Zolkiewka - Walking Forward to the Past

District Krasnystaw, Province of Lublin

Żółkiewka Memories and Stories

Walking Forward to the Past

Jim Haberman

During the 1980's my job required occasional visits to my then employer's Warsaw office. During one of these visits, I was fortunate enough to be able to explore my paternal genealogical roots.

Like most Americans, I had failed to take advantage of the living databanks that were my grandparents, and to obtain from them the valuable details of their and their ancestors' origins. My father, the only son of an only son, experienced the death of his biological father, Abram Haberman, as a young child. While my father's mother, Rebecca LAFER HABERMAN GOLDBERG, lived to a ripe, old age (though exactly how old we did not know - more on this later), leaving us in 1973, the only useful information regarding her origins that we recalled were the name of the Polish village from which she came (which she pronounced ZHOW-kehv-kih) and the fact that the village was a half-day horse cart ride from the city of Lublin, in present day southeast Poland.
My Bubbee was the archetypical matriarch and the grande dame of my father's side of the family. She was the center of the family's universe, around whom all members rotated and to whom all were drawn. She represented the very best that America offers to those immigrating to its shores, rising, through her own hard work and initiative, from abject poverty to successful Detroit restaurateur.

During the course of a telephone conversation with one of my Warsaw-based counterparts a few weeks prior to a planned February 1987 business trip to Europe, which was to include a visit to Poland, I had casually mentioned my grandmother's origins, including the sparse (to say the least) details that I possessed. Upon my arrival at Warsaw my colleagues had a wonderful surprise for me. They had located what they felt fairly certain was my grandmother's village - Żółkiewka (pronounced ZHOH-kehv-keh). Furthermore, they had arranged for a car and an English-speaking driver to bring me there.

It should be noted that 1987 was near to, or perhaps just after, the low point in U.S.-Polish relations. The U.S. had recalled its ambassador to Poland following the heavy-handed Polish/Soviet reaction to the Solidarity movement's efforts to reform the Polish Communist state. The iron curtain would suffer its very first cracks as a result of this period in Polish history, which a few short years later would result in its complete collapse.

We left Warsaw late the following afternoon in my guide's worse-for-wear Maluch (the ubiquitous tiny Polish-made Fiat automobile) taking, as I recall, 2 to 2½ hours to reach Lublin (some 30 miles from Żółkiewka), where we spent the night. The following morning, I asked my guide to speak to the hotel staff and attempt to learn whether there was a Jewish presence in Lublin - a synagogue, a Jewish community center, etc. I thought that speaking with local Jews might yield information that would be useful during our visit to Żółkiewka. Based on my knowledge of the Holocaust, I was not optimistic. The staff directed us to a local social service office. We phoned them, but the best they were able to offer was the name of an elderly Jewish man living not far from our hotel. The guide phoned the man and he immediately invited us to visit him. He enthusiastically welcomed us to his tiny apartment, where we talked for a short while. He told us that prior to the Second World War Lublin had a Jewish community numbering around 40,000, and that he was one of around 40 remaining. He had escaped the holocaust by fleeing to the Russian border, and returned to Lublin after the war. Afterwards he accompanied us to a small holocaust memorial in the center of town. After visiting the memorial, we returned him to his apartment, where he provided directions to a large, old cemetery with a Jewish section on the way out of Lublin. There, I was surprised to find the Jewish graves to be in remarkably good condition. The grave markers appeared authentic, and I am uncertain as to how they had escaped destruction by the Germans.

As we departed the cemetery en-route to Żółkiewka, we passed, on the outskirts of Lublin, Majdanek, the concentration camp constructed specifically for Lublin and the surrounding area. My driver asked if I wished to stop and see it. I replied that I did not feel emotionally prepared for such an experience at that time.

It was a typical, gray European winter day as we made our way down the two-lane asphalt roadway, past the small, thatched-roof homes that dotted the snow covered farm fields. Horse drawn carts riding on truck tires were by far the dominant mode of transport on the road. The sights evoked for me what I imagined nineteenth century rural Poland to have been, until there at the side of the road - a typical black-on-white government-installed road sign announcing our arrival at Żółkiewka.

Our first stop was the village church (Poland is more than 90% Catholic). We explained to the priest our mission, and asked whether he could offer any assistance or advice in researching my grandmother's early life. He curtly replied that he could not, and we made our way back to the near-deserted sidewalks.

We walked a short distance until we happened across a small community center in which were seated four or five aged locals sipping coffee. We entered and engaged them in conversation. I sensed that I may have been the first American they had ever encountered. They offered us coffee and were very forthcoming in sharing their remembrances and in recalling the fate of Żółkiewka's Shtetl. Not surprisingly, it had suffered the same destiny as countless others not long after Germany's 1939 occupation of Poland. I asked whether any Jews remained in the area, and they informed me that none did. One of our interlocutors was a local functionary, and he offered to take us to the town office to determine what could be gleaned from the municipal records. Until that moment I would not have ever guessed that this small town had an office, let alone historical records. As municipal records are often destroyed by conquering forces, and as this region had been conquered so many times over the years, I was amazed to hear that any had survived.

As we walked to the office, the functionary pointed out the location of the town's former Jewish cemetery. It now looked like any other wooded plot of ground, with no indication whatsoever of its previous use, or of the many graves that no doubt still remained. A small portion of the ground was being utilized as a storage area by a small local construction company. The official told us that the Germans had ordered the tombstones removed and had them used as fill for road repair work.

Our host led us to the austere, unoccupied town office and, pulling a set of keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, flipped the light switch and led us in. There, on a small wall shelf, was an amazingly well organized set of small books, each perhaps 10 inches tall by 6 inches wide by ¾ inch thick, three for each year (one each for births, marriages and deaths).

The town official respectfully informed us that he would not be able to spend much time with us and that regulations forbad our photographing or even touching the books. Whether this no-photograph policy was due to overreaching by the Communist autocrats or in deference to legitimate privacy concerns, I do not know. Stanley Diamond, the guiding force behind Jewish Records Indexing - Poland (and the 'superb JRI-Poland web site), was surprised that I had even been allowed to view the books, and leans towards the latter explanation.

As was not uncommon among her contemporaries, my grandmother not only never knew her birthday, she never knew the year of her birth. As was also not uncommon among immigrants of her generation, my grandmother never observed an annual celebration of her birthday. Whether this resulted from the general failure of many rural immigrants to reconcile the Jewish calendar with the western calendar following immigration to the west, the higher degree of attention to basic survival that Shtetl life required, or some combination of these or other factors is unclear. What is clear is that my father's Ohio birth certificate indicates that his mother was 26 years old at the time of his birth in 1917 (presumably establishing her year of birth as 1890 or 1891), however Dad always suspected that her declaration of age at the time of his birth was, at best, a good guess.

After I conveyed my estimate of my grandmother's birth year to the town functionary, he pulled the 1891 birth book from the shelf The book's lined pages were hand-written in Russian, as that part of Poland was then under Russian control. He carefully perused the volume's text but, alas, no luck. Then, the 1890 book. Again, nothing. As a last ditch effort, he agreed to check one more year - 1889. Voila! There it was - my grandmother's birth record. Date of birth: 13 September 1889. Father: Keilman LAFER. Mother: Sura LAFER. As our host was in a hurry to conclude our visit, I left the office feeling a combination of great elation at having located the birth information, and disappointment at having missed an opportunity to delve further into the records.

I later requested and received a modern version of my grandmother's birth certificate, on which was typed in Polish the information from the original book. Interestingly, it translated the Russian Cyrillic representation of the family name as "LAUFER", not LAFER, as it had earlier been Americanized. In the last few months, thanks to JRI-Poland and it's highly skilled and dedicated group of volunteers, I have located basic information regarding my grandmother's parents and grandparents (my great-great grandparents), whose identities were heretofore unknown to me and my parents.

As I left my grandmother's birthplace to begin the long drive back to Warsaw that late afternoon in 1987, the temperature had dropped precipitously and heavy blasts of wind driven snow had begun falling in earnest. Although the day was slipping away, a blizzard seemed in the offing and a long drive back to Warsaw lay ahead of us, I had my guide stop the car at the edge of town so that he could snap a photo of me standing next to the Żółkiewka road sign. Hopefully, one day I'll return there, as one more step in the research that I'm certain I have only just begun. Stay tuned.

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Updated 05 March 2024