The Painful Memory of a Tragic Legacy

The recent television presentation of the film documentary “Shoah,” dealing with the Nazi extermination camps during World War II, flooded me with remembrances of things unseen. I recalled the vivid stories my mother told me about life in rural Poland early in this century. Although I still have never seen the people, towns and scenery she described, they remain unforgettable for me.

My family came from a region in northeastern Poland, from a small village called Nur, about 65 miles northeast of Warsaw. Nur is so tiny it isn’t even shown in the latest edition of the National Geographic Atlas. Of course, there is the distinct possibility that the village no longer exists.

In 1910, my father left my mother, two brothers and a sister in Nur to come to America. It was quite common in those days for a father to leave his family behind to come to the golden land of opportunity to seek his fortune. At a later date, with money earned in America, he would buy steamship tickets to transport his family to join him in the New World.

For several reasons, including the turmoil and confusion of World War I, my father was unable to bring the family to America until early 1922. I was conceived then, the only member of my family to be born in the U.S.A.

As a boy growing up in Chicago, I was enthralled as my mother told me stories about their family life in Nur--about ice fishing in the winter on the frozen-over Bug River, about the suffering and privation they endured during World War I as the area alternated between Russian and German occupation, and about the fascinating series of events that eventually led to their leaving Poland for America.

I was particularly interested in the local geography. Nur was along the northern bank of the Bug River, between the two towns of Ciechanowiec and Czyzewo. My mother’s stories frequently contained references to other nearby cities and towns: Lomza, Zambrow, Bransk, Kosow and Sterdyn.

I especially remembered the name of Malkinia. It was the railroad junction town where she and my family boarded the train in 1921 to go to Warsaw to begin their journey to America.

All of these boyhood memories rushed suddenly, forcefully, unexpectedly and painfully through my mind as I watched the opening segments of “Shoah.” Those who are familiar with the history of the Holocaust can recognize the names of the more infamous concentration and extermination camps in which 6 million Jews were killed: Auschwitz, Chelmno, Belzec, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Maidanek and Treblinka.

But few people know the geographic locations of these death factories. Yes, Auschwitz, Chelmno, Belzec, Maidanek and Treblinka were in Poland--but where in Poland?

It turns out that the extermination camp called Treblinka was on the southern side of the Bug River, about five miles south of the Malkinia railroad junction. I was shocked and horrified as the “Shoah” story unfolded to realize that the trainloads of Jews bound for death at Treblinka had been routed through Malkinia. I had been unaware that Treblinka was only about 10 miles from the village where my family had lived.

With my curiosity immediately aroused, I visited the library to unearth more details about Treblinka, its immediate surroundings, and its morbid operations in the early 1940s. I found that on Oct. 15, 1942, the Nazis rounded up 3,000 Jews in Ciechanowiec and sent them to the gas chambers and crematoria at Treblinka. And on Nov. 22, 1942, 7,000 Jews from Lomza, 2,000 from Zambrow, 700 from Ciechanowiec and 200 from Czyzewo were dispatched to Treblinka to a similar fate.

I now know what happened to my uncle and his family who had decided to remain in Poland rather than emigrate to America. There, but for the grace of God, went I.

As “Shoah” drew to its heart-wrenching conclusion, one of our daughters turned to my wife and me and said, “Someday I would like to visit Auschwitz.”

Surprised, we chorused, “Why?”

She looked at us poignantly and answered, “I would like to go inside the extermination camp and then come out as living proof that they didn’t get everyone.”

My mother would have approved.