Shtetl (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

[Music] it's been more than 50 years since the nazis came now he's come home to the place he loves and the place he fears [Music] has anything changed or nothing at all tonight on frontline producer marion marzinski travels to poland to search for remnants of the lives and memories of an entire jewish village a shtetl lost in the holocaust [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] this is poland the country where my jewish ancestors lived for centuries before world war ii 85 percent of all jews had their roots in this part of the world then 6 million jews lost their lives in the holocaust i was among the few survivors a child hidden by christians in warsaw my work began in a horse wagon in 1942 i was smuggled from the warsaw ghetto to the christian side of the city i was sitting in the carriage with a woman guide her hand over my mouth as i struggle to scream i want to go back to the ghetto i want to go back to mommy [Music] in the ghetto a massive deportation of jewish children to the death camps had just started on the christian side of town germans posted notices of death penalties for hiring a jew my hideous were warso courtyards i called people who took care of me my aunts and uncles their children pretended to be my cousins [Music] but the game was over when a friendly neighbor said rather loudly for everyone in the courtyard to hear i don't remember anybody in their family looking like him and i had to go when all doors had closed my mother took the elevator up to the top floor of 59 mokotovska street she was going to open the window and jump and take me with her but she couldn't then she made a decision she brought me to this courtyard of a christian charity organization in the hope that i would be sent to an orphanage she gave me a brown bag with my favorite sugar sandwich she hung a cardboard sign around my neck my name is marish my parents are dead she watched me carefully from across the street fearing that i would run after her i didn't i stood still [Music] i survived the war but 90 of my family didn't some of them died in the warsaw ghetto others were killed in this little town called wenchitsa where the history of our family was written before the war most jews lived in places like this they called them shtetl a little town in yiddish [Music] in the 25 years i lived in poland after the war i returned only once to enchita in 1969 but when i started asking questions about those in my family who were killed and those who betrayed them i couldn't take it i decided never to return to my stettle i left for america with the image of steadily life frozen in time it smelled of death another 25 years have passed i find a way to enter this haunted world of my ancestors my friend from chicago is searching for his jewish roots it's easier for him he was born in america he never lived in poland i feel secure with him leading the way will be his translator [Music] this is him nathan kaplan [Music] we are going to his family's shtetl a place called bransk 100 kilometers east of warsaw near the russian border nathan was two years old when his father died i have no memory of my father he told me it's only by going to bronze that i can touch him that i can understand who i am [Music] nathan wants me to ask a fellow passenger what does he know about the jews who once lived in poland he says that they talk about jews differently they know they were jews that they mainly were in commerce that they were taking care of the commerce [Music] he also knows that there is a little forest where where where there are graves of where the jews are were buried dead there and then they were killed by many germans nearby [Music] you are at the age you should know something i pursue i'm only 50 he replies and your father i ask he passed away he answers but when he was alive he never talked about it two years ago nathan kaplan sent a letter to bransk asking for information about his family a few weeks later he got a reply from someone who worked in the town hall dear mr kaplan there are no juiciness today but i am a paul whose family has lived here for generations and i have an interest in juice i'd like to help you [Music] i am trying to recreate my family's life in bransk replies nathan i know my grandmother washed clothes in the river and walked on a cobblestone path to the mikvah my mother was born in a one-room cabin would you know how these homes were furnished did people sleep on straw were there wolves in the forest were there bandits in the forest dear nathan comes the answer your mother lived in very interesting times brands had three marketplaces polish farmers from 60 villages sold corn potatoes eggs horses cattle sheep and poultry in the market square all the houses belong to the jews in those houses jewish tailors shoemakers bakers and sellers of fancy goods at their shops signed special manuka [Music] young friend there have been over 100 letters exchanged over a two-year period between the 70 year old jewish man from chicago and this mysterious 29 year old gentile from bransk i wonder who he is and why he does it there is no hotel in bransk specia has invited us home his parents will sleep outside in a tent so that we can stay in their bedroom there is a say in polish the guest in your home is like god in your home the guest is god that's it you want to write it down yes that's this is it has to do with the fact that if you know well how to receive a guest in your home that you have a god blessing i wrote also that we met at the station and what my greetings to him were and that he may be a dreamer but not not to my face he's a dreamer he's a he's a i see him as a practical person who knows what he wants to do and how to go about it that's very nice to hear says bishek but i am not sure i deserve it a real warmth here nathan will write in his diary this bishop's mother is a husky woman her eyes sparkle with love democracy in poland the jewish quarter was just behind their window or it's nathan's diary the pastoral setting is silent about the past sorrow um [Music] in a house much like this one writes nathan my grandparents lived and my mother was born [Music] four children in this house my mother was next to the youngest [Music] then [Music] in the summertime the women came here and did their laundry and talked to each other the in the winter time the ice skate the people ice skated here the uh fish the polish fishermen caught fish and the jewish women would come to buy the fish to prepare for friday night's dinner um the ice that i mentioned i mentioned the ice okay the winter they took out the ice uh carved out the ice for storage wrapped in straws for storage the water for the for the public for the jewish bath house which included the mikva was drawn from here and was emptied in here the bishop collects photographs of all brands this is the river as your mother would remember it the bishop tells nathan wider and less polluted the original house okay and then the synagogue all five synagogues in branson were destroyed during the war nathan wants to know precisely where each of them stood up but the jews were continuously collecting for their poor and the poles always could not understand that they are doing this because they say in our community if someone is poor it gets poorer nobody will help them [Music] the only synagogue that survived the war in this area is in orla on the russian border [Music] [Music] ten years ago a renovation project began with limited funds from the government [Music] but in the last five years because of lack of financial support the synagogue is deteriorating i tell you what he's telling me is just incredible because it was first neglected it was totally destroyed and then in the last 10 years there's nothing but stupidities that are being done to this place a wrong way of of reconstructing the things they are discovered and then then stolen the the the the glass is gone the door is gone the fresh then some students come and do some some reconstruction [Music] zlishek who never learned that school the jews ever lived in france discovered on his own that before the war jews made up 60 percent of the brans population tracing their history became an intellectual adventure he has gathered his own jewish archive during the demolition of one of the old houses in branson some school children found three fragments of torah and brought them to zbishek al yahara and he introduces himself as an expert on juice and economics when a polish farmer needed to borrow money he had to come to the jew foreign do you know that polish banks charge 60 today a jew looks at the pig and says i will give you two zlotys per kilo not enough says the polish farmer and the jew goes away the next day another jew comes and offers a zloty and a half for the pig and the farmer refuses again then the first jew comes on the third day and buys the pig for two zlotys that's how cunning they were [Music] a [Music] brans is no longer a hidden world to me writes nathan in his journal i'm touching the places my parents touched i walk on the ground they walked on [Music] nathan is like a sponge he is overwhelmed by information he cannot sort out [Music] he absorbs it all [Music] the jewish subject was a taboo when i lived in poland during the communist era but even now in a small town like bransk it takes guts to advertise this type of interest as long as he collects remnants of jewish life he's safe but what about when he touches on jewish death in 1942 the germans fence in the jewish quarter with barbed wire and created a jewish ghetto at the edge of it was this mill the miller's name is jan olszewski today he is 96 years old and blind before the war a jewish merchant sold him grain the name of the merchant was maurice goldwasser [Music] i make the introduction he knows the son of goldwesser nathan lives in america he's 72 not that young you can touch him i can tell he's an older man i can feel his stubble says who lives in chicago and who is a doctor i repeat has witnessed the deportation of the gold vessel family from the ghetto is [Music] as a part of the plan to erase the jewish past the germans ordered paul's to remove the gravestones from the jewish cemetery in bransk most of them were used as underpavement for local roads and sidewalks like this one around the catholic parish in brans [Music] when swisher learned about it he asked the priest for permission to break up the concrete and retrieve the gravestones the priest agreed under the condition that zvishek will be responsible for repaving the sidewalk when you show this film make sure in your commentary that it is clear that the germans did this not the pulse [Music] that's is yes um to be able to read the inscriptions on the graves seeing this [Music] is foreign [Music] to his search for stolen gravestones as bishop recruited a friend a local school teacher and his students the latest tip came from this farm according to the farmer's son two jewish gravestones lie on the ground [Music] one is at the entrance to the peak style and another one by the stable cut into a circle for use as a grinding wheel [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign one of his projects is the compilation of the least of jewish families who lived in brans in the 19th century but i wonder what meaning the stunts have for a woman who is old enough to remember the jews do they remind her of the jewish death she witnessed during the war foreign foreign this is the result of two years of collecting gravestones by zbishek and his friend they have been carrying them to the old jewish cemetery from where the original stones were all stolen 175 gravestones separated from the bodies they once marked make up this exhibit [Music] special calls it a lapidarium a museum of stones for nathan and me these stones are alive [Music] this is a roll call of the dead for the kaplans the rubins the idols the finkelsteins the tekotsukis when world war ii started they were two and a half thousand of them in this town [Music] illinois don't know on november 8 1942 germans rounded up the jews of bransk they ordered polish farmers to provide 500 horse wagons to transport two and a half thousand jews to the nearby train station within 24 hours the jews of brans died in the gas chambers of treblinka only 300 of them were able to escape natan wants to meet people who remember what happened to jews who went into hiding foreign he tells me that after the jews left the germans ordered the polls to demolish some of their houses and offered building materials for sale skovronski was one of the buyers but he was looking for other bargains as well has a revelation for me after the war skovronski was accused of giving up jews to the germans after we finished conversation with the guy yeah our friend romania says that he has enough evidence from young hashem that is going to be five dollars gave up a the full room of jews to germans he had some evidence the guy gave up i don't know 30 20 the bunker full of juice to get to to the german it's just blowing my mind i cannot believe it so i went to the guy and i asked him are you the only guy of under this name say yes would you leave only your life over that says yes and i came back to and so of course i i don't want to confront him but that is how tragic is this whole thing i can't even think i can't even everything falls apart everything falls apart i i can't i can't i can't there's nothing in life that connects with this with this with this with this what we have here this this double row this revelation of righteousness and evil nathan wants to believe the best [Music] but in my pocket i am carrying depositions from several jews accusing skovronski of betraying them to the nazis i decide we have to see kovronski again [Music] so this is a false accusation oh apparently i have accused the wrong man but somebody did it says nathan [Music] [Music] [Music] food um sometimes in life events awaken us to new perceptions of ourselves we return to the parish because nathan wants to ask the priest about polish jewish relations during the war here is bryansk who in a way is a symbol of every town what great realization has come to this town as a result of the events of nazi occupation today yes how does it affect their lives and their thinking in their hearts the trick is to live as close as possible to the teaching of the church answer the priests everybody had family father mother children they had to choose with those who kept jews it was more than ordinary life it was heroism [Music] according to god's law i can love my brother more than myself but i don't have to i'm not talking about those who were doing it for money or gold some of whom perished as well but those who kept the jews with pure intentions were taking risks although the priest privately compliments bishop on his jewish research he refuses to discuss it in the church or to give public support we learn that there are other clouds over this young man's head his mother who helped him gather information about the jews from older people has run into some resistance she met just a moment ago a man who said i have a lot of stuff to tell you about jews but i want because i saw that there are guys here they are taking a picture of the jewish homes and that that means that if we talk more about it some jews will come take the homes and we'll leave it here and we don't want this to happen nathan worries that he has created problems for his young friends bishop who has changed nathan's perspective on polish anti-semitism it took me a year of correspondence to wonder where he's coming from there's a certain tension as to what is the meaning of this man's thinking now how often we come a person who says he's a friend of the jew but dormant uh he he but he has he has all the he has the negative images he will say uh the jews are okay he says but um he won't say but he says they really know how to make money he or else they'll say he's the jew in my family meaning that they have an image that he is a uh an aggressive hustler uh money money uh ambitious person when i was baptized during the war with my mother this older woman that was really taking care of it came to my mother and said congratulations i'm so happy for you finally you do not smell jew so i'm saying that even the heroes were not free from anti-semitism that's a big contradiction and he is free of anti-semitism he's outside of our experience [Music] from my conversations with zbishek i begin to imagine what has happened here 50 years ago during the liquidation of the brand's ghetto 300 jews escaped to the surrounding forest their chance of meeting a german soldier was slim for a population of some six thousand the entire occupation force consisted of five germans [Music] the survival of jews depended on getting food and shelter from polish farmers like the family of boleswaza pisek [Music] i wanted to know if the farmers were getting anything in return for their help but we had 20 pigs and five cows and for bread mother bought grain and baked it in the oven the pinch crew the pizza story seems too good to be true so i decided to provoke him because of my nose tell me [Music] that i was saved by christians but that most of the people in hiding were given over to the germans it's true he says i know of a case where a beautiful jew is along with a whole bunch of jews hid in the forest nearby and were betrayed by the farmers who are the farmers i ask the people over there he says i ask for names but zapiesek is elusive i have to think about it he says he doesn't know who exactly was but it was a group of seven jews that were that were living in the forest when you took this and they were coming to this uh little area and they were asking for food and he said that they were probably annoying them by asking them too often yeah or maybe they didn't want to pay them or whatever at one point they came from over there through this road to the place when they that they were hidden and they take them physically and drove them to germany betrayal [Music] was much thicker [Music] foreign [Music] you think that's it what would you call it dig out dug out dug out what dugout [Applause] the next day we get a phone call from zapiesek come over to the wedding of my niece he says i have some news for you i know the names of the two people who betrayed the jews in the dugout [Music] [Music] m [Music] tells me where to find him at the first glance i realized that the man is senile it crosses my mind that i should back off and not bother him but then i realized that when he closes his eyes the last traces of memory will disappear and we will never know his daughter insists that he was too young to remember and then i should go to their neighbor who is older he says he knew jews were hiding in the forest and farmers were giving them food they had to give them food yet they were afraid of them i tell kurek that i have seen the places in the forest where the jews were hiding and i asked him if he ever came across them i didn't he answers unless by accident when i was hurting the cows i could have stumbled on them he says whenever germans found them they would bash their heads in and throw them into the pit and that was the end of it they knew how to handle them he answers and unleashes his fantasy sometimes they would send planes after them and bombard them from there the p6 lead has reached a dead end but the investigation has hooked me one thing i know the atrocities happened here in the remote farm areas where there were no witnesses from the pages of survivors testimonies certain names stand out like the brothers rich who would receive jews grabbed their belongings bludgeoned them to death and throw their bodies in the river i learned from zbishek that one of the brothers rich is still alive me me um um movies [Music] none of the people who serve jail sentences for betraying the jews is alive but the daughter of a man who was convicted of killing jews is willing to talk i really don't remember this well i don't know where those jews were did they round them up to our house or someplace else i couldn't tell my father was told that if he doesn't report them he will pay the price he had family that's why i really don't remember this my well had some good jews with whom he was friendly they left some belongings with us for safe keeping and went to hiding after the war they returned and picked those things up was it in the hands of people or was it god's will people told me that it happened but i didn't see it so i cannot testify they said they shot them in an open field maybe he did something wrong he spent 15 years in prison he was a good man he didn't drink he will go to the church but there were the times i'm sure it all happened on a great tension i say we were only human you know and those were the times everybody was a victim that's right i wonder if people would act the same way if it happened today i asked her i never get an answer and try to make sense of this and i cannot make sense of this my my mind cannot support decency and inhumanity in the same people i don't know what it means how can a decent man be inhuman at times what component of a man of a just man of a decent man of a caring person have evil lurking in their hearts and that evil will assert itself and rule that person i don't know this i don't understand it it doesn't it doesn't i can't take anything else in life and use it as a yardstick as a comparison as they explanation i i don't know what this is i i can't i'm stuck i'm stuck i have to figure this out i don't know at the home of bishop's friend with whom he restored the jewish cemetery nathan and i receive farewell wishes [Music] uh [Music] trains bring back memories [Music] after my mother left me in the courtyard a catholic priest took care of me later he brought me here to the orphanage of the brothers oriana 15 miles from warsaw i was a five and a half year old boy who knew his story well my mother was a mate i never knew my father here at the age of six i had my first communion and became the most dedicated altar boy from here we saw the heavy smoke over warsaw the ghetto was burning and i knew my father was there only the principal knew who i was when the germans visited the orphanage he brought me to the chapel and i would work around the altar or hide behind it since i had lost my mother memories of my father were coming back the touch of his unshaved cheek when he invited me to his bed sunday morning in our ghetto room then the war was over i was sitting in the dining room at a table a woman came from the entrance an old woman with sunken cheeks was looking at me [Music] she said we can't speak i told her we have meditations now i'm your mother she said i don't know you ma'am i'm your mother don't you remember your aunts and uncles no i don't remember you i would like to take you to warsaw do you have enough money to take care of me i'm okay here i said she cried i later found out that my father cut a hole in the train's floor on the way to the concentration camp and jumped off he joined the partisans and was killed in a battle nathan could be my father but i see him as a schoolboy eager to learn i am grateful to him for bringing me to bransk i couldn't face the memories of my own family's stettle i have adopted nathan's bransk as my own but my journey in search of a stettle has only begun [Music] foreign a year later special romaniac comes to chicago where nathan and i live special wants to gather more material for his research about jewish life in brans they haven't seen each other since we left poland [Music] i think about him all the time i have conversations and dialogue with him all the time i look after him all the time i'm right about he never believed that he will be in chicago one day and it's the big big uh emotion [Music] i want to know what was the atmosphere that you grew up in in bruins that the information that you got about jews a lot of jokes which would make fun of jews [Music] a lot of sayings that were they were derogative about jews the jewish saying oh for example since he was very little whenever someone is dressed in a bad taste the comment is you are dressed as if you were going for a jewish wedding is when people talk at the same time and there is a noise in the room that the person says it's noisy like in a header or in a jewish school okay you know i was so touched and so overwhelmed by the hospitality and the congeniality after that first day i i i was just really touched i couldn't i couldn't see through it [Music] [Music] [Music] it is very nice that you got this impression and he's very glad i was overwhelmed however the mo the day after you left and the day after other jews leave what he hears from his neighbors often is that he again brought the jews so they can reclaim their properties a woman told him after he started to do work on the cemetery you better stop doing this because something bad can happen to you i worry about you how did he how did he react to these things then how i was never afraid of anything i'm not concerned about threats that's why i worry about them that's going to achieve it's from these towns that we mark over here that i can humanize the experience of the jews and to stay away from cold history the ghetto wire was over here and they get a fence to get a wooden fence was here and when the people went to the church they had to see this ghetto fence and i always wondered what type of impression they made on the people going to that church this is the market this is where my grandmother sold the soap in the market this is the market where my my grandmother sold so this is the last time the bishop will see nathan kaplan within a year nathan will die leaving behind him hundreds of pages of notes from a four year long search for his statue this is the street where the synagogue where three uh three of the five synagogues were on this we're on the street a little cluster of religious a spiritual cluster and i can imagine that all the time the sound of prayer and chants were filling the streets [Music] don't forget i want a picture of you and your wife [Music] it was nathan who set up appointments for zbishek across america i will be special guide my assignment is a difficult one i will be opening the door for him to the jews from brans who live in america i know they never met a gentile who studies the jewish life i also know that american jews have different feelings toward the stettle for some it is an inspiration for others a nightmare in this new jersey condominium complex most of the residents are jewish it occurs to me that i am taking zbishek to a vertical shuttle in modern america we are visiting an israeli woman whose mother was born in branson [Music] her name is rifka cordray hello nice to meet you you know what happened my mother came from bryce which i can understand the most elegant woman that you can imagine so asking me if he heard about that people in bronze in those time was so elegant everything when my mother passed away my cousin told me that she remember the way she came to israel everybody looked at her not only because she was beautiful she had the most gorgeous clothes the very high heeled shoes in fact she could not even use them in israel and we had them for years and years in the closet this is the first time that the bishop is in a jewish home and right away he is under scrutiny how come your parents didn't object to you delving into the life of the jews i translate questions [Music] because of freedom because of this right i have no my my most important question of today do you think that it can be objective in searching the jews because it's not jewish and this is really about an answer i have a little bit doubt i'll tell you why you connect objectivity with being a jew no because this is but who is most qualified you think to really write the history of a little polish town if not a historian that lives there that has access to archives isn't it the polish interest to know the history of the land absolutely i agree he could be more objective than if you were writing it because you would write you would make it a you would like beautify it or whatever and you would put in all your subjective opinions which you have plenty of and he doesn't have any well maybe he has some but but he could be a lot more objective than anyone and as else historian i mean he's looking up history why would it be suspicious is it it's uh no it's something a novel i mean he's writing a uh a history book right and they'll tell you what odysseus [Music] the last time i saw you you were in a shape yeah yes i just spoke with somebody and i told them how nice you look how is esther doing your rest is not so good okay i'll make you now feeling very good because i have a surprise for you you know i have in my house three people that are doing a project about brian about your steadily whatever the pose was there was no good when the people used to go saturday mornings and sure from smith and synagogue they used to see them in [Music] in sunday you straight and tie them to the tails of the horse and then they used to drag them in the street what do you remember elf what else you remember it was the children that were doing this or the older pauls people older people one more question anya listen to this my mother came to israel she bought beautiful clothes and beautiful shoes and we have pictures she was so elegant and she used to tell me that when they come to israel she had such a hard life you know they had to establish for hasidim and fa they had to walk in the day and they have to watch at night they have so many problems in israel so i always wear under the impression that in bronze she had good life no no i can't say that they had such a good wife so how come she came with this beautiful clothes and with the high-heeled shoes and hell listen this is your life forever you you need it you spent on yourself so whatever you had but to use it in bronze no she probably took all the savings and bought one pair of everything and came to israel that's what immigrants like to do that's what she did after our first experience i feel like a warrior i am watching this bishop as he trespasses into a foreign territory just as i did during the war when i lived among christians in poland i watch him entering a world he could only imagine until now in a suburb of atlanta lives a woman who left brans as a 14 year old girl her name is evelyn silverboard her family fled brans in 1938 just before the war [Applause] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] yeah and the tomah would you go to brass no why i want to remember the way i am that's my home home brian's home that's my [Music] that's that's the way i it's home and that's the reason i don't want to go back because i don't i want to remember my home the way it was i don't want to remember it the way it is now i don't know anybody now that was all the familiar faces every nook and cranny i mean i i drew him a map and where people lived and names and i can still see in my mind's eye i can see everything i can see the way it look and i remember going on the river and with lightness on the river when it was frozen and i remember going uh in the summertime uh swimming in the river i remember that all of that this is from uh rahela finkelstein na pamyanki this is from uh shaina gold goldurna her mother they had a galante ray store this is joseph batale casting in jewish and this is from mortal spitane and this is from haifa tsuvana and this is ramayan and this is stellalerman we were close-knit group of girlfriends the last night i went we said goodbye the lights were out in town the electronic was being cleaned so [Music] we had lamps and everybody came to say goodbye and in the morning i remember homskid you know the name hamsky sarah homsker who was they were very good friends of our family she was knocking on the on to wake up it was time to wake up then the bus stopped in front of our house all the good friends they went on the bus with us to the outskirts of town when the bus was near benduga and that's where they got off and walked back in and we went on and we i remember my aunt saying they'll never see us again and that was it then we went to warsaw and we stayed in warsaw at three four days papa went to lodge to say goodbye to his brothers and sisters and two brothers came and uh and a nephew came back to warsaw to say goodbye to us and i remember going on the bus to this train station to go to gadina and there were riots in the street and the last thing that i remember about poland and i don't know whether i should say it or not was we were on the bus and the students college students university students yelling and carrying signs spread your dummy and that i'll never forget that was in my brain it still is and that's another reason i won't go back to poland because that's my last memory of poland was prejudice we won the bus we were all scared and that that was it would you say prejudice down with the jews evelyn shows us a collection of letters from bransk written to her in 1939 before the war put an end to all correspondences i can't believe that you are seasoned continents away from us reads one of the letters your golden america is a dream for everyone you read newspapers and must know what is happening in germany therefore you should not miss brands even though you had your sweet childhood here i hope you will forget branson soon and adapt to the american life yes has become unbearable i am sick of this hideous world jew i hear all around and you are so far from me in your golden america you can't believe it i won't be able to see your beautiful little faces look uh toys on friday friday night we used to put this on our table um that was called this and mama's my mama self candlestick this is the way it looked laura it's pretty it's still pretty and we've been here since 1938 and and i don't think it's been used since we have some beautiful candlesticks and mama used to put it like right here at the end of the table and she used to bench lift there was a what was was was and it'll never never never be again it's a a civilization a way of life that's gone forever and it'll never be duplicated it can't it was a very rich rich rich civilization how can you transfer the flavor the uh that was sure the american jews they're doing though they're making shabbos but have they got them pushing them tishtach the i mean that doesn't make the shabbos but it's the little things it's the way of life it's um ensure and you are you going to hear it here measure you the calling you can't it's just a way of life that i was really blessed to to know i really was and that is you asked me about going back to blind i want to remember i want to have my memories that i remember my my good memories a holocaust survivor from brans lives in baltimore after the war he came to america now jack rubin owns a clothing store this is the empress from the bank in 1947 we came to this country now i'm in united states i'm in america what will i do here you don't have money you don't have a trade and you can't talk everybody looks at you like a dummy what will i do here so my uncle saw the way i was walking around she said what do you worry about you don't know what to eat i'll take you i had a country out of town i'll take you over there you're going to be a whole summer you're not going to do nothing you're going to drink and eat you're going to rest up for all your service said uncle are going to get crazy over there i wanna do something give me that i wanna do something so what can you do i told him i got a lunchman in baltimore tokyo chicochi so he told me if i'm not going to be able to do nothing in philadelphia i should come to baltimore i know him he knows me in both together we'll do something we used to sell suits if i'll tell you we used to buy suits let's say five dollars six dollars two dollars three dollars the ivan wants the one man we bought 1200 suits maybe 20 percent of them we added throughout in the restaurant we paid maybe 50 cents apiece in the restaurant we worked it out you sent the cleaner and we had also a seamstress to fix it up into salad in the same thing choice i can only tell you when i get pants here you see depends delay in i didn't like the way they lay like this they don't lay straight i soaked tens character since faraway they looked better than this the juventus i saw those pens three dollars a dozen three dollar a dozen shorts two dollars a dozen a dollar used to buy for a dollar a dozen if but you have to work it out and grade it out with jack rubin i feel we are back in the state i can hear him speaking polish with the same yiddish accent i can see his store on the market square in brands jack rubin presides over a small community of people in baltimore who call themselves branskers some of them left bronze before the war a few like rubin survived the holocaust in poland this evening everyone was asked to bring family photos from brands i haven't seen you in a long time since my mother's birthday parties they are joined by their children romania is the guest of honor his computer the main attraction he has entered two thousand names of jewish families from france which was a rare home queen [Music] when bishop grew up in france the word jew was always whispered but here he says the word aloud sits among jews and feels trusted i'm glad for him i always wanted the same from the polls foreign a friend of mine teaches a course called shtetl at graz college in philadelphia he is excited to have zbishek in his classroom here is a pole right who has a certain need a very profound need for the same memory right now his needs may be very different and in fact he he represents um a whole young generation of in poland michael steinlove the instructor is the son of holocaust survivors no doubt uh you know the the the the focus and the core of this of this of this new uh interest he drew the marketplace that was and here was the the the small a smaller marketplace called the horse marketplace where animals were were traded this is a history class and is in his element he tells them that in the 19th century the jews of brans occupied 400 houses in the town center only ten houses belonged to the catholics if paul wanted to live there he had to be interviewed by the jewish community the jews controlled the town's economy the polls around the local government a vice mayor position was reserved for a jew during the break michael invites bishop to his office the two historians have different views about 1918 when poland regained independence after centuries of foreign occupation jews did not support polish independence says bishop and therefore they became a focus of animosity and were called unpatriotic why should they be patriotic ask michael under russia they were one of many minorities but they didn't know what kind of destiny an independent poland will bestow upon them as a matter of fact the iso national is on the rise and 10 years later they saw its results and openly anti-semitic society [Music] one of the students has prepared a recital of shtetl songs in edish this is a song about the house left behind in a stettle somewhere in poland [Music] in my name is [Music] at the polish speaking radio station in chicago mr bishog and i are invited to tell the story of bransk and to answer caller's questions this is a message [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] when i brings bishek to the holocaust museum under construction in washington dc the words from the polish radio still ring in our ears his attempt to maintain a cool command of his jewish studies keeps colliding with living memories tinted by moral judgments this museum will again confront him with the question of his people's responsibility for the faith of the jews one of the exhibitions in the museum will be dedicated to life in the shtetl [Music] the exhibit is the result of 20 years of photographic research by a brooklyn college scholar jaffa elia she collected some 2000 photographs taken in a stettle called a shishkee not far from brass [Music] 1500 jews lived in the shettle only 29 survived the war [Music] we are at the home of javelia in brooklyn i have to finally go pictures in really let me see the synagogue is here it's not here i just have to not sure which one is the cylinder this is binyamin now he was killed he was the father of that little boy that he was killed in the house of biki witchover that's the father of the little boy [Music] he's his little boy and him each of us that survived is alive because of the poles and those that escaped are not alive most of them are dead also because it say a is for instance the family of rogowski escaped five sons and they came to a farmer that was very friendly and they asked him for honey because honey you could keep for a long time he gave them that mute the minute they walked out from the house he killed four one son survived i interviewed him extensively he could not understand he died in israel he has two sons in vancouver he told me i cannot understand why when he used to come on market day he used to park his horse in their backyard and used to come the night before and slept in the house so in the morning he would be very early at the market it didn't enter his i think there were a handful of wonderful people that were willing to give their lives everything was an issue of life and death and unfortunately for others uh it was a time to take jewish property uh they they were paid for being nasty they were paid salt uh they got the jewish homes they got a jewish clothing they got the jewish money and it there was there was anti-semitism that was there for years it's not it was not something that happened from the german occupation because we were different it is the dislike of the unlike we were jewish and they were christians and they hated us because we were different [Music] here yes here if my father gives who were the poles who preached against jews in church krollev before jaffa's father died he gave her a list of pauls who were openly anti-semitic in this stettle along with the list of jews who were killed by the pulse both were working they were the assistance of priest machulski sometimes the family of five was killed by one person okay oh one person killed 13 people all right i how many polish names are there the polish names i really didn't count i counted the victims names i did not count the polish names he counts the killers he as a paul is interested how many were polish killers for him it makes it different for some reason that someone says hundred and we're only 50. i i i feel very sorry that our conversation focuses on on those that killed rather than those that saved i would rather have it focus on those that saved because he would not be here to tell his story to do all that and i would not be here to do all that and it's very i understand how painful it must be for you and you must understand it was very painful for me getting all the names together because by now i knew each victim and i also knew many of the polls as as part of my chapter on market day they used to come they they drank in this house they took photographs in this place and just a year later on two years later they killed the people with whom they drank with whom they did business with photographs they took how your mother was finally killed show me just the scene how was it it was october 20th 1944 we came back on july 14th 1944. we were liberated on the 13th and we came out at night so nobody could see that we were on the farm of mr korkuch because there were rumors that he was hiding jews and if people would know they would kill him so he was not safe so he wanted us to live at night so nobody would know that he gave shelter to jews we came we were in we slept in the field and came to the town to ashish in the morning when we walked in a group of us the kabachnik family all hiding 15 of us hiding on cockroaches farm when we came in people came out and said how come you are back uh hitler after all didn't do such a good job this was the welcome my mother was begging my father not to stay she didn't want but the war was going on and my father said we'll just stay for a while and then we will move on uh the meantime we got back my brother my baby brother from a priest and there were rumors that we have a lot more gold not only the gold that we took out during the war but we must have a lot of gold with us and that my mother is going to open the drug store that was owned by my grandmother that we are going to open again the drug store in town this clad up technique that my grandmother will open it up and the the pharmacist was one of the people that was one of the town outspoken anti-semites at night on the 20th of october there was a bang on the window where my brother and i slept which was downstairs and my brother grabbed me by the hand and we ran upstairs to my parents that was sleeping upstairs a minute later a grenade was thrown into through the window and all the blankets the covers and the pillows everything exploded and and all the feathers were all over and we are shooting downstairs there were russians also living in our house two russian officers that were sleeping downstairs and other jews around the house were jumping from the windows and running but we couldn't because my mother was holding the baby so upstairs was a little closet-like because for the ceiling to be straight was a little closet i have a picture of the house and a picture of the closet and we were we went inside to hide and my father took a piece of furniture to block the door so it would look like it there is no no no little door there and we heard them downstairs and we could identify the voices we knew who they were one of them was the son of the pharmacist and then one of them said probably mishinka my father they used to call moshe but they locally everybody called him mishinka that he probably he and the daughter of katsova meaning my mother ran away with their children and took all the gold with them because they couldn't find any gold in the house then somebody said let's go and look upstairs and he said they probably ran away they heard that we are coming but then there was on the floor when my father pulled the furniture there was like a a scratch on the floor it was a wooden floor and somebody said it's a fresh scratch blue chili granite it's ability they and then they pulled the furniture and opened the door and there was my mother sitting and the baby is and then my brother and my father because it was on a slope so there was almost no space and my father was flat on the back so i could sit up and my mother and the baby could sit there and my mother stood up with a baby and she she spoke she called the men by his name she knew who he was he was a neighbor he was the son of the pharmacist and she said to him please kill me first so i will not see when you kill my baby and i counted the bullets and i will never understand why but i did there were 9 bullets that killed my brother and then he shot my mother with 15 birds and she fell on the back on top of me and i thought that i was dead he didn't uh and um then they still did some shooting on the floor but all the bullets went into my mother's body and they left they didn't they were very upset they didn't find any gold and that they thought that my father managed to run away and they were very upset that they didn't get my father what did you do next they left we heard i thought that i was dead i didn't move uh later when the light started to come in and they left my father crawled out he was a little bit wounded in his neck and uh we heard downstairs the other jews that came out from hiding and we took my mother's body down and uh the police came the kgb came the uncovered they came and my father gave them all the names of the people that were there they were closer to me than you are and my father knew them all and we buried my mother in the jewish cemetery she was the last jew my mother and my brother were buried in the cemetery and people lined the streets and some of them were very happy they they told us we should have never come back but we should have not come back they were happy they were happy [Music] the bishop and i are in israel we've been invited for the commemoration marking the 50th anniversary of the liquidation of the brans ghetto these are the jews from france [Music] most of them emigrated to israel before the war a few are holocaust survivors [Music] forze bishop it is his statue coming alive his first witnessing of the jewish religious life [Music] me [Music] ashamed [Music] [Music] [Music] hello there is a famous rabbi who was born in branson and went to yeshiva there today rabbi man runs his own yeshiva here in tel aviv after the prayer as bishek will meet him this will be bishop's first meeting with a rabbi a religious figure he knows intimately from his research and readings bishop knows that the jews come to their rabbis with questions so he too came with one he looks for assurance that what he did with the gravestones is in accordance with jewish religious laws he has placed the stones in the old cemetery but he has no way of matching them with the bodies lying beneath the ground this is not a problem the rabbi tells him you did the most you could do under the circumstances and we consider this a mitzvah a good deed when i learned that a group of ramada beef high school seniors has just returned from a trip to poland in the beginning i thought special should meet them their trip was part of their studies of the holocaust wants to break the barrier between paul's the jews where appalled by definition is no good among according to some people and vice versa his people had a big part in what happened he must accept it i i think that going to schools and trying to re-educate to re-educate kids is no good i mean it won't change a thing because this kind of education and educator and education of racism is something you you get at home but why are you so pissed i cannot be i believe it why why can't you believe it i mean you've been there as i am yeah and you've seen the things that i have seen i guess yeah and my father died in warsaw i understand everything my family was completely killed by germans but i can still think that it's happened because of the ignorance look at this is rooted it's it's there to stay he disagree violently and he says that he cannot stand that you you think like that history in the holocaust they he says polls do not play a an important role 30 million polls against i don't know how many regimes german regimes could have done something they didn't for helping jews oppose were killed by germans he brings the point that how you can expect from polls to defend the jews if jews didn't fight back themselves except for the warsaw and bialystok ghetto they were jews that escaped from the concentration camps and they they tried to run to the forests and to join the partisans that to the guerrilla forces and the polish guerrilla forces never accepted jews they were anti-semitism there was anti-semitism in the guerrilla forces like there was the german german leadership it wasn't different they just killed any jew that that came near them it's it's like even though they were in the same situation of surviving the german the german it has nothing to do with varunki he says the only those who had conditions uh could help what kind of conditions everybody has the same country said listen what are you talking about condition every peasant has one pig one cow one house everybody has the same condition you you took you two yeah you could you could bring it to you and hide him yeah okay oh you or whatever but he says but there was always a one or two poles that were collaborating with germans in this village and the other people were afraid of those other poles oh to a whole village afraid of too cold i have the impression that what he's trying to do is clear his conscience more than he tries you know to to understand he's coming here with all kinds of excuses and i'm not sure that his goal is to change opinions more than to you know relax a bit feel that he's not as guilty as he really is he never feels guilty his family was very friendly with the jews always and never had any problem he's talking about very very dangerous thing right now because he's saying that if a crazy group like the nazis takes takes over europe again the same thing could happen because it says that it wasn't possible but it was possible you understand what i'm trying to say he says that they couldn't have done anything the situation hasn't changed since then if the same thing happens again we're not safe i i think that none of them are safe not the poles not the jews anybody [Music] thanks a lot look i never had a chance to talk to you about this begins my heart to heart talk with bishop but there is something you don't understand where there is even one person who killed a jew they want to know about it they want to speak loudly about it they want to condemn it and that is their education and you while admitting certain facts try to rationalize them by saying oh yes but the same things happen in france or yes but most polls didn't do it why do you make these excuses i because says bishek all i hear about in israel is how it all happened in poland but where else could it happen jews were living in poland what sense would it make for germans to send the jews to france and kill them there we are talking [Music] then i have no problem says bishog as long as we mention the names but your problem i say is that you don't like to mention the names you prefer to use words like bandit and then you suggest that bandits are everywhere you suggest that people generally acted fine with just a few exceptions i didn't say everyone act fine argus bishop but by underlining the word bandit i insist you try to diminish the gravity of all of this i still take the criticism of bad pulse to be the condemnation of poland says bishop and it hurts me because i know that they were those who helped where are they talked about not far from here i say in the museum of yad vashem how many of them are mentioned you know very well how many jews are grateful to those who save their lives i say but how many of the polls who helped did not even admit it he asks [Music] but what doesn't say about the world they live in if they are still afraid of admitting to their neighbors that they have helped jews doesn't this condemn polish society wait a moment says i'll ask them about it and i will tell you but you yourself told me that people in the villages are afraid of being accused by the neighbors of getting rich on the jews that's right that's exactly what they are afraid of not of being accused that they helped so what do you think i ask about the society with this type of mentality i deplore this mentality answers bishop to me i add it is tragic that a world in which you cannot admit altruism still exists and we both agree that this world needs improvements eleven thousand trees have been planted at the advan in memory of righteous gentiles who helped jews to survive the holocaust half of the names almost five thousand are polish seven belong to families from brass [Music] one of those jews saved by righteous pauls is with me he is jack rubin the clothing store owner from baltimore he survived the holocaust against extraordinary odds [Music] [Music] before the war his family owned a goose feeding yard in branson [Music] this is the house the rubin family lived in for many generations [Music] um [Music] and the telephone number was 11. that tells you how many phones there were in branches they were a prosperous jewish family in france his parents and three children shimon [Music] he was known in this town as young against [Music] at 16 he started to work for his father at 20 he was in charge of 11 000 geese [Applause] the rubin family's competitive edge was that they would walk the geese to the market rather than cram them into wagons so that they would arrive unwrinkled and presentable [Applause] jack reveals another business secret to the attendant of the now state-run museum after we bought the geese he tells him we would plug them down from their bellies and guess what they would immediately start to eat like crazy imagine how many thousands of zlotys [Music] [Applause] foreign the monday morning market was the only place where jews mingled with pulse when it came to geese jack was the king he was setting the pace immediately he runs into one of his old farmhands whose name is brogotsky they recall the times when they serve in the same military unit number 79 second company remembers best the pledge of allegiance the catholic priest the rabbi and the orthodox priest were all there everyone pledged to serve the fatherland in his own faith [Applause] [Music] another former worker shows up his name is bronic everything i know i learned from you the jews says during the war i was nobody today i am wealthy i own four or five houses he brags he's got down five houses is that jack wants to visit another man who work for his father's business the bishop shows him the way huh oh i have to explain something to you says joseph after the war people were saying bad things about us but you know how much we did for your family sneaking your stuff out tonight it was about this fur that shimmer left here and later gave it to my mother foreign looking for the old-timers jack meets a man who remembers the juice [Music] suggestions foreign i imagine an argument like this one erupting hundreds of years ago when the first jews settled in small polish towns the jews had to be industrious it didn't take long before envy and narrow mindedness pushed them into isolation [Applause] and they believed in a wrong god [Music] when the holocaust began the silence of their polish neighbors made the jews vulnerable [Music] jack was 16 when germans invaded his statue he was a golden athletic boy wearing a fashionable leather jacket a young successful man starting in business he was 19 in 1942 when his family was forced to leave their house on the main street and move to the ghetto quarters and the outskirts of town was 20 when machine guns walked him in the middle of the night and the liquidation of the ghetto began [Music] the germans were taking the jews by horse wagons to the nearest train station then transporting them to the death camp of treblinka jack begged his parents and sister to run before it was too late but only the young and gutsy had the strength [Music] along with his brother jack fled to the forest they knew one polish family they could depend on before the war jack bought geese from their farm the name of the farmer was kozlowski now only his son is alive jack and his brother hid in their barn for eight months is but when one barn became too dangerous to stay jack and his brother would look for another shelter a couple of kilometers away was a farm owned by yashko maximum [Music] [Music] yes oh foreign soon this place too became unsafe [Music] for several months jack and his brother hid in the woods [Music] [Music] there were 14 of jack's relatives and friends hiding in different places underneath each of them the heirs was crumbling like animals smelling the hunter they had to escape the pastoral country the only possible destination was the city of bialystok where surrounded by german tanks the ghetto was still alive [Music] in the winter of 1943 jack collected money and bought a horse and a sleigh said he and his brother were the drivers eaten including three children who had lost their parents and a couple who had escaped yes [Music] we are riding the road that the sleigh took in 1943 the question that will never be answered is how the germans learned about jack's plan [Music] there were only five soldiers overseeing the area and it was unheard of to see them on the road in the middle of a sub-zero winter night [Music] with the help of a local villager we find the place on the road where it all happened [Music] [Music] his goal was to reach bialystok's ghetto 15 kilometers away where he saw his only chance to survive but going alone was too dangerous and only a polish farmer could offer the protection he needed yeah so i started to knock on this window [Music] there was a roadside [Music] could i come to your house to warm up [Music] i will give you 290 and i keep 10 for my first kilo of bread i said [Music] i will walk behind you and you will lead me to be honest [Music] when you see germans turn the stick to the right i told him so we went [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] so [Music] everyone is on the street when branson celebrates pentecost with no jews living here bransky is entirely christian [Music] every home on the procession route receives the body of god [Music] a year ago special romanian was elected by his mayor of the town but there are clouds over his political future [Music] some people are resentful of his jewish research for about a year from time to time tells me inscriptions of different content appear on the walls of my staircase whoever does it has an intention to offend me for example here we have an inscription guy followed by the word next to it is a swastika here is a signpost this way to the jew in a couple of weeks brands will celebrate its 500th anniversary as the local historians bishop is responsible for the program of the celebration it was his idea to create a monument reflecting the history of the town it will be erected in the middle of what used to be a market square when the jews lived in france the stone has just been delivered the idea of the monument explains bishops there are three of its sites will be filled with inscriptions and the fourth left blank for the future the three sides point to the most important moments in bran's history this site for example tells us that from the 16 through 18th century we were the capital of the entire region the seat of local parliament and courts the other side speaks about the symbolic victory of christianity over paganism in this area there is no mention of the jewish history the town council is about to adopt zebesha's program of festivities i invite myself to the meeting how much of the jewish history will be included in your program i have enough aggravation already because of this subject says bishop unfortunately people here don't understand this matters i have come to the conclusion that our community is still very primitive the word jew is still pronounced in a whisper it's immediately associated with a pot of gold and with dollars it is very unpleasant to see all the graffiti in my staircase with the word jew and the arrow pointing to my door it has all been annoying to me i am a christian and a good catholic and i am not any less a polish patriot than the people who oppose me they must feel guilty or they must be very primitive to do things like that a wise man does not trade in stupid gossips that's enough on this subject isn't this an occasion to use the energy of wise people and speak publicly to enlighten those who are ignorant whoever visits bishop response is labeled a jew whatever i do it is in the interest of the jews there is even a gossip that the monument we are erecting will be a monument to jewish history please don't be discouraged bishop one of the town council member advices it is a small group that is against you speaking publicly is the best solution i am a public servant says bishop and i have to act accordingly my private life is separate i will still continue my private interest but what i say as a public official must be balanced but what about history i say there are no two histories i'm also saying that there is one history response bishop i would never say as vice mayor that the jews were never living here and say something else as a private person of course not i agree that would be very unintelligent of you i am not concerned about what you are saying but about what you are not saying but zbishak says that jews are no longer here and he cannot promote the jewish subject in a town that is 100 percent gentile but you are one of those gentiles i point out why are you interested in the jews if they are no longer here because i am interested in culture he responds and perhaps other people look at the jews only in a financial life am interested in their life and their contributions to the history of this town so they were here for 430 years i say don't you believe that their contribution to this town deserves public recognition yes but i believe it is a delicate subject i am not even talking about the 16th century i say i'm saying that in 1939 65 of people here were jewish so in a five minute speech about brands can you spend a minute on the juice or is it too much you have a problem i cannot make people listen to what they don't want to hear [Music] in his proclamation speech zbishek does not mention the jews [Music] brans celebrates its 500th anniversary fiddler on the roof by the local military orchestra is the only jewish element of festivities not counting one box of judaica in an exhibit of historic documents curated by zbishek [Music] i am at the end of a three-year-long journey with the bishop we have discovered how fragile are the memories of jewish life in branson i take some of these memories with me on a piece of film i leave my friends bishop in branson the lonely guardian of my people's past [Music] so [Music] bye [Applause] [Music] um [Music] um [Music] funding for frontline is provided by the annual financial support of pbs viewers like you with additional funding for this program from the corporation for public broadcasting [Music]

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

Views: 998,537

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Id: GzmDqs1LCAc

Length: 174min 18sec (10458 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 25 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/UnderTheMuddyWater]

Going on my watch list, thanks for picking this out

[u/thetacticalpanda]

Thanks, I love Frontline.