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Kasriel K. Eilender, M.D.

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THE BARBER OF GOERLITZ - A MEMOIR

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Josel & Sarah

My Father

and Mother

Her father was a businessman who exported fish from nearby lakes to Germany. I remember my mother as being an educated, attractive woman, who was an avid reader. She was especially interested in the lives of royal families. Etiquette and good manners were very important to her and she tried to instill these values in all of her children.

            My grandmother Eiga was a kind, soft-spoken and very religious woman. She was the one in our family in charge of the cooking and her specialty was chulent, a typical Jewish dish consisting of meat, potatoes, fat and beans stewed together for 24 hours.

My grandfather Benjamin loved music, especially the opera. On four occasions, he visited the United States, where he had an extensive family. Considering the times and circumstances, my grandfather was a rather pro-gressive man who had many friends among the Polish intelligentsia.

My family and our community considered Germany to be a civilized and industrial country that they envied and admired. My father used to bring us fancy toys from East Prussia. When I was 13 years old, I had a Bar Mitzvah. In front of our many guests, My grandfather Benjamin proudly held up the telegram he received announcing my birth as well as a photo of the German nurse who took care of me. My grandfather was very fond of and attached to me. He used to say we had a friendship similar to the one that King David and Jonathan enjoyed together. 

Following Hebrew public school, I matriculated to a government high school, commonly referred to as a Gymnasium. It was only for boys and you were required to wear a uniform. We had a curfew and our upbringing was very strict.

A free and independent Poland did exist between the wars from 1919 to 1939. The Russian Tzars had controlled Eastern Poland for hundreds of years; Germany dominated the Western part, and Austria controlled the South. While the Polish population as a whole knew what it meant to live under oppression, it was especially difficult to be a Jew and a member of a minority group. 

German propaganda escalated the pre-existing anti-Semitism with all kinds of printed inflammatory articles and pamphlets in the Polish language. At the universities there were "numerous clausus," enacted which greatly restricted the number of Jewish students allowed to enroll. 

It was widely known that Jewish university students had been ordered to sit on the left side as a demeaning gesture. But often, they chose to stand up during the lectures, and sometimes the Jewish students were beaten up by their Polish classmates.

It is ironic that when Hitler came to power, Marshall Von Hinden-berg, the President of Germany until his death in 1934, wrote a letter to the Fuhrer requesting that the children of Jewish veterans of World War I be allowed to finish their studies at German universities. Permission was granted.

As the German anti-Jewish propaganda spread, the atmosphere in Poland, especially in the border areas, was becoming increasingly tense. My town was located in an area surrounded by many forests and lakes. On one occasion, the students from my high-school class went for an outing to the nearby countryside. I got lost with a Polish classmate until we found our way back to town in the evening. 

The next morning when my Polish gymnastics teacher spoke to me, he shook me a little bit and said: "You cannot afford to do these things, because you have to hold on with your hands and feet to this school since you are a Jew, and by the way, Hitler will soon come to you." He was right. Hitler came to my people and to me, but he also came to him and his people. 

During World War II, about three million Poles were martyred, killed, beaten, and persecuted. The Polish people had been proud and patriotic. They fought back on many of the fronts during the last War, and credit should be given to the Polish nation for never having organized any auxiliary SS troops, as other East and West European countries had done.

On September 1, 1939 it happened. Hitler’s Germany attacked Poland with three huge army groups: one from the North, one from the West, and one from the South. Since we had been in the border area, my parents, myself and my siblings tried to move farther away from the German border to the Southeast into the area of Grodno, to the small city of Indura where we had some relatives. We stayed there until September 17, 1939 at which time Russian troops invaded the Eastern part of Poland. 

After several days, we trekked back home to the North. We had a horse and buggy, and were advised by a Soviet General to travel only on the main roads to avoid being robbed. On the way we mingled with marching Russian troops, vehicles, tanks and artillery. We were stopped and question-ed several times by Russian troops who searched us for weapons. We finally came back to our city of Suwalki.

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