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Hatikvah fosters reunion between a Polish town’s descendant and a local survivor

By Tracy Sullivan

SPRINGFIELD— When Irene Siegel of Baltimore, Md., traveled to Western Massachusetts last month, she didn’t expect to meet someone from her parents’ hometown in Eastern Europe.

Siegel, 75, and her husband, long-time membersof the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, decided to take a trip to the Pioneer Valley to visit the center. While there, they found information about the Hatikvah Holocaust Education Center in Springfield and its permanent exhibit, “A Reason to Remember.”

“Whenever we go anywhere and if there’s a Holocaust museum, we always go,” said Siegel, who lost many relatives in the Holocaust.

On the last day of their trip, July 27, they visited the Hatikvah Holocaust Education Center, and walked through the exhibit, which chronicles the lives of five Jewish families in Roth, Germany, and what happened to them when the Nazis came to power. The exhibit also contains artifacts and stories of Holocaust survivors who settled in Springfield and the surrounding area.

As the couple was walking out of Hatikvah’s main atrium to leave, Siegel glanced to her left, and one word on a panel on the wall jumped out at her: Mlynov. 

“My parents came from that town,” she explained. “I’m always on the look-out for any mention of the town, any Holocaust information I could find.”

She continued, “My parents came to the United States in 1927, but my father left Mlynov in 1921 with his parents and younger sister, and they went to Palestine. My mother remained in Mlynov and joined my father in Palestine in 1924 when they were married.”

After enduring much hardship in Palestine – including the lack of food, malaria, and Arab attacks – Siegel’s mother convinced her husband to immigrate to the United States.

“He promised that if she came to Palestine and stayed for a period of time and couldn’t adjust to that life… he would go with her wherever she wanted to go.”

They settled in the Baltimore area, where many other Mlynovers were living.

Siegel grew up hearing stories about her parents’ hometown, and her relatives who were still living there.

“I always looked forward to meeting all these cousins I had in Poland… It was my childhood dream, which of course never came true.”

Siegel found Rabbi Robert Sternberg, director of Hatikvah, and asked him about this portion of the exhibit. Sternberg explained that a local Holocaust survivor, Gerald Steinberg, was born in that town. The rabbi showed Siegel a yizkor (memorial) book about Mlynov that Steinberg donated to Hatikvah. Siegel showed the rabbi pictures of her father and other relatives who contributed to the book.

After unsuccessful attempts to get in touch with Steinberg, the rabbi called Steinberg’s son David, who owns Semolina Bread Company in Longmeadow, and the Baltimore couple went to the shop to wait while David tried to reach his parents.

As soon as Gerald Steinberg and his wife, Barbara, got the message, they immediately came to the store to meet the Siegels, and invited them to their home in Longmeadow.

“Of course, we talked there for several hours,” Siegel said.

“It turned out that we had common people whom we know,” Steinberg said.

“It was almost like finding a relative,” he added. 

A child survivor

“I was actually very fortunate in a number of ways,” said Steinberg, now 65. “I survived with my parents.”

Gerald Steinberg is one of the younger survivors of the Holocaust. He was only about 3 years old when the Nazis came to his hometown.

Mlynov is located in the western part of the Ukraine, and was part of Poland from 1918-1939. Steinberg described the town as similar to that of the fictional town of Anatevka from “Fiddler on the Roof.” Many of the Jewish families in Mlynov were farmers, and although some owned their own farms, many worked for non-Jewish land owners. 

“My father had a farm, and he was the oldest of seven children. His father died at a very young age,” Steinberg said. “My mother’s family had a flour mill.”

The Germans invaded Poland in 1941, and all the Jewish families were forced out of their homes and into a ghetto, where Steinberg and his family lived for a year.

When the Germans had issued orders to the Jews of Mlynov to dig ditches for storing potatoes, his father became suspicious and suspected that the ditches were going to be a mass grave. 

Steinberg and his parents were smuggled out of the ghetto, and a Christian farmer who they knew hid them for a couple of days. But soon life became too dangerous for the farmer to continue doing so, and he asked Steinberg’s family to leave. The family found another non-Jewish farmer who agreed to hide the Steinbergs. He dug a hole in the barn underneath where the cows stood. The hole was just big enough for Steinberg and his family to lie down. 

“A short time later, the word got out that [the Nazis] took all the inhabitants out of the ghetto and shot them in this mass grave,” Steinberg said.

At night, his father would go out to find food. He eventually discovered one of his sisters and brought her back to the farm to hide. He also met a family in hiding who had given their daughter to a non-Jewish family. They were eventually caught by the Nazis, and killed. His father vowed to find the girl and take care of her, which he did.

Three farmers hid the Steinberg family in this fashion for about two and a half years.

“Needless to say, the conditions were horrible,” Steinberg said. “I learned how to cry making sounds of animals. My mother would tell me stories about how things would be when we were liberated.”

He remembers the chances when the family was able to get out of the hole, go up to the attic just to see daylight and dry off, and eat some leftover fruit.

Steinberg was liberated by the Russians in 1944, and his family stayed in the area for less than a year. His father and the remaining survivors of Mlynov dedicated a plaque at the site of the mass grave to remember those who perished there.

Steinberg, his parents, his aunt and adopted sister eventually made their way to a larger town in Poland. They were stopped on a train in Czechoslovakia while on their way to Palestine. President Roosevelt had to intervene to allow the train to continue to the American zone, and the Steinbergs were placed in a displaced person (DP) camp called Pockling with other Jews. Gerald went to school in the DP camp and had other children to play with. His father’s sister got married in that camp, and went to live in Israel.

Eventually, his mother’s aunt and uncle living in Springfield found Steinberg and his family, and sponsored them to immigrate to the United States. On July 2, 1949, he came to New York and took a train with his family to Springfield; he was just 9 at the time.

Gerald Steinberg went on to graduate from Classical High School in Springfield, and received degrees from the University of Massachusetts and the University of Connecticut’s School of Pharmacy. He owned Sims Drug Stores for 35 years. He and his wife have been married for 42 years, and have three sons and three granddaughters.

Siegel said, “This story has to be told, and it has to be remembered. The memories of these people have to be perpetuated. At least, they deserve that much.”

This article courtesy of The Jewish Ledger and Tracy Sullivan

To submit an article, please email administrator@hatikvah-center.org  or mail to Hatikvah Holocaust Education Center, 1160 Dickinson Street, Springfield, MA 01108