p 3

Kasriel K. Eilender, M.D.

next >

THE BARBER OF GOERLITZ - A MEMOIR

< PHOTOS < CONTENTS < BACK   

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Around the beginning of October 1939 my father went to City Hall where there were Russian officials, and asked them what would happen to his business and the wood that he had in certain forests. He was told that there would be no problem, and he would be able to continue his activities. This turned out not to be true, since the Communist Regime of the Soviet Union was strictly against private business, regardless of how small.

Because of the Nazi persecution, a string of refugees from the German-occupied Western part of Poland was flowing into the eastern part occupied by the Soviets. There had been Jewish people, as well as Polish, with some belonging to the Communist Party. The Soviet authorities looked with great suspicion upon the refugees crossing their demarcation zone. They believed that there were many spies and saboteurs among them that might be harmful to their country. Ultimately, the Soviets closed the border between the occupied zones of Germany and Russia.

Meanwhile, rumors spread that the city of Suwalki, along with the outlying districts, was going to be incorporated into East Prussia, according to a change in the German-Soviet treaty. As the citizens expressed their concern, the Soviet political commissars gathered together many of the townspeople in the center of the city, and assured us that wherever the feet of Soviet soldiers stepped, they would never retreat. 

As usual, it was not true. After several days, we noticed Soviet tanks and trucks moving toward an area 30 kilometers from Suwalki to the town of Augostow, named after Polish King August. Finally, the authorities admitted that this area was being incorporated into German East Prussia. Panic spread, especially among the Jewish population. The Soviets granted us permission to go along with the troops. They expressed their willingness to give trucks to anybody who wanted to go with them to transport furniture and other personal belongings.

My father was not very sympathetic with the Communist Regime, and was reluctant to accept the offer. Nevertheless, realizing that there was no future for his family under the Germans, he agreed to move to Augustow where the Russians would be stationed. It was the city where my mother was born. We still had some relatives and friends there; however, we be-came refugees.

I was happy that I could resume my curriculum in the Polish govern-ment Gymnasium in Augustow. The school was taken over by Russian civilian authorities and the language used was gradually changed to Russian. I tried to learn the language by reading newspapers. There were still many Polish teachers that remained at the school. However, we noticed that many Polish students were missing. 

We learned that the Soviet border troops and the NKVD (Narodny Komissariat Vnutrennch Del or Komissariat of Interior Affairs) arrested those suspected of being Polish patriots, and sent them to Siberia. Some of the local communists, who knew my father, denounced him, and he was called into the NKVD office. He was told that he could not stay in a border city because he was an untrustworthy person and must move with his fam-ily a distance of 103 kilometers from the Soviet-German demarcation line.

As the German front troops moved into Suwalki, two officers were billeted in the house of our cousins where there lived two unmarried sisters and a third sister with a husband and two children. When the two officers moved in, they asked about my father and were told that he had left town to go to the Russian side of the demarcation line. The officers were the sons of Mr. Botchwina from Koenigsberg, East Prussia who was a business assoc-iate and friend of not only my father, but also of my grandfather. They warned our relatives of the danger in staying in Suwalki and that they should move to the demarcation line on the Russian side. 

As mentioned before, the border was closed. Many of the border troops were very hostile and some did not speak Russian well since they came from different areas of the vast country of the Soviet Union. The two German officers took our cousins to the border in the middle of the night and spoke to the commanding officer. At this time, the German and Soviet troops were on friendly terms. They let my family into the Soviet side and they joined us. Sadly, all of them perished later in the Holocaust.

As part of the Third Reich, Suwalki was renamed Sudauen. The remaining Jewish people in the town had been evacuated, and sent to the center of Poland to Lukow and other localities belonging to the district of the city of Lublin. It didn’t take too long before all of them had been exterminated in one way or another. While my grandfather died of natural causes, my maternal grandmother, as I know from witnesses, was just shot along with other victims in a forest at nearby Lomzy. The Polish citizens of Suwalki didn’t fare much better. Many of the high school students joined an

next  >