For me and for many families of Holocaust survivors, we don’t have photographs or objects from the past; we don’t have physical items passed down from generation to generation. We are connected to our past through the smells and tastes our families experienced. In making traditional Jewish foods, we are passing down elements of the Eastern European Jewish life that no longer exist. These foods are our artifacts.
For my grandpa, Jack, food connected him to the sweet memories of his upbringing. My grandpa was born Jonas Scwarz on April 17, 1919 in Drobnin, Poland. He had a really warm and loving family of his mom (Esther), dad (Yosef), sister (Chaitcha/Helen), and younger brother (Baruch).
Drobnin was a close knit community, and Jewish life was rich despite the fact that they were monetarily poor. Esther was an amazing cook and started making challahs on Thursday. Jack was part of a group called Ha’shomer Ha’leumi, and on Thursdays they met and danced. He came home from dancing and “attacked” a fresh, delicious challah.
On Shabbat, Jewish families took their pots of cholent - a traditional Eastern European Jewish food of meat, potatoes, and beans - and kept them in the town bakery’s oven Friday night. Saturdays after synagogue, someone from each family went to the bakery to take their warm cholent home to eat.
The community, security, and joy of his childhood represented through these foods so starkly contrasted with the conditions Jack faced during the war. The Nazis came to Drobnin on September 8, 1939. The beautiful, 200 year old synagogue, homes, and much else was destroyed. Soon after, Jewish families were sent to a ghetto in Neustadt. There were 4-5 families in a room. Illness and starvation were prevalent.
In a testimony from 2010, my grandpa explained: “We didn’t have what to eat. Nothing. I was a tailor. I went out of the ghetto to the village to tailor and get food for the family. I was not allowed; we went under the ghetto and ran to the village. We did tailoring for the Polish people and they gave us bread, food. By the end of the week, we would bring food back to my parents so they had what to eat. I went so long, and then they caught us.”
After Jack was caught, he was put in prison. He first was in prison in Torun, Poland, and then in Krakow, Poland. In November 1942, him and other prisoners (who were not all Jewish) were transported to Auschwitz. Family and friends from Drobnin arrived to Auschwitz about a month later. Esther, Yosef, Baruch, and many other extended family members were immediately sent to the gas chambers where they perished.
Of Auschwitz, my grandpa said: “I had to do all the dirty work. Digging canals, all kinds of bad work. And I was working really hard. It was no picnic, but I was strong. Whoever couldn’t do it, they would start hitting them, and after that they’d shoot them. You hear a shot, and a shot, and a shot, and a shot. That was the story. I started to get weak. You had no food, they gave you a piece of bread and a little soup in the evening after they counted the people. You were fighting over the bread.” Jack would always say “You had to live day by day.”
Once when Jack was working in the fields, an SS officer injured Jack’s hand. He was sent to a hospital where he was presumably tortured. Jack’s cousin Chaime had good relations with an SS officer, and got Jack a job in the tailoring department. Here, while conditions were still terrible, they were slightly better. It was indoors, less physically demanding, and could result in extra food once in a while in return for alteration work.
Jack also spoke of one time when he saw his sister, Helen: “3-4 miles from us was the crematorium. When you walk out in the night, you can feel the smell of the people, and my sister worked there. She was lucky, because every few weeks they took the workers and killed them because they shouldn’t know what’s going on; she wasn’t killed. One day when I was going out to work, my sister and other girls were walking, and she recognized me. She had a piece of bread and she threw it to me. That was the only time I saw her there. I never saw her again, until after the war.”
From Auschwitz, Jack went on a death march. He said: “We went night and day, we were walking in the snow, no food or nothing. We’d eat snow.” He was in Dachau for a bit before being placed on a train. One day in April 1945, the train stopped and it was quiet. They opened the doors and saw no soldiers. My grandpa and the others he was with were traumatized, lost, and hungry.
Jack described what he and the others that survived the train ride did next: “We said let’s go to the villages to organize some food. We went from one German to another, door to door, and one door opened up.” Someone in uniform opened it much to the fear of my grandpa. But it was an American soldier, an army chaplain who was a rabbi.
The rabbi said, “in five minutes we will have food on the table” and put out whatever they had. My grandpa and the others he was with finally had some food. But, people ate more than their starved stomachs could handle. Many who my grandpa was with that night died from overeating.
After the war, Jack tailored for the American Army in Frankfurt. In August 1948, he married Jeanette in a displaced persons camp in Germany, and in 1949 they came to the United States. Jack worked as a tailor until retirement at the age of 87.
Jack would take his daughter, Barbara, to Friendly’s after Hebrew school every Sunday, order her a hamburger, and sit by the counter just watching her eat. It gave him so much joy to watch his family eat.
During the weekly Shabbat dinners of my childhood, my grandparents and family would gather around the table exchanging stories, jokes, and love. My grandpa lost almost everything in the war, except for his memories. Every time Barbara made cholent for Jack, he would recall the Shabbats he spent with cholent in Drobnin, and say “My mom would grate a potato and make a potato kugel on top”.
The horrors and loss of the war obviously changed my grandpa, and yet for a split second while eating the food it would seem he remembered the more joyous man he used to be. The spark in his eyes and smile as he ate Eastern European food suggested it was more than how delicious it was. It was as if the tastes and smells reached his soul, creating a connection with his childhood, family, and shtetl life.