 December 2003.
159
. Bernadette Landréa, letter to author, 29 December 2003.
160
. Martin,
Never Tell your Name
, p. iii.
161
. Ibid., p. 199.
162
. Martin, e-mail to author, 27 November 2009.
163
. Martin, e-mail to author, 25 November 2009.
164
. John Paul Abranches, letter to author, 12 August 2002, p. 1. He was the ninth son of Aristides, born in 1932 in Belgium. He was international chairman of the committee to commemorate his father, and he worked tirelessly to get his father’s work recognised.
165
. Maria Julia Cirurgiao & Michael D. Hull, ‘Aristides de Sousa Mendes (1885–1954)’ in
Lay Witness
published by Catholics United for Faith (CUF) in October 1998, p. 3.
166
. José-Alain Fralon,
A Good Man in Evil Times
(London: Viking, 2000), p. 46.
167
. Abranches, letter to author, 12 August 2002, p. 2.
168
. Eric Silver,
The Book of the Just: the Silent Heroes who Saved Jews from Hitler
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1992), p. 52.
169
. Fralon,
A Good Man in Evil Times
, p. 57.
170
. Ibid., p. 47.
171
. Cirurgiao & Hull, ‘Aristides de Sousa Mendes (1885–1954)’, p. 6.
172
. Fralon,
A Good Man in Evil Times
, p. 48.
173
. Cesar Mendes, ‘Memories of Cesar Mendes’, undated memoir from the 1960s, p. 2.
174
. Ibid., p. 1.
175
. Cirurgiao & Hull, ‘Aristides de Sousa Mendes (1885–1954)’, p. 7.
176
. Fralon,
A Good Man in Evil Times
, p. 60.
177
. Ibid., p. 62.
178
. Ibid., pp. 73–4.
179
. John Paul Abranches, letter to author, 12 August 2002, p. 2.
180
. Fralon,
A Good Man in Evil Times
, p. 118.
181
. ‘A Protest’ dated 10 December 1945, sent to the author by JPA, 12 August 2002.
182
. John Paul Abranches, letter to author, 15 May 2003.
183
. Henrie Zvi Deutsch, ‘The Many Marvelous Mitzvot of Aristides de Souse Mendes’, on the website of the Portuguese Sephardic History Group, www.saudedes.org/500yrs2.htm, accessed 27 December 2002.
184
. Ibid.
185
. Silver,
The Book of the Just
, pp. 52–3.
186
. Sebastian Mendes, e-mails to the author, 21 December 2009.
187
. JPA, 12 August 2002.
188
. Miriam Dunner, interview with the author, 18 November 2001, at Miriam’s home.
189
. Abraham Dunner, telephone conversation with the author, 20 December 2009.
190
. Max Arpel Lezer, ‘Shame on this Dutch Law’ in
Mishpocha
, Summer 2002, Newsletter of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust, and e-mail to the author, 10 March 2003.
Józef Robert Barczynski (1900–80)
rescued 250 Jews in Poland. He was the eldest of seven children, born in Poland into a family of rich landowners on his mother’s side and Polish nobility on his father’s. His father, Józef Kazimierz, was a political activist and a member of the Polish Socialist Party who fought for the independence of Poland from Tsarist Russia. He was first arrested in 1901 and imprisoned for four months. In 1906 he was arrested again and sent to Siberia to do forced labour in a coal mine. He was released after two years but had to stay in Siberia, in a town called Kustanay (now Kazakhstan) beyond the Ural mountains. His wife and family were allowed to join him in 1908 and they were only
permitted
to return to an independent Poland in 1921.
1
Józef’s formative years from 8 to 21 were thus spent in exile, but during his childhood he saw the example of his parents helping those in need. He used to speak of displaced people calling at their home or business asking for help, work or food:
Apparently, frequently, destitute strangers were invited to sit with them for dinner and were treated as equals. (I do not know whether any of these displaced persons were ever of Jewish origins.) My grandfather grew up in a family where Social Democratic political beliefs were adhered to. They believed in the equality of all people. This was a big influence on all the children growing up in the Barczynski home. In addition, from the side of my grandmother, Paulina, there was a strong religious influence. The kinds of principles that the children grew up with were to be found in the Bible. We are to love, not hate. We are to make peace, not war. We are to love our neighbour as ourselves, to care for the oppressed, to extend our hand to the sorrowful. The principles of scriptures as found in Isaiah and Proverbs were not only commended, but Józef would have seen them lived out in his family home.
2
This example made him a very caring man and ‘in Siberia he witnessed his parents caring for strangers when they had no obligation to do so’.
3
Yet he would not have been described as particularly brave. His niece Olympia has said that in her family it was always said that her uncle would not hurt a fly. In fact, he was quite timid and Olympia recalled that as a child, on seeing a cockerel strutting in the yard, he rushed back into the house, wailing to his mother that the cockerel was staring at him.
4
Józef was aware of the impact of the 1917 Russian Revolution on his parents. When the Red Army came to Kustanay his father’s timber businesses were taken from him and he had to work as a night watchman in his own factory. The family lost their home and their servants and had to live like the ordinary workmen. However, Józef’s father had foresight and had converted many of his assets into gold coins which he kept hidden. Although Poland regained its independence in 1918, the family were only permitted to return home in 1921, when Józef’s father had a small fortune with him. He continued his philanthropic work by
sponsoring
the University of the People, which was the first Polish university open to the ordinary people. Józef Robert, therefore, ‘grew up in a climate where other people less fortunate than themselves were always cared for, and what was owned was for the benefit of others too’.
5
His experience working in his father’s timber works in Siberia enabled him to become a director of a timber and forestry scheme when he returned to Poland. In the late 1930s he was employed by a Czech man called Cezar Andrieu to run a factory in Krakow making timber products, minutes from Oskar Schindler’s enamelware factory. Olympia is not aware of how the two men came to work together but presumes it was through business since ‘Schindler produced enamel ware and then ammunition. My uncle’s factory produced the wooden cases in which the ammunition was packed.’
6
As a result of his involvement in the ‘war effort’, Barczynski was able to operate relatively freely. He personally rescued four Jewish families from the Krakow Ghetto. He had a truck fitted with a false bottom, which he drove into the Ghetto regularly. Schindler gave him the money with which he bribed the German guards. He was in the Polish Resistance with his brother and was called a ‘White Courier’ (in Polish
Biaty Kurier
). He took people out of the occupied territory, even as far as the Pyrenees. Apparently, ‘he personally escorted over 250 Jewish people to safety and is credited with saving their lives’.
On one occasion he was arrested and was in a convoy of prisoners being taken to Auschwitz. He managed to escape by asking to go outside to relieve himself. But his brother, Olympia’s other uncle, Wladyslaw, was not so fortunate. It appears that he was arrested in Warsaw, having been betrayed by some children. He spent six weeks in Auschwitz as a political prisoner and was questioned, tortured and
shot. His family received a telegram on Christmas Eve 1941 describing his fate. Olympia has written: ‘I remember frequently hearing of the sorrow they all had on that day, as one of his sisters was just laying the table for the Christmas meal.’
7
When the Nazis began to persecute the Jews, Józef Barczynski was able to empathise with their plight:
They were displaced people, like his family once were, in a land taken over by the enemy. He could empathise with them as his family too were plunged into the unknown and lost all they had. He would have had a strong sense of injustice,
especially
as now many of the Jews he knew and worked with were being arrested and losing all they had. Even more so as the Nazis began their campaign of extermination.
8
Józef was posthumously recognised as a Righteous Among the Nations as he had refused the honour previously saying that he ‘had only fulfilled his duty toward his fellow human beings’. After his death, his widow gave her permission and he was recognised by Yad Vashem on 7 November 1993. His niece Olympia only heard about it by accident when she visited her aunt in 1998, as his rescue of persecuted Jews had never been mentioned before.
The citation, which stresses that his job enabled him to save victims of
persecution
, both Poles and Jews, from mortal danger, describes his rescue of one Jewish family. Artur and Lola Frim, and their daughter Bronislawa, originally Przemysl, had moved to Lvov at the outbreak of war. When the Nazis occupied the city, they were interned in the Ghetto:
They remained in the Ghetto, and throughout their stay there, until the autumn of 1942, received help from Józef Barczynski, who had been superficially acquainted with Artur before the war. Prior to the Ghetto’s liquidation, Józef succeeded in smuggling out 7-year-old Bronislawa Frim and placing her with a Polish family, passing her off as a niece of his, whose parents had been exiled from the country. In due course, Artur and his wife also escaped from the Ghetto, and Barczynski found them employment in a factory and a place to live – all without requesting material recompense. After the couple had settled in the village where they were employed, Barczynski personally brought Bronislawa to join them. The Frims survived and immigrated to Israel after the war.
9
Bronislawa continued to correspond with Józef’s widow after the war, as is common between the rescued and their rescuers. Olympia used to visit her uncle’s widow until she died in 2007.
10
Achille Belloso Afan and Guilia Afan de Rivera Costaguti
. The Costaguti family lived very close to the Ghetto area in Rome. The head of the family was Achille Belloso Afan de Rivera Costaguti and his wife was Guilia Afan de Rivera Costaguti. They had five children. One was Clotilde, who was my main
informant
, and another was Costanza, who verified the rescuees’ story to Yad Vashem’s investigator in 2002.
11
At No 29 Via della Reginella there is a memorial stone high up on the wall commemorating the deportation of Jews from the area on 16 October 1943. At No 27 at that time the Costagutis took in eighteen Jews from four families who were all related by marriage, ‘a deed which, under the Nazi occupation, could have cost them their lives’.
12
Apparently the eighteen were well hidden for a couple of months:
In December 1943 fascists forcefully entered the building but luckily no harm was done. Donna Guilia moved her charges, sixteen in all, to the home of one of her
servants
. However, this hiding place was also discovered by fascists who, through threats of handing her over for deportation, extorted a high sum of 50,000 Liretta from Donna Guilia, who personally objected to the arrest of her charges. Following this incident, they were compelled to abandon this shelter and Donna Guilia arranged for their transfer to various locations under her auspices, where they remained until the liberation of Rome.
13
These eighteen Jews all survived the war, although they are all dead now. The rescue seems to have been based partly on the proximity of the Costagutis’ palace to No 27, which was an all-Jewish house in the old Ghetto area. The rescuers’ daughter Costanza, born in 1950, confirmed the rescuee Nicla Fiorentino’s story in her testimony to Yad Vashem:
Since the window of the stairwell in that building faced the balcony of their home, her parents placed boards between the window and the balcony and always left a window open so that during the Nazi actions, people could escape to their home. There they could stay or escape through the building to another street where there was no danger.
14
Costanza also spoke about a Jewish family, originally from Poland, who lived in her parents’ property and changed their name to Kellner to elude the Nazis. She also said her parents ‘never boasted of their deeds and always stressed that any person would have acted as they did in the same situation’. Nicla Fiorentino stressed that Donna Guilia was a very good woman whose actions put her in
personal
danger and she expected no recompense or acknowledgement. It is noted
that after the war she returned ‘all the belongings that she stored in her home, including gold and merchandise, to the owners’. Warm relations were maintained between the rescued and their rescuers after the war. Costanza said that ‘When her parents died the Jews closed their shops during the funeral and participated in a prayer service in the church’.
15
Nicla’s two daughters repeated the story but their evidence was hearsay as they were born after the war. However, they added an interesting detail that Donna Guilia had helped their Aunt Renata when she was giving birth to her son Mario in the cellar. Because of the dangerous conditions he was only circumcised eight months later.
16
The Costagutis’ other daughter, Clotilde Capece Galeota, explained: ‘What I can tell you now is that everything my mother did was out of humanitarianism. We live just at the border of the Jewish Ghetto so she knew these people and she didn’t think twice in helping them without any question and at risk of her safety.’
17
Milton Gendel, a historian who originally told me about the Costagutis, said: ‘Her parents, long-since dead, were right-wing. I doubt that they were
generally
pro-Jewish. The people they helped were neighbors, and some were early members of the Fascist Party, I’ve been told.’
18
In December 2002 Donna Guilia and her husband, both now deceased, were awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations in Rome, in the presence of their daughter Costanza and several members of the four families who would not have been there but for their rescuers’ bravery. It was held at Palazzo Valentino before the Israeli Ambassador and the Chief Rabbi. At the ceremony, Silvano Moffa (President of the Province of Rome) particularly emphasised the role of Donna Guilia, and said: ‘with the simplicity and profound dignity, which comes only from the love of one’s fellow men for humanity’s sake, beyond all rhetoric, stands out like a mother to all those who came to her for help and comfort.’ The President concluded:
They never gave up. After the war, they never spoke of what they had done as an act of heroism but as something that it was right to do; they have taught us to be on the side of the weak and to face the future with confidence, seeking to build a better world with every deed in our daily lives.
19
It was noted:
Unfortunately, there were few people in Europe who behaved like the Costagutis and who, beyond the bounds of politics (Achille was a volunteer in the Fascist militia), felt it was their moral duty to follow their sense of natural justice and did not passively accept racist laws and deportation.
20
One of those present at the ceremony in 2002, Giovanni Terracina, the son of one of the families rescued, remembered that a year back, when an increase in
anti-Semitism
was evident, he had jokingly asked Costanza whether her cellars were still available.
Christine (Christl) Denner (1922–92)
. Edith Hahn-Beer was born in 1914 in Vienna. She became a law student but was forced to abandon her studies, like other Jewish students, in 1938 after the Anschluss. After being a forced labourer in a rural area she was sent back to Vienna, which would have led to
deportation
. She decided to ignore the Nazis’ edicts and although she boarded the train sporting her compulsory yellow star, when she got off at Vienna she was no longer wearing it. She was fortunate that a Nazi woman she knew as Frau Doktor enabled her to visit another Nazi who dealt with racial identity – a Sippenforscher, named Johann Plattner. She had been told to tell him the truth and, sitting at home ‘wearing a brown Nazi uniform with a swastika on his arm’, he told her exactly how to get Aryan papers – but she needed an Aryan friend’s help.
21
He explained that if her friend previously obtained a vacation ration book as proof, she could claim she had been on holiday and say she had lost her papers. She would receive a new set and Edith could then use the original ones and pass as an Aryan. Plattner even told her not to apply for a
Kleiderkarte
– ration book for clothing – as these were distributed from a national list and the authorities would realise there were two people with the same identity. Plattner’s role is remarkable as he saw her in his own home and his two young sons, aged 10 and 12, opened the door to her.
