Eighty years on, seeing my grandparents for the first time

This year ALLAN PREISS finally found an archive with photos of his father’s family, who perished in 1941. Here he rejoices in the elation of casting eyes on them for the first time

A FEW YEARS AGO I was asked to speak at the Jewish Labor Bund’s annual April 19 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Commemoration.  I spoke about the spaces at our Seder table that would remain forever empty.  They would never be filled by my paternal grandparents, or the aunts, uncle and cousins on my father’s side.  That was part of my family’s Holocaust legacy. 

Coincidentally, my father’s birth date was April 19, 1923. 

My father was the oldest of five children.  He was 16 when Germany invaded Poland.  Only he survived the Holocaust.  About Pop’s family all I knew were the names of his parents and siblings.  There were no records, no photos. No stories. 

My father was a quiet, reserved man. He didn’t talk much. He left that to my mother. It was from her that we learnt Pop’s survival story. We only got it in broad brush strokes from her. I’m unsure whether she knew the details or whether she wanted to spare us the pain of knowing. 

But I knew grief from an early age.  he home I grew up in was full of Holocaust survivors. Apart from our family there was Mrs Vadasz, a Hungarian survivor who was a boarder for a short time. She was followed by Kurt and Carla Schaeffer. He was Austrian, she was Rumanian. My family affectionately called him “der yekke” – the Austrian. After they left, Mr Lipschitz moved in. 

I remember being woken up at night by the nightmares my father was having and my mother consoling him.

I learnt about the Holocaust at the Sholem Aleichem Yiddish Sunday school I attended and the SKIF Jewish youth movement. In both organisations I was taught and led by Holocaust survivors. I got to hear their stories, see their photos, meet their families.

But of my father’s family I knew next to nothing. 

In 1979 my mother went to England to visit her brother and meet her newly-born nephew. My uncle at the time was an Australian journalist based in London. We were renovating our house and Pop came over most days to help and then stayed for dinner. 

And we started taking. It was a combination of my mother being away, and the birth of his first grandchild in 1979 that helped him open up. He told me where he lived before the war broke out.  How he had trained to be a milliner.

I learnt that he worked at the Krakow airport before being sent to Plaszow, the camp where Oskar Schindler saved many Jews. From there he was sent to Mauthausen, then Melk and finally to Ebensee. He was liberated by American soldiers in May 1945. 

In 1991 I got involved in an oral history project run by the Melbourne Holocaust Centre. My father was among the survivors I interviewed.

We spent hours together and piece by piece his story emerged. He showed me a photo he said was taken in Ebensee soon after the camp was liberated (the main photo for this story). 

He returned to Krakow to see if anyone was left. Only he survived. He was told that his father Eliasz Preiss (after whom I am named), died in 1940. His mother Khaye, sisters Fayge, Laye and Gitl and brother Aleksander (he called him Sender) died in 1941. The cause of their deaths was unknown.

I started looking for more details. The internet was in its early stages. Although I was a history graduate, I didn’t know where to start. And with a young family, I was too easily distracted from the search. 

As the internet became more pervasive, I started putting names into search engines. 

Nothing came up. 

I tried different ways of spelling our surname in case it had been Anglicised when my parents arrived here in 1949. 

Nothing. 

I put the names of my grandparents, aunts and uncle into the Yad Vashem search engine in the hope somebody may have known them and could tell me something – anything. 

Again nothing.

Periodically I put names into Google. I never got a hit. The gaps between my searches lengthened as I had all but given up hope of finding anything. 

About three weeks ago I was listening to a podcast with a Polish woman who helps trace families of survivors.  She mentioned that Poland had the best organised archives in Europe.

So I tried again.  More in hope than expectation.

I got a hit.  It directed me to the archives of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. 

I put in the name of my grandfather. I was sent to a link, clicked on it, completed a very simple, on-line form and was immediately sent a copy of my grandfather’s identity card to get into the Krakow Ghetto. At the bottom was a small photo. It was very blurry and I could barely make out any features. Across it was the German hand-written word “gestorben” – deceased. 

I got similar cards for my grandmother Khaye (called Helena on the card), aunt Fayge (Fela) and aunt Laye (Lajka vel Lel). There were photos on each of the cards.  All were blurry.  Aleksander and Gitl (who was called Gusta) were names that appeared on my grandparents’ forms as they were under 14 and didn’t need their own identity cards. Gitl was 10 when she was sent to the Krakow Ghetto. The same age as my granddaughter.

It was not enough to murder them.  They even had to be deprived of their names. 

Their address was on the card – Hauptstrasse 55, Wola Duchacka.  Wola Duchacka was the site of the Krakow Ghetto. 

I shared all the information with our two sons. They wanted to know more. When could we return to Krakow? We had been there in 2008 but found nothing. Now we had leads to follow. 

I contacted the US Holocaust Museum and asked if they could enhance the photographs. They directed me to a contact at the Polish National Archives in Krakow. I emailed him. I got a return email in Polish. Fortunately, a translation was available.  Yes, they could send me copies of the photos. It would cost me the grand sum of 12 Polish zlotys – about $4. 

I arranged the money transfer and waited. They were quick.

Two months ago, I was emailed four very clear photographs. My grandfather, grandmother, Fayge and Laye.  For the first time I saw my father’s family – my family. 

I immediately sent them on to our sons. Gideon called within minutes. He could barely speak. I spoke with Benjamin soon after. He was already planning the trip to Krakow and the research we needed to do beforehand. 

We had the address where Pop had lived before the war and we had the address where they lived in the Krakow Ghetto. We could walk from one to the other as they had done in 1941. 

I knew Pop as a father, husband, father-in-law, son-in-law, brother-in-law, uncle and grandfather. Until I saw the photos I had never been able to imagine him as a son, a brother. 

Was he a good son?  An affectionate son?

What kind of brother was he? Did he look after his younger siblings, especially Sender and Gitl, the baby of the family?

Who did he look like?  Who did my brother and I look like?  Did our sons and granddaughter and grandson look like any of them? 

Pop looks like his mother and his two beautiful younger sisters. They have the same eyes. I think my brother and I also look like them. Our younger son Gideon looks like Fela. Our grandchildren resemble Laye. 

There are many threads that we can now pull on to unravel more of the story. I will keep searching. As more records become digitised, families like ours that had nothing will be able to discover information that will enable them to piece together their family’s stories. 

Eliasz, Khaye, Fayge, Laye, Sender and Gitl will never sit at our Seder table. But next year when our family sits down to celebrate Pesach, I will be able to imagine them there. Dipping their fingers into the wine as we count the 10 plagues, reminding the little ones not to lick their fingers after dipping as they would then get that particular plague. 

Laughing as the kids search for the afikomen.  Eating with us, singing with us, laughing with us, arguing with us.

Just being.    

Photo: Allan Preiss's grandparents Eliasz and Khaye Preiss