Mr. Simcha Dobner – Part II

The Gestapo took over your hometown, Rejowiec, in Poland, in January 1940. Thanks to your sister Matel’s quick action, you and your father were spared the first Nazi aktion against the Jewish men of Rejowiec. What happened to you and your family then?

There were many aktions against the Jews, with torture, beatings and ransom demands. On February 8, 1940, the Gestapo rode once again into our shtetl and this time my brother and I were not spared. As soon as news of their arrival reached us, my brother and I fled our house and ran to the nearest village, Wulka.  We found a barn and hid in the hay.

After a short while, we heard the sounds of sleigh bells and then German soldiers barking at us, “Out, Out!” We attempted to escape by jumping over a fence, but they shot at us. A bullet grazed my brother’s face and we were shocked into remaining slumped over the barbed-wire fence. They made us line up against a barn wall with 11 other Jews, among them my cousin Avrumele. Facing the wall with our hands up behind us, we heard them loading the guns and begin counting to four. We started to recite Viduy. Suddenly, they ordered us to turn around and run. The soldiers jumped into their horse-drawn sleds and we were ordered to run in front of them in the knee-deep snow.

Each time someone fell, he was killed.  When, unfortunately, another man fell in the snow, the soldiers were distracted, so I managed to escape and hide behind a wooden fence but I couldn’t get my brother with me. He was driven like cattle into the market place where more Jews had already been rounded up. He was released later, after my mother paid a few hundred zlotys in ransom.

The Nazis formed a Judenrat, a Jewish council that had to deliver labor units when ordered to and pay ransoms whenever an aktion took place. My brother and I were often sent to work at the railroad station, cleaning the rails from snow or moving tracks from one place to another.  The Polish railroad workers who supervised our work entertained themselves by ordering only four men to carry the rail instead of eight or 10 men needed.

In the spring, rumors began circulating that there soon would be a roundup to send people to the infamous Majdanek concentration camp.  In May, the Judenrat prepared a list of men to be sent to work at the Zawadowka saw mill. I was among the first 100 men on that list. On Lag BaOmer our group marched 4 miles (7 km) to Zawadowka. We were joined by Judenrat members. I was assigned to the boiler house, working a 10-hour shift day or night, alternating weekly. It was exhausting work in the hot summer season, feeding the boiler furnaces with sawdust and cleaning them.

On our first day there, before we returned home from work, news reached us that there had been a roundup for a concentration camp. Along the way home, we met the unfortunate men headed to the camp. I tried to find out if my father and brother were among them, but didn’t see them. When I reached home, my mother’s tearful eyes revealed the sad news. My father and brother had been taken to a labor camp in Zmudz. The work there consisted of digging and draining water from swamps. My father became ill from constantly trampling in muddy swamps. My Uncle Nuchem was part of the Judenrat and after enormous efforts by him and many bribes, my father was released and sent home.

One night at the end of July, we were on our way home when we saw smoky flames fill the skies. The Poles sadistically taunted us, “The Jews are burning — where is your G-d?” While carrying out pogroms in the Jewish areas, the SS troopers had set our big, beautiful shul aflame.

On the night of Tishah B’Av, at 2:00 a.m., on the way home from our night shift, we did not meet the scheduled day shift going to work, like we usually did. Non-Jewish workers told us that the SS had rounded up all the Jews in town and taken them away. We found out later that they had been taken to the death camp in Belzec. My coworkers and I hid in a field in a haystack. When we were told by some other workers that the Nazis had left the town, we returned home. To my great joy, I found my father home, again thanks to his brother Nuchem, who had risked his life to save him.

After the Yamim Tovim, my brother was released from the camp in Zmudz. He got a job at the railroad station. My Uncle Nuchem succeeded in obtaining a job for my father as a messenger for the local authorities, so that he also could receive some sort of security card. Father had to be available at any time of the day or night.  Each time he returned home from his job, he bentched gomel.

To be continued.