Memories of a Holocaust Survivor - Irving Farber

Howard Farber

Description

From my earliest childhood memories, I recall my dad speaking about his experiences in the holocaust. When he started talking about it, which wasn’t often, you just listened. You’d occasionally hear him screaming in his sleep, reliving the nightmare of the holocaust.

As I heard his stories, they were disconnected, with no organized chronology. Most of the time, you had very little idea as to when a particular story took place, and even my father was fuzzy on the timeframe.

When I was about thirteen, an event occurred that imprinted itself indelibly in my mind. While shopping with his family in downtown Brooklyn, my father encountered a man who had been a kapo (guard) at one of the slave labor camps where he had been interned. I can still see the confrontation, which is described in the book, as clearly as if it happened yesterday.

When my father neared eighty, I realized that all his stories would be lost to future generations when he died; and, when I died, no one in the family would have any knowledge of the suffering he endured. I persuaded him to collaborate with me to get his story on paper. It took two years, and here’s the product of our efforts.

His story is too important for it not to endure and serve as a lesson to future generations. What happened to him and the Jewish people must never be allowed to happen again – to Jews or any ethnic group.

Don't ever let it happen again!

Sujets

• History
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 31 octobre 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781410771933
• Langue: English

Extrait

Memories of a Holocaust Survivor - Irving Farber
 
 
 
By
Howard Farber
 
© 2003 by Howard Farber. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.
 
ISBN: 978-1-4107-7194-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4107-7193-3 (e)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1stBooks – 1 st edition 10/13/2003; revised 11/18/2022
Contents
Introduction:
Before the War:
Outbreak of WW2 and capture:
As a Prisoner of War (POW):
In Miedzyrzec:
The Fate of the Jews of Krynki:
In Majdanek:
In Skarzysko(-Kamienna):
In Czestochowa (pronounced Chesta-hova) and Buchenwald:
In Schlieben:
In Meuselwitz:
Liberation!!!
Coming to America:
Conclusion:
What was my father like?
Postscript (July 29, 2001)
Irving Farber’s Wartime Chronology
Bibliography:
Introduction:
As far back as I can recall, the Holocaust has been a part of my life. As a young child, I remember that my father would occasionally talk about his experiences during World War II, what the Nazis did to him and to his family. Every once in a while, he would relive a particularly bad experience in his dreams and would wake up screaming. I remember seeing the scars on his back, and his disfigured toe, which he told me happened during the war.
He told his family about the concentration camps and the unspeakable horrors that took place there. My father was fortunate in that he did not have an identification number tattooed on his forearm. Many of my friends’ parents did; some of them had been in camps such as Auschwitz.
I grew up in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, in a neighborhood that was 99% Jewish. In the 1960’s and 70’s, there were many Holocaust survivors in Brighton. You didn’t often hear people speak about the Holocaust, but you did hear it.
When I was about twelve years old, something happened that I shall never forget. It gave me a much better understanding of what my father went through. Let me set the scene.
It was a hot summer day in Brooklyn. My parents had decided to go shopping, which meant that my sister and I went along. (Boy, did I hate shopping!!!) When my parents were really hunting for bargains, they drove to East New York to shop at Fortunoff’s on Pitkin Ave and Rockaway Boulevard. On a typical summer weekend, this area was always packed with shoppers.
We had parked our car on a side street, got out, and began to walk towards the “main drag.” My father seemed unusually interested in a car parked on the other side of the street. There was a man in the drivers seat, a woman next to him, and there were children in the rear. Everything seemed totally normal. But suddenly, it looked to me that my father had gone mad. Without warning, he runs up to the car and reaches through the window. He grabs the man by the shirt and pulls him out of the car, so that the man’s head is sticking out of the window. My father is holding him with one hand, pointing at him with another, all the while shouting at him: “I know you, I know you. You were a Kapo at …(he was yelling the name of some place that I couldn’t understand). You hit me with a spoon, so hard, that I saw stars. I’m going to get the cops, and you’ll be deported.”
A crowd began to gather. At first, the man in the car shouted back at my father “I don’t know you. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get away from me.” But you could see it in his face. He recognized my father.
It turns out that the man’s name was Fleisher. As I later learned, he was a Jew whom the Germans had made a Kapo (barracks chief) over the other prisoners at Skarzysko. My father had been a prisoner there. Fleisher was cruel to the prisoners. When German guards were watching, Kapo’s had to be cruel. But Fleisher treated prisoners this way, even when the German guards were not watching.
The next thing I remember was Fleisher’s wife. She was pleading with my mother. “Please let him go. He suffered too. We have a family.” And I remember my mother started to tug at my father, pulling him away. She managed to do so, and we never saw Fleisher again.
As for myself, I was too young to do anything but watch. But I will never forget the anger that I saw in my father’s face. He wanted to kill Fleisher. But he never actually hit Fleisher.
Had I been older, I believe that I would not have shown the restraint that my father did. I would have relished the opportunity to administer a beating to Fleisher, which he well deserved. Neither would I have had any regrets if I had been responsible for him being deported.
I think that this incident is what partly motivated me to write my father’s memoirs. Another reason — as I write this, my father is eighty years old. His memories are still vivid, but even he knows that he will not live forever. That’s why he finally agreed to be interviewed by me.
The interview itself, which was conducted July 13 - 15, 1994, is contained on two micro cassette tapes. My father subsequently supplied written answers to follow up questions and clarified many issues for me in phone conversations.
I realize that, if I don’t write down his story, it will die with him. It’s too important a story to let this happen. I am writing this book in the hope that it will be passed down through future generations of Farber’s. Whether or not we Farber’s remain Jews, it is incumbent upon us not to forget our roots.
The Rabbi of my synagogue once spoke about the difference between memories and history. History is what happens to others; memories are what happens to you. The Holocaust is not history to the Jews and not history to the Farber’s. We experienced it in all its horrors. My father is all that is left of his family. Germany killed six million Jews. This should never be forgotten. I truly believe the Germans are capable of doing so again. As Jews, we must remain alert. We must never let this happen to us again!
Howard Farber
September 24, 1994
Before the War:
Irving Farber, my father, began his story speaking about his family: “We were a family of six…four children.” His parents were named Mordehi and Freida. His older brother (born 1912), was named Herschel (Harry). Dora, his sister, (born 1916) was two years younger than my father, and Peshke, his youngest sister (born 1926), was about ten years younger than Dora.
Irving Farber was born on October 2, 1914, in Sokolka, a town along the rail line from Bialystok to Grodno, in northeastern Poland. He was born in a house (not a hospital) and delivered by a midwife. His real name was Izak, which his relatives changed to Irving when he arrived in the USA.
My father grew up in Krynki, a small town about 30 miles east of Bialystok, and about ten miles from Sokolka. Today, Krynki is on the Russian-Polish border. In 1939, the Russian border ran about 100 miles to the east of Krynki.
According to the Encyclopedia Judaica , the Jewish presence in Krynki dates back to the first half of the seventeen century. The 1921 Polish census reported 3,495 Jews in the town, comprising 67% of the town’s population. However, just before the start of the war, Krynki had possibly as many as 13,000 people, more than half of them Jews. (The gentile population consisted of Poles, White Russians, and Byelorussians.) According to my father, the Jews in Krynki lived mainly on the outskirts of town. He said that there may have been as many as six synagogues in the town and several churches.
At the outbreak of the war, there were approximately three million Jews in Poland, comprising about 10% of the population. In the countryside around Bialystok, and eastern Poland in general, the percentage was even higher, closer to 20%.
My father never spoke much about his childhood. He received schooling by attending religious school (Yeshiva), where he learned to read both Polish and Yiddish, and probably also basic arithmetic. When he was young, the family was poor, but apparently began to do well just before the war. (My mother used to tell me that Irving’s mother, Freida, would make a stew for 6 people, using only 1 lb. of meat.)
Mordehi, Irving’s father, was blind in one eye. To avoid serving in the Russian army, which could last twenty-five years, he had an operation performed to (temporarily?) blind him in one eye. Mordehi had four brothers: Nathan, who emigrated to America probably in the 1920’s (and whom I recall visiting in New York City when I was a child); Ruvie, who died in Europe before WW II at age eighteen; and Berel and Kisseal, who were killed by the Germans in WW II. He had two sisters: Miyasha, who emigrated to America (and whom I also recall visiting in the Bronx when I was a child), and Ester.
My father described the house he grew up in. The house was situated just off of Koschen(l)ya Street, down a path and across a little bridge. It was made of wood, with a tile roof. The floors were uncarpeted, painted red, and polished. The house had electricity, a wood burning stove for heating and cooking, but no indoor plumbing. Water was fetched from a well outside. The bathroom (outhouse) was outdoors.
The house was two stories — two bedrooms, a kitchen, and living room/dining room. The parents slept in one bedroom; the two sisters slept in another. Dad and his brother shared a big room, which also doubled as the dining room. The room contained two sofas that served as beds.
According to my father, “We had quite a bit of land.” From his description of the property, I estimated the family’s holdings to be about 20 acres. 1 Leah, Mordehi’s mother, had given the land to her sons. Besides Mordehi, Berel (with his wife and two children), and Kisseal (who may also have h