Holocaust Survivor Publishes ‘Bitter’ Memories
Nearly half a century after its writing, and against her late husband's wishes, Jafa Wallach is telling the story of how she survived the Holocaust.
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Her book, Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor, will be released May 7, and she will sign it at 3 p.m. at the senior citizen residence in Midwood where she now lives: Scharf's Ateret Avot at 1410 East 10th Street.
By Emily Keller
Nearly half a century after its writing, and against her late husband's wishes, Jafa Wallach is telling the story of how she survived the Holocaust.
Her book, Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor, will be released May 7, and she will sign it at 3 p.m. at the senior citizen residence in Midwood where she now lives: Scharf's Ateret Avot at 1410 East 10th Street.
In her book, Wallach, who is in her 90s, tells her life story from 1938 to 1977, as a letter to her daughter, Rena Wallach Bernstein, whom she was separated from for two years during World War II as Wallach buried herself in a damp hole in the ground in Lesko, Poland, and Bernstein was hidden in a nearby forest between the ages of 4 and 6.
"It's a memoir written to me to inform me of how they survived," said Bernstein.
Wallach, who was born in Galicia, Poland dug the hole with two of her brothers and her husband, Dr. Natan Wallach, the day before the people of Lesko were transferred to concentration camps. They anticipated staying inside it for a few weeks, but remained there for 22 months instead, during which time they could not stretch out, change their clothes, or wash themselves, and lived with insects, rats and mice.
For 12 hours a day they could not sneeze, cough or make any noise, as the Gestapo frequented the cellar workshop above them, where its vehicles were repaired. Another sister joined them in the hole towards the end.
"The hole was so small that no one could stretch their legs. They were just barely able to stand on their knees without hitting their heads," said Bernstein. At the top of the hole was a crack for them to breathe stale cellar air. For light they had a tiny bulb wrapped in black rags, so it would not be visible from above. "As my mother said, it was their only sun for two years," said Bernstein.
"Every day was like a year in those circumstances. It was like being buried alive. You couldn't move. You had to have very strong will," said Wallach.
Later they acquired a radio, which they listened to with earphones. "This changed our lives," said Wallach. "That way we were connected to the world."
"They were very very very lucky," said Bernstein. If the Gestapo had brought a dog into the workshop they would have been discovered, she said, adding that Lesko was an extremely dangerous place to be, with the Gestapo headquarters on one end of town and the Ukrainian military on the other.
"People were being murdered, and children especially were in the greatest danger. There were 30,000 Jews. Eighty came back," Bernstein said about her town in Lesko. "I was the only child who survived. We came really from the killing fields."
And they owe it all to a man by the name of Jozef Zwonarz, who snuck them food each night without telling his wife or five children what he was doing.
"They lived on a couple of potatoes every two days," said Bernstein. "He somehow managed to keep them alive." His wife, as she was not informed of his undertaking, became suspicious that he was seeing another woman, Wallach recalled.
"He had to steal from his family, and he was poorand he shared everything with us. He brought his supper and he didn't eat it, he just gave it to us. He was like a father to us," said Wallach.
Meanwhile, Bernstein was hardly better off, nearly abandoned in a forest that she is somehow able to retain fond memories of. Zwonarz found a place for her in a hut without running water or electricity when Jews were being rounded up, and she was torn from her parents.
"[A] woman picked me up while screaming and crying and took me down a long road into the forest and deposited me in a hut," Bernstein recalled. "It was a kidnapping. That's what it felt like."
"[She] couldn't understand why she had to be taken away from us," said Wallach.
About the time she spent there, Bernstein said, "I basically raised myself. I just lived in the forest and came home to sleep. My existence was strange, to tell you the truth."
It was also filled with uncertainty. "My life was being threatened all the time. It was very dangerous to keep a Jew. Had I been found, everyone would have been killed," said Bernstein, adding that she did not know whether she would see her mother again and has trouble sleeping to this day because of what she endured.
About the man who kept her during that time, Bernstein said, "His family was putting tremendous pressure on him to take me into the forest and shoot me."
To prevent that from happening, Zwonarz told him that her parents were alive and that he would have to answer for whatever happened during that time.
Then one day, two years later, Bernstein's mother came down the road to get her. "The loss of the forest was very hard. The forest kept me alive. The forest was my mother and father," said Bernstein, who now has a country house in the southern Adirondacks.
Zwonarz died of cancer in 1984. One of Wallach's motivations for publishing the book was to honor the man she knew only as a co-worker of her husband's prior to the war, until "he promised he's going to save the whole family," Wallach recalled.
Wallach, her siblings and husband finally came out of their hole because of bombings at the end of the war.
When she finally emerged from the hole to hide in a man's house for the last 3-4 weeks until the Russians conquered their town, liberating them, Wallach said, "It's hard to describe what it feels like. I was sick. I had developed a terrible itch"
"They couldn't stand. Their legs were swollen. They had to crawl to his house in the middle of the night," Bernstein explained. "The muscles had atrophied. [My father] fell face down and was pulled into the house."
Even after liberation, Bernstein said the Wallachs were still unsafe in Poland because Jews were being murdered to prevent them from reclaiming property lost during the war.
Zwonarz was even punished for saving the family, and was told by the town's elders that he had disgraced the town. Then his workshop was boycotted.
The Wallachs also had to cope with the loss of many members of their immediate family. Only six of Wallach's nine siblings survived the Holocaust, and Dr. Wallach's entire family perished.
Determining that they could no longer remain in Poland, the Wallachs came to the U.S. in 1947, where a relative vouched for them, and Dr. Wallach opened up a medical practice in Rockaway Beach. They had another child, named Sheldon, in 1948, who now lives in Arizona.
"Coming here was like landing on Mars. All of a sudden we landed in a country where there was no war," said Bernstein.
Dr. and Mrs. Wallach moved to Haifa, Israel in 1963, where they lived as permanent residents for 28 years and Dr. Wallach continued his work, while their children remained in the U.S.
Then, in 1976, tragedy struck again. Dr. Wallach was riding in the back of a pick-up truck when a motorcycle flew into the road, causing an accident that left him blind in both eyes.
The motorcyclist was a German who had been working towards atonement for his community's crimes. He was wrought with guilt over the accident and later committed suicide, Bernstein said.
In 1991 the Wallachs moved to Washington D.C. to be near family. Dr. Wallach passed away in 1995, and Mrs. Wallach returned to Brooklyn three years ago to be near her daughter, who is a retired teacher and painter, and has lived in Brooklyn Heights for 15 years.
"We have to tell the story for generations to come," Wallach said about why she finally pulled the book that she wrote in 1959 out of the closet.
"The book has fulfilled her obligation to bear witness," said Bernstein, who did not learn about the book until 25 years ago. "I, myself, was not ready to read it either until the last ten years," she said.
The book is published by Hermitage Publishers, and 2,000 copies were initially printed, although Bernstein says there will be many more.
It chronicles the fear and trauma that plague the family to this day.
After 40 years of therapy, Bernstein said, "It was incredible that I was not more damaged." Her fearful memories date back to two years before the war even began. "I was terrified right from the very beginning, from the time I was 2," she said.
The fear persisted long after the war as well, she said, and her father never overcame it, and opposed his wife's desire to publish the book because he was still afraid of the Germans. "He would not have allowed it to be published," said Bernstein.
After the war, Bernstein said it was difficult to talk about anything except the Holocaust with other Jews, and when former neighbors and family members reunited, she said, "It was also a feeling of disbelief - how could this have happened? How could this have happened among civilized people?"
To find out more about Bitter Freedom call (718) 875-0531 or email bitterfreedom@gmail.com. For information about the May 7 book signing, call Ateret Avot at (718) 998-5400.
By Emily Keller
Nearly half a century after its writing, and against her late husband's wishes, Jafa Wallach is telling the story of how she survived the Holocaust.
Her book, Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor, will be released May 7, and she will sign it at 3 p.m. at the senior citizen residence in Midwood where she now lives: Scharf's Ateret Avot at 1410 East 10th Street.
In her book, Wallach, who is in her 90s, tells her life story from 1938 to 1977, as a letter to her daughter, Rena Wallach Bernstein, whom she was separated from for two years during World War II as Wallach buried herself in a damp hole in the ground in Lesko, Poland, and Bernstein was hidden in a nearby forest between the ages of 4 and 6.
"It's a memoir written to me to inform me of how they survived," said Bernstein.
Wallach, who was born in Galicia, Poland dug the hole with two of her brothers and her husband, Dr. Natan Wallach, the day before the people of Lesko were transferred to concentration camps. They anticipated staying inside it for a few weeks, but remained there for 22 months instead, during which time they could not stretch out, change their clothes, or wash themselves, and lived with insects, rats and mice.
For 12 hours a day they could not sneeze, cough or make any noise, as the Gestapo frequented the cellar workshop above them, where its vehicles were repaired. Another sister joined them in the hole towards the end.
"The hole was so small that no one could stretch their legs. They were just barely able to stand on their knees without hitting their heads," said Bernstein. At the top of the hole was a crack for them to breathe stale cellar air. For light they had a tiny bulb wrapped in black rags, so it would not be visible from above. "As my mother said, it was their only sun for two years," said Bernstein.
"Every day was like a year in those circumstances. It was like being buried alive. You couldn't move. You had to have very strong will," said Wallach.
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"They were very very very lucky," said Bernstein. If the Gestapo had brought a dog into the workshop they would have been discovered, she said, adding that Lesko was an extremely dangerous place to be, with the Gestapo headquarters on one end of town and the Ukrainian military on the other.
"People were being murdered, and children especially were in the greatest danger. There were 30,000 Jews. Eighty came back," Bernstein said about her town in Lesko. "I was the only child who survived. We came really from the killing fields."
And they owe it all to a man by the name of Jozef Zwonarz, who snuck them food each night without telling his wife or five children what he was doing.
"They lived on a couple of potatoes every two days," said Bernstein. "He somehow managed to keep them alive." His wife, as she was not informed of his undertaking, became suspicious that he was seeing another woman, Wallach recalled.
"He had to steal from his family, and he was poorand he shared everything with us. He brought his supper and he didn't eat it, he just gave it to us. He was like a father to us," said Wallach.
Meanwhile, Bernstein was hardly better off, nearly abandoned in a forest that she is somehow able to retain fond memories of. Zwonarz found a place for her in a hut without running water or electricity when Jews were being rounded up, and she was torn from her parents.
"[A] woman picked me up while screaming and crying and took me down a long road into the forest and deposited me in a hut," Bernstein recalled. "It was a kidnapping. That's what it felt like."
"[She] couldn't understand why she had to be taken away from us," said Wallach.
About the time she spent there, Bernstein said, "I basically raised myself. I just lived in the forest and came home to sleep. My existence was strange, to tell you the truth."
It was also filled with uncertainty. "My life was being threatened all the time. It was very dangerous to keep a Jew. Had I been found, everyone would have been killed," said Bernstein, adding that she did not know whether she would see her mother again and has trouble sleeping to this day because of what she endured.
About the man who kept her during that time, Bernstein said, "His family was putting tremendous pressure on him to take me into the forest and shoot me."
To prevent that from happening, Zwonarz told him that her parents were alive and that he would have to answer for whatever happened during that time.
Then one day, two years later, Bernstein's mother came down the road to get her. "The loss of the forest was very hard. The forest kept me alive. The forest was my mother and father," said Bernstein, who now has a country house in the southern Adirondacks.
Zwonarz died of cancer in 1984. One of Wallach's motivations for publishing the book was to honor the man she knew only as a co-worker of her husband's prior to the war, until "he promised he's going to save the whole family," Wallach recalled.
Wallach, her siblings and husband finally came out of their hole because of bombings at the end of the war.
When she finally emerged from the hole to hide in a man's house for the last 3-4 weeks until the Russians conquered their town, liberating them, Wallach said, "It's hard to describe what it feels like. I was sick. I had developed a terrible itch"
"They couldn't stand. Their legs were swollen. They had to crawl to his house in the middle of the night," Bernstein explained. "The muscles had atrophied. [My father] fell face down and was pulled into the house."
Even after liberation, Bernstein said the Wallachs were still unsafe in Poland because Jews were being murdered to prevent them from reclaiming property lost during the war.
Zwonarz was even punished for saving the family, and was told by the town's elders that he had disgraced the town. Then his workshop was boycotted.
The Wallachs also had to cope with the loss of many members of their immediate family. Only six of Wallach's nine siblings survived the Holocaust, and Dr. Wallach's entire family perished.
Determining that they could no longer remain in Poland, the Wallachs came to the U.S. in 1947, where a relative vouched for them, and Dr. Wallach opened up a medical practice in Rockaway Beach. They had another child, named Sheldon, in 1948, who now lives in Arizona.
"Coming here was like landing on Mars. All of a sudden we landed in a country where there was no war," said Bernstein.
Dr. and Mrs. Wallach moved to Haifa, Israel in 1963, where they lived as permanent residents for 28 years and Dr. Wallach continued his work, while their children remained in the U.S.
Then, in 1976, tragedy struck again. Dr. Wallach was riding in the back of a pick-up truck when a motorcycle flew into the road, causing an accident that left him blind in both eyes.
The motorcyclist was a German who had been working towards atonement for his community's crimes. He was wrought with guilt over the accident and later committed suicide, Bernstein said.
In 1991 the Wallachs moved to Washington D.C. to be near family. Dr. Wallach passed away in 1995, and Mrs. Wallach returned to Brooklyn three years ago to be near her daughter, who is a retired teacher and painter, and has lived in Brooklyn Heights for 15 years.
"We have to tell the story for generations to come," Wallach said about why she finally pulled the book that she wrote in 1959 out of the closet.
"The book has fulfilled her obligation to bear witness," said Bernstein, who did not learn about the book until 25 years ago. "I, myself, was not ready to read it either until the last ten years," she said.
The book is published by Hermitage Publishers, and 2,000 copies were initially printed, although Bernstein says there will be many more.
It chronicles the fear and trauma that plague the family to this day.
After 40 years of therapy, Bernstein said, "It was incredible that I was not more damaged." Her fearful memories date back to two years before the war even began. "I was terrified right from the very beginning, from the time I was 2," she said.
The fear persisted long after the war as well, she said, and her father never overcame it, and opposed his wife's desire to publish the book because he was still afraid of the Germans. "He would not have allowed it to be published," said Bernstein.
After the war, Bernstein said it was difficult to talk about anything except the Holocaust with other Jews, and when former neighbors and family members reunited, she said, "It was also a feeling of disbelief - how could this have happened? How could this have happened among civilized people?"
To find out more about Bitter Freedom call (718) 875-0531 or email bitterfreedom@gmail.com. For information about the May 7 book signing, call Ateret Avot at (718) 998-5400.
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