RelatioNet SP HA 36 RE PO
Hannah (Spigel) Ya'akoby

Interviewer:

Tal Chudy and Eliran Kachlon
Email: elirn.chalon@gmail.com
Address: Kfar-Saba Israel

Survivor:

Code: RelatioNet SP HA 36 RE PO
Family Name: Ya'akoby (Spigel) First Name: Hannah
Father Name: Joseph Mother Name: Ester
Birth Date: 9/04/1936
Town In Holocaust: Rejowiec Country In Holocaust: Poland

תקציר קורות חיים [בעברית]: נולדתי בעיר רייביץ שבפולין, בה היה למשפחתי אטליז. כשהיטלר פלש לפולין ברחתי עם אמי, אחותי ואחי לרוסיה, שם חיינו בתנאים קשים מאוד של רעב וקור.בשנת 1942 עברנו מרוסיה לאוקרינה, בה חיינו שנתיים, ובשנת 1944 שבנו לפולין בה הועברתי לבית יתומים. בית היתומים עבר ממקום למקום בעקבות איומים מצד הפולנים, ולבסוף הגיע לאוסטריה. בבית היתומים שבאוסטריה מצא אותי אחי, עזר לי להשתקם ולבסוף עלינו בשנת 1948 לישראל.

Interview:

I can't remember what happened before World War 2 because I was only a baby, but my relatives told me that my family and I lived in a small town called Rejowiec in Poland. There were two pogroms each year, one on Rosh Hashanah and one on Passover. We were 9 persons in the house, my father's parents, my parents and five brothers and sisters. We lived in a small house which had three rooms: one for my grandparents, who usually took one child to sleep with them, one room for me, my brother, my sisters and my parents, and one room which was used as a butcher shop, which was the family business.

My grandfather Yitzhak was a Yeshiva student, and my grandmother Zehavah was the main seller in the butcher's shop. My mother Ester believed that the Jews should act as a nation in exile, so she refused to speak Hebrew, which was spoken in Israel, and spoke only Yiddish. My father Joseph was Yeshiva student at the beginning, just as his father had been, but he wanted to study a profession, so he worked at textile factory, though his father resisted it.

On the 1st of September Hitler invaded Poland. Stalin, the leader of the USSR wanted to confront him, so he sent Russian soldiers to small Jewish towns, in order to save as many Jews as they could from the Germans. In our small town the Russian soldiers went from house to house and took Jews who wanted to escape from the Germans with them. My mother wanted to go with them, but my grandparents did not want to go. They remembered what they had gone through during the last war, which was very difficult, and they believed that they would go through this war too. My father wanted to stay with them, so he told my mother to go with the Russian soldiers, and if the situation got worst, they would look after them. My mother took me, two of my sisters, and my brother and ran with the Russians. I can say that we escaped at the last moment, because the Germans invaded Lublin Province, were our town was, killed many Jews, and took some of them to forced labor. My father was taken to forced labor by the Germans because he had a profession. There were terrible conditions in his camp and he became ill. When the doctor of his camp understood that he was ill he ordered the German soldiers to kill him.

My grandparents hid themselves in a basement but a German soldier found them, and my grandmother asked him to kill them in the Jewish graveyard, because she wanted to be buried there. The soldier agreed. I do not know what happened to my sister, because no record was ever found about her.

After we escaped, we were waiting at the Russia-Poland border for a train, which had to take us to a province in Siberia. We were waiting in the cold, and about third of the people who were waiting for the train died. I asked my sister how I could have survived and she told me that she covered me with rags, and gave me some of the food that she had. When the train arrived, we found out that it was a goods train. The train took us to a province in Siberia, where one of the weapons factories of the Russians was. We stayed there during 1939 to 1942. Most of Jews in the province worked in weapons factories, and as payment they got food coupons, so they could get sugar, bread and flour. Many Jews were murdered by local Russians, or killed by the bad conditions, and the lack of food. We lived in a small cabin in the cold and without warmth. We were lucky to have a neighbor who warmed us by her fireplace, and gave us water with salt to drink. My mother was a woman with motivation, who did not want to starve, so she helped the neighbor who, in return, helped us.

One day, Russians citizens took my brother, who looked like a typical Jew, and put his head into the bathroom. On the same day my brother decided to look Russian, so he removed his Jewish clothes and cut his hair. In addition my brother was an ambitious man, who collected branches and twigs from the forest, so we could light a fire, and worked as a shepherd, and so he gained milk and fruit peel.

In spite of my mother and brother's efforts, my mother understood that we would not be able to survive with the lack of food and the cold, so she began trading in the black market. She activated men and children to steal food for her. She sold the food, and at last she was able to buy a cow. The Russians policemen understood that she was doing something illegal, and they put her in jail. My mother did not despair and succeeded in bribing the policemen. She told them that she would give them half of the profits, and they released her. Because of my mother's new business we were able to improve our conditions, and eat properly. After a time, a youngster who was working for my mother was caught, and informed on her. My mother was jailed again, for a long period of time.

In 1942 we moved to Ukraine. We stayed there for two years and in the end I was very sick. I had some luck because our neighbor was a Jewish doctor who gave me pills that probably saved my life. At the end of 1944 we were moved back to Poland. Every time the train stopped everyone ran to the fields in attempt to find some food, my brother was stealing food because we had nothing to eat. During one of those times my brother got lost, we had no option except to continue without him. After two weeks he appeared wearing a military coat with a lot of food in his pockets. In Poland we settled in a big house and my mother got remarried with a man who had lost all his family. That's why he didn't want any kids in the house. I was sent to an orphanage where most of the kids there didn’t even know they were Jewish.

Every child in the orphanage spoke different languages and some of them didn’t even speak. The counselors educated us in Zionism. One day a rumor that the Poles planned to murder every one from the orphanage reached to counselor's' ears. They gathered us and loaded us on a big truck that brought us to the Polish border. I think we were 30 kids and 3 adults. We got caught by the Czech, the guides claimed we were lost, but the Czech understood we were running away and to my surprise helped us. They gave us food and the next day passed us on to the American camp. We stayed there for a long period of time. From Czech we moved to Zaltzborg in Austria. I met my sister over there, she took me to a public bath house and treated my skin problem. Her group refused to take me with them so she left me there and continued to Italy. From Zaltzborg we moved to Vienna, we stayed there in a palace that got bombed, one of the days we went to see Herzl's grave. From Vienna we moved to Rozenhiim near the border with Austria. We stayed in a children's camp and once a month we got a package from the Joint.

My brother arrived at a children's camp in Germany when he was 14, there he got rehabilitated and decided to look for me. Finally he found me but the management didn't allow him to take me. After threatening the manager I was allowed to leave with him to Zlthiim. I, as opposed to him, wanted to immigrate to Israel, according to the Zionist education I had got in the orphanage. Eventually I was convinced to go with him. When we got there he took me to dentist who pulled all my rotten teeth. At the age of 12 my brother celebrated my Bat mitzvah. He hired a Hall and bought food. My brother studied in "Ort" in Germany because he wanted to learn a profession before coming to Israel. In 1948 we arrived in Israel in an American plane.

Rejowiec

Rejowiec is situated about 40 km south of Lublin, near a crossroads of railroad track and roads. The village was founded by an aristocratic family named Raj in the 16th century. The Raj family founded a religious college in the village. In 1547, Rejowiec received the status of a city from King Ziegmund the First. In the 17th century the owners of Rejowiec changed a few times, and the College closed.

In the 19th century two tanneries and a copper producing factory were founded in Rejowiec. Two more big factories which were founded in Rejowiec are: a glass factory and a cement factory which kept working after the world war and became one of the biggest cement factories in Poland.

The first Jews inhabited Rejowiec in the middle of the 16th century, and at the end of the 17th century, there were almost 130 Jews. In middle of the 19th century, the Jews were the majority of the population, about 80%. The Jews of Rejowiec earned their living as traders, merchants, or artisans. In the early 20th century, the Jews took part in the industrialization of the village and some of them worked as workers but most Jews were employed as clerks. In the 20th century, commerce of the general Jewish labor union, the “Bund”, was founded in Rejowiec. In November 1904, there were incidents of anti-Semitic rebellion in the village, but the “Bund” organized self-defense groups of young Jews who managed to hold off the rioters.

When the First World War started there was combat in the Rejowiec area. The Russian official authorizations expelled most of the Jews from the village. There were Jews who chose to leave of their own will. The withdrawing Russians soldiers burnt down the synagogue. After the war ended, there was new growth in the village and the Jews were once more in abundance.

In 1923 the synagogue was re-established, and it was opened with much joy and celebration. In the period between the two World Wars, the Jews of Rejowiec established Jewish organizations and youth movements. In the local elections to the 20th Zionist Congress, 131 of Rejowiec’s Jews, who had bought the Jewish “shekel”, voted. The old "Bund" group continued its activity together with a large group of “Agudat Israel” whose members were a majority in the village commission. In 1917 in Poland, many Jews were beaten in the village squares, and gangs plundered their possessions. Two years before the start of World War Two, violence began again. In June 1938 a building commission arrived in Rejowiec to examine the quality of the buildings. The commission announced that 22 Jewish homes were too rickety to live in, and the families who were evacuated from their homes were left without a roof over their heads.

The Germans invaded Rejowiec at the end of September 1939, and soon conquered the town. After conquering, the Germans took the Jew's assets, closed all the Jewish businesses and from the first day they forced the Jews into forced labor. Jewish property was commonly stolen by Germans and Poles. Sometimes the SS soldiers killed Jews for their own pleasure, usually those who looked like typical Jews with beards. In February 1941 German policemen burnt Torah books and synagogues. The Germans took the Jews houses and put the Jews in the center of the town, and so formed a ghetto, which was open, so people could enter and leave it freely. About 1300 Jews from Lublin and Krakow were brought to the ghetto, the population of the ghetto became bigger, and the Jews suffered from lack of food and heat, and from bad health conditions. Many of them died from the bad conditions. The Jews used funds from Jews in Krakow and opened a soup kitchen for poor Jews.

The transports of Jews to the death camps from the Rejowiec began in April 1942. The SS soldiers ordered the residents of the ghetto to assemble in the market square. Jews who tried to hide from the Germans or sick Jews who couldn’t come to the market square were murdered by the Germans. About 2000 Jews from the ghetto walked to the train station, which was located about 4 km from the town. On the way some Jews were killed by the German soldiers. From the station the Jews were brought to Sobibor death camp. After the transportation, about 500 Jews were left in Rejowiec. They lived in a synagogue under a heavy guard. Many of them tried to escape during the nights, but most of them were caught and shot by the guards. Those who chose to stay were brought to the work camp at Krikov, and did forced labor there.

In April and May 1942 about 3000 Jews from Slovakia and Protcatores were transported to the ghetto in Rejowiec. In October the inhabitants of the ghetto were transported to Maidanek, except for a small group of Jews who worked in the sugar factory and in the cement factory. As time passed Jews who had escaped from the Germans during the transportations from Rejowiec and the surrounding area have joined them. At first the Germans didn't harm these Jews, but later they chased after them and killed them in the forests. Some of the workers in the cement factory got weapon with the help of a Polish teacher. They fought their way out of the town, and at the end of a shooting battle some of them were able to run to the forests near Zamoshtz, and some were able to arrive to Hungary.

On the 7th of April 1943 the Germans began sending groups of Jews from the ghetto to Maidanek. Some Jews were sent from Maidanek to Auschwitz. The last group was sent on 2nd of July 1943. At this time there were only 16 Jews in Rejowiec, and they worked in the local Gestapo headquarters. These Jews were killed by an SS soldier in July 1944, when the Polish army began to free the Lublin province. The murderer was found in 1945 and was put to trial in Chelm. At his trial Jews from Rejowiec testified against him.

After the war, when the Jews who had survived the war wanted to return home, they found that local Poles had taken control of the Jews property. These Poles threatened the Jews when they returned, so all Jews had to leave the town.