Kestenberg Archive

DS was born in June 1933. At first his family lived in Bielsko Biala and then moved to Cieszyn which was on the pre-war Czech border. The city was half-Czech and half-Polish. DS attended Polish kindergarten in the morning and cheder in the afternoon. DS was the youngest of four boys, and they had a Polish maid looking after them. They were a Chassidic family. He remembers one time the Polish guards attacking his brother on a bus for being Jewish. DS's father was drafted on the first day of the war and was stationed in Bielsko. That was where both of DS's parents families lived and the family moved there to be near his father. However, DS's father did not want them to stay there and took them to Cracow where they stayed with the sister of the Bobower Rebbe. After another few weeks, DS's father was transferred to Lemberg and the family decided to move there. The journey involved crossing a deep river and since DS had not yet learnt how to swim, the older brothers went on alone and DS waited behind with his mother for the river to get lower. They went in January on a dangerous journey, especially because at one point they passed the cross-fire between Russian and German soldiers. They were picked up for smuggling across the border and taken to a police station, but eventually were given a permit to go to Lemberg. They arrived in Lemberg in January 1940. ; At first it was a free city for them, but when Germany declared war on Russia the Jews in the border areas were deported immediately. DS's family were taken to Chelyabinsk in the Urals, were there was a coal-mining settlement called Kiosk. The men had to work in the mines and they were not allowed to leave without a permit. They were there for fourteen months and DS's memories are vague from that period. He remembers his father being arrested for helping to organise kosher meat and he thinks there must have been some sort of school for the children. When the peace treaty was signed with Russia, in 1942 they were declared free again. The family moved to Tajikstan, a Republic of Russia, near the Afghanistan border. It was very difficult at first, especially as DS's mother was very ill, but with time they settled down. DS attended a Polish school there and remembers Arab children throwing stones at him on the way to school. DS's family returned to Lemberg in 1945 and they expected to see all their family as they had not heard about what had happened during the war. After being told they went to Auschwitz and saw the ashes and clothes, but it was empty. They moved around Poland, to the different places where they had lived before, looking for relatives. DS helped to smuggle children across the border. In 1946 they moved to France, where DS went to school and then yeshiva in Paris. In 1951 they moved to America. DS went to yeshiva in Crown Heights and got married in 1953.