The Man Across the River: The incredible story of one man's will to survive the Holocaust (Holocaust Survivor True Stories WWII) Read online

  Advance Praise

  "The Man Across the River is an elegant and enthralling testament of the faith, courage, and hope of a Holocaust survivor written eloquently and lovingly by his adoring grandson. Both the book and the grandson are wonderful legacies of the life of Jacob Wiesenfeld, z"l."

  - Rabbi Mark Dratch, Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Council of America

  "The Holocaust genre is riveting, horrifying, and more necessary than ever. The Man Across The River gives a voice to those so traumatized that they never spoke of their experiences, yet forged on to create a new reality. Zvi Wiesenfeld tells his grandfather's story, from a young child in Romania through his wife's untimely death, with a sense of awe, authenticity, and appreciation of his grandfather's tenacity and strength. I started reading it when I knew had other things to do, and then didn't stop."

  - Yitzy Weinberg, Executive Director at Flatbush Community Fund

  "The Man Across the River gives voice to a little-known epoch of the European Holocaust. I was at turns moved, horrified, and awed by Yankel Wiesenfeld's fortitude during his journey in the face of unimaginable tribulations. The author's descriptions of the Transnistrian killing fields were vivid and engrossing. Yankel's tale, as told by his grandson, is a must-read."

  - Rabbi Steven A. Weil, National Director and CEO at Friends of the IDF

  "What makes a mild mannered, easy going grandfather scream every night in his sleep? Determined to learn the history his grandfather would never talk about, Zvi Wiesenfeld did extensive research to outline the facts, and used his skill as a writer to fill in the blanks with a gripping narrative. The Man Across the River succeeds in telling a story that combines the drama of fiction with the all too real horrifying events that took place in Europe during the Holocaust."

  - Betty Schwartz, The Jewish Link of Bergen County

  The Man Across the River

  The incredible story of one man's will to survive the Holocaust

  Zvi Wiesenfeld

  ISBN: 9789493231078 (ebook)

  ISBN: 9789493231061 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9789493231290 (hardcover)

  Publisher: Amsterdam Publishers, The Netherlands

  [email protected]

  The Man Across the River is Book 8 in the series:

  Holocaust Survivor True Stories WWII

  Copyright © Zvi Wiesenfeld, 2021

  Cover image: Grace Roberts

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  Contents

  Preface

  Maps

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Amsterdam Publishers Further Reading

  Holocaust Survivor True Stories

  Holocaust Survivor Memoirs

  In memory of my grandfather, Jacob Wiesenfeld

  Jacob was left alone on the far side of the river. A stranger appeared and wrestled with him until just before daybreak. When the stranger saw that he could not defeat Jacob, he touched the upper joint of Jacob’s thigh. Jacob’s hip joint became dislocated during the struggle.

  “Let me go,” said the stranger. “Dawn is breaking.”

  “I will not let you leave until you bless me.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Jacob.”

  “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel. You have grown strong before God and man. You have won.”

  (Genesis 32)

  Preface

  I was studying in Israel when my grandfather, Jacob Israel Wiesenfeld, passed away. I was 18 years old and enrolled in the post-high school program at the Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh Talmudic seminary, located on a kibbutz twelve kilometers east of the Mediterranean port town of Ashdod. I received the call from my father in my spartan dorm room on Sunday morning, the first day of the Hebrew month of Kislev, November 10, 2007.

  “Zvi, I just want to let you know that Saba passed away.”

  “Oh. Baruch Dayan HaEmes” (Blessed be the True Judge).

  “Do you want to come home for the funeral?”

  I didn’t want my parents to spend the money. “No, I’m good.”

  “That’s fine. Stay and learn (study) in his memory.”

  My grandfather had been ill for some time. He had spent his last few months at my parents’ house in northern New Jersey. He was eventually admitted to Maimonides Hospital near his home in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. There, my grandfather contracted a staph infection. The infection proved fatal.

  The funeral was held the following day. I sat huddled around a Nokia cell phone in my cousin Dovi’s cramped apartment in the Beis Yisroel neighborhood of Jerusalem. Dovi was studying in the Mirrer Yeshiva at the time. His mother, my aunt, called Dovi and muted her phone for the duration of the service. In this manner, my cousin and I listened to relatives eulogizing our grandfather.

  Stories about my grandfather’s hellish experiences in Europe were conspicuously absent from the eulogies. The Holocaust left him utterly traumatized; he never talked about it – not to anyone.

  My grandfather was the kindest, gentlest man I ever met. He worked hard and was devoted to his family and community. He was one of my role models and had an outsized influence on my life. Yet, I didn’t truly know him. Very few people really did. He hid his pain away.

  Several years ago, my sister and I were discussing my grandfather and his astonishing life. “We are the last generation to personally know survivors,” I said to her. “The Holocaust dies with us. Someone needs to find out what happened to Saba.”

  I decided to write a book.

  I traced my grandfather’s life from the Yiddish-speaking Jewish Quarter of Czernowitz to the killing fields of Transnistria and to the region’s concentration camps. I learned about his time as a conscript in the Red Army, his status as a refugee in an Italian displaced persons’ camp, his arrival on Ellis Island and his struggles as an immigrant in a new land.

  This slim volume is the result of interviews with everyone I could find who knew my grandfather, gathering partially formed anecdotes and
snippets of stories. I then deeply researched the Holocaust in Romania and the Ukraine until I was able to include the stories in a larger narrative. I filled in many details myself. I imagined virtually all of the dialogue and some of the characters. The result is a work of biographical fiction based upon the life story of a remarkable man. Throughout, I strove to do justice to my grandfather’s story and to honor his memory.

  Maps

  Map of Czernowitz by Leon Koenig. From: http://czernowitz.ehpes.com/czernowitz3/newmaps/20sCzCity.jpg

  Romanian Camps and Ghettoes, 1942. Collection: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. https://images.app.goo.gl/FeLYEBDH9mebpYB66

  1

  Dawn broke over Czernowitz as Yankel Wiesenfeld-Reiner hurried home, pulling his tattered coat tightly to him against the autumn chill of November 1937. It was a long shot, but there was a chance that he could get home and crawl into bed before Zushe awoke for morning shacharis prayers. He didn’t think he had the energy for one of Zushe’s lectures. Yankel tried to ignore the cold ache in his feet, protected only by thin stockings and a worn pair of shoes, as he turned onto the dusty cobblestones of Judengasse, Jewish Street, in Czernowitz’s Jewish Quarter.

  He rushed past small, drab two- and three-family apartment buildings attached to form a single, long structure. Many of the buildings housed small shops featuring a potpourri of Yiddish signs; katsev (butcher), kandelmaker (candlemaker), shuster (cobbler). The building facades began mere inches from the winding street, leaving precious little room to avoid the horse-drawn wagons that were beginning to rattle along – even at this early hour. He dodged the coal wagon, its heavy wheels coated with the muck that constantly accumulated in the gutter, before arriving at a modest storefront. A small wooden sign above the doorway read Shpayzkrom (grocery).

  He removed a key from his pocket and slipped through the front door, doing his best to prevent the old hinges from creaking. He crossed the tiny room in a matter of seconds, past empty barrels, wooden trestle tables, and crates. Shelves lining the wall were filled with glass jars of jam, oil, tallow, and honey. A simple table at the far end of the shop, next to a sizable ice box, served as the register counter. Yankel gingerly ascended the narrow staircase at the rear of the store. He slowly turned the knob of the door at the top of the stairs and crept inside, turning around to gently close the door.

  A throat cleared behind him.

  Yankel spun around with a start.

  Zushe was sitting on one of the room’s five plain wooden chairs. He sipped tea from a tin cup, his long legs crossed in front of him. A candle burned on the table, illuminating the wry look on his face.

  “A guten morgen,” Zushe said quietly. “Had fun in the woods last night?”

  Yankel sighed. He was annoyed at having been caught by Zushe again, especially when he lacked the energy to argue. Arguing wasn’t his strong suit anyway; he hated conflict of any kind. He grabbed a cup from a shelf and poured himself tea from the kettle, moving quietly so as not to wake five-year-old Hirsch on his mattress at the end of the room. He sat down next to Zushe and began to sip his tea. “I know what you’re going to say Zushe, but it won’t change my mind.”

  Zushe uncrossed his legs. “Forget about the socialists and maskilim, intellectuals, who go to those Zionist meetings. It is your business if you want to surround yourself with those kinds of treifedike, unsuitable, influences. The more pressing matter is that these meetings are dangerous. What if you’re seen sneaking around the city by some of those fascist thugs? Or a Jew-hating policeman. You could be killed! What would I say to Mamme and Tatte?”

  Yankel was silent. It was true that the monthly Betar meetings he attended in the nearby Horeczaer Forest were frequented by Reform, socialist, and secular Jewish youths in addition to Orthodox youngsters like himself. His family was devoutly traditional and firmly opposed to the burgeoning Eastern European Socialist movement. But that didn’t bother him. He didn’t feel that his own strict observance of Torah law was incompatible with his ability to learn from young men and women of different backgrounds. And there was so much to learn! He was educated at the local one-room heder (religious Jewish school), whereas many of his fellow Zionists were enrolled at the local public schools. Some even attended university. From them, Yankel learned about history, politics, and literature. Many spoke Russian and German in addition to Romanian. He had a talent for languages. Through conversing with the youths and borrowing some of their books, he learned to passably speak those languages, in addition to ritual Hebrew and the Yiddish he spoke at home. As far as Yankel knew, he was the only Jew in Bukovina who spoke all the Jewish and gentile tongues of the region.

  But more importantly, Betar youths shared a common purpose that transcended the relatively minor differences in observance, politics, and education. Each one harbored a deep ardor for the land of Israel and hoped for the establishment of a national Jewish home. Even the youngsters who did not grow up in the poverty and decay of the Jewish Quarter could not avoid the vicious antisemitism that pervaded Romania. To ethnic Romanians, Jew-hatred was as natural as breathing. Radical students and fascist sympathizers could beat, harass, and rob Jews with near impunity.

  In 1926, in a Czernowitz courtroom, a young Romanian man named Nicolae Totu pulled a revolver on David Falik, a Jewish student protesting antisemitic professors. Totu put three bullets in Falik’s belly. Upon Falik’s death, the killer was paraded through town by his friends, adorned with ribbons and the flag of Romania. Octavian Goga, the Romanian Minister of Interior, publicly dubbed Totu a “National Hero”. A member of parliament commended Totu for killing one of Romania’s “filthy beasts” and called upon every Romanian household to hang an icon of the boy in their homes. Predictably, the incident kicked off a rash of anti-Jewish riots. Jews were beaten in the streets, Jewish stores were looted, and synagogues were set afire.

  Antisemitism was the raison d’etre of the Iron Guard, a political party with growing influence in the country. Romanians blamed Jews for a whole host of socials ills, including socialism, syphilis, poverty, prostitution, alcoholism, and homosexuality. It was well-known that Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany’s fiercely nationalistic National Socialist party, adopted many of the tactics and symbols of the Iron Guard and their members, the Legionnaires.

  At the Betar meetings, the attendees talked about fulfilling their people’s millennia-old dream of returning to their ancestral homeland. In the case of Yankel and the other Orthodox Jews, it was a dream they prayed for three times a day while facing south toward the land of Israel. They planned their escape from under the fascist jackboot to live as free Jews in a new, revitalized Israel. This dream was slowly beginning to look like a real possibility. Ever since the Balfour Declaration of 1917, afflicted Jews from all over Europe, individually and in groups, started to make their way toward the Mediterranean. These intrepid settlers dug up stumps, drained swamps, and fought malaria. Pioneer communities, through endless, punishing labor, raised crops from the swampland and cultivated the barren desert. These halutzim toiled day and night, leading hard lives in spartan conditions, but they lived as proud, free Jews. Yankel’s ancestors had prayed for this opportunity for two thousand bitter years. Now, he and his friends had the chance to make those dreams a reality.

  Yankel and his comrades lit bonfires, sang Zionist songs and listened to speeches by local Zionist leaders, while absorbing the Zionist philosophy of liberty, self-reliance, and political autonomy. They studied agricultural methods and exercised their bodies in preparation for their own hoped-for emigration. Occasionally fusgeyers, travelers who journeyed to Israel on foot, passed through Czernowitz and joined the meetings in the forest. The fusgeyers captivated the young Zionists with tales of their travels and plans upon their arrival in the Holy Land. Yankel yearned for the day when he, too, would join the ranks of the fusgeyers and do his part to settle the Land and make the desert bloom. In the meantime, he was content to endure the occasional sleepless night and Zushe’s stern looks
.

  Zushe watched his younger brother engrossed in thought and couldn’t resist a slight smile. He understood Yankel’s attachment to the idea of the Holy Land, but he worried for his safety. After all, he was only 15 years old and a small, slight 15-year-old at that. Zushe sighed, placed his cup on the table and stood up. He was nearly six feet tall, broad in the shoulders, and well-built. He was four years older but many inches taller. “Grab your tefillin, little brother. It’s time for shacharis.”

  The brothers walked up the street, cracking jokes and laughing as they approached the shtiebel, the small basement synagogue where the family prayed. Yankel took his usual place toward the back of the room. His father was already there, wrapped in his tefillin and prayer shawl, reading intently from the Book of Psalms. He made a point of arriving for services early and insisted that his sons follow suit. The saintly rabbi of the congregation, Rabbi Shlomo Czernowitzer, swayed gently to the prayers at his small wooden table near the Torah ark at the front of the room. Yankel’s friend Velvel, a round-faced, good-natured boy with whom he had attended heder, smiled at him from a few tables away. Velvel was a fellow Betar member and had also spent the night in the forest. His eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep. Yankel wondered if he looked as tired as his friend.