Churban Zmigrod - Phase 2

The Churban of Zmigrod

Phase 2

Chana Laks
Debi Reece

My father-in-law, Mr. Naftali Laks z”l, was born in 1922 in the town of Nowy Zmigrod which is part of the Galicia area of Poland.  He survived several concentration camps, emigrated to Palestine/Israel after the war, and eventually settled in the United States.  He spent his last years with my husband and me in Passaic and was niftar November 2024.

Prelude

The shtetl of Zmigrod was liquidated in two phases.  Last year, we wrote phase one, in which the Germans murdered about a third of the Jews of Zmigrod.  My father-in-law’s aunts, uncle, and many of his neighbors and childhood friends were among those who were killed in the forest near the town.  Mr. Laks, his mother, and sisters survived the Selection.  He was taken to the slave labor camp of Plaszow, the first of several labor camps he endured during the war.

Meanwhile, Mr. Laks’s mother Rivka, and his sisters (Esther, Bertha, Manya, and Zahava), ranging in age between 28 and 16, remained at their home in Zmigrod.  The girls sewed uniforms for the Germans and their mother cooked for them.  Mr. Laks was able to contact his family from the labor camp with the help of a Polish woman who lived near the place they were working.  She made a business selling food to the inmates and sending and receiving mail for them.  The family started sending food parcels to Mr. Laks via this woman.

Weeks after the first liquidation of the Jews of Zmigrod, the Germans prepared to deport every remaining Jew to make the town Judenrein (Jew-free).  

The German authorities commanded all the Jews to gather in the town center to be deported.  Every Jew had to make a calculation: to obey the order and likely be killed or to hide.   Anyone who hid faced certain death if discovered by the Nazis as they went from house to house searching for Jews.  

Rivka urged her daughters to hide.  Amid the general panic, she remembered where the family had stowed false identification papers for the daughters.  These papers could allow them to pass themselves off as non-Jews.  Rivka knew that she herself was too old to survive and resigned herself to death.  Determined that her four daughters should escape, she pleaded with them to hide.   Three sisters obeyed.  Esther, the fourth sister, refused to leave her mother.   

The Jews who assembled at the town center were loaded into packed trains to a death camp; few, if any, survived.  Since the Laks family never found out when or how their mother and sister perished, they have neither a yahrzeit date or a known burial place.  Mr. Laks’s custom was to commemorate their yahrzeits on Yom Kippur.

Meanwhile, the other three sisters needed to find a hiding place. The Laks home, built by their grandfather Naftali, had two attics: a regular attic and a secret attic above it.  Family members would hide there during pogroms.  Manya, Bertha, and Zahava climbed to this attic.  Bertha took with her the beautiful, detailed needlepoint pieces that she had created over the years.  As they sat in their refuge, they heard the screams of their friends and neighbors who had also tried hiding.  The Germans pulled them out of their hiding places and shot them on the spot.

The sisters could not hide in the attic forever.  They would not be safe in the countryside either.  They realized that their only hope was to try to join their brother in the Plaszow concentration camp.  They had the address of the Polish woman through whom they had been sending packages to Mr. Laks, and they had cash--American dollars from an aunt with children in America.  Dollars could buy anything. 

In order to get to Plaszow, the sisters needed to travel to Jaslow, the closest city with a train station, to catch a train from there to the Polish woman's house.  Manya, who didn't look very Jewish, went out from hiding to hire a wagon to take them to Jaslow.  None of the Poles were willing to rent them a wagon.  At this point, they viewed the Jews as the living dead and were too frightened to do business with a Jew.

Manya refused to give up.  She pushed herself and her sisters to walk to Jaslow. The walk was unpleasant and frightening.  Any time traffic passed by, they hid in the tall grain growing at the side of the road.  Manya and Berta successfully made it to the train station and boarded the train for Plaszow.  However, Zahava, the youngest sister, was separated from the rest, captured by a group of Nazis, and severely abused.  Eventually, she was able to make it on her own to Plaszow where she rejoined her sisters.  Once in Plaszow, they found the Polish woman and stayed with her for about a week, paying with their American dollars.

At this time, a women's camp was being set up in Plaszow for the women in the Krakow ghetto.  Some landsmen (fellow former residents of Zmigrod) learned that the Laks sisters were in the area.  They applied to Shaya Eisenberg, the Jewish head of the Plaszow concentration camp, to bring them into the women's camp.  The man gave the three Laks sisters the slots they needed, since there was a quota for how many women the camp would hold.  Manya, Bertha and Zahava were smuggled into the new women's camp in order to make it appear that they were from the ghetto.

The women in Plaszo were crowded into unheated tents in frigid conditions.  Their job was to peel potatoes and beets for the German army.  The vegetables were for the soldiers.  The peels were for the Jewish inmates of the camp.  The women were supervised to make sure that the peels were very thin; they could be whipped or shot for making overly thick peels. They were always afraid and under tremendous physical and mental stress.  Lice were prevalent, and typhus epidemics were common.  Those who contracted pneumonia were often shot since Jews were not treated for illnesses.

The commander of the camp liked Zahava because she was young and pretty and he made her his personal servant. This position gave Zahava access to more food which she shared with her sisters and Naftali, but it also subjected her to horrendous abuse from the commander. In addition, she used her influence to have Naftali switched from the backbreaking work on the railroad to serving as a tailor.  This saved Naftali's life, since he would not have been able to survive had he continued to haul the rails.   However, Zahava never fully recovered from the daily abuse she endured from the commandant and she was emotionally scarred for the rest of her life.

Naftali and his sisters stayed in Plaszow until after Yomim Noraim in 1943, a little over a year.  They continued to be together at the next camp: Skarżysko-Kamienna.  After that, Naftali and his sisters were separated and only reunited after the war.  It was very rare to have four siblings to survive.