RelatioNet PE SO 39 LO PO
Interviewer:
Full Names: Tamar Bar-Nur and Shachar Davidi
Address: Kfar Saba, Israel
Survivor:
Code: RelatioNet PE SO 39 LO PO
Family Name: Peleg (Rozenzweig Krujevsky) First Name: Sophia (Sarah)
Father Name: Ephraim Rozenzweig Mother Name: Yocheved (Berger)
Birth Date: 27/08/1939
Town In Holocaust: Lodz Country In Holocaust: Poland
Profession (Main) In Holocaust: None
This page is dedicated to Sophia's parents, Ephraim Rozenzweig and Yocheved Berger, and to Sophia's aunt, Hannah Berger.
Interview with Sophia Peleg:
"I was born on 27.8.1939. It was four days before the beginning of World War II. The Germans invaded Poland in 1.9.1939, and the War started. Of course it took a long time, I don't remember exactly the dates or time, until the Germans decided to build the ghettos, that is to say put the all Jews into their own “neighborhoods” together. Nobody could come in or out, but there were people who could get out, with licenses, and that's how the Germans showed the whole world, that there was nothing wrong – simply all the Jews together.
My father, of blessed memory, was a young, very energetic man. He decided that he would start smuggling people out of the ghetto and hide them, so they could be free of the ghetto. He took someone, who apparently was an expert in forging documents. They issued certificates, which “turned” Jews into Polish. My father decided that he would smuggle me and my mother too, with the others, so he changed our certificates. Before then, my name was Sarah, and it was changed to Sophia, which was a very famous name in Poland. The name of the heroine in one of the greatest books was Sophia, that's what I was called. From Sarah Rozenzweig I became Sophia Krujevsky. After that, my father took us out to the first train, which took us to Warsaw.
In Warsaw he got us an apartment of some Polish people, and most of the time he wasn't there. He traveled with the Jews in order to save them and took them from place to place. My mother and I stayed there, in Warsaw. Our economic situation wasn't good, of course, so my mother went out to work in a bread delivery and put me in a convent. It was an unbelievable thing.
My father also used the apartment to hide weapons, which were stolen, I don't know where from. It was the same as in all Europe: there was a basement and hiding place below the floor and the double bed. That's where my father hided the weapons. Of course it was very dangerous to be with the weapons, but my father was ready to do anything to help the Jews escape.
I was in the convent and I didn't understand too much, but slowly I began to understand. Of course I didn't think of myself as a Jew. I was a Polish girl inside a convent. I prayed with them, wore crosses and became a normal Catholic girl. I even managed the prayers for them. I was a very active girl. My mother visited me sometimes, but she didn't want to come too much, because she was afraid that she would be discovered.
We were inside this hiding place, and once the Germans came to make a search. That's one thing I remember, I was a very young child. It seems that there are events in life, even at a very young age, which are absorbed like a camera inside the brain. I'm speaking right now and I hear the knock on the door and see how the door was opened. My father was usually at home in the morning, never at night, which was when he smuggled the Jews. When he had time, he took me out of the convent and played with me. He lay down with me on the same bad, which covered the whole weapons storeroom. That's when the Germans broke into the house.
We had luck. It seems that in life there are a lot of things which are lucky, strange things. Apparently the commander of those men who came, maybe five Germans, saw me and fell in love with me. Really, he caught me up, lifted me up with his hands, started to play with me and brought me sweets, I can see that. Maybe he had children and he missed them. That's how they forgot the reason they had came for and left. But then my father started to be afraid and my parents decided that we should leave Warsaw.
There were deportations in Warsaw at that time. The Germans walked around the square with large loudspeakers and shouted: 'Get out! Get out! Men to the right, women to the left - with the children!' Those who didn't come out, those who were caught hiding got killed. After they took all the men aside, they divided them. Everyone from the age of 15-16 to 40 was taken to hard labor, to forced labor, like digging graves or… lots of terrible and awful labors. They took the old men and put them on the "Death Train", sending them simply to their death. The mothers stayed with the children. In those days they hadn't been touched yet, and there was enough food.
Until the trains, the men's transport, were arranged, the Germans let the women come back home and they told them to sew white flags for anyone who wanted to come and see their husbands, the children who wanted to see their dad, and the children would hold them. That's how we arrived to the place. Then my mother had an idea and she said 'Now, we are going to see dad, but if you don't do what I say, they won't let us see him'. She said we would arrive, then she would put me on the floor and I should cry, saying that I didn't have a mother; I needed my father because I couldn't stay alone, so if they don't let my father go, I wanted to stay there. We arrived. There were a lot of German officers, with their high boots, disgusting uniforms, and they were taking the women. I cried out loud, because my mother had dumped me and gone! She was hiding, she obviously saw me, but I was frightened and I started to scream 'Dad! Dad!' One of the officers came to me, lifted me up with his hands, asked an interpreter to translate, and asked "Where is your father?" "I don't know", 'Where is your mother?' 'Dead'. He looked at me and played with my hair. Then he told me 'Go and get your father'. They brought my father and he said to him: 'Well, take your child and go home'. My father thanked me: 'Thanks to you I'm still alive'.
When the deportations began, my father left Warsaw. Later, he came back and at one of the deportations he said to my mother 'You will get on the train with me'. Then we got on the train. Those trains were intended for animals, a tightly packed area. From the small holes we could see some pieces of sky. My father told my mother she shouldn't call him, shouldn't speak to him, nobody should know he was her husband, and he really wasn't near us. One night he came, gave me and my mother a kiss and left. Suddenly we heard shootings and my mother said later 'I knew dad jumped of the train'. He jumped of the train, and the Germans tried to kill him but they didn't.
Those trains went to many stations, where there was a Red Cross center. At the first station my mother got off the train and went to the Red Cross, and said she didn't feel well and she had menstruation. She told a whole story and when she finished the train started to move, and then she said 'I have to rest, to go to the toilets'. She started to walk in the opposite direction from which the train moved. She looked for my father; she knew that he wasn't on the train, that he had jumped a long time ago. She remembered that in one of the places in those areas he had a friend from high school and they were still friends, maybe he was there, and she went there. Then we started to come back on foot. It was winter, snow up to the knees. It was impossible to walk. Suddenly we heard a bell ringing. We looked around and saw a cart full of big milk jars. On this cart I took some break. It was so hard to walk.
Then, my mother suggested a new idea. She said 'Now, if we see dad, if we find him, don't call him dad'. She was afraid that if he had that friend there and they knew the truth, they would turn us in. The Polish often surrender the Jews. 'And you will shout 'Uncle! Uncle!' and then everything will be just fine'. We came to some place, with a wall made of wooden beams. I looked through those holes and saw a man who was chopping fire woods, for the fireplace. I was really shocked by what I saw. 'Say it's your uncle, call him uncle' and she opened the gate to let us in and I, irresponsibly, ran and screamed 'Daddy! Daddy! Daddy, daddy, come!' That night we were expelled from there.
My father knew those people before the war, when he was a handsome young man, and probably there was a connection between him and the friend he met at high school. But they didn't know he was Jewish, they probably thought he was Polish, because of his appearance. So, my mother knew that if they discovered he had a child, they would tell the Germans and we would be killed. That's why my mother told me to call him 'uncle' when I saw him. That night, the friend and her family refused to hide us because they didn't want to risk their lives, but they were fair enough not to tell the Germans that we were Jewish. Afterwards we ran from that farm. We didn't know anything about our location, but we went through a lot of small villages with huge farms and fields. One night we were separated in one of the villages, then, in this village, my father found a place for us. My father knew a lot of people, who forged him Polish certificates so I guess he found us a place to stay in a village, with another Polish family. I was very young to ask so I don't know the name. But I do know that it happened very close to the end of the war. My mother told the family she was a widow, and they loved me very much because I was very beautiful and friendly, so I guess they felt sorry for me.
So one day, when the family wasn't at home, someone knocked on the door, and said: "Open the door" in German, and my mother knew how to speak German because she had studied German in high school. She opened the door, and there was a German governor of the village. In every village there was this German officer from the Gestapo. My mother was frightened, and she held me in her arms. He looked at me and asked: 'Can I hold her?' and played with my blond curls. Then he told her: 'You speak German very well' and she answered him that she had studied German at the secondary school. 'You also know to read German?' he asked. 'Of course' she said. Then he said: 'Look, I can bring you books in German, you must be bored'. So he started to bring her books and to bring me candies. Probably he missed his kids. It was the only German that took care of us. My mother was saying all year that despite everything, there were humans among them, not only beasts. He had no interest in us but helped us. He didn't want anything from us.
A couple of months later the Russians came. The owners of the place we lived in went to the Russians and claimed that my mother was German and cooperated with the Germans. The Russians, when they invaded Poland, preferred to kill Germans and collaborators than save the Jews, and the Polish, and they were very violent. Luckily my mother had good faked documents that showed she was Polish, so they let her go. My parents probably decided to meet at Lodz, after the war, so we went there after 1945. Our House became some sort of hostel for children that were at the camps. After the war I learned in Lodz till the 4th grade and then, five years later, we immigrated to Israel, to Hadar Yosef. We lived in a neighborhood with only Jews from Poland.
Information about the city Lodz:
Before the war
Lodz is one of the biggest towns in Poland, located 130 kilometers from Warsaw. Lodz is also the capital city of the Lodz district. Lodz was a small undeveloped village until the 19th century. During which it was passed between different governments such as Prussia, Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw and Russia.
In the beginning of the 19th century Lodz started to develop as an industrial city in the textile industry. The modern industrial development brought many immigrants to the city. Lodz became a multinational city and its population had grown up very quickly: from a small village it became the second largest city, after Warsaw, and one of the most densely populated industrial cities in the world.
In WW1 the city, which was occupied by Germany, had suffered from hunger and lack of employment because the industry and the commerce were halted by Germany.
Before the WW2 there were 665,000 citizens in Lodz, with a high percent of Jews and Germans. In fact, Lodz held the second largest Jewish community in Europe, second only to Warsaw.
During the war
During the invasion of Poland, the Polish forces defended Lodz against initial German attacks. However, the city was captured on September 8th 1939. Despite plans for the city to become a Polish enclave, Germany annexed it to the Reich in November 1939 because of the large German population there. The city received the new name of Litzmannstadt after the German general Karl Litzmann, who captured the city during World War I.
The next several months were marked by daily round-ups of Jews for forced labor as well as random beatings and killings on the streets. It was easy to distinguish between Pole and Jew because on November 16, 1939 the Nazi's had ordered Jews to wear an armband on their right arm. The armband was the precursor to the yellow Star of David badge which was soon to follow on December 12, 1939.
Soon the Nazi authorities set up the Lodz Ghetto in the city and populated it with more than 230,000 Jews from the Lodz area. The Nazis wanted Jews concentrated in ghettos so when they would find a solution to the "Jewish problem", they could execute it quickly and efficiently. It took several weeks to transport the Jews to the Ghetto, until it was officially sealed in May 1940.
In order to organize and implement Nazi policy within the Ghetto the Nazis chose a Jew named Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski to be the head of the Judenrat and to manage the Ghetto. He had to follow the Nazis orders and to provide food, security, sewage removal, medical treatment and all other expenses by their continuing incarceration.
He started many programs that replaced outside bureaucracy with his own. For example, Rumkowski replaced the German currency with ghetto money that bore his signature - soon referred to as "Rumkies". Rumkowski also created a post office with a stamp with his image.
Rumkowski was a firm believer in the autonomy of the ghetto and that working for the Nazis will save the Jews from death. Because the Nazis were determined that Jews weren't useful and not even human beings, as the Nazi ideology claims, Rumkowski was eager to prove that Jews can manufacture products which will be useful for the Nazis. Rumkowski believed that if the Ghetto became an extremely useful workforce, then the Jews would be needed by the Nazis and then, they would make sure that the Ghetto received food and they won't be transported to death camps.
Rumkowski immediately began setting up factories and gave jobs to all who were able to work. Most of the factories required workers to be over fourteen but older people and children often found work in these factories. Adults worked in factories that produced everything from textiles to munitions. Some factories even hand stitched the emblems for the uniforms of German soldiers.
Once this policy was implemented, anyone who didn't work (for all kinds of reasons) wasn't useful to the Nazis, and they deported these people to the death camps. Even though Rumkowski tried to lower the numbers of the summons for deportations, many Jews were sent to Chelmano, the main death camp near Lodz. In the death camp the people were gassed by carbon monoxide in trucks.
The most difficult destructive deportation for the Jews was the "Allgemeine Gehsperre" in September 1942. Unlike other deportations, the Nazis ordered exactly who to send; the children under the age 10, the elders over the age 65, and the sick people from the hospitals. They were chosen because all these people couldn't work at the factories and they weren't useful. Rumkowski decided that he had to follow the orders because he knew that refusing will bring the end to the Ghetto. So he summoned the entire Ghetto and gave a shuddering speech, in which he explained why he had to collaborate with the Nazis. It was so horrifying for the Jews to hear these news that they were weeping during the entire speech.
After the war
By the end of World War II, Lodz had lost approximately 420,000 of its pre-war inhabitants: 300,000 Polish Jews and approximately 120,000 other Poles. In January 1945 most of the German population fled the city for fear of the Red Army. The city also suffered tremendous losses due to the German policy of requisition of all factories and machines and transporting them to Germany. Thus despite relatively small losses due to aerial bombardment and the fighting, Lodz had lost most of its infrastructure. The Soviet Red Army entered the city on January 18, 1945. According to the Russians, the Germans retreated so suddenly that they had no time to evacuate or destroy the Lodz factories, as they did in other cities. In time, Lodz became part of the People's Republic of Poland. Prior to World War II, the Jewish population of Lodz numbered about 233,000. Only 877 people remained in Ghetto Lodz, which means that the community was wiped out in the Holocaust.
