Shtetl

>>NARRATOR: It's been more than 50 years since the Nazis came.

Now he's come home to the place he loves, and the place he fears.

Has anything changed?

Or nothing at all?

Tonight on Frontline, producer Marian Marzynski travels to Poland to search for remnants of the lives and memories of an entire Jewish village.

A shtetl, lost in the Holocaust.

.

(woman singing with piano accompaniment) .

(music continues) .

>>MARZYNSKI: This is Poland, the country where my Jewish ancestors lived for centuries.

Before World War II, 85% of all Jews had their roots in this part of the world.

.

Then, six million Jews lost their lives in the Holocaust.

I was among the few survivors, a child hidden by Christians in Warsaw.

My war began in a horse-wagon.

In 1942, I was smuggled from the Warsaw ghetto to the Christian side of the city.

I was sitting in the carriage with a woman guide, her hand over my mouth, as I struggled to scream: "I want to go back to the ghetto; I want to go back to Mommy."

.

In the ghetto, a massive deportation of Jewish children to the death camps had just started.

On the Christian side of town, Germans posted notices of death penalties for hiding a Jew.

My hideouts were Warsaw courtyards.

I called people who took care of me my aunts and uncles.

Their children pretended to be my cousins.

But the game was over when a friendly neighbor said rather loudly, for everyone in the courtyard to hear, "I don't remember anybody in their family looking like him."

And I had to go.

When all doors had closed, my mother took the elevator up to the top floor of 59 Mokotowska Street.

She was going to open the window and jump, and take me with her.

But she couldn't.

Then she made a decision.

She brought me to this courtyard of a Christian charity organization in the hope that I would be sent to an orphanage.

She gave me a brown bag with my favorite sugar sandwich.

She hung a cardboard sign around my neck: "My name is Marys.

My parents are dead."

She watched me carefully from across the street, fearing that I would run after her.

I didn't.

I stood still.

.

I survived the war, but 90% of my family didn't.

Some of them died in the Warsaw ghetto.

Others were killed in this little town called Leczyca, were the history of our family was written.

Before the war most Jews lived in places like this.

They called them "shtetl"-- "a little town" in Yiddish.

In the 25 years I lived in Poland after the war, I returned only once to Leczyca, in 1969.

But when I started asking questions about those in my family who were killed and those who betrayed them, I couldn't take it.

I decided never to return to my shtetl.

.

I left for America with the image of shtetl life frozen in time.

It smelled of death.

Another 25 years have passed.

I find a way to enter this haunted world of my ancestors.

My friend from Chicago is searching for his Jewish roots.

It's easier for him, he was born in America, he never lived in Poland.

I feel secure with him leading the way.

I will be his translator.

This is him: Nathan Kaplan.

.

We're going to his family's shtetl, a place called Bransk, 100 kilometers east of Warsaw, near the Russian border.

(singing) .

Nathan was two years old when his father died.

"I have no memory of my father,” he told me.

"It's only by going to Bransk that I can touch him, that I can understand who I am."

.

Nathan wants me to ask a fellow passenger, what does he know about the Jews who once lived in Poland?

He says that they talk about Jews differently.

He knows there were Jews, they mainly were taking care of the commerce.

(speaking Polish) .

MARZYNSKI: He knows that there's a little forest where the Jews were buried there.

And then they were killed by the Germans, year by year.

>>The fellow behind you, he's old enough to remember some things... >>MARZYNSKI: "You are at the age you should know something," I pursue.

"I am only 50," he replies.

"And your father?"

I ask.

"He passed away," he answers.

"But when he was alive...?"

"He never talked about it."

Two years ago, Nathan Kaplan sent a letter to Bransk, asking for information about his family.

A few weeks later he got a reply from someone who worked in the town hall.

"Dear Mr. Kaplan, there are no Jews in Bransk today, "but I am a Pole whose family has lived here for generations, "and I have an interest in Jews.

I'd like to help you."

"I am trying to recreate my family's life in Bransk," replies Nathan.

"I know my grandmother washed clothes in the river "and walked on a cobblestone path to the Mikveh.

"My mother was born in a one-room cabin.

“Would you know how these homes were furnished?

"Did people sleep on straw?

"Were there wolves in the forest, were there bandits in the forest?” "Dear Nathan," comes the answer, "Your mother lived "in very interesting times.

"Bransk had three market places.

"Polish farmers from 60 villages sold corn, potatoes, eggs, "horses, cattle, sheep and poultry.

"In the market square all the houses belonged to the Jews.

"In those houses Jewish tailors, shoemakers, bakers, and sellers of fancy goods had their shops."

Signed: Zbyszek Romaniuk.

.

>>My young friend and our great hope.

I came to see my young friend.

(speaking Polish) >>MARZYNSKI: There have been over 100 letters, exchanged over a two-year period, between the 70-year-old Jewish man from Chicago and this mysterious 29-year-old Gentile from Bransk.

I wonder who he is, and why he does it.

.

There is no hotel in Bransk.

Zbyszek has invited us home.

His parents will sleep outside in a tent so that we can sta in their bedroom.

(speaking Polish) There is a saying in Polish: "A guest in your home "is like God in your home.

The guest is God."

You want to write it down?

>>Yes!

(Marzynski speaking Polish) It has to do with the fact that if you know well how to receive a guest in your home, then you have God's blessing.

>>I wrote also that we met at the station and what my greetings to him were... And that he may be a dreamer, but not to my face he is a dreamer.

I see him as a practical person who knows what he wants to do and how to go about it.

>>MARZYNSKI: "That's very nice to hear," says Zbyszek, "but I'm not sure I deserve it."

"Real warmth here," Nathan will write in his diary.

Zbyszek's mother is a husky woman.

Her eyes sparkle with love.

>>Long live democracy in Poland!

(Marzynski translates in Polish) .

"The Jewish quarter was just behind their window," reads Nathan's diary.

The pastoral setting is silent about the past sorrow.

.

"In a house much like this one," writes Nathan, "my grandparents lived, and my mother was born."

.

>>Four children in this house.

My mother was next to the youngest.

.

In the summertime the women came here and did their laundry and talked to each other.

In the wintertime the people ice-skated here.

The Polish fishermen caught fish and the Jewish women would come to buy the fish to prepare for Friday night's dinner.

Did I mention the ice?

Okay, in wintertime they carved out the ice for storage.

The water for the Jewish bath house, which included the Mikveh, was drawn from here and was emptied in here.

.

>>MARZYNSKI: Zbyszek collects photographs of old Bransk.

.

"The is the river as your mother would remember it," Zbyszek tells Nathan, "wider and less polluted."

The original house... and then the synagogue where?

All five synagogues in Bransk were destroyed during the war.

Nathan wants to know precisely where each of them stood.

(speaking Polish) .

>>MARZYNSKI: Saturday they would walk, long walks.

(speaking Polish) .

>>MARZYNSKI: The difference between Poles and Jews was that the Poles were rich and poor, but the Jews were continuousl collecting for their poor and the Poles always could not understand that they are doing this.

Because they say in our community if someone is poor and gets poorer, and nobody will help him.

.

The only synagogue that survived the war in this area is in Orla, on the Russian border.

.

Ten years ago, a renovation project began, with limited funds from the government.

But in the last five years, because of lack of financial support, the synagogue is deteriorating.

I tell you, what he's telling me is just incredible, because it was first neglected, totally destroyed, and then in the last ten years there's nothing but stupidities that were being done to this place: wrong way of reconstructing, the things are discovered and then stolen.

The glass is gone, the door is gone... the fresco.

Some students come and do some reconstruction.

.

Zbyszek, who never learned at school that Jews ever lived in Bransk, discovered on his own that before the war Jews made up 60% of the Bransk population.

Tracing their history became an intellectual adventure for Zbyszek.

He has gathered his own Jewish archive.

During the demolition of one of the old houses in Bransk, some schoolchildren found three fragments of Torah and brought them to Zbyszek.

(reading in Hebrew) .

>>MARZYNSKI: Today is pig killing day in Bransk.

"I've killed 30,000 pigs in my life," boasts Fabian, an old-timer, and he introduces himself as an expert on Jews and economics.

"A Jew owned the bank," explains Fabian.

"When a Polish farmer needed to borrow money, he had to come "to the Jew for it.

The rate was 2% per month."

"That means 24% per year", I figure.

"Do you know that Polish banks charge 60% today?

You see, that's the Jewish way," says Fabian.

A Jew looks at the pig and says: I will give you two zlotys per kilo.

"Not enough," says the Polish farmer and the Jew goes away.

The next day another Jew comes and offers a zloty and a half for the pig and the farmer refuses again.

Then the first Jew comes on the third day and buys the pig for two zlotys.

That's how cunning they were.

That's how cunning.

.

(humming tune) .

>>MARZYNSKI: "Bransk is no longer a hidden world to me," writes Nathan in his journal.

"I am touching the places my parents touched, I walk on the ground they walked on."

.

Nathan is like a sponge.

He is overwhelmed by information he cannot sort out.

He absorbs it all.

.

My eye is on Zbyszek.

The Jewish subject was a taboo when I lived in Poland during the Communist era.

But even now in a small town like Bransk, it takes guts to advertise this type of interest.

As long as he collects remnants of Jewish life, he is safe.

But what about when he touches on Jewish death?

.

In 1942, the Germans fenced in the Jewish quarter with barbed wire and created a Jewish ghetto.

At the edge of it was this mill.

The miller's name is Jan Olszewski.

Today he is 96 years old and blind.

Before the war, a Jewish merchant sold him grain.

The name of the merchant was Maurice Goldwasser.

Goldwasser's son lives in Chicago.

He is a friend of Nathan's.

"This is Nathan from Bransk," I make the introduction.

"He knows the son of Goldwasser.

"Nathan lives in America.

"He is 72.

"Not that young.

You can touch him."

"I can tell he's an older man, I can feel his stubble," says Olszewski.

"Nathan knows the son of Goldwasser, "who lives in Chicago, and who is a doctor," I repeat.

Olszewski has witnessed the deportation of the Goldwasser family from the ghetto.

.

>>MARZYNSKI: As a part of the plan to erase the Jewish past, the Germans ordered Poles to remove the gravestones from the Jewish cemetery in Bransk.

Most of them were used as underpavement for local roads and sidewalks, like this one around the Catholic parish in Bransk.

.

When Zbyszek learned about it, he asked the priest for permission to break up the concrete and retrieve the gravestones.

The priest agreed, under the condition that Zbyszek will be responsible for repaving the sidewalk.

"But I have one request," says the priest: "When you show this film, make sure in your commentar "that it is clear that the Germans did this, not the Poles."

.

Zbyszek has learned some Hebrew to be able to read the inscriptions on the graves.

(reading in Hebrew) .

(reading in Hebrew) .

To his search for stolen gravestones, Zbyszek recruited a friend, a local schoolteacher, and his students.

The latest tip came from this farm.

According to the farmer's son, two Jewish gravestones lie on the ground.

.

One is at the entrance to the pig sty, and another one by the stable, cut into a circle for use as a grinding wheel.

.

These stones mean a lot to Zbyszek.

One of his projects is the compilation of the list of Jewish families who lived in Bransk in the 19th century.

(reading in Hebrew) But I wonder what meaning these stones have for a woman who is old enough to remember the Jews.

Do they remind her of the Jewish death she witnessed during the war?

(speaking Polish) .

This is the result of two years of collecting gravestones by Zbyszek and his friend.

They have been carrying them to the old Jewish cemetery, from where the original stones were all stolen.

.

175 gravestones separated from the bodies they once marked make up this exhibit.

Zbyszek calls it a lapidarium, a museum of stones.

.

But for Nathan and me these stones are alive.

This is a roll call of the dead... for the Kaplans, the Rubins, the Edels, the Finkelsteins, the Tykockis.

.

When World War II started, there were 2,500 of them in this town.

.

(chanting in Hebrew) .

On November 8, 1942, Germans rounded up the Jews of Bransk.

They ordered Polish farmers to provide 500 horse wagons to transport 2,500 Jews to the nearby train station.

Within 24 hours, the Jews of Bransk died in the gas chambers of Treblinka.

.

Only 300 of them were able to escape.

Nathan wants to meet people who remember what happened to Jews who went into hiding.

.

His name is Jozef Skowronski.

I ask him about the deportation of the Jews.

He tells me that after the Jews left, the Germans ordered the Poles to demolish some of their houses and offered building materials for sale.

Skowronski was one of the buyers.

But he was looking for other bargains as well.

.

As soon as we leave Skowronski, Zbyszek Romaniuk has a revelation for me: after the war, Skowronski was accused of giving up Jews to the Germans.

.

After I finished conversation with the guy, our friend Romaniuk said that he has enough evidence from the Yad-Vashem that this guy that we gave $5 to gave up a full room of Jews to Germans.

He has evidence from Yad-Vashem: the guy gave up, I don't know, 30, 20... a bunker full of Jews to the Germans.

It's blowing my mind.

I cannot believe it.

So I went to the guy and I ask him: "Are you the only guy under this name?"

He says, "Yes."

"Do you live all your life over there?"

He says, "Yes."

Of course I don't want to confront him.

But that is how tragic is this whole thing.

>>I can't even think... Everything falls apart.

Everything falls apart.

I can't...

I can't... there's nothing in life that connects with this.

With this... what we have here.

This double revelation of righteousness and evil.

.

MARZYNSKI: Nathan wants to believe the best in people.

.

But in my pocket, I am carrying depositions from several Jews accusing Skowronski of betraying them to the Nazis.

.

I decide we have to see Skowronski again.

(speaking Polish) .

(Marzynski reading in Polish) .

He's not guilty.

There was a man whose name was close to his...

He knew this, he was interrogated and he proved his innocence.

So this is a false accusation.

False accusation... .

Joseph Skowronski/Sowinski...

He was arrested... "I am a poor man but I am a righteous man," says Skowronski.

.

Apparently I have accused the wrong man.

"But somebody did it," says Nathan.

.

A Jew was like a fly.

>>Sometimes in life events awaken us to new perceptions of ourselves.... >>MARZYNSKI: We return to the parish because Nathan wants to ask the priest about Polish-Jewish relations during the war.

>>Here is Bransk, who in a way, is a symbol of every town.

What great realization has come to this town as a result of the events of Nazi occupation.

>>MARZYNSKI: Today?

Yes.

How does it affect their lives and their thinking and their hearts?

.

>>MARZYNSKI: "The trick is to live as close as possible to the teaching of the Church," answers the priest.

"Everybody had family: father, mother, children.

"They had to choose.

"With those who kept Jews, it was more than ordinary love, "it was heroism.

"According to God's law, I can love my brother "more than myself, but I don't have to... "I'm not talking about those who were doing it for money or gold, "some of whom perished as well, but those who kept the Jews with pure intentions were taking risks."

Although the priest privately compliments Zbyszek on his Jewish research, he refuses to discuss it in the church or to give Zbyszek public support.

.

In Zbyszek's house, we learn that there are other clouds over this young man's head.

His mother, who helped him gather information about the Jews from older people, has run into some resistance.

She met just a moment ago a man who says: "I have a lot of stuff to tell you about the Jews, but I won't.

"Because I saw that there are guys here, "they are taking pictures of the Jewish homes.

"And that means that if we talk more about it, some Jews "will come and take the homes and we will... and we don't want this to happen."

Nathan worries that he has created problems for his young friend Zbyszek, who has changed Nathan's perspective on Polish anti-Semitism.

>>It took me a year of correspondence to wonder where he's coming from.

There's a certain tension as to, what is the meaning of this man's thinking?

How often we come across a person who says he's a friend of the Jews, but dormant... but he has all the negative images.

He will say: "The Jews are okay, but... they really know how to make money."

Or, he'll say, "He's the Jew in my family."

Meaning, they have an image that he is an aggressive hustler, a money-ambitious person.

>>MARZYNSKI: When I was baptized during the war, with my mother, this older woman that was really taking care of us came to my mother and said: "Congratulations.

"I'm so happy for you.

Finally you do not smell Jew."

So I'm saying that even the heroes were not free from anti-Semitism.

That's a big contradiction.

And he is free of anti-Semitism.

>>He is outside of our experience.

.

>>MARZYNSKI: From my conversations with Zbyszek I begin to imagine what has happened here 50 years ago.

.

During the liquidation of the Bransk ghetto 300 Jews escaped to the surrounding forest.

Their chance of meeting a German soldier was slim.

For a population of some 6,000, the entire occupation force consisted of five Germans.

The survival of Jews depended on getting food and shelter from Polish farmers like the family of Boleslaw Zapisek.

I wanted to know if the farmers were getting anything in return for their help.

"The Jews had nothing to pay us with," says Zapisek.

"Did they have a good appetite?"

I ask.

"Not bad," he answers.

"But we had 20 pigs and five cows.

And for bread, Mother bought grain and baked it in the oven."

Zapisek's story seems too good to be true, so I decide to provoke him and ask if he recognizes a Jew in me.

"You know what, you could be one," he says.

"Because of my nose?"

I ask.

"And him," I point to Nathan.

"He looks like one; I can tell by his nose."

.

"And how about me?"

asks Zbyszek.

"No."

.

"But really," insists Zapisek, "tell me the truth, are you?"

When I confirm, he assures me that he doesn't have any problem with it.

.

I tell Zapisek that I was saved by Christians, but that most of the people in hiding were given over to the Germans.

.

"It's true," he says.

"I know of a case where a beautiful Jewess, "along with a whole bunch of Jews, hid in the forest nearby, and were betrayed by the farmers."

.

"Who were the farmers?"

I ask.

"The people over there," he says.

I ask for names, but Zapisek is elusive.

.

"I have to think about it," he says.

.

He doesn't know who exactly it was but it was a group of seven Jews, who were living in the forest, and the were coming to this little area, and they were asking for food.

And he says that they were probably annoying them by asking them too often, or maybe they didn't want to pay them or whatever.

At one point they came from over there to this road, to the place where they were hidden; and they take them physically, and drove them to the Germans.

.

It was a roof with dirt on it... was much deeper, squarer... (speaking Polish) .

He's saying that's it.

What would you call it, digout?

>>Dugout, dugout... Dugout.

(people singing) >>MARZYNSKI: The next day we get a phone call from Zapisek.

"Come over to the wedding of my niece," he says, "I have some news for you.

"I know the names of the two people who betrayed the Jews in the dugout."

.

(singing in Polish) .

"I know the names of the two people," he tells me.

"One is dead, one is alive."

Zapisek tells me where to find him.

.

At the first glance I realize that the man is senile.

It crosses my mind that I should back off and not bother him.

But then I realize that when he closes his eyes, the last traces of memory will disappear and we will never know.

His daughter insists that he was too young to remember and that I should go to their neighbor who is older.

.

He says he knew Jews were hiding in the forest and farmers were giving them food.

"They had to give them food," he adds.

"They were afraid of them."

I tell Kurek that I have seen the places in the forest where the Jews were hiding, and I ask him if he ever came across them.

"I didn't," he answers, "unless by accident when I was herding the cows, I could have stumbled on them," he says.

"Whenever Germans found them, they would bash their heads in "and throw them into the pit.

And that was the end of it."

"Did Germans ever come to your house asking about the Jews?"

.

"They didn't need to ask, they knew how to handle them," he answers, and unleashes his fantasy: sometimes they would send planes after them and bombard them from the air.

.

Zapisek's lead has reached a dead end, but the investigation has hooked me.

One thing I know: the atrocities happened here, in the remote farm areas, where there were no witnesses.

.

From the pages of survivors' testimonies, certain names stand out, like the brothers Rycz, who would receive Jews, grab their belongings, bludgeon them to death, and throw their bodies in the river.

.

I learn from Zbyszek that one of the brothers Rycz is still alive.

.

None of the people who served jail sentences for betraying the Jews is alive.

But the daughter of a man who was convicted of killing Jews is willing to talk.

"I really don't remember this well," she says.

"I don't know where those Jews were.

"Did they round them up to our house or someplace else?

"I couldn't tell.

"My father was told that if he doesn't report them "he will pay the price.

"He had family... that's why.

"I really don't remember this well.

"My father had some good Jews with whom he was friendly.

"They left some belongings with us for safekeeping "and went to hiding.

"After the war, they returned and picked those things up.

"But the others were desperate, with no place to go.

"How did it happen, why did it happen... "I don't know.

"Was it in the hands of people, or was it God's will?

"I don't understand.

"People told me that it happened.

"But I didn't see it.

"So I cannot testify.

They said they shot them in an open field."

Maybe he did something wrong...

He spent 15 years in prison..

He was a good man...

He didn't drink...

He would go to the church.

But they were the times.

(speaking Polish) "I'm sure it all happened under great tension," I say.

.

"We were only human, you know.

And those were the times."

.

"Everybody was a victim."

"That's right."

.

"I wonder if people would act the same wa if it happened today," I ask her.

.

I never get an answer.

>>And you try to make sense of this, and I cannot make sense of this.

My mind cannot support decency and inhumanit in the same people.

I don't know what it means.

How can a decent man be inhuman at times?

What component of a man, of a just man, of a decent man, of a caring person.... have evil lurking in their hearts and that evil will assert itself and rule that person?

I don't know this; I don't understand it.

It doesn't... it doesn't...

I can't take anything else in life and use it as a yardstick, as a comparison, as an explanation.

I don't know what this is.

I...

I can't...

I'm stuck.

I'm stuck.

I have to figure this out.

I don't know.

(playing "If I Were a Rich Man") >>MARZYNSKI: At the home of Zbyszek's friend, with whom he restored the Jewish cemetery, Nathan and I receive farewell wishes.

♪♪ .

Trains bring back memories.

.

After my mother left me in the courtyard, a Catholic priest took care of me.

Later he brought me here, to the orphanage of the Brothers Orione, 15 miles from Warsaw.

I was a five-and-a-half-year-old boy who knew his story well: my mother was a maid; I never knew my father.

.

Here at the age of six, I had my first communion and became the most dedicated altar boy.

.

From here we saw the heavy smoke over Warsaw.

The ghetto was burning, and I knew my father was there.

Only the principal knew who I was.

When the Germans visited the orphanage, he brought me to the chapel, and I would work around the altar or hide behind it.

Since I had lost my mother, memories of my father were coming back: the touch of his unshaved cheek when he invited me to his bed Sunday morning in our ghetto room.... Then the war was over.

I was sitting in the dining room at a table.

A woman came from the entrance.

An old woman with sunken cheeks was looking at me.

.

"Marys," she said.

"We can't speak," I told her, "we have meditations now."

"I'm your mother," she said.

"I don't know you, Ma'am."

"I'm your mother.

Don't you remember your aunts and uncles?"

"No, I don't remember you."

"I would like to take you to Warsaw."

"Do you have enough money to take care of me?

I'm okay here," I said.

She cried.

I later found out that my father cut a hole in the train's floor on the way to the concentration camp and jumped off.

He joined the partisans and was killed in a battle.

Nathan could be my father... but I see him as a schoolboy eager to learn.

I am grateful to him for bringing me to Bransk.

I couldn't face the memories of my own family's shtetl.

I have adopted Nathan's Bransk as my own.

But my journey in search of a shtetl has only begun.

♪♪ .

A year later, Zbyszek Romaniuk comes to Chicago, where Nathan and I live.

Zbyszek wants to gather more material for his research about Jewish life in Bransk.

They haven't seen each other since we left Poland.

.

>>I think about him all the time.

I have conversations and dialogue with him all the time.

I look after him all the time.

I'm worried about him all the time.

(speaking Polish) >>MARZYNSKI: He never believed that he would be in Chicago one da and it's a big, big emotion for him.

.

I want to know what was the atmosphere that you grew up in in Bransk that the information you got about Jews.

(speaking Polish) >>MARZYNSKI: A lot of jokes... >>(speaking Polish) >>MARZYNSKI: ...which would make fun of Jews.

>>(speaking Polish) >>MARZYNSKI: A lot of sayings that were derogative about Jews.

Jewish sayings.

>>(speaking Polish) .

>>MARZYNSKI: For example, since he was very little, whenever someone is dressed in bad taste the comment is, "You are dressed as if you were going for a Jewish wedding."

>>Can you give me another example?

(speaking Polish) .

>>MARZYNSKI: When people talk at the same time and there is a noise in the room, the person says it's noisy like in a Hedder, or in a Jewish school.

>>You know, I was so touched and so overwhelmed by the hospitality and the congenialit after that first day.

I was just really touched.

I couldn't see through it.

.

(speaking Polish) .

>>MARZYNSKI: "It is very nice that you got this impression."

And he's very glad.

>>I was overwhelmed.

>>MARZYNSKI: However, the day after you left and the day after other Jews leave, what he hears from his neighbors often is that he again brought the Jews so they can reclaim their properties.

(speaking Polish) >>MARZYNSKI: A woman told him after he started to do work on the cemetery, "You better stop doing this "because something bad can happen to you.

I worry about you."

>>How does he react to these type of things?

(speaking Polish) .

"I was never afraid of anything.

I'm not concerned about threats."

>>That's why I worry about him.

(Marzynski speaking Polish) >>It's from these towns that we mark over here that I can humanize the experience of the Jews, and steer away from cold history.

The ghetto wire was over here, and the ghetto wooden fence was here.

And when the people went to the church, they had to see this ghetto fence.

And I've always wondered what type of an impression it made on the people going to that church.

This is the market, and this is where my grandmother sold soap in the market.

>>MARZYNSKI: This is the last time Zbyszek will see Nathan Kaplan.

Within a year, Nathan will die, leaving behind him hundreds of pages of notes from a four-year-long search for his shtetl.

>>This is the street where three of the five synagogues were on this street: a little cluster of religious... a spiritual cluster.

And I can imagine that all the time the sound of prayer and chants were filling the street.

>>Don't forget I want the picture of you and your wife.

.

>>MARZYNSKI: It was Nathan who set up appointments for Zbyszek across America.

I will be Zbyszek's guide.

My assignment is a difficult one.

I will be opening the door for him to the Jews from Bransk who live in America.

I know they never met a Gentile who studies the Jewish life.

I also know that American Jews have different feelings toward the shtetl.

For some it is an inspiration, for others, a nightmare.

.

In this New Jersey condominium complex most of the residents are Jewish.

It occurs to me that I am taking Zbyszek to a vertical shtetl in modern America.

We are visiting an Israeli woman whose mother was born in Bransk.

Her name is Rivka Kornreich.

>>Hello, nice to meet you.

My mother came from Bransk... the most elegant woman that you can imagine.

So ask him if he heard about it, people in Bransk in those times were so elegant?

When my mother passed away, my cousin told me that she remembered the way she came to Israel, everybody looked at her, not only because she was beautiful; she had the most gorgeous clothes, very high-heeled shoes, in fact, she could not even use them in Israel and we had them for years and years in the closet.

>>MARZYNSKI: This is the first time that Zbyszek is in a Jewish home and right away he is under scrutiny.

"How come your parents didn't object to you delving into the life of the Jews?"

I translate Ryvka's question.

(speaking Polish) .

>>MARZYNSKI: His parents always stayed away from his life.

(speaking Polish) They have nothing against what he is doing.

(speaking Polish) Sometimes they would come home a little nervous... (speaking Polish) when they heard in town bad gossips about him.

(speaking Polish) He has a nickname: "Jude," they call him in town, some people.

>>Because of this, right.

>>My most important question of today.

Do you think that he can be objective in searching the Jews because he's not Jewish?

Really I want an answer.

I have a little bit of doubt.

Don't tell him... >>MARZYNSKI: I'll tell him.

>>No.

>>MARZYNSKI: I'll tell him.

(speaking Polish) Absolutely yes.

(speaking Polish) Why do you connect objectivity with being a Jew?

>>No!

>>MARZYNSKI: I would say it's subjective.

>>No, there is a lot to do.

>>MARZYNSKI: But who is most qualified, do you think, to really write the history of a little Polish town, if not a historian that lives there, that has access to archives?

Isn't it in the Polish interest to know the history of the land?

>>Absolutely.

I agree.

>>He could be more objective than if you were writing it because you would write, you would make it, you would, like, beautify it or whatever, and you would put in all your subjective opinions, which you have plenty of, and he doesn't have any... Well, maybe he has some, but he can be a lot more objective than anyone else.

And as a historian, he's looking up history.

Why would it be suspicious?

He's not writing a novel, he's writing a history book.

>>Right.

(speaking Hebrew) .

>>MARZYNSKI: He speaks some Hebrew-- he learned it.

>>Really, you learned Hebrew?

Anya, it's Ryvka!

>>Oh, Ryvka!

>>How are you?

>>Oh, not so good.

>>What's happened?

>>Oh, my eyes bother me... my sinus, my legs, I can hardly walk.

>>The last time I saw you you were in A-shape.

Yes, I just spoke with somebod and I told them how nice you looked.

How is Ester doing?

>>Oh, Ester's not so good.

>>Okay, I'll make you now feel very good, because I have a surprise for you.

You know, I have in my house three people that are doing a project about Bransk, about your shtetle.

.

>>MARZYNSKI: What else do you remember?

.

Was it children that were doing this or the older Poles?

People.

Older people.

.

>>One more question.

Anya, listen to this.

My mother came to Israel, she wore beautiful clothes and beautiful shoes.

We have pictures, she was so elegant.

And she used to tell me that when they came to Israel, she had such a hard life.

They had to establish Hasidim...

They had to work in the day and they had to watch at night.

They had so many problems in Israel.

So I always was under the impression that in Bransk she had a good life.

>>No, no, I can't say that they had such a good life.

>>MARZYNSKI: So how come she came with these beautiful clothes and with the high-heel shoes?

>>Listen, this is your life, whatever you needed, you spent on yourself whatever you had.

>>But she used it in Bransk?

>>MARZYNSKI: No.

She probably took all the savings and bought one pair of everything and came to Israel.

That's what immigrants like to do!

>>That's what she did?

.

>>MARZYNSKI: After our first experience I feel like a voyeur.

I am watching Zbyszek as he trespasses into a foreign territory, just as I did during the war, when I lived among Christians in Poland.

I watch him entering a world he could only imagine until now.

.

In a suburb of Atlanta lives a woman who left Bransk as a 14-year-old girl.

Her name is Evelyne Silverboard.

Her family fled Bransk in 1938, just before the war.

.

>>MARZYNSKI: Would you go to Bransk?

>>No.

>>MARZYNSKI: Why?

>>I want to remember it the way I am.

That's my home.

Home.

Bransk is home.

That's my...

It's home and that's the reason I don't want to go back.

Because I want to remember my home the way it was.

I don't want to remember it the way it is now.

I don't know anybody there.

That was... All the familiar faces.

Every nook and cranny.

I drew him a map of where people lived.

And names.

And I can still see in my mind's eye, I can see everything.

I could see the way it looked, and I remember going on the river with Lyzwy.

On the river when it was frozen.

And I remember going in the summertime swimming in the river.

I remember that.

All of that.

This is from Rachela Finkelstein.

.

This is from Shana Gold.

Goldowna.

Her mother, they had a galanteria store.

This is Josef Balkestin in Jewish.

And this is from Motel Szpitalny.

And this is from Hajcuvna.

And this is from my aunt Huma, Mulhuma.

And this is Stella Lerner.

We were a close-knit group of girlfriends.

The last night we said good-bye the lights were out in town.

The elektrownia was being cleaned.

.

So we had lamps and everybody came to say good-bye and in the morning, I remember Chumski... Do you know the name Chumski?

Sonya Chumski, they were very good friends of our family, she was knocking on the... to wake us up.

It was time to wake up.

Then the bus stopped in front of our house.

All the good friends, they went on the bus with us to the outskirts of town, when the bus was near Binduga.

That's where they got off and walked back in and we went on.

I remember my aunt saying, "They'll never see us again."

.

And that was it.

Then we went to Warsaw and we stayed in Warsaw, three, four days.

Papa went to Lodz to say good-bye to his brothers and sisters and two brothers came... and a nephew came back to Warsaw to say good-bye to us.

And I remember going on the bus to the train station to go to Gdynia.

There were riots in the street.

And the last thing I remember about Poland.

I don't know whether I should say it or not.

We were on the bus and the students, college students, university students, yelling and carrying signs "Precz z Zydami."

And that I'll never forget.

That was in my brain.

It still is and that's another reason I won't go back to Poland.

Because that's my last memory of Poland was "Precz z Zydami."

We were on the bus, we were all scared.

And that was it.

>>MARZYNSKI: Would you say "Precz z Zydami" in English?

>>"Down with the Jews!"

.

>>MARZYNSKI: Evelyne shows us a collection of letters from Bransk written to her in 1939, before the war put an end to all correspondence.

"I can't believe that you are seas and continents awa from us," reads one of the letters.

"You golden America is a dream for everyone.

"You read newspapers, and must know what is happening "in Germany.

"Therefore, you should not miss Bransk even though "you've had your sweet childhood here.

"I hope you will forget Bransk soon and adopt to the American life."

.

"Life in our shtetl has become unbearable.

"I am sick of this hideous word 'Jew' I hear all around me.

"It seems that we were born to suffer.

"The only hope is that one day we will all be "in our sunny Palestine.

"And you are so far from me, in your Golden America.

"I can't believe I won't be able to see your beautiful little face and kiss your rosy lips."

.

>>Look!

Friday night we used to put this on our table.

>>MARZYNSKI: Shabbes.

>>For Shabbes.

(speaking Polish) >>That was called... And Mama's... My Mama's silver candlesticks.

.

This is the way it looked, Lord.

.

It's pretty.

It's still pretty.

And we've been here since 1938 and I don't think it's been used since.

We have some beautiful candlesticks and Mama used to put it like right here.

At the end of the table and she used to benchlicht.

.

That was a... what was, was, and it will never, never, never be again.

It's a civilization, a way of life that's gone forever and it will never be duplicated.

It can't.

It was a very rich, rich, rich civilization.

How can you transfer the flavor that was?

Sure there are American Jews there doing, making Shabbes.

But have they got the Pulshenin Tishtact?

I mean, that doesn't make the Shabbes, but it's the little things.

It's the way of life.

It's "En Shul a rhine".

Are you going to hear it here?

Maycheu, the calling.

You can't.

It's just the way of life that I was really blessed to know.

I really was.

And that is... You asked me about going back to Bransk.

I want to remember.

I want to have my memories that I remember.

My good memories.

>>MARZYNSKI: A Holocaust survivor from Bransk lives in Baltimore.

After the war he came to America.

Now, Jack Rubin owns a clothing store.

.

>>In 1947 we came to this country.

Now I'm in the United States.

I'm in America.

What will I do here?

You don't have money.

You don't have a trade.

You can't talk.

Everybody looks at you like you're a dummy.

What will I do here?

So my uncle saw the way I was walking around.

He said, "What are you worried about?

"You don't have something to eat?

"I'll take you to the country, out of town.

"I'll take you over there for the whole summer.

"You are not going to do nothing.

"You're going to drink and eat.

You are going to rest after all your troubles."

I said, "Uncle, I'm going to get crazy over there.

"I want to do something.

I want to do something."

"So what can you do?"

So I told him I got a lantzman in Baltimore so he told me if I'm not going to be able to do nothing in Philadelphia I should come to Baltimore.

I know him.

He knows me.

And both together we'll do something.

We used to sell suits.

If I'll tell you.

We used to buy suits, let's say, $5, $6, $2, $3.

Once from one man we bought 1,200 suits.

Maybe 20% of them we had to throw out.

And the rest of them we paid maybe 50 cents apiece.

And the rest of them we worked it out.

You sent to the cleaner.

And we had also a seamstress to fix it up and to sell it.

And the same thing shirts.

I can only tell you when I had pants here.

You see the pants I have.

I didn't like the way they lay like this.

They don't lay straight.

I sold pants for a dollar that from far awa they look better than this to viewers.

I sold also pants $3 a dozen.

$3 a dozen.

Shirts $2 a dozen.

I used to buy for a dollar a dozen.

But you have to work it out and grade it out.

>>MARZYNSKI: With Jack Rubin I feel we are back in the shtetl.

I can hear him speaking Polish with the same Yiddish accent.

I can see his store on the market square in Bransk.

Jack Rubin presides over a small community of people in Baltimore who call themselves Branskers.

Some of them left Bransk before the war.

A few, like Rubin, survived the Holocaust in Poland.

.

This evening, everyone was asked to bring family photos from Bransk.

.

They are joined by their children.

Zbyszek Romaniuk is the guest of honor, his computer the main attraction.

In it he has entered 2,000 names of Jewish families from Bransk.

.

When Zbyszek grew up in Bransk, the word "Jew" was always whispered.

But here he says the word aloud, sits among Jews, and feels trusted.

I am glad for him.

I always wanted the same from the Poles.

.

I am eager for Zbyszek to make more connections.

A friend of mine teaches a course called "Shtetl" at Gratz College in Philadelphia.

He is excited to have Zbyszek in his classroom.

>>Here is a Pole who has a certain need, a very profound need, for the same memory.

Now, his needs may be very different.

And in fact he represents a whole young generation in Poland.

>>MARZYNSKI: Michael Steinlauf, the instructor, is a son of Holocaust survivors.

>>Certainly in his town, he is no doubt the focus and the core of this new interest.

>>(speaking Polish) >>He drew the marketplace.

>>(speaking Polish) >>Monday was the market day.

>>(speaking Polish) >>500-year-old tradition of Monday being the market day.

>>(speaking Polish) >>And here was a smaller marketplace called the horse marketplace where animals were traded.

>>MARZYNSKI: This is a history class, and Zbyszek is in his element.

He tells them that in the 19th centur the Jews of Bransk occupied 400 houses in the town's center.

Only ten houses belonged to the Catholics.

If a Pole wanted to live there, he had to be interviewed by the Jewish community's board.

The Jews controlled the town's economy, the Poles ran the local government.

A vice-mayor position was reserved for a Jew.

.

During the break, Michael invites Zbyszek to his office.

The two historians have different views about 1918, when Poland regained independence after centuries of foreign occupation.

.

"Jews did not support Polish independence," says Zbyszek, "and therefore they became a focus of animosit and were called unpatriotic."

"Why should they be patriotic?"

asks Michael.

"Under Russia they were one of many minorities.

"But they didn't know what kind of destiny an independent Poland "will bestow upon them.

"As a matter of fact, they saw nationalism on the rise "and ten years later they saw its results: an openly anti-Semitic society."

.

(singing in Yiddish) .

One of the students has prepared a recital of shtetl songs in Yiddish.

This is a song about a house left behind in a shtetl somewhere in Poland.

.

At a Polish-speaking radio station in Chicago, Zbyszek and I are invited to tell the story of Bransk and to answer callers' questions.

.

When I bring Zbyszek to the Holocaust Museum under construction in Washington, DC., the words from the Polish radio still ring in our ears.

His attempt to maintain a cool command of his Jewish studies keeps colliding with living memories tinted by moral judgments.

This museum will again confront him with the question of his people's responsibility for the fate of the Jews.

.

One of the exhibitions in the museum will be dedicated to life in the shtetl.

.

The exhibit is the result of 20 years of photographic research by a Brooklyn College scholar, Yaffa Eliach.

.

She collected some 2,000 photographs taken in a shtetl called Ejszyszki, not far from Bransk.

1,500 Jews lived in this shtetl.

Only 29 survived the war.

We are at the home of Yaffa Eliach in Brooklyn.

.

>>I'm not sure in which one is the synagogue...

This is Banjamin Kabacznik.

No, he was killed.

He was the father of that little boy...

He was killed in the house of Bikiewiczowa.

That's the father of the little boy.

.

Each of us that survived is alive because of the Poles.

(Marzynski translating into Polish) And those that escaped and who are not alive, most of them are dead also because of the Poles.

(translating into Polish) Let's say a family, for instance, the family of Rogowski escaped.

Five sons and a sister.

And they came to a farmer that was very friendly with them.

And they asked him for honey because honey you could keep for a long time.

He gave them.

The minute they walked out from the house, he took a gun and shot and killed.

He killed four.

One escaped.

So from the entire Rogowski family, one son survived.

I interviewed him extensively.

He could not understand, he died in Israel.

He has two sons in Vancouver.

He told me, "I cannot understand why."

When he used to come on market day, he used to park his horse in their backyard and used to come the night before and sleep over.

And slept in their house.

So in the morning he would be very early in the market.

It didn't enter his mind.

Why?

I mean he was a friend.

I think there were a handful of wonderful people that were willing to give their lives.

Everything was an issue of life and death.

And unfortunately for others, it was a time to take Jewish property.

They were paid for being nasty.

They were paid salt.

They got the Jewish homes.

They got the Jewish clothing.

They got the Jewish money.

There was anti-Semitism that was there for years.

It was not something that happened under German occupation.

Because we were different.

It was the dislike of the unlike.

We were Jewish and they were Christians.

They hated us because we were different.

.

Here my father gives who were the Poles who preached against Jews in church.

Krolewits... >>MARZYNSKI: Before Yaffa's father died he gave her a list of Poles who were openly anti-Semitic in this shtetl along with the list of Jews who were killed by the Poles.

>>They both were working, they were the assistants of Priest Machinski.

(speaking Polish) >>MARZYNSKI: ...70 Poles?

>>70 Jews.

No, because sometimes a family of five was killed by one person.

Or one person killed 13 people.

>>MARZYNSKI: All right, I see.

But there are how many Polish names?

>>The Polish names I really didn't count.

I counted the victims' names.

I did not count the Polish names.

>>MARZYNSKI: He counts the killers.

He, as a Pole, is interested: how many were Polish killers.

For him it makes a difference for some reason that someone says 100 and there were only 50.

>>I feel very sorry that our conversation focuses on those that killed rather than those that saved.

I would rather have it focus on those that saved because he would not be here to tell his story, to do all that, and I would not be here to do all that if not... (Marzynski speaking Polish) (answering in Polish) .

>>I understand.

I understand how painful it must be for you and you must understand it was very painful for me getting all the names together because by now I knew each victim.

And I also knew many of the Poles as part of my chapter on market day.

They used to come.

They drank in this house.

They took photographs in this place.

And just a year later, two years later, they killed the people with whom they drank, with whom they did business, whose photographs they took.

>>MARZYNSKI: How was your mother finally killed?

Show me just the scene.

>>It was October 20, 1944.

We came back on July 14, 1944.

We were liberated on the 13th.

And we came out at night so nobody could see that we were on the farm of Mr. Kokouch because there were rumors that he was hiding Jews and if people would know they would kill him.

So he was not safe so he wanted us to leave at night so nobody would know that he gave shelter to Jews.

We came, we slept in the field and came to the town to Ejszyszki in the morning.

When we walked in, a group of us, the Kobacznik family all hiding, 15 of us, hiding on Kokouch's farm.

When we came in, people came out and said, "How come you are back?

Hitler, after all, didn't do such a good job."

This was the welcome.

My mother was begging my father not to stay.

She didn't want to, but the war was going on.

My father said, "We will just stay for a while and then we will move on."

In the meantime, we got back my baby brother from a priest.

There were rumors that we had a lot more gold, not only the gold that we took out during the war but we must have a lot of gold with us.

And that my mother is going to open the drug store that was owned by my grandmother, that we are going to open again the drug store in town, the Sklad Apteczny, that my mother will open it.

(Marzynski translating into Polish) >>And the pharmacist was one of the people that was one of the town's outspoken anti-Semites.

(Marzynski translating) >>At night, on the 20th of October, there was a bang on the window where my brother and I slept, which was downstairs.

And my brother grabbed me by the hand and we went upstairs to my parents that were sleeping upstairs.

A minute later a grenade was thrown through the window and all the blankets, the covers and the pillows, everything exploded and all the feathers were all over and we heard shooting downstairs.

There were Russians also living in our house.

Two Russian officers that were sleeping downstairs.

And other Jews around the house were jumping from the windows and running.

But we couldn't because my mother was holding the baby.

So upstairs was a little closet like, because for the ceiling to be straight was a little closet.

I have a picture of the house and a picture of the closet.

And we went inside to hide.

And my father took a piece of furniture to block the door so it would look like there was no little door there.

And we heard them downstairs.

We could identify the voices.

We knew who they were.

One of them was the son of the pharmacist.

And then one of them said, probably Mishenka.

My father they used to call Mishe.

But locally, everybody called him Mishenka, that he, probably, he and the daughter of Katzova, meaning my mother, ran away with their children and took all the gold with them because they couldn't find any gold in the house.

Then somebody said let's go and look upstairs and they said they probably ran away.

They heard that we are coming.

But then there was on the floor where my father pulled the furniture, there was like a scratch on the floor.

It was a wooden floor.

And somebody said it's a fresh scratch.

(Marzynski speaking Polish) .

>>And then they pulled the furniture and opened the door.

And there was my mother sitting, and the baby.

(Marzynski speaking Polish) >>I was sitting behind my mother, and then my brother and my father because it was on a slope so there was almost no space, and my father was flat on his back so I could sit up and my mother and the baby could sit up.

(Marzynski speaking Polish) And my mother stood up with the baby and she spoke-- she called the man by his name, she knew who he was.

He was a neighbor.

He was the son of the pharmacist.

And she said to him, "Please, kill me first so I will not see when you kill my baby."

(Marzynski speaking Polish) So, he shot my baby brother first... (Marzynski speaking Polish) And I counted the bullets.

And I will never understand why, but I did.

There were nine bullets that killed my brother.

(Marzynski speaking Polish) And then he shot my mother.

It was 15 bullets.

And she fell on the back on top of me.

And I thought that I was dead.

Then they still did some shooting on the floor but all the bullets went into my mother's body.

And they left.

They were very upset they didn't find any gold.

And they thought that my father managed to run awa and they were very upset that they didn't get my father.

>>MARZYNSKI: What did you do next?

>>They left.

We heard...

I thought that I was dead.

I didn't move.

Later, when the light started to come in and they left, my father crawled out.

He was a little bit wounded in his leg.

And we heard downstairs the other Jews that came out from hiding, and we took my mother's body down.

The police came, the KGB came, the NKVD came and my father gave them all the names of the people that were there.

They were closer to me than you are.

And my father knew them all.

And we buried my mother in the Jewish cemetery.

She was the last Jew, my mother and my brother were buried in the cemetery.

And people lined the streets and some of them were very happy.

They told us we should have never come back... that we should have not come back.

>>MARZYNSKI: They were happy?

>>They were happy.

.

>>MARZYNSKI: Zbyszek and I are in Israel.

(man chanting in Hebrew) .

We've been invited for the commemoration marking the 50th anniversary of the liquidation of the Bransk ghetto.

(chanting) These are the Jews from Bransk.

(chanting) Most of them emigrated to Israel before the war.

A few are Holocaust survivors.

For Zbyszek it is his shtetl coming alive, his first witnessing of the Jewish religious life.

(chanting) .

(chanting) .

>>MARZYNSKI: There is a famous rabbi who was born in Bransk and went to Yeshiva there.

Today Rabbi Man runs his own Yeshiva here in Tel-Aviv.

After the prayer, Zbyszek will meet him.

This will be Zbyszek's first meeting with a rabbi, a religious figure he knows intimately from his research and readings.

.

Zbyszek knows that the Jews come to their rabbis with questions, so he too came with one.

.

He looks for assurance that what he did with the gravestones is in accordance with Jewish religious laws.

He has placed the stones in the old cemetery, but he has no way of matching them with the bodies lying beneath the ground.

"This is not a problem," the rabbi tells him.

"You did the most you could do under the circumstances, and we consider this a mitzvah, a good deed."

When I learned that a group of Ramat Aviv High School seniors has just returned from a trip to Poland, I thought Zbyszek should meet them.

Their trip was part of their studies of the Holocaust.

(speaking Polish) >>MARZYNSKI: He wants to break the barrier between Poles and Jews where a Pole, by definition, is no good, according to some people, and vice-versa.

>>His people had a big part in what happened.

He must accept it.

I think that going to schools and trying to reeducate kids is no good.

It won't change a thing, because this kind of education of racism is something you get at home.

>>MARZINSKI: But why are you so pessimistic-- I cannot believe it-- why?

>>Why can't you believe it?

You've been there as I have; and you've seen the things that I've seen.

>>MARZINSKI: Yeah.

And my father died in Warsaw ghetto.

I understand everything.

My family was completely killed by Germans.

But I can still think that it happened because of ignorance.

>>Anti-Semitism is rooted... it's there to stay.

(speaking Polish) >>MARZINSKI: He disagrees violently, and he says that he cannot stand that you think like that.

(speaking Polish) >>MARZINSKI: In the Holocaust, he says, Poles did not pla an important role.

>>That's not true.

>>30 million Poles against I don't know how many German regimes, could have done something.

They didn't.

(speaking Polish) >>MARZYNSKI: For helping Jews, Poles were killed by Germans.

(Zbyszek speaking Polish) >>MARZYNSKI: He brings the point that how can you expect from Poles to defend the Jews if Jews didn't fight back themselves except for the Warsaw and Bialystok ghettos?

>>There were Jews that escaped from the concentration camps, and they tried to run to the forests and to join the partisans, the guerrilla forces.

The Polish guerrilla forces never accepted Jews.

There was anti-Semitism in the guerrilla forces like there was in the German leadership.

It wasn't different.

They just killed any Jew that came near them.

>>Even though they were in the same situation of surviving the German... (speaking Polish) >>MARZYNSKI: How can you imagine: everybody goes out in public and helps Jews where on every building it says that for helping a Jew there will be the death penalty?

(speaking Polish) .

It has nothing to do with the...

He says that only those who had conditions could help.

What kind of conditions?

Everybody has the same... (speaking Polish) .

>>MARZYNSKI: I said, listen, what are you talking about conditions?

Every peasant has one pig, one cow, one house, everybody has the same condition.

>>One barn.

>>MARZYNSKI: You could bring a Jew and hide him in the barn, or whatever.

But he says but there was always one or two Poles that were collaborating with the Germans in this village, and the other people were afraid of those other Poles.

>>Oh, a whole village afraid of two Poles?

That... think about it... (speaking Polish) >>I have the impression that what he's trying to do is clear his conscience more than he tries to understand.

He's coming here with all kinds of excuses and I'm not sure that his goal is to change opinions more than to, you know, relax a bit and feel that he's not as guilt as he really is.

>>MARZYNSKI: He never felt guilty, he says.

(speaking Polish) >>MARZYNSKI: His family was very friendl with the Jews always and never had any problem.

>>He's talking about a very, very dangerous thing right now because he's saying that if a crazy group like the Nazis takes over Europe again, the same thing could happen because he says that it wasn't possible, but it was possible.

You understand what I'm trying to say?

He says that they couldn't have done anything.

The situation hasn't changed since then.

If the same thing happens again we're not safe.

I think that none of them are safe, not the Poles, not the Jews...

Anybody.

>>MARZYNSKI: Bye-bye.

Thanks a lot.

"Look, I never had a chance to talk to you about this," begins my heart-to-heart talk with Zbyszek, "but there is something you don't understand.

They know their facts, you must admit it."

"But which facts?

Who provides them?"

asks Zbyszek.

"All the tragic facts," I answer.

"Where there is even one person who killed a Jew, "they want to know about it.

"They want to speak loudly about it, they want to condemn it "and that is their education.

"And you, while admitting certain facts, "try to rationalize them by saying, "'Oh yes, but the same things happened in France'... "or, 'Yes, but most Poles didn't do it.'

"Why do you make these excuses?"

I ask.

"Because," says Zbyszek, "all I hear about in Israel "is how it all happened in Poland.

"But where else could it happen?

"Jews were living in Poland.

"What sense would it make for Germans to send the Jews to France and kill them there?"

.

"Nobody says the Polish nation is no good.

"We are talking about Poles, about people.

We are talking about Poles, Jews, Germans."

"Then let's mention their names," says Zbyszek.

"Fine," I agree, "let's do it."

"Then I have no problem," says Zbyszek, "as long as we mention the names."

"But your problem," I say, "is that you don't like to mention "the names: you prefer to use words like bandit, "and then you suggest that bandits are everywhere.

"You suggest that people generally acted fine, with just a few exceptions."

"I didn't say everyone acted fine," argues Zbyszek.

"But by underlining the word bandit," I insist, "you try to diminish the gravity of all of this."

"I still take the criticism of bad Poles to be the condemnation of Poland," says Zbyszek.

"And it hurts me, because I know that there were those "who helped.

Where are they talked about?"

"Not far from here," I say, "in the museum of Yad Vashem."

"How many of them are mentioned?"

asks Zbyszek.

"You know very well how many Jews are grateful to those who saved their lives," I say.

"But how many of the Poles who helped did not even admit it?"

he asks.

"I am sure there are many," I answer, "but what does this "say about the world they live in, if they are still afraid "of admitting to their neighbors that they had helped Jews?

Doesn't this condemn Polish society?"

"Wait a moment," says Zbyszek, "I'll ask them about it and I will tell you."

"But you yourself told me that people in the villages "are afraid of being accused by the neighbors of getting rich on the Jews."

"That's right," says Zbyszek.

"That's exactly what they are afraid of, not of being accused that they helped."

"So what do you think," I ask, "about a societ with this type of mentality?"

"I deplore this mentality," answers Zbyszek.

"To me," I add, "it is tragic that a world in which you cannot admit altruism still exists."

"On that point you are right," says Zbyszek.

And we both agree that this world needs improvement.

11,000 trees have been planted at Yad Vashem in memory of righteous Gentiles who helped Jews to survive the Holocaust.

Half of the names, almost 5,000, are Polish.

Seven belong to families from Bransk.

.

I return to Bransk.

One of those Jews saved by righteous Poles is with me.

He is Jack Rubin, the clothing store owner from Baltimore.

He survived the Holocaust against extraordinary odds.

(speaking Polish) .

Before the war, his family owned a goose-feeding yard in Bransk.

This is the house the Rubin family lived in for many generations.

>>MARZYNSKI: "There were no stairs here.

"That was a bedroom.

"On this wall was the telephone.

"And the telephone number was 11.

That tells you how many phones there were in Bransk."

.

They were a prosperous Jewish family in Bransk.

His parents and three children: Shimon, the oldest, sister Szprinca, and Jack.

Jack in the uniform of the Polish Army.

Jack, the body builder.

His mother.

Jack at 14. .

He was know in this town as "Jankiel gesiarz," "Yankel the goosman."

At 16 he started to work for his father.

At 20 he was in charge of 11,000 geese.

.

The Rubin family's competitive edge was that they would walk the geese to the market rather than cram them into wagons so that they would arrive unwrinkled and presentable.

.

Jack reveals another business secret to the attendant of the now state run goose yard.

"After we bought the geese," he tells him, "we would pluck "the down from their bellies.

"And guess what: they would immediately start "to eat like crazy.

"You can't imagine how many thousands of zlotys we made on this invention."

.

The Monday morning market was the only place where Jews mingled with Poles.

When it came to geese, Jack was the king.

He was setting the pace.

.

Immediately he runs into one of his old farmhands, whose name is Jan Dobrogodzki.

They recall the times when they served in the same military unit, #79, 2nd company.

Jan remembers best the pledge of allegiance.

The Catholic priest, the rabbi, and the Orthodox priest were all there.

Everyone pledged to serve the Fatherland in his own faith.

Another former worker shows up.

His name is Bronek Lochnicki.

"Everything I know I learned from you the Jews," says Bronek.

"During the war, I was nobody.

"Today, I am wealthy.

I own four or five houses," he brags.

>>This guy's got five houses, he says.

.

>>MARZYNSKI: "Do you know, you can reclaim your goose farm?"

he asks Jack.

"I know," says Jack, "but I'd like to give it awa to people who helped me during the war."

.

Jack wants to visit another man who worked for his father's business.

Zbyszek shows him the way.

.

>>MARZYNSKI: "I have to explain something to you," says Joseph.

"After the war, people were saying bad things about us.

"But you know how much we did for your family... "sneaking your stuff out of the ghetto.

"After the war, people started to say bad things about me.

"These were lies, but people believed it.

"It was about this fur that Shimmel left here, "and later gave it to my mother."

He told her, 'This is yours, you can keep it.'"

.

Looking for the old-timers, Jack meets a man who remembers the Jews.

.

>>MARZYNSKI: Listening to the old-timer, I find myself thinking about the roots of anti-Semitism.

I imagine an argument like this one erupting hundreds of years ago when the first Jews settled in small Polish towns.

.

To build a new life, the Jews had be industrious.

It didn't take long before envy and narrow-mindedness pushed them into isolation.

And they believed in a wrong God.

When the Holocaust began, the silence of their Polish neighbors made the Jews vulnerable.

(bell ringing) .

Jack was 16 when Germans invaded his shtetl.

He was a golden, athletic bo wearing a fashionable leather jacket, a young, successful man, starting in business.

He was 19 in 1942, when his family was forced to leave their house on the main street and move to the ghetto quarters at the outskirts of town.

He was 20 when machine guns woke him in the middle of the night and the liquidation of the ghetto began.

The Germans were taking the Jews by horse wagons to the nearest train station, then transporting them to the death camp of Treblinka.

Jack begged his parents and sister to run before it was too late.

But only the young and gutsy had the strength.

Along with his brother, Jack fled to the forest.

They knew one Polish family they could depend on.

Before the war, Jack bought geese from their farm.

The name of the farmer was Kozlowski.

Now, only his son is alive.

Jack and his brother hid in their barn for eight months.

.

>>MARZYNSKI: But when one barn became too dangerous to stay, Jack and his brother would look for another shelter.

A couple of kilometers away was a farm owned by Jasko Maksymiuk.

.

Soon, this place too became unsafe.

.

For several months, Jack and his brother hid in the woods.

.

There were 14 of Jack's relatives and friends hiding in different places.

Underneath each of them the earth was crumbling.

Like animals smelling the hunter, they had to escape the pastoral country.

The only possible destination was the city of Bialystok, where, surrounded by German tanks, the ghetto was still alive.

In the winter of 1943 Jack collected mone and bought a horse and a sleigh.

He and his brother were the drivers.

There was the brother's wife, their baby child, cousin Mayor.

There were seven friends, including three children who had lost their parents and a couple who had escaped the Bialystok ghetto, but in desperation were now going back.

14 people on the sleigh, under cover of winter darkness.

.

"Even today in my sleep I count them all," says Jack.

We are riding the road that the sleigh took in 1943.

The question that will never be answered is how the Germans learned about Jack's plan.

There were only five soldiers overseeing the area and it was unheard of to see them on the road in the middle of a sub-zero winter night.

With the help of a local villager, we find the place on the road where it all happened.

.

His goal was to reach Bialystok's ghetto, 15 kilometers away, where he saw his only chance to survive.

But going alone was too dangerous and only a Polish farmer could offer the protection he needed.

(Marzynski translating): So I started to knock on this window.

(speaking Polish) He asked, "Who is it?"

I said, "I'm looking for the route to Szerenosy."

I already knew the road, but I wanted him to come out.

I said, "I am lost.

Would you come out and show me?"

He said, "Okay."

Two minutes later he comes out.

He shows me the road; there was a road sign.

Now I decide to change the tone of my voice... "Could I come to your house to warm up?"

"Are you a little Jew?"

he asked.

I said, "Yes."

He said, "Come in."

I told him I had 300 marks in my pocket.

"I will give you 290, and I keep 10 for my first kilo of bread," I said.

"I will walk behind you and you will lead me to Bialystok."

I told him to carry a stick and walk ahead of me.

"When you see Germans, turn the stick to the right," I told him.

So we went.

.

(bells ringing) (people singing) (band playing processional music) .

Everyone is on the street when Bransk celebrates Pentecost.

With no Jews living here, Bransk is entirely Christian.

.

Every home on the procession route receives the body of God.

.

A year ago, Zbyszek Romaniuk was elected Vice Mayor of the town.

But there are clouds over his political future.

.

Some people are resentful of his Jewish research.

"For about a year, from time to time," Zbyszek tells me, "inscriptions of different content appear "on the walls of my staircase.

"Whoever does it has an intention to offend me.

"For example, here we have an inscription: 'Goy' followed by the word 'Jew.'"

.

"Next to it is a swastika."

.

"Here is a signpost: 'This way to the Jew.'"

In a couple of weeks, Bransk will celebrate its 500th anniversary.

As the local historian, Zbyszek is responsible for the program of the celebration.

It was his idea to create a monument reflecting the history of the town.

It will be erected in the middle of what used to be a market square when the Jews lived in Bransk.

The stone has just been delivered.

.

"The idea of the monument," explains Zbyszek, "is that three of its sides will be filled with inscriptions, "and the fourth left blank for the future.

"The three sides point to the most important moments "in Bransk history.

"This side, for example, tells us that from the 16th "through 18th century, we were the capital "of the entire region, the seat of local parliament and courts.

"The other side speaks about the symbolic victory of Christianit "over Paganism in this area.

"The Polish Prince Boleslaw defeated the soldiers of Komas here."

.

There is no mention of the Jewish history.

.

The Town Council is about to adopt Zbyszek's program of festivities.

I invite myself to the meeting.

"How much of the Jewish history will be included in your program?"

I ask.

"I have enough aggravation already because of this subject," says Zbyszek.

"Unfortunately, people here don't understand these matters.

"I have come to the conclusion that our communit "is still very primitive.

"The word 'Jew' is still pronounced in a whisper.

"It's immediately associated with a pot of gold, "and with dollars.

"It is very unpleasant to see all the graffiti in my staircase "with the word 'Jew,' and the arrow pointing to my door.

"It has all been annoying to me.

"I am a Christian, and a good Catholic, "and I am not any less a Polish patriot than the people "who oppose me.

"They must feel guilty, or they must be very primitive "to do things like that.

"A wise man does not trade in stupid gossip.

That's enough on this subject!"

(speaking Polish) "But Zbyszek, isn't this an occasion to use the energy of wise people, and speak publicly, to enlighten those who are ignorant?"

"Whoever visits me," Zbyszek responds, "is labeled a Jew.

"Whatever I do, it is in the interest of the Jews.

"There is even gossip that the monument we are erecting will be a monument to Jewish history."

"Please don't be discouraged, Zbyszek," one of the town council members advises.

"It is a small group that is against you.

Speaking publicly is the best solution."

.

"I am a public servant," says Zbyszek, "and I have to act accordingly.

"My private life is separate.

"I will still continue my private interest, but what I say as a public official must be balanced."

"But what about history?"

I say.

"There are no two histories."

"I am also saying that there is one history," responds Zbyszek.

"I would never say, as Vice Mayor, that the Jews "were never living here, and say something else as a private person."

"Of course not," I agree.

"That would be very unintelligent of you.

"I am not concerned about what you are saying, but about what you are not saying."

But Zbyszek says that Jews are no longer here and he cannot promote the Jewish subject in a town that is 100% Gentile.

"But you are one of those Gentiles," I point out.

"Why are you interested in the Jews if they're no longer here?"

"Because I am interested in culture," he responds, "and perhaps other people look at the Jews "only in a financial light.

"I am interested in their life and their contributions to the history of this town."

"So they were here for 430 years," I say.

"Don't you believe that their contribution to this town deserves public recognition?"

"Yes, but I believe it is a delicate subject."

"I'm not even talking about the 16th century," I say.

"I'm saying that in 1939, 65% of people here were Jewish.

"So in a five-minute speech about Bransk, can you spend "a minute on the Jews, or is it too much?

"Zbyszek, you have a problem.

There are two of you, two Romaniuks."

(speaking Polish) "I do not agree," he says.

"I cannot make people listen to what they don't want to hear."

♪♪ .

In his proclamation speech, Zbyszek does not mention the Jews.

(band playing klezmer-style music) .

(playing "If I Were a Rich Man") Bransk celebrates its 500th anniversary.

"Fiddler on the Roof" by the local military orchestra is the only Jewish element of festivities... not counting one box of Judaica in an exhibit of historic documents curated by Zbyszek.

♪♪ .

I am at the end of a three-year long journey with Zbyszek.

We have discovered how fragile are the memories of Jewish life in Bransk.

I take some of these memories with me, on a piece of film.

I leave my friend Zbyszek in Bransk.

The lonely guardian of my people's past.

.

ANNOUNCER: Visit Frontline's website for an online supplement to "Shtetl."

Read an interview with the filmmaker, biographical profiles of Poles who saved Jews, a guide for researching family genealogy in Eastern Europe, the "Shtetl" Teacher's Guide, personal stories from viewers, and lots more at www.pbs.org.