Dear Family Member,

Enclosed you will find an account of Randy Gross' recent visit to Poland. After reading it, I decided that the content is priceless and everyone should have a copy of their own.

If you have children who live away from home, please make copies and forward to them. If your children still live at home, please copy and put away for their safekeeping.

This document may be the closest any of us ever get to our own roots.

God bless you and hopefully we will all see each other soon -- for a happy occasion.

Love,

Sharon


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March 26, 1992

Dear Sharon,

You asked me to record my experience, my thoughts and emotions for you: experiences from my recent trip to Poland, thoughts on our family and our origins, and emotions as I tried to tie all the pieces together.

Certainly nothing I have seen or heard before this trip can equal in pain and horror that which I experienced during my week in Poland. At the very same time, nothing has brought me closer to my family-in-my-heart than this heart-wrenching travel back in time.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As I describe this, remember the portraits above our fireplace -- for they are all that remain of our family in Pultusk. The bearded man on the right is Y'shaya Gruszka, our great grandfather. We believe his last name was Gruzhka, a word which means "pear" in Polish. Y'shaya was a glazer, an artisan who makes glass. His picture always reminded me of Tevye the Milkman, from "Fiddler on the Roof." He wears the same type of hat and he looks like a proud, yet humbler, man.

Y'shaya was from the town of Pultusk, Poland. Jews pronounce the town "Pultisk" in their Yiddish dialect. When Y'shaya lived in Pultusk in the late 19th century, it was a bustling market town about the size of Franklin, Tennessee [editor's note; 2000 census population 41,842] . More than one-third of the residents were Jews, who were segregated to a large section just off the town's market square. There were several synagogues, a yeshiva, and other active Jewish organizations. But the Jews were relatively new to Pultusk, having settled there only in the early 1800s after the authorities lifted a ban against Jewish settlement in the region. There was no state of Poland at the time -- it was all part of the Russian Czarist Empire. Mom's family came from an area that is now part of Russia, but it is really not that far away from Poland.

The Jews is Pultusk were primarily merchants, craftsmen (like Y'shaya), or scholars. Poles were primarily farmers with homes in the town. There was also a great castle which served as a home for Jesuit bishops. The Jesuits, ironically, also operate Georgetown University -- which I attended. The castle sat high on a hill overlooking the town and the Narew River.

Pultusk also had a great cathedral, built in 1440, and several other churches. The town was a religious and regional market center. But it was located only about 30 miles north of Warsaw, the capital and largest city in today's Poland.

Our great-grandfather Y'shaya marries a woman named Malka Gittel (XXXXX). The young couple had three children:

Esther (XXXXX), born in 1879
Shmuel Nissen (XXXXX), "Sam," born July 1883
Pinya (XXX), "Pinchus," born 1879

But in 1887, before they could raise their children, Malka Gittel died. Y'shaya later married a second time, to Liba Ruchel (XXXXX), "Little Rosie," our great-grandmother. It is her picture you see on the left side of our fireplace wall in the big den.

Liba Ruchel was the young, beautiful and mysterious woman of dark hair and dark eyes that so many have said remind them of you, Sharon.

With his new wife, Y'shaya continued to expand his family. Four more children were born:

Lazar (XXXX), "Louie," born 1890
Avraham (XXXXXX), "Abe," our grandfather, born 1893
and twins, Moshe Isaae (XXXXX), "Morris,"
and a girl who died after six months, born 1896.

Y'shaya's sons learned several crafts, including shoemaking, as hey grew up in Pultusk. They were all promised brides, some probably from birth. Sam was the first to marry, to Ruchel Leah (XXXXXX) - "Rose" Slomnoki - in January 1906. Sam was the first to have children, Shalom (XXXX), "Sol," and Yankel (XXX), "Jake," in 1907 and 1909 respectively.

Sam was also the first to be drafted into the Poland army as the Great War broke out in 1912.

Jews were not "citizens," yet were told to fight for this new country of Poland. Jews were likely used as cannon fodder in the war with Germany. And so Sam, being the bright man (and risk taker, thank God) that he was, decided to check out Amerika to see if its streets really were paved with gold.

Once again the first, Sam left his home -- his wife and children, his parents, brothers and sister -- and traveled alone from Putusk, Poland to Galveston, Texas, where he arrived on September 15, 1909.

And Sam liked the new country, so after learning the ropes, he sent for his family. First Louie came to New York City on November 11, 1911. Then came his wife and two sons on July 15, 1913.

Abe, our grandfather, had meanwhile married a young woman named Sarah (XXXX) Bailey Turek. Sarah was the daughter of Wolf Baer (XXXXXX). She had a sister, and a brother named Shalom (XXXXX).

The Tureks were from the town of Makow, about 10 miles north of Pultusk. Makow was smaller than Pultusk, but it was 80% Jewish, a real "shtetl." The Jews called the town "Makava" in Yiddish. They lived in wooden houses along cobblestone streets. There were several synagogues, mikuas and other Jewish religious buildings. Some Jews were orthodox, but others were sephardic. We know very little about grandma Sarah's family or her home.

Abe decided to leave his new wife and follow his brothers to Amerika. He would send for Sarah later. But while Abe was on the ship to his new country, a world war broke out. It was 1914. He arrived safely at Galveston, where he was reunited with his brothers.

Years later, as the war ended, Morris and Esther came to America and Abe finally sent for Sarah. Esther's husband stayed behind and joined the Russian army -- he was a bolshevik. The family was going in many different directions now, because of the war.

Y'shaya's remaining son Pinya also came to Galveston after the war. But his enlarged heart and hunched back prevented his passing the health requirements. The Gruszka (now Gross) brother was turned away by U.S. immigration authorities and sent back on the grueling journey to Poland.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Morris was Cousin Chuck's father (and Lil's, Phil's in Chicago). Sam's son Sol was Sylvia Lipschultz's father. Louie's kids went to California.

Your dauther is named from Sarah Bailey, as you know. Lil in our family is named after Y'shaya's wife, Liba Ruchel (the picture).

Sheldon is named after Grandma's brother, Shalom.

Charles and Chuck are from Y'shaya.

...and all of those Phils in our family were named after Uncle Pinya, who's heart was "too big" to allow him into this wonderful country.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It was springtime in Paris, but when I arrived in Poland there were gale-force winds whipping snow across barren plains and market squares. Fifty-year-old industrial bohemoths belched out tons of black, leaden pollutants into the air and onto the nearby houses and farms. The sky throughout Poland was an ashen grey.

It was 20 below zero when I found myself in Osweicim, a grimy town in southern Poland. I asked townspeople how to get to nearby Auschwitz, but I was greeted with shrugs and sneers or indifference. They want to forget. Finally, I saw a sign pointing towards a "muzeum."

Auschwitz is everything you'd imagine it to be, and worse. Barbed wire surrounds the entrance gate with the admonition "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" (work makes you free) cast into the iron doors. There were groups of tourists visiting the exhibit, showcased in brick barrack buildings.

I would enter a barrack building, with its long central hallway. On each side of the hallway were glass windows, and behind the windows were piles -- floor to ceiling -- of human hair.

I'd go to another barrack. A long hallway. Piles of toothbrushes. Shaving brushes, cooking pots, suitcases -- one with the name Melanie Gross scrawled on its side. One exhibit explained how 4,000 men, women and children could be gassed at one time in a gas chamber. And how Nazis made Jews clean out the dead bodies (including their own families) and take them to the crematorium.

Another barrack exhibited photos of children -- 3, 4, 5 years old -- in their oversized prison clothing. I began to sink. I remembered the museum I had visited in Prague, Czechoslovakia, which had the pictures of butterflies and flowers drawn by children at Terezin. I dropped to my knees at the site of tallises taken from religious Jews.

I began to feel very alone and I wandered out of Auschwitz and down the road several miles, in the freezing wind, to Birkenau. This camp was 20 times as large and cruel as Auschwitz. Birkenau was a death factory.

I entered along the railroad tracks that had transported boxcar loads of people, like cattle led to slaughter. Children were sent immediately to the gas chambers.

I was alone. This was not like Auschwitz -- no tourists, no cameras. I felt as if I were transported 50 years back in time. This was a concentration camp and nothing had changed.

Overgrown and wind-blown grass. Thousands of weak wooden barracks breaking apart in rows. Those barracks were never meant to house people for very long. I walked towards a barracks. Its doors creaked open and slammed shut in the howling wind.

I walked into another barrack and I could almost hear whispers. "How could anyone do such horrible things to other human beings," they pleaded. "How?" The dark, wooden barrack was filled with ghosts. A candle was lit mysteriously in a fireplace. I fell again to my knees and tears streamed from my heart.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

After having heard the names "Makava" and "Pultusk" for years, it was startling to actually see them on the bus schedule in Warsaw. "One ticket to Makow," I asked in broken Polish at the ticket window. The ticket clerk looked at me quizzically and finally asked me "scrborski namesti krdm?" or something to that effect.

But somehow I ended up on my way to Makow. Sitting next to me on the bus were two Russian men wearing carpet hats. I asked them what brought them to Poland.

"Bizness." they replied,
"What sort of bizness?" I pressed.
"Don't know yit."

I couldn't imagine why anyone would leave Russia to move to Poland. But I guess our great grandparents couldn't imagine why their children would move 5,000 or more miles away to some God-forsaken land of cowboys called "Amerika."

The bus pulled into Makow's bus station and I hopped off. The very first images I captured of my grandmother's hometown was a great pyramid made of Jewish tombstones, only a few feet from the bus terminal. I pulled over to this monument, which is moaning under the weight of the history it memorializes.

I look at the names. And the first name I see is XXXX. Sarah. What happened? What is happening to me? I sink deeper. I begin to feel that someone is still alive under this huge monolith and I touch the stones. Again I hear their whispers:

"Why are we broken in half and stacked this way? Who will remember us?"
"Why?"

A bus driver took me to his house and I met his son, who spoke a little English. The Polish family sat in awe of me as I related our family's story. The mother wanted to know about my brothers and sisters and my parents. They were Catholic, but they knew the history of this once Jewish town. The son showed me the old wooden homes and teh cobblestone streets and the old synagogue -- now a boarding house.

The Jews of Makow were taken by the Nazis in 1939 to the Treblinka death camp, 40 miles away. Whatever few surviving Jews returned to Makow after the war were killed by the Poles. Communists mowed down the Jewish cemetery and built the bus station on the site. The gravestones were broken in half and used as markers on the sides of the road for 45 years. Only recently were hey unearthed and used to build the Pyramid of Makow.

I wanted to go back to this monument over and over again. It had names -- names of grandma's friends and neighbors and family. It was all that remains of an entire community.

Several days later, the bus driver and his son took me to Pultusk. This is now a large, attractive town filled with sadness and irony. The great castle has been converted into the "Home of Polonia," for Polish people who left Poland and return to visit. It is a luxurious hotel and conference center. But I did not feel welcome here, even though it was from Pultusk that my family came.

The "Home of Polonia" overlooks the rapids of the Narew River. In September, 1939, all 10,000 Jews of Pultusk were forced to march to this river and were drowned by the Nazis. Ten thousand men, women and children:

Mysterious and lovely Liba Ruchel.
Y'shaya with his hat.
Pinya with his heart too big.

Our aunts and uncles and cousins who had to stay behind in Poland because they couldn't make the long journey to Amerika.

The Polam Factory sits atop the former Jewish Cemetery of Pultusk. But no monument here, only a plaque on the site of a former synagogue. The old Jewish section near the market square was destroyed. Now my heart was hardened. Now the full weight of this inhumanity beared down on this town. I had seen enough -- I was so lucky to be alive and I wanted to breathe.

I said a tearful goodbye to the wonderful family that had taken me in. The bus driver's [missing text to be updated] and he insisted that I "don't remember" him. The next day I left Poland. As I sat in my compartment on the train, I heard whispers again, Hebrew, our ancient language. "What were they saying?" I thought.

I wandered out of my compartment and saw three beautiful young people talking to each other -- in Hebrew. "Can this be a dream?" I thought.

The Israeli high school students had just taken the same trek as myself. They had gone to worse places -- to Mjadenk, where piles of human ash still fill swampy ponds. The young Israelis were aslo glad to be leaving Poland.

The snow stopped falling. The wind stopped howling. The sky began to clear. We knew we were leaving the hell that was Poland.

I filled my lungs with fresh air and breathed.

I love you, Sharon.

We have a wonderful gift of life.

Your little brother, Randy

P.S. I met a little old man in Warsaw, one of the few surviving Polish Jews. He told me there was a star soccer player on a Maccabbee League team is Warsaw before the war. His name was Grushka. The little old man then insisted we "drink a little L'Chaim --" to life!


[editor's note: please advise webmaster of mispellings or inaccuracies]