Maurice Chilowicz and the Story of Pilzno.

Compiled from:
    Letter from Maurice Chilowicz to Harry Kranz, May 5, 1986; and
    Interview by Sharlene Kranz, Forest Hills, NY, Jan. 18, 1999
 
I was born in Pilzno on Dec. 22, 1918.  My Jewish name is Moshe Yankele.   My father's name was David Chilowicz, my mother Sabina.  My father was born in 1885.  His brother Itzhak and his sister Esther Kirschbaum came to the U.S. before the war.   I had four brothers and a sister.  My father is not in the 1924 synagogue photo.  He had no time for that, he was a businessman, a wholesale grocer.  He was on the city council.  My father supported half the town.  On Mondays for market day, people borrowed money from my father to buy merchandise, then after the market they paid him back.

 The towns around Pilzno were very small, smaller than villages.  The Jews were clustered in Pilzno.  They came for the High Holy Days to Pilzno from the little villages.  Most of the Jews were merchants, some had cows, a horse to come to town.  Pilzno had 150 Jewish families, about 600 people.  The pictures from 1924  were taken the same day to show the people in America what their money had built.  Our rabbi was Menasha Horowitz.

This photo was taken in 1924 at the dedication of the new Talmud Torah, built with funds from the New York Pilzno Society, to send to New York.

Some of the men in the photo are (left to right): Shlomo Tulipan, Montag Eisenberg, Mechel Stern, Abraham Tirk, Abraham Abraham, Mendel Eisenberg, Meier Lerner, Yacov Katzner, David North, Mr. Grafschrift, Zelig Derszowitz, Moishe Aaron Kranz, Moshe Linder, and Gershon Bodner.

(Identified by Arye Bodner of Israel).

 

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My life in Pilzno till 1939 was not bad.  I was the youngest of five brothers, and the only one who was a chasid.  I wore a black coat and payes.    We had a good business, but it started to cloud with Hitler as a Polish neighbor.  I worked in my father's business and attended Talmud Torah.  I was in Pilzno in 1939 when the Nazis invaded Pilzno.  I lived with them for two months, then smuggled myself across the German-Russian border to Lwow and deported to Siberia.  In 1943 I was mobilized to the Polish Army.  My immediate family perished in different places.  About 50 or 60 people of the town survived by hiding out, hidden by Poles; some survived concentration camps and in Russia.
 
The story in Harry Kranz's letter about his visit to Pilzno, which says that Chilowicz refused to come out of it and was burned to death inside when the Germans torched the synagogue is not true.  Here is what happened to my brother:

On Erev Rosh Hashanah my brothers and I stayed hidden in the back of our house.  My father went to the bath house at 1pm, that day the S.S. came to town, my father came home with a shaved beard.  The soldiers came in the back of our store.  We five brothers were ready to go to a neighbor's  (Adler's) for the evening prayers.
 
Two S.S. came in the back of our store and said to us raise your hands.   The soldiers came in, they stole shoe paste and a pack of chocolates.  They handed the package to my oldest brother Mottel to carry.  Mottel said he had a bad back and handed the package to another brother, Aaron.  My mother said he would get caught in the curfew .

 So Aaron went with the package, about 7 pm; later some other cousins came over.  By 11pm  Aaron wasn't home yet.  At 3am my mother went out to look for him.  The soldiers were staying in the public school.  Mother went to the school, but Aaron was not there.  She went looking at the Agriculture School, on the way to the synagogue.  A Polack (a friend), told her there was a body in the shul, in the back.  She went to look and found Aaron dead.  He was shot in the front.  She buried him in the Jewish cemetery that night.

On the second night of Rosh Hashanah the Germans burned the Talmud Torah. After that we were sitting shiva.  Erev Yom Kipper my parents were taken out by the solders to clean the streets.

I went to Einspruch's for awhile.  Two weeks later I came home, then after four weeks my brother and I decided to go to the Russian side.  I couldn't take life under the Germans anymore. The war started on Sept. 1, and on Sept. 8, a Friday, the Germans came to Pilzno.  I left 3 months later.  After awhile, they organized to pull out  the Jews from the street. They took my parents right away to the train station, and they killed them right away.

From 1939 to 1942 everything was normal.  A committee was organized to tell who would work. Three men were on the Juden Rat: Hershel Bochner, Zanita Weissman, and Mundich Treibish..  In 1942 they liquidated the Jews, took away my father's store, they chased everyone out from the houses, and took them away to  Dembitz.  The younger ones they took to work in the factories.  When they liquidated the Pilzno ghetto my family and other families found themselves places to hide.  First we had a small ghetto in Pilzno, then in Dembitz.  The older people they packed into the trains to Belzec.  Hershel Bochner's family and other families they ran away into a bunker.   My family secured also a bunker.  But my mother and father and one sister  disappeared down there (in the Pilzno ghetto).  My oldest brother they took away in 1940 because somebody squealed on him that he was in Germany.  He was in Germany from 1928 to 1932, and he just disappeared, and his two children were left.

In the bunker  there were  my brother Itzak and his wife Raizel Chilowicz,  with my oldest brother's two children, and  Gitka Furman  my sister, and her husband.  They were in a bunker with 6 or 7 people next to the Bochner's bunker. Shushka Bochner used to tell me at night they came out and talked to each other. My sister and her husband, when they were hiding, they had to choke their own child, who was crying.    Somebody squealed and my family was killed down there.  (Their names are on the monument we erected in 1945; see Photo).  The Germans were looking for dead Jews.  But the sister of the guy who hid them, a stupid girl,  she showed them the living Jews . That happened Sept. 9, 1943.  The Germans came in the morning, they threw grenades into the bunker.   They came out alive, and they shot them and they shot the Polloks, too, who hid them.  My family was buried down there in the sands near the toilet.  The Polloks they took to the cemetery.

The minute the Bochners heard what happened the next night they ran away to find another place to hide in the wilderness.

 

My brother and I lived together, I went to the Army but he was worried that I would not make it.  He got killed two days before the war was over, April 20, 1945.  I got a letter from him, "I'm happy I'm going to see you soon."  And the next letter came that he was dead.

 

I was in the Polish Army.  They took me, I didn't go.  They had to take me 3 times to go, I didn't volunteer. The first Polish army  organized in 1941, the  Polish officers in 1941 who trained in Iran, they never came back.  So two years later another Polish general organized another army, this is the Army that came in with the Russians together to liberate Poland in 1944.  I was in this Polish army. I was a Captain. They knew I was a Jew.  I was lucky.  They sent me to 3 officers schools, to learn to drive,  then to be an auto mechanic,  and by the time I came back the war was almost over.  I came in 1944 straight to Poland, the war was almost over.  I had to wait for six months in Dembitz because the Germans were still in Pilzno.. I was in transportation, my chief of staff was a Jewish guy. I came back in 1945 to Pilzno from the Army.  First I went to Pilzno to find out what's what.  When I came a neighbor told me what happened to my family. So I came back with an army truck and a couple of soldiers to protect me. We brought lumber and caskets. The Bochners showed me the mass grave of part of my family. Together with the Bochners and other survivors we exhumed the bodies we knew about.  We exhumed those bodies and buried them all together.  I recognized my family through their teeth after two years; they had been buried in their underwear in a dry place, one on top of the other. Other bodies were buried near river banks, their bodies looked like calcium. We erected a memorial (see Photo) and left Pilzno.

 

PHOTO TAKEN AT PILZNO JEWISH CEMETERY JUNE 1946.

Left to right: Benjamin Derszowitz, Perec List, Leika Bochner, Salomon Kampf, Maurice Chilowicz (in Army uniform), Harry Bochner, Leizer Bochner (husband of Leika), Michael Bochner (brother of Harry), and Leibish Schnaps. See Maurice Chilowicz's description of the building of the memorial.

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NAMES ON THE MONUMENT IN JEWISH CEMETERY IN PILZNO, erected in 1946 by returnees to the town:

 "Here lie the bodies of the Jewish people who have been killed by the Germans and their helpers. Exhumed 24.11.1945 by H and M Bochner and M. Chilowicz."

 

 

 

NAME	AGE	PLACE OF DEATH	DATE OF DEATH
LIST, NECHA	19	PILZNO	24.06.43
CHILOWICZ. IZAAK	32	POLOMEJA	9.9.43
CHILOWICZ, REIZLA	30	POLOMEJA	9.9.43
CHILOWICZ, IZAAK	7	POLOMEJA	9.9.43
CHILOWICZ, BENA	5	POLOMEJA	9.9.43
FURMAN, LAZAR	35	POLOMEJA	9.9.43
FuRMAN, GITHA	28	POLOMEJA	9.9.43
APFEL, HIRSH	28	POLOMEJA	9.9.43
APFEL, EZRIEL	23	POLOMEJA	9.9.43
PINTER, MEIER	48	POLOMEJA	9.9.43
BOCHNER, LAZAR	35	JAWORZE	16.9.43
BOCHNER, PESLA	32	JAWORZE	16.9.43
GRUMET, BARUCH	35	JAWORZE	16.9.43
LIST, LEIB	55	LEKI	15.9.43
LIST, JOZEF	11	LEKI	15.9.43
EINSPRUCH, WOLF	35	LEKI	15.9.43
WAROWICZ, GITLA	-	LEKI	15.9.43
KUNWALD, ABRAM	31	BUDYN	14.4.43
LIST, GEDALIE	30	DULCZOWKA	24.10.43
ROSENBAUM, PINKAS	25	DULCZOWKA	24.10.43
KAMPF, SARA	28	JAWORZE	22.11.43
KAMPF, AMALIA	6	JAWORZE	22.11.43
KAMPF, RYWKA	3	JAWORZE	22.11.43
TANENBAUM, MOSES	24	JAWORZE	22.11.43

 

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I came to America in 1952. I worked in the garment industry, and now I'm retired.  I have two sons and two granddaughters.

Why did some survive and others not?

 Everybody who is alive today is alive by luck.  Friends left, a lot of people didn't come back.  Schiffman didn't come back, Tascher didn't come back, and Browns didn't come back.

 The Bochners survived by luck.   Hershel used to shlep his mother on his back.  It wasn't easy.  How many times Michael wanted to give up.  Hershel wasn't God, he couldn't save everybody, the Germans were God, not him.

 I don't live in the past, the past lives in me. I haven't been back to Pilzno.  Who wants to see the blood?

Who were the Reichs?

 Three Reichs were in the bunker with Leika and the other Bochners: Tuli, Yosel, and Shlomo Reich.  They all survived.  They were big guys.  Their parents and sister were killed.  Leika Bochner's first husband was Chazkel Schmier, a cousin to the Reich's.
 

Did you know my great-grandmother Chaya and my grandfather Avram Leib Kranz?
I knew Chaya Kranz, your great-grandmother,  we used to play behind her house and knock on her window.  She would yell at us and we called her "Chayash Kurech", meaning a crotchety old woman.    Your great-grandmother's place was near the Shul.   Chaim Tulipan lived on one side of the shul in a little building and Chaya Kranz lived on the other side.  The river ran behind her house.  After her third husband Gabriel Einspruch and she broke up, she had an elder woman living with her, Rivka Bouf.  Chaya was a fine, pious, hard-working  woman, a member of the society of women who took care of preburial cleansing.

Your grandfather's name has been known to me a far as I can remember.  His name was inscribed with other names from Pilzno Society in America on a plaque in the Talmud Torah where I studied Talmud.  I used to see him at the meetings  here.  He was a powerful man, outspoken.

Did you know my grandfather's brother Moishe Aaron?

Yes.  Moishe Aaron Kranz was a poor man.  On Monday, they'd come out to sell at the market, piece goods, they didn't have a store.   Ninety percent of Pilzno was poor.   One of Moishe Aaron's daughters was a widow, a wig maker in Mishlenice.  Shlomo Meyer Kranz, Moishe Aaron's son, did gernisht (nothing) for a living. His other sons, Avrum Leib and Chaim Zev were in Germany.    Moishe Aaron's wife Gittel Haber had a brother, Chazkel Haber, and four sisters:
 one sister married Tobey Scheyer, a Pilzno man,
 one sister married Hershel Geiser,
 one sister married Yattel Auterslander, they sold candy,
 one sister, Raisl,  married my brother Itzhak Chilowicz, a baker.
Gitel's father was Zeesman Haber.  He was deaf; he had a bakery in Pilzno.

There were three bakeries in Pilzno: Haber, Chilowicz, and Einspruch.
Itzhak Chilowicz's bakery is now the police station in the marketplace.

Tell me about the Turk family.

There lived in Pilzno three Turks: Avrum Turk, Moishe Turk, and Beryl Turk.  Moishe had two daughters who survived in Israel (one was married to a cousin of mine) and one daughter was in Philadelphia.  One married Avrum Katzner.  One married Avrum Bush, died in South America.  There's Golda Turk and Raisa Turk.   Avrum Turk was wiped out completely.

Where is the Pilzno Society burial plot?

We have plots at Montefiore Cemetery, in Queens, and at New Montefiore, on Long Island.  There is also a Pilzno plot at Mt. Moriah Cemetery in Fairview, NJ (201- 943-6163).  Of the Pilzno Society there is only now me and Bill Seiden, and he is 96 years old.

What would you like remembered about Pilzno?

I like to remember the joy of a small town, a big family lived together, enjoyed together, suffered together, and perished apart.

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    PHOTO OF TALMUD TORAH SCHOOL OF PILZNO, 1924
  Photo donated by Maurice Chilowicz.  Students identified by Maurice Chilowicz.
 

 
 

Top Row, left to right: Chaim Baum, Shloime Mechlevicz, Tulek Katzner, Moice Epstein, Aron Chilowicz, Hershel Bochner, Nussel Kampf, Shia Sperber, Hazkel Kohn, Itzik Brust, Ichik Katzner, Henig Bodner, Yankel Brust, Fulek Geiser.

Second row, left to right: Chaim Tulipan (teacher, shamos), Ephroim Tulipan (nephew of Chaim), Hershel Lerner, Chaim Epstein, ____ Schall, Chiel Turk, Chamek Herbst, Shloime Tulipan* (teacher, son of Chaim), Avrum Bodner, Nissel Thau, Fulek Freeman, Hershel Apfel, Mendel Reiner.

Third row down, left to right: Mottel Hochberg, Usher Mechlovicz, Shimen Schonwetter, Zreil Apfel, Yurma Herbst, Leibish Apfel, Chaim Reiner, Nussen Schindlawer, Pincus Apfel, Saul Eisenberg, Shia Wollek.

Bottom row, left to right:  Maurice Chilowicz, Mayim Mechlowicz, _____ Pelz, Chiel Kohn, Chaim Berkowicz, Itzak Stern, Nussen Montag, Monik Brust, Yankel Hochberg, Zamus Insel, Wolf Tanenbaum, Elik Linder, Simche Waxpress.

*"You can see Shloime Tulipan is holding a long stick.  When you were bad he hit you over the head."--Maurice Chilowicz.