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.

Gruss aus Chrzanow (Greetings from Chrzanow) - A Little Geography

Postcard from Chrzanow - Market Square and Folk School

President Kennedy, on a visit to a divided Germany in 1963, famously declared "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner).  Daddy always proudly said, "I am a Galizianer."  It was his identity, and he was very proud of it, even though Galizianers historically were looked down upon by both the German Jews (who were proud that they were more German than Jewish) and the Viennese Jews (who were very proud of how intellectual and cultured they were).   I think being a Galizianer fit in well with my father not wanting to be a "big shot."

You may think that I have been negligent about my "picture of the day" blogging responsibilities, which I have, but mostly I have been involved in doing  research so I could provide some background on some of the geography and towns in our story, which I thought might be helpful.  This turned out to be more of an adventure than I expected, and led me through all kinds of distractions in many different directions.  As it turns out, these towns were in the path of history -- they changed their nationalities frequently, and they played minor roles in some major historical events.

So here is my first pass.  I'm sure there will be corrections and additions to this entry....

Here is an overview map to get you oriented:

If I blow up the section around Cracow, it looks like this:

We are not talking about large distances here.  The distance between Chrzanow and Gleiwitz or Beuthen is less than 40 miles.

The important towns for our story are:

Chrzanow -- where the Hochbaums and the Schorrs (and possibly the Brauners) were all born, and where most of the previous generation were born and died.  I don't know anything about generations before that, but I wouldn't be surprised if they came from Chrzanow too.

Beuthen (Bytom in Polish) -- "Over the border" in Germany, where the C. H. Hochbaum, Tropical Fruits, Fruits, and Vegetables wholesale business was located.  Most of the family lived here during the week.  Before his parents died, Daddy and his siblings would all return to Chrzanow on Friday for the weekend.  Charlie Grun was born in Beuthen, as was his cousin, Chaim Hirsch Hochbaum, Erna's son. 

Gleiwitz (Gliwice in Polish) -- Also over the border, in Germany.  Daddy had a second store there, as did Dave Ulreich and Dave Redner.  (These were Daddy's future partners in America.  In Europe they were competitors.)  I'm not sure when either of their businesses in Gleiwitz closed.  Daddy and everyone else referred to Beuthen (pronounced "BOY-ton") much more frequently than Gleiwitz.  It may be that they all lived in Beuthen and commuted to Gleiwitz.

Auschwitz (Oswiecim) -- The site of the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps.  Charlie's parents died here.  Auschwitz is only about 12 miles from Chrzanow.

In addition, the town of Bendjin (Bedzin), which doesn't show on the map above, is about 12 miles east of Beuthen.  It's where the Brauner part of the family emigrated from.  I'm not sure where they were born.  (Mom thought Chrzanow.)

If you google these towns today, the names show up in Polish, because this whole area is now in Poland.  But that wasn't always true.

From 1846 until the end of WW I, Chrzanow and the rest of Galicia was part of Austria-Hungary, under the rule of the Habsburg Monarchy, most notably under Emperor Franz Joseph, who was (relatively) good to the Jews, and hence, well-liked.  Beuthen and Gleiwitz were in Germany, in an area known as Upper Silesia.

After WW I, the Habsburg Monarchy was disbanded.  A new Polish Republic was formed which included chunks of Germany and most of Galicia, including Chrzanow. There was a dispute, however, between the Allies about what should happen to the area of Upper Silesia that included Beuthen and Gleiwitz and Katowice.  While most of the surrounding area was rural and poor, the triangle formed by these three cities was an industrial and mining center.  France, wanting to dismember Germany, wanted this area to go to Poland.  England wanted the area to be left in Germany.  Ethnically the area was mixed, with large numbers of both Poles and Germans.  As a result, the Treaty of Versailles required a plebiscite, which was held in 1921.  The plebiscite was marked by uprisings on the part of both the Poles and the Germans and with mixed voting results -- Beuthen voted heavily for joining Germany, Katowice and the countryside for staying with Poland.  The issue was turned over to the League of Nations, which drew new boundaries.  Beuthen and Gleiwitz became part of Germany, Katowice stayed with Poland, and the whole area became an economic zone with some rules for protecting minority rights and resolving disputes.

As you might have surmised from this account, these towns were not Fiddler-on-the-Roof type shtetls.  Here is a postcard that was in with my grandmother Rose's papers of the synagogue in Kattowitz (Katowice):

And here's a picture from Wikipedia of the synagogue in Beuthen, built in 1869 and burned down on Kristallnacht (November 7, 1938).

Both of these cities had more than 60,000 people.  It's estimated that the Jewish population of Beuthen in the inter-war period was about 5000, according to a former resident (this is from Wikipedia), who thought that about 4000 of that number left the city (as our whole family did) between 1933 and 1939.  During the war, Beuthen's Jews, numbering around 1300 became the first Holocaust transport to be gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau.  I don't think any of our family was part of that transport -- Charlie's family had moved to Prague, where they thought they would be safer, I believe Erna's family had moved back to Chrzanow.  Daddy and his brothers Sam and Henry had emigrated to the United States, and Gina had gone to Palestine.  Charlie did witness Kristallnacht in Beuthen, however, and wrote about it in his remembrance of the Holocaust.

Chrzanow, in contrast, was smaller and less industrialized, but it was still a real town and not a village.  Before WW II, Chrzanow had a population of about 20,000, about evenly divided between Poles and Jews. It had been that way for a long time -- a Wikipedia article has the Jewish population (2069) in 1838 slightly exceeding the Catholic population (2009).  Jews owned some of the major houses around the market square and the main street, Aleja Henryka, was a "Jewish street."  (Regina Rappaport's family owned an apartment building on or near that street.)  

Ed and I went to visit Chrzanow in 1998, while I was on a business trip to Warsaw.  Through Regina Rappaport's lawyer, we had arranged a guide, a 21 year old college student from Katowice named Dagmara, who taught English at a Berlitz-type school in Chrzanow.  She and her "driver" (her father) picked us up at our hotel in Krakow, took us to Chrzanow and then to Auschwitz.  I didn't know what to expect of Chrzanow and was surprised by what a pleasant, substantial town it was. I tried to find Daddy's address and apartment, but couldn't because I didn't know the address, and because they didn't own the building there weren't any records at town hall.  In case anyone else gets to go, I know the address now -- it's Krakowska 23B.  The creepy part -- and it really was creepy, was that the only trace of the vibrant Jewish community are a couple of rooms in the small Chrzanow museum.  We also visited the Jewish cemetery, which is just outside town, and under lock and key.  It is in a state of disrepair, but isn't vandalized at all.  Somewhere I have some pictures, which capture the cemetery well, but not the town, but at the moment I can't find them..... 

One final interesting footnote to all this history:  it was an attack on the radio station in Gleiwitz on August 31, 1939, staged by the German secret police, which served as a pretext for Nazi Germany to invade Poland, marking the start of WW II.

There are two additional resources about Chrzanow and the war.  There's a book called Chrzanow: The Life and Destruction of a Jewish Shtetl that is available in its entirety online on one of the Jewish genealogy sites.  No one in our family except Max (Markus) Schorr is mentioned in that book, but it provides some history of the town before and during the war.  And there is a well-written memoir, The End of Days: A Memoir of the Holocaust," by Helen Sendyk that describes her family's experiences in Chrzanow during the war.  It is out of print but there are used copies available online, and I have a copy if anyone would like to borrow it.  Her family seems to be much more religious than I think our family was.  Chrzanow seemed to have supported a wide range of belief, from a large Chasidic community to more traditional observant Jews, free-thinkers and Socialists and Zionists.



The Ancestors

The story, as I remember it, was that Mom bought "the ancestors" at an antique store on 2nd Avenue, for $25.  They hung above the fireplace in the house in Bayside for many years.  They seem like nice people and we all became very fond of them.  When the Bayside house was sold they moved to Mom's apartment in Florida, and now preside at Chet and Debbie's house, back in Manhattan.  We don't know much about their provenance, and nothing about the people, though Mom thought the portraits came from Vienna.

Our actual ancestors were a little less posh (or perhaps they just never had their portraits painted).

These are my grandparents on my father's side, Chaim Hirsch Hochbaum and Feigel Laufer Hochbaum. I was named for my grandmother.  Charlie, Chet, and Charles Hochbaum I believe were all named for my grandfather. (Chuck, on the other hand, was named after my mother's father, Hyman Brauner.)

They were born in 1876 and 1880, respectively, in Chrzanow and, according to my father, both died in Chrzanow in 1928. 

We don't know a lot about these grandparents.  Everything I do know came from Gina.  I have an undated, somewhat illegible set of handwritten notes that I took after questioning Gina about her history one day.  Between Gina's recollections and my handwriting, these should all be taken with a large grain of salt, but I'll get them into this blog one of these days.

And below are my mother's grandparents:  Zanvel or Samvel Schorr and his (second) wife, Miriam Leah Hochbaum.  He lived from 1848-1914.  She lived from 1868-1916.  She married him after his first wife died, leaving two daughters, the younger about 3 months old.  My guess is that Aunt Margie (Margaret Lydia), who was born the year after Miriam Leah died, was named for her. 

My parents were, much to Lexi's continuing dismay, first cousins once removed, by a step-sister/step-brother relationship.  Here is the connection:  Miriam Leah Hochbaum, Mom's grandmother, and Chaim Hirsch Hochbaum, Daddy's father, had the same father, Moshe Lieb Hochbaum, but different mothers.  Yes, you do need a family tree to sort this all out.

And just to finish off this post, my mother's cousin Sally Crown sent her this photocopy of Zanvel's passport.