Kestenberg Archive

FZ, the younger of two children, was born in 1928 in Łowicz, Poland to a Hassidic family. His father was a sales manager in a shoe shop, an adjudicator and a teacher. FZ experienced antisemitism before the war. Pogroms started around June 1939. The Germans invaded in September 1939. FZ witnessed his father being burnt to death in the local synagogue. The Germans moved all the town's Jews to the Warsaw ghetto. The family soon fled to a nearby forest. They stayed in Słubice. His mother and sister volunteered do three months of labor, because the Germans promised them that thereafter they would be free to return to their home but three months later they were sent to Treblinka. FZ travelled by train to Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine and lived in the region's forests for six months. When he returned to the city, the Germans sent him to a shell factory in Poland and later to a weapon factory in Skarżysko-Kamienna for eleven months. From there, he was moved to Flossenbürg concentration camp. As the Russians and Americans advanced, the Jews were moved to periodically Buchenwald, סליבן and then back to Flossenburg. Eventually, in 1945, the Germans sent them to Mauthausen, but fortunately FZ managed to escape from the train and hide in a forest. The Americans liberated him and took him to a hospital in Italy. A former Nazi officer's widow adopted him and accompanied him to an orphanage run by Youth Aliyah. They made aliyah, initially settling in Kibbutz Mishmar HaSharon. In 1947, FZ joined the Palmach and fought in the independence war. In 1949, he moved to Ze'elim. At that point, the widow returned to Germany. FZ moved to Shoval and then settled in Tel Aviv. He joined the police and worked as a policeman for thirty years. FZ married and had three children. He did not tell his children much of his experiences from the holocaust. He led a secular lifestyle.