“A chocolate cake made with chocolate from Warsaw sprang my father from jail” Shoshana Jedwab, daughter of Holocaust survivor Cwi Jedwab, said.
By the time that the Nazis rolled into Cwi’s town of Drobnin, Poland, they had already hanged Cwi’s uncle Mordechai for the crime of being a Jewish leader. Furious, Cwi went right over to a Nazi officer and kicked him in the shins. Cwi was sent to jail, and his family expected the worst.
Cwi’s parents owned a “spick-and-span, well-run bakery”. His every day in Drobnin began with eating six rolls from that bakery. My grandpa, also from Drobnin, would later tell Shoshana that he remembered the delicious breads Cwi’s parents baked.
So, Cwi’s mother baked a chocolate cake with chocolate made in Warsaw. She took it to the back door of the house that the Nazi officer and his family had taken over. The Nazi officer’s wife came to the back door, saw the cake, and in a complete state of shock said: “How in heaven’s name did you know?” Cwi’s mom asked what it was assumed that she knew. The woman responded, “How did you know it’s my four year old’s birthday today? We can’t get any rations. This is incredible. What can I do for you?” Because of this chocolate cake delivery, Cwi was released from jail.
Cwi’s parents commonly made food for others prior to the war as well. Cwi’s dad was head of a committee that helped provide food to poor Jews so they could still celebrate on Shabbat. Every Thursday night, packages of the bakery’s challah rolls, cholent, and other components were put together from donations. At around 4:00am, a helper would assist Cwi’s dad to discreetly deliver them.
In 1940, Cwi and the other Jews from Drobnin were sent to a ghetto in Neustadt, Germany. There was a lot of starvation in the ghetto. Cwi saw that his mother was giving her food rations to the kids, and he was determined to ensure that his mother would not starve to death. An athletic boy, he ran as lights were going out under machine gun fire and tried to steal food from local farms during the night to feed his family.
At the end of 1942, they were sent from Neustadt to Auschwitz. Cwi’s mom, dad, two sisters, and one brother were immediately gassed upon arrival at Auschwitz. Cwi and his brother, Binyamin, were selected for work.
In Auschwitz, a Jewish professional thief whom Cwi knew from the local area had somehow been chosen to work in Kanada, where the property of victims was sorted through. There is great irony in this; he was the perfect person for this role, because if Cwi or others were in trouble and needed a bribe, he could provide it. The prisoners quickly learned which guards were bribe-able and which were not.
A few weeks into their arrival at Auschwitz, Binyamin fell sick, and Cwi was able to get a bribe in hopes of saving his brother. It was already too late. Then, about a week later, there was a conscription of bakers; Binyamin was trained as a baker. Between the bribe and conscription of bakers, then, the timing to save Binyamin was only a week off. “This would keep my father up at night and make him cry”, Shoshana said.
In 1944, when Cwi had already been in Auschwitz for over a year and a half, some Greek Jews were sent to Auschwitz. A Greek Rabbi went to Cwi and communicated with him in Hebrew. He obviously did not totally know where he was yet, asking, “Do you think we can get matzah here?” Despite the risks and difficulty involved, Cwi replied that yes, they could make that happen.
Two shirts and a watch were obtained as bribes: the shirts were given in exchange for flour to people in the Polish, non-Jewish work camp who worked in the kitchen; the guard that would watch over them on Seder night received the watch. On Seder night, under somebody’s bunk there was a hole in the ground and there they built a fire to make the matzah.
From Auschwitz, Cwi was sent on the death march where he was with a man from Drobnin. This man would say he was so hungry and unable to live in the conditions anymore. Cwi’s job in that moment was to push the food cart. Of course, if anyone dared touch the food on the cart, they would risk being shot. Cwi said to the man from Drobnin: “If I get you food, will you choose to live? Promise me.” He promised. Cwi reached right ahead into the can of meat and fed his friend from Drobnin.
One of the guards saw this happen and called a halt to the whole line. He pointed a gun at Cwi and asked, “Did you put your hands in the food?” To which Cwi responded, “Yes, absolutely! Because that guard said ‘Dirty Jew! Eat the poisoned food and do it now’”. Cwi was referring to the second guard, who he had learned over the course of the death march was a secret communist and in grave danger of discovery. Cwi’s life was in this guard’s hands.
The guard responded that indeed, he had asked the Jew to eat the poisoned meat, and “let’s keep moving”. The guard who had his gun pointed believed him.
Food determined time and time again if Cwi, and others in the Holocaust, would live or die. A chocolate cake released him from jail. Matzah was made as a form of resistance and Jewish observance while the Nazis aimed to strip them of their humanity. And the severe lack of food drove many of his actions, from running out of the ghetto to bring food back for his family, to grabbing a piece of meat with the hope his friend from Drobnin might stay alive.