Together and Apart in Brzezany

Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, 1919-1945

Shimon Redlich

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9780253108883
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

"... by reconstructing the history/experience of Brzezany in Jewish, Ukrainian, and Polish memories [Redlich] has produced a beautiful parallel narrative of a world that was lost three times over.... a truly wonderful achievement." —Jan T. Gross, author of Neighbors

Shimon Redlich draws on the historical record, his own childhood memories, and interviews with Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians who lived in the small eastern Polish town of Brzezany to construct this account of the changing relationships among the town's three ethnic groups before, during, and after World War II. He details the history of Brzezany from the prewar decades (when it was part of independent Poland and members of the three communities remember living relatively amicably "together and apart"), through the tensions of Soviet rule, the trauma of the Nazi occupation, and the recapture of the town by the Red Army in 1945. Historical and contemporary photographs of Brzezany and its inhabitants add immediacy to this fascinating excursion into history brought to life, from differing perspectives, by those who lived through it.

1

MY RETURN

It was a sunny and hot afternoon in August 1991. We’djust landed at the tiny, shabby Lwow airport. I was returning to this part of the world after forty-six years. I had left it in August 1945, after which I lived in Lodz, Poland, for a number of years before emigrating to Israel, where I’ve been living ever since. I traveled to Lwow with my American-born wife, Judy, and my two sabra daughters, Shlomit and Efrat. Shlomit was named after my father, Shlomo, and Efrat was named after my grandfather, Efraim-Fishl. Both men were killed in Brzezany during the war.

The airport, which had seen better days, was my gateway to Brzezany, ninety kilometers southeast of Lwow. I had been chasing my past and my childhood for some time. I repeatedly examined the map of the town and old family photographs. I was both eager and scared to return. Luckily, my family agreed to accompany me. They’ve always been willing partners in my pursuit of the past. I needed their support. I was anticipating emotionally moving events, and I didn’t want to be alone.

The first familiar face that I recognized was from a photo which I’d received from the Kontsevyches, the Ukrainian family who hid us during the war. It was that of beautiful Tania, Tanka’s granddaughter. She told us that her old and ailing babushka had insisted on traveling the bumpy road all the way from Brzezany to greet us at the airport. Ania, Tanka’s daughter and Tania’s mother, hadn’t been able to come and was waiting for us at home. Within minutes, Tanka and Tania and I were hugging and kissing. My wife was moved to tears. I tried to be more restrained. Tanka, whose physical appearance now made her a complete stranger to me, cried and kept calling me “my little boy.” Although Tanka and Tania insisted that we join them and immediately travel to Brzezany, we apologized and told them that we would be coming the next morning. I hadn’t known what to expect in provincial Brzezany and had decided to make Lwow, the big city where I had made some prearranged local connections, our temporary base. That same evening our 12-year-old, Efrat, had a high fever and a terrible sore throat. I was frustrated and even considered traveling alone to Brzezany. Judy convinced me that we should wait another day. Luckily, within a day, her condition started to improve.

I was very tense when we finally set out. As we approached Brzezany, I tried to recall the scenery and the architecture. I had a strong urge to find familiar objects. I was hoping to recapture certain moments which had lived on in my memory and imagination. We went first to Tanka’s. When we approached her house I wondered whether I would recognize it. It turned out that they had built a new house where the old one used to be, the house where we hid for months in a narrow attic above a stable. During the war, Tanka’s husband had been sent for forced labor to Germany, and she had remained there with two children, 9-year-old Ania and 5-year-old Henio.

Once young and full of energy, Tanka was now an old woman, hardly able to walk. I talked to her and tried to recover her memories of my past. She kept repeating her story in broken, rustic Ukrainian, which I barely understood. Tanka remembered carrying me on her back for miles on a cold and snowy night. She also recalled how some Jews she had hid before us were discovered and how she was nearly tried and punished for it. A miracle happened, as she maintained, and she was released. That’s when my Aunt Malcia and Vovo appeared unexpectedly, and she didn’t turn them down. How this simple peasant woman could once more put her own and her children’s lives at risk is beyond my comprehension. Tanka insisted that we stay, but I was afraid to stay overnight. I didn’t feel secure in this Ukrainian peasant neighborhood. I wasn’t ready to take the slightest risk. The place where I felt so safe during those terrible times wasn’t safe enough now. How could that be? Perhaps the answer to this question lies in the concept of relative security. After hiding in the attic, in the ghetto, Tanka’s house was a shelter. Now, the big city seemed safer than provincial Brzezany. Or perhaps it was my undefined fear of Ukrainian peasants and the Ukrainian underground fighters of wartime, the banderovtsi, which subconsciously lurked somewhere in the background. We left for Lwow in the evening. I was overwhelmed and drained.

We returned to Brzezany the next morning. Only a few places really looked familiar. Perhaps the only site which I distinctly recognized was the town square, the Rynek, and the town hall building, the Ratusz. Nearby, on a slight elevation opposite the Ratusz, was the Ukrainian church with the carved statues on both sides of its entrance. Another slightly familiar sight was the dilapidated Brzezany synagogue, which had only vestiges of its former beauty. This is the place to which I had often walked with my father and Grandpa Fishl on Saturdays and holidays. In my mind, I vaguely pictured the bimah, the aron hakodesh with its silver lions, and felt the festive atmosphere.

What I was most eager to find was the house we had lived in before the war and the building inside the ghetto where we hid in the attic before moving to Tanka’s. One minute I thought I had identified them, but the next minute I wasn’t sure. We were on Kolejowa Street, very close to the Ratusz. This used to be part of the ghetto. I looked toward a light-brown apartment building and was almost sure that we had lived there and hid in the attic. I went in and climbed the steps. The door to the attic was locked. I didn’t dare knock on apartment doors and ask for the key. Then I was back on the street, not sure about anything anymore. I walked around and looked for familiar buildings and sights. It was impossible to pin them down. They seemed to have just disappeared. Whole sections in the center of town had been rebuilt. A garden was planted where houses used to be, trees were there instead of buildings. I wanted to fly back in time, but there was nothing to hold on to. I was chasing shadows. All I had were fragments of memory that never added up to something whole. My maps and drawings didn’t help much. Names of streets had been changed several times, from Polish into German, then into Russian, and finally into Ukrainian. Polish Brzezany had become a Ukrainian town. Its former beauty still showed through the dilapidated facades of some old buildings around the Rynek. What used to be the Jewish cemetery on the Okopisko hillside on the way to the village of Raj was full of weeds and broken tombstones. This is where my father was shot and thrown into a mass grave during the last ghetto roundup, nearly half a century ago. We wandered around for a while, I said Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, and we left. My first return to Brzezany will always signify a major landmark in my mental and emotional journey back to the past.

* * *

The Poles called it Brzezany; the Ukrainians, Berezhany; and the Jews, Berezhan. These three ethnic groups had lived there for centuries. Brzezany, a village granted the status of town by the Polish King Sigismund the Old in the sixteenth century, became part of the Hapsburg Empire in 1772, following the partition of Poland. As a result of the disintegration of the Empire during the First World War and the emergence of independent Poland, Brzezany became part of Kresy, the eastern Polish borderlands that were not far from the Soviet border. The southeast region of Poland, where Brzezany was located, was usually referred to as eastern Galicia. The largest city in the region, less than 100 kilometers northwest of Brzezany, was Lwow. A somewhat closer large town, northeast of Brzezany, was Tarnopol. Brzezany was incorporated into the Soviet Ukrainian Republic in 1939 and became part of German-occupied “Distrikt Galizien” in 1941. In 1944, it again became part of Soviet Ukraine. With the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, it has become part of independent Ukraine. Contemporary Berezhany is totally different from Brzezany of the interwar years. Almost all of its Polish inhabitants moved to Poland, and many of its Ukrainians fled to the west. Its Jewish population was annihilated. Today, Berezhany, a town of slightly more than 18,000, is almost completely Ukrainian.¹ Most of its inhabitants are Ukrainians who settled there after the war, having come from neighboring villages or other parts of Ukraine.

Whereas in the past the most common language in Brzezany was Polish, today one hears mainly Ukrainian and Russian in its streets. Most of the street names have been changed four times within half a century: first, during the short-lived Soviet rule between 1939 and 1941; then, during the German occupation in 1941; then again, after the return of the Soviets in 1944; and finally, after Ukrainian independence in 1991. Whereas during the interwar years the names of Polish military and cultural heroes, such as Pilsudski, Rydz-Smigly, Iwaszkiewicz, Mickiewicz, and Slowacki, were given to prominent Brzezany streets, during the second half of the century those same streets were given the names of Marx, Engels, and various Soviet leaders and generals. Today most of the street names reflect Ukrainian history and culture. Names such as Sheptyts’kyi, Bandera, and The Sich Riflemen, unthinkable under Polish or Soviet rule, are prominently displayed on its updated commercial map.² Contemporary Berezhany has very little in common with the multiethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual community of old.

Interwar Brzezany was a neat, mid-sized town. Its population was about 11,000 before the First World War and about 13,000 on the eve of the Second World War.³ Although the years 1914–1920 witnessed considerable demographic changes resulting from the war and the turmoil of the early postwar years, the basic size of its population wasn’t seriously affected. The dominant group in Brzezany between the wars were the Poles. Every second person was Polish. The “Polishness” of Brzezany was enhanced by an army regiment of 1,000 soldiers and officers and their families, almost all of whom were Polish. Since Brzezany was a district town, many of its Polish inhabitants were employed by various administrative offices and institutions. The Poles were followed quite closely by the Jews: every third person in town was Jewish. Three out of every four stores in Brzezany were owned by Jews.⁴ Ukrainians constituted less than a quarter of its population. But the surrounding countryside was predominantly Ukrainian. More than 60 percent of the peasants were Ukrainian, and about 30 percent were Polish.⁵ Only a small number of Jews lived in the surrounding villages.

Various descriptions of Brzezany, as well as personal accounts of Brzezanyites, speak of the “Swiss” nature of the Brzezany landscape.⁶ The town, located in a low-lying area, was surrounded by a number of gently sloped hills covered by forests: Storozysko in the north, Zwierzyniec in the northeast, Lysonia in the southeast, Ruryska in the south, and Babina Gora in the southwest. An impressive lake, the Brzezany Staw, through which flowed the Zlota Lipa River, was the striking feature of its northern edge. On a northwestern hill, overlooking the town, stood the centuries-old Bernardine Church and monastery. The town center, the Rynek, or the Ringplatz as it was called in Hapsburg times, was dominated by the Ratusz, the quadrangular town hall building with a belfry and clock on top. The Ratusz was surrounded on all four sides by buildings, some of which were constructed in a somewhat bombastic nineteenth-century style. Some were adorned with tall columns protruding from their front walls. On the ground floor of the Ratusz, as well as along the houses facing the Ratusz building, were numerous small shops, owned mostly by Jews. The space between the Ratusz and the block of houses to the north was used for weekly fairs, where peasants from nearby villages sold their produce. These were, naturally, the busiest days for the shop-owners. The open spaces around the Ratusz were also used for military parades and various festive occasions.

Opposite the western wall of the Ratusz, on a slight upgrade, was the Holy Trinity Tserkov, the Ukrainian church, with larger-than-life sculptures of Peter and Paul guarding the entrance. Not far from the Ratusz, on a slight elevation to the southwest, was the gothic Roman Catholic parish Farny Church, the largest place of worship in town. A few streets farther on, in the same direction, on a picturesque hill overlooking the town, was an impressive modern edifice, the Brzezany Gimnazjum. In the southern section of Brzezany, in the midst of the old and mostly poor Jewish quarter, was the Large Synagogue, constructed in a Renaissance style and modeled after the Synagogue of Livorno.⁷ The short Potocki Street, leading eastward from the Ratusz, soon became Kolejowa, the Railroad Street, which ended at the local railroad station. On the northern side of Kolejowa, halfway between the town center and the railroad station, lay the grounds of the old, dilapidated Sieniawski Castle, surrounded by the Old Park. The Polish nobleman Nicholas of Sieniawa was the founder of the town of Brzezany. The castle was built as a massive fortress and included a church and a chapel, where the remains of its successive owners were interred. Along the southern side of Kolejowa, opposite the Sieniawski Castle, were the barracks of the 51st Army Regiment.

A 3-kilometer-long lane, shaded by tall linden trees, led from the southwestern suburb of Adamowka into the nearby village of Raj, which is Polish for “paradise.” North of the lane, on a slope overlooking the town, lay the centuries-old Jewish cemetery, the Okopisko. Further toward Raj, south of the lane, was the extensive Christian cemetery where both Poles and Ukrainians buried their dead. At the far end of the linden lane, inside Raj, was the Potocki estate with its huge park and ponds and a beautiful Renaissance-style palace.

* * *

After leaving Brzezany in 1945, we resettled in Lodz, the “Polish Manchester,” an industrial center and one of the few Polish cities which remained intact after the war. I spent five happy years there attending a Zionist Hebrew school. I was also a member of the Hashomer Hazair youth organization. By the time we finally emigrated to Israel, in the winter of 1950, I already spoke fluent Hebrew. Nevertheless, I went through a rather difficult “Israelization” process in one of the kibbutzim. Within a single year I became an Israeli, at least outwardly. I had to adapt to my sabra peers and must have paid a price for this. For years I bore a grudge against them. At the height of the Demjaniuk trial, in the course of a newspaper interview, I intentionally remarked that my memories of that simple Ukrainian peasant woman who saved me during the war were much more positive than the memories I carried from the kibbutz. I graduated from high school in a nearby town and was drafted into the army. The kibbutz, the army, and my studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem overshadowed my childhood in Brzezany. It gradually receded and dissolved into the distant past.

The first time I consciously started thinking about Brzezany was in the early 1960s. These were the long weeks of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. At the time I was studying history at the Hebrew University. One day, while browsing through some journals, I came across a short piece by Elie Wiesel, “The Last Return.” Wiesel was telling the story of his first and last postwar visit to his hometown, Sighet. It moved me deeply. At that time I couldn’t even dream about going back to Brzezany. I was totally immersed i...