Remembering the Goldapel Family by David Lejfer (Dec. 2022)

Erez, our oldest grandchild, a junior in high school, has a driver's permit and is ready to conquer the world. Mila, our youngest grandchild, a one-year-old, moved from an observer in her highchair to a walking explorer.

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, life for the Goldapel family turned the hardships and the simple joys of daily living into a journey for survival. David, my maternal grandfather, 48, wife, Helen, aka Buba, 38, daughters Genia, 17, Mania, 15, and Bella, 8, moved from a small shtetl of Krylow, Poland to Volodymyr-Volynsky, Ukraine, occupied by the Russians, to delay the inevitable.

"Who shall live, and who shall die?" On June 21, 1941, the Germans marched into town. Separated to avoid suspicion, the family frequently moved amongst barns, haystacks, and the homes of my grandfather's courageous and sympathetic non-Jewish friends to avoid capture and incarceration in one of two sections of the ghetto. According to my aunt Genia, Jews named the first "Life," which housed those who could do manual labor or with special skills. The second "Death," because children, the elderly, the sick, and the weak were destined for immediate liquidation.

On Thursday, November 12, 1942, thinking it was "safe" to enter the ghetto, David and his family entered. Tired, hungry, and filthy, David gathered his wife and daughters to replace their soiled, tattered clothes with the garments of murdered Jews, eat a few spoonfuls of watery potato soup, and rest.

This was the same day the second Aktion (pogrom) started in Vladimir Volynsky**. Two thousand five hundred Jews were murdered, including my grandfather.

Sixty-four years later, on November 18, 2006, speaking in a calm and deliberate voice, my mother, Mania, in an interview with my cousin Charlie Rosenberg, describes witnessing her father's death, escaping from the ghetto, and descending into the next level of hell.

For three weeks, Mania hid in a four-by-four-foot underground root cellar. Only late at night, she felt "safe" to remove the cover, stand, and painfully stretch her legs. What did a 17-year-old think about in her crypt? Did she relive the nightmares or dare to dream of surviving, marrying, and having children and grandchildren?

Only when her oldest grandchild, Mara, for a High School class project, started asking about her experience during the Holocaust did a few memories seep through the suppressed shadowy recesses of her brain. As my mother got older and more survivors died, she decided silence was not what the world needed. Mania instructed her three sons to never forget and teach our children and grandchildren about the Holocaust.

Tomorrow night is the first night of Chanukah. My mother and father will shed a few tears of joy as they watch their eight grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren light the first candle.

** Dates and statistics about the Volodymyr-Volynsky Ghetto are from the book Jewish Ludmir, The History and Tragedy of the Jewish Community of Volodymyr-Volynsky, written by Volodymyr Muzychenko. The author Volodymyr lives in Volodymyr-Volynsky, Ukraine, and "takes care of the town's Jewish graves and sites of execution.”