Regina and life in Chrzanow and Beuthen







Regina and Charlie - 1934

Regina (Ryfka) Hochbaum was born in Chrzanow on November 20, 1915.  She was the youngest daughter of Chaim Hirsch and Feigel (Laufer) Hochbaum, and their second youngest child.  Only Sam, born two years later, was younger. 

While her brothers and her parents were off working in Beuthen during the week, Gina (and probably Sam, originally) was home with her grandmother in Chrzanow.  I think she was the only one of the children to go to a Polish school....she talked about learning Polish at school. 

As an aside, I don't think that any of the rest of the family spoke or understood much - if any - Polish.  Yiddish was their first tongue, and they were also fluent in German, which was essential to their business dealings.  Chet pointed out that even though Daddy thought of himself as a Galizianer, he never thought of himself as either a Pole or a German.  Galizianer to him meant Galician Jew.  And once he got to this country he wanted nothing to do with Europe. He never visited and never did any business in Europe.  In fact, he was upset, in 1966, when he took his first trip to Israel and the plane stopped in Athens.

Back to Gina:

Gina always seems to have had a very lively and vivacious personality, and it was pretty clear that she didn't liked being restricted at home.  She complained that her grandmother was always sick (arthritis, I think) and according to Gina she was a crusty old lady, who fired the local Polish maid and made Gina do all the work.  It sounded like Gina was always high-spirited and a bit of a rebel and always getting herself in trouble.  She told stories about sneaking off on Shabbos to smoke and go dancing.

We have a couple of pictures of a young Regina, which I assume were taken in Chrzanow, and many pictures of Gina's friends.  Here are some of a young Gina:



I assume these were taken in Europe, but there's a chance that some of them may be from her years in Palestine. 

I don't know when Gina's grandmother died, but I think Gina stayed in Chrzanow until after both her parents died.  Gina said her mother had liver trouble, water and arthritis, and was in terrible pain.  She died on Gina's 14th birthday.  Eight months later, her father died.  Gina said that when they buried her mother, something clicked in her father....that Daddy said that from that moment on he laughed and giggled and was a completely changed person.  Daddy took over the business.  He took his father back to Chrzanow three days before he died.

Religious Jews were not allowed to be buried in caskets.  They were buried on a wooden board covered with dirt.  Gina said they had to bribe the policemen to allow them to bury her father with the appropriate religious ceremony.   They took him out of the casket, and put him in a white shroud, made by hand.

After his father died in Chrzanow, Daddy was afraid to stay in Chrzanow.  He was afraid the military would come and get him, and put him in the Polish Army.  So he went back to Beuthen right away and Marta stayed in Chrzanow with Gina.

Marta had gotten engaged two weeks before her mother died, and her father died one month before she was supposed to be married.  They went to the rabbi to ask what they should do.  The rabbi said that whatever was arranged must go on.  Gina, however, couldn't go the wedding because she wasn't registered in Germany.

Marta's husband, David Green (these are Charlie's parents) was an educated man from Teschen, Czechoslovakia.  He was very religious.  And connected somehow with the hospital. (I think he was an administrator.)  "One of the nicest guys," according to Gina. "He didn't speak too much." 

Life went on.  My father bought a car for the business, and Erna got married and moved to Gleiwitz with her husband.  It was not true, Gina said, that her baby was sent a copy of Mein Kampf.  "They said too bad you are Jewish...you would have gotten a crib and this and that....The baby was a beautiful child.  Blond and blue eyes."

Chaim Hirsh Hochbaum (Erna's son)

Uncle Sam and the car (Gina told Andrea that Sam loved cars)

There was a Zionist organization in Beuthen.  Gina joined and studied the books and the programs.  "Everybody was enthusiastic." 

I asked her what life was like. (I can't make out a lot of my notes here, so take this with a large grain of salt.)  They lived in an apartment with two rooms.  One room was the kitchen and eating room.  It had a big closet with grandmother's and her mother's silk wedding dresses.  A coal stove in the corner, and a huge table for about 14 people.  Potatoes and coal and fat and butter for special occasions were stored in the cellar.

The second room had three beds and a sofa -- "real velvet" -- for sleeping. And four "outside closets" (armoires).  According to my notes they had maids to do the housework and their clothes were sent out to the laundry.  They came back tied up with ribbons.  The big stuff was sent out.  The small stuff was done at home.  Her grandmother's sister owned the house.  "My parents - understand - were fairly well off." 

The girls were behind.  "Like in Iran, exactly."  There were rules and regulations.  A girl is nothing.  There was a law that if a husband dies and the widow has no children the brother-in-law could take everything. 

If a woman lost her husband and had no children she couldn't remarry.

Hitler's first victory, in 1932, gave him 20-30% of the vote.  But Germany was still a democratic state and, Gina said, Jews were still treated fairly.

Then, after 1933, everything started to change.  David Green used to travel, had a piece of paper that said he could get imports.  All of a sudden everything was completely tied up.  Everybody who lived in Beuthen always had guests.  They always slept two to a bed.  Sam and Henry slept together.   Daddy slept in the office.  The office had big store rooms, filled with onions, bananas, figs, apples and pears.  Gina slept in the maids room.

They got away with a lot because they were Hochbaums and a lot of Hochbaums were Germans.  

In Germany the Nazis started to chase Jewish women who married goyim and vice versa.  They put tar on their bodies and dragged them through the streets.  Gina said she saw this, in 1937.  No Jew was allowed to live in Berlin or in Munich.  They broke the windows of Jewish stores and people were killed on the street.  "It was just impossible."

In 1938 they burned the synagogue in Beuthen.  (The Polish Jews didn't go to the synagogue.  The German Jews went to the synagogue, they went to shul.  Gina said the boys went every Friday and Saturday.)

Everybody talked about leaving but couldn't leave.  Didn't have any money.

Erna's husband had no nationality. I'm not sure what made him different from the rest of the family.  It may be that the others had official permission to work in Germany and he didn't. He went back to Chrzanow. Uncle Aaron Hochbaum (Regina Rappaport and Duftsha Schoenberg's father) lived in Katowice and tried to help them out, by putting him in business selling fruits, but Katowice was Polish and they didn't speak Polish. 

There was no place to go.  Poland was a forbidden country and they didn't speak the same language.  "Dave said, I would rather die than go to Poland."

In 1935, Gina went to Berlin for three weeks.  Dave called Rose Schaufeld (his cousin, living in Berlin) and told Gina to come home -- "Sam is very sick."

They were training thirteen girls to be cooks for the kibbutz.  In order to get papers to go to Palestine, you had to be able to do something. 

After she came back from Berlin, Marta said, "No more!" 

Two years later, Gina packed her stuff and ran away to Gleiwitz.  She was 21.  She lived on a commune and worked for 35-40 people, cooking.  "I didn't know how to light the stove.  The boys were starving."

You needed a certificate to go to Israel as a student.  From all of Germany only 120 Jews would be allowed to go there to study.  The other possibility was false papers.  The Hachsharah (preparation) movement in Hamburg provided training, especially training in physical labour, such as farming, for settlement in Palestine.   Gina went to Hamburg for six weeks.  There were speeches and reading and sightseeing.   Polish Jews were not allowed to take the tests, but the teacher liked Gina and seems to have found a way to get her the required papers.

When she returned to Beuthen, Marta got hysterical.  "Screamed bloody murder that she would tear up the paper."  But then she relented and made pillows, featherbeds - "everything monogrammed."  There were no more dressmakers, so they got dresses from the stores.  Regina needed slacks and other things -- clothes and sweaters and boots and mosquito netting.

Erna gave Gina a wristwatch.  Daddy asked her what she wanted.  She got a camera and a tennis racquet (!!). 

To get to Israel, Regina went through Czechoslovakia and Vienna.  David Green's sister met her in Yugoslavia and took her to Trieste on January 1, 1938.  It was snowing and bitter cold. 

In Trieste, she met rich people -- bankers. Daddy had had the business people he dealt with in Italy bill him extra for lemons and other fruits and vegetables and save the extra money for him.  That’s how, when Gina got to Trieste, there was money waiting for her.  But she could not take the money out of Italy – it was illegal, so they told her to buy any thing that she wanted and spend it.  “Not for publication, she said.  “Not till after I am dead.” 

She spent three days in Trieste, eating "spaghetti instead of potatoes and meatballs that were cooked differently."   

From Trieste she took a short boat trip to Palestine and settled in a moshav (a type of agricultural kibbutz) called Nahalal.  And from there our story will be continued.......

Note:  Almost every post I add to this blog raises questions.  This one especially does, since most of it is based on somewhat incoherent notes I took while Gina was alive, and  I don’t trust either my notes or Gina’s memory.  Here are some specific issues:  1) I’m not sure whether her description of the apartment with the maids and sending out the laundry describes life in Chrzanow or life in Beuthen.  If I had to make a guess, I’d guess Chrzanow. 2) Those of you who remember your high school history will remember the rampant inflation at the end of the Weimar Republic, that decimated the economy.  How did that impact the Hochbaum family?  Gina goes from describing a family that was pretty well off to one where no one had money to leave. Although even more likely was that at some point the Nazis forced my father to sell the business to a non-Jew for a pittance, which totally cut off their income and probably was the final incentive to getting them to leave.  3) Dates: There is a lot of confusion here, among other things, about the dates that my grandparents died.  My family tree, most of which I got from my father, says they both died in 1928.  Gina’s story that her mother died on her 14^th birthday, and her father 8 months later would have their death dates at November 1929 and July or August 1930.  There is a database online of people buried in the Chrzanow Jewish Cemetery that says they both died in 1930.  So this is still To Be Determined, though I’m not sure it matters a lot.