Beich 8/21-22/2012

8/21-22/2012 (home of Steve, Russ, and Ed's father's father) Biecz.  Long commemorative day.  We assembled around 9:30, walked over to the adjacent gymnasium, where the stage had papers saying:  Biecz Aug 14 1942 Aug 21 2012.  There were speeches by the headmaster (who had Ira in to one of his history classes).  There was a long, utterly unintelligible speech in Polish from someone in cultural history (we were told it was abt Poles who helped Jews), and then Ira gave a speech he’d first given in 1953.  click here for a link to photos of the ceremony

Audience included a scout troop.  Then we walked up to the cemetery, mostly mass graves.  A Hassidic rabbi read some prayers.  Ira read from an account of the 80 people shot by the Germans in the months leading up to the community’s annihilation – some shot at 3 AM in bed.  Literally, people went to sleep not knowing if they’d be alive in the AM.

How he was sitting in his grandmother’s house on Shabbat and the Germans came in, took out a relative and shot him in the hall.  How a school friend of his was shot in those days.

From the cemetery, we waled into town (Caroline remembering the food at what was once Ira’s grandmother’s house as being particularly good), but the only place open was the c entral café.  We ordered mostly pierogies.  I looked in my Polish phrasebook & realized A had ordered blueberry.  I ordered cabbage, but it turned out to have ham, so I switched w/ Aaron.

Ira joined us; we started a walking tyour after he’d eaten.  What follows is a transcription of Caroline’s notes:

·         The bus went each direction each week (Monday to Tarnoff & return on Wed) and kids would run down to meet it, then hang on the bus to get a ride back up the hill.  Sometimes the bus driver would stop suddenly to shake off the kids.

·         Market at the Rynek (town square) on Mondays.  Rynek had cobblestoned floor.  Store-owners sold cookes wrapped in paper.

·         The house our family lived in (deli in 2009) is now a pizza palace (2012)

·         1903, fire burned down the town.

·         There had been one synagogue, but the Rabbi was said to have gone to the US an eaten in a non-K restaurant, so some people split off and formed a second synagogue.

·         Almost every house had a store in front.

·         Edith Maurer had a shack whose door didn’t hang properly.  She cleaned and washed clothes for people.  She lived with her son, Menashem.

·         Buildings weren’t 2 stores before the war.  Most of the roofs were tin – Ira had to shovel off 3-5’ of snow so the snow wouldn’t break the roof.

·         The houses used to be painted bright colors, but either city hall decided color, or needed to approve it.

·         There was a fat priest who used to grab Ira & say”why did you kill our God”, but Ira used to say (at 7-8) “Wow, I didn’t know I was strong enough to kill a God”, so priest gave him a cookie and he ran off.

·         UNESCO giving $ to Beica b/c it was a highly fortified city.

·         The Jewish kids walked to school.  By the church, Polish kids would throw rocks on them or sprinkle them with holy water.  Ira thrust his arm in the holy water, defiling it, and the kids stopped.

·         Beicz was bigger than Krakow in 15^th century – they have a huge church.

·         The school had no J teachers – not allowed.  J kids spent recess on the side of the school (C kids put rocks in snowballs).  J kids were 20 pct of students.

·         Ira liberated day after the war ended in May 1945 and went back to Beicz.  Abt 11 Jews in total came back and within 5-6 months, all but one had left, b/c threatened by Polish resistence (told to leave or die).  They all lived in one house.  The J officers in the Russian army put a guard with a machine gun in front of the house, for protection.

·         Talking in the library, which used to be the synagogue – when he got out of camp, he used to repeat all the names of his relatives who died, every day (56 names).  Upset he couldn’t remember some of the children.

·         On the day of the annihilation of the community, people were rousted out of bed at 3 AM (able-bodied had been taken away to work camps, incl a couple of Ira’s uncles).  Ira hid his sisters in a barn; he hid in a hole in the hillside (suspended from the top of the hole), then hid in a family’s barn.