My families from the East
​Family genealogy
Title 2
6- In Aunt Blima's family, (the one who looked after my father after her mother's death) Two little girls will escape death:
Bronia Frucht and
Rosa/Rouja Wenchadlowski.
These two little girls of Aunt Blima helped each other during the Holocaust. I knew them both well in Holon.
During family meals, conversations were conducted in Yiddish. I didn't understand a word, but it was always warm and lively.
The story of Bronia
Bronia lived in Miechow.
She was fifteen years old when the Germans entered her town.
She remained there until April 1941.
Then she was sent to a forced labor camp in Krako-Rakowiec, like Rouja.
I have always heard that they were able to stay together during their deportation.
Next, she was transferred to the Plaszow camp from April 1943 until December of the same year, then to the PIONKI camp, north of Radom until May 44. It was a work camp manufacturing munitions.
Conditions there were harsh, and according to some accounts, deportees could work 16 hours, or even 24 hours straight, at the whim of supervisors. Living conditions were extremely difficult, with rooms where some thirty women were crammed onto bunks, and food rations were meager. Polish workers were also employed there.
In the summer of 1944, she was deported to Bergen-Belsen, then to the Elsnig commando at Buchenwald.
From November 1944 to April 1945, she was transferred to Auschwitz, where, it was said in the family, she found Rouja, very ill, whom she helped as best she could.
She had to endure a long "death march" to Brandenburg where she was liberated on May 5, 1945.
Her first instinct, like so many other survivors, was to return to her hometown where she stayed for some time.
Then rumors spread that an anti-Jewish pogrom was being planned in the city. Having learned that some members of the Landschaft had gathered in Munich, she decided to take the train to join them.
She learned there of the death of her brother Abraham, Perele's husband, at the time of the liberation.
She reappears in Munich in 1946.
There she met Moszek Nowitarger, whom her cousin Perele had introduced to her. She married him.
His daughter Chaja-Rajzla was born on August 14, 1946.
She lived at 200 Arnulf Straße.
His second son, Abram, (Avroum) was born on February 2, 1948, also in Munich.
She emigrated to Israel with her husband and two children, by plane on March 2, 1949.
Bronia and Chaia in Munich in 1947 or 1948
All the surviving cousins are reunited: Bronia is second from the top with Raya in her arms, to her left Perele from Canada then Henri and Ziggy.
Seated from right to left, Perele's husband from Canada, then Kopel and Rouja, Aron-Maier, and then on the far right Rouja, Aron-Maier's wife.
The story of Rouja
Rouja was living in Miechow when the war was declared.
She was 19 years old.
According to the archives, the Germans established the Miechow Ghetto in December 1941.
Eight months later, it was liquidated and most of the city's Jews were transferred either to the Krakow ghetto, to other camps, or were immediately victims of the Holocaust by bullets.
Rouja remained in the Miechow Ghetto from February 1940 to January 1942.
Then she was sent to a forced labor camp in Krakau-Rakowiec.
Then she was transferred to the Plaszow camp from April 1943 until December of the same year, then to PIONKI about twenty kilometers from Radom, until May 44, to end up at Auschwitz until the entry of the Red Army, on January 27, 1945.
She owed her survival, after entering the gas chamber, to a Zyklon B rupture at that moment.
I don't know what her journey was between February 1945 and August 1946 when she came to live in Munich.
Until October 1947, she lived at 7 Von der Pfordten Platz.
Then she lived with her cousin Kalman (born in 1924) at 106 Ismaniger Straße.
She married Koppel Landschaft in Munich.
They emigrated to Israel by plane on May 19, 1949.
His cousin Kalman went to the USA, where he started a family in Brooklyn.
Contact me
All information, archives, photos, and testimonies would be welcome. Don't hesitate!