Full Name Pinchas Elez
Interviewer: Dor Bram and Nadav Shapira
Email: nadavsh5@gmail.com
Address: Kfar Saba Israel
Survivor: Pinchas Elez
Code: RelatioNet EL PI 27 WA PO
Family Name: Elez First Name: Pinchas
Father Name: Father Name Mother Name: Mother Name
Birth Date: 15/08/1927
Town In Holocaust: Wachock Country In Holocaust: Poland
Profession (Main) In Holocaust: None
Interview with Pinchas Elez:
My name is Pinchas Elez. I was born on August 15th, 1927 in Poland in a town called Wachock. Wachock was like all the other towns in Poland. My family wasn’t poor or rich. Most of the Jews lived in the town center. Every morning I went to a Polish school and afterwards I studied in a "Heder" for religious studies until evening. In the evening we could go to a "yeshiva" or to learn a profession such as- tailoring, watch making and more. My family was a conservative family. Every Friday we went to the synagogue, and we did a Kiddush too and on Saturday we ate meat and Halla as opposed to the rest of the week, when we didn’t have meat. We bought the meat at a Jewish butcher. Back then you could see Sabbath candles in every Jewish house. The Jews, including me, didn't go to school on Saturday so every Jew got his material from a non-Jew who went to school on Saturday. I didn't feel anti-Semitism in school clearly although I knew that they were all born with this anti-Semitism because of what they were taught at home. Once when I was in elementary school a Polish boy told me: "You killed our God, Jesus" so I answered him: "If he was God why did he let someone kill him?"
One day a group of young Jews came to live in a commune. The town's Rabbi didn’t allow us to meet them, and he said that they weren’t Jewish at all. Our rabbi told us to wait for the messiah. When he came we would immigrate to Israel and instead the messiah took us to Auschwitz. Everything was calm and peaceful until 1939. In that year the Germans took Poland. They bombed Warsaw but not small towns such as Wachock. I was twelve when the Nazis arrived in my town. They came very quickly, seven days after the war started. When the Germans entered Wachock, many escaped to the forests. Not long after their arrival they burned the town center and my house burned as did most of the other Jewish houses. Because the Jews had no homes we all went to the Synagogue. Suddenly a Germen officer came in and asked "What is this place?" So my sister, Ester who had learned German in High School told him that it was a Synagogue. Later on, the officer came back and took many people for labor including my brother. Afterwards my family and I went to Polish friends who gave us a room in their home, however it wasn't free, and we paid them for the room. We were six people in one small room. It was very crowded and uncomfortable to live there. A couple of days later, we were taken for labor, I went instead of my father because I didn't want him to work so hard. I worked at widening the road. At that time there were no schools, and it was forbidden to leave town. We were living on the street, and forced to wear a yellow patch on the shirt. The only thing we could do then was to run to the forests. The Germans were afraid to go to the forests because of the Partisans. The only food that we had was what we found in the forest.
After the Nazis conquered Wachock the S.S came to town once or twice a week. When they were patrolling in town, we hid until they left. If they caught any Jew they abused them and cut their beards. When the threat was over we opened our stores. We knew what was happening with the Jews because we remembered what Hitler's plans were from 1933. Back then it was forbidden for us to leave our street and we all lived in overcrowded apartments, three families in each one. Suddenly my father became ill. We weren’t allowed to bring a doctor so he passed away and left my family alone. We waited for one week until the Nazis came to take us. The neighbor's hairdresser asked us to bring him a razor and to get ready to leave in the morning. At 5 o'clock in the morning of the next day, everyone went to the town square. Whoever tried to escape got shot. My uncle didn’t want to leave town so he hid in the Synagogue and prayed. One Polish man informed on him to the German soldiers who shot my uncle and gave the Polish some food and my uncle's boots.
After we left town we arrived at noon to the country town of Wiez'bnik. The Nazis transported us to concentration camps for work. The camps were fenced in and full of guards. The next day we worked in the factory. Jews were spread all over the factory in different jobs such as; cleaning, porterage, dragging steel plates and more. My job was with the lathe. I had never seen a lathe in my life. My manager was a Polish man to whom my family gave all of our belongings. He never bothered me. We worked for 8 hours and when we came back to the camp we were given deadly beatings by the Ukraine soldiers. When we arrived in the camp, we got some soup and went to sleep. The Polish people in the factory told us everything about what was happening out there. At the same time we waited for the Partisans to breach the fences of the camp so we could escape, but they never came, so a few guys from the camp bought some grenades to toss at the fences. Among the guys who breached the fences was my brother Nathan, and after the fence was breached they ran into the forest. Many of them were killed, however, my brother managed to escape. No one knows what happened to him, but the rumors said he died by stepping on a mine.
The next day we were transported on a goods train with no food or water to Auschwitz. The train had no doors and many people were packed in there. We left the camp at 10 a.m. and arrived the next day at 5 a.m. Although we knew what the Germans were doing to the Jews, we couldn’t believe that they could have done something like that. When we arrived in Auschwitz, Doctor Mengale separated us into two groups; the younger-healthier ones who could work went into the right side, and the rest to the left side. I was in the group of the younger ones. We got clothes and shoes, which didn’t necessarily fit. Even the Ukraine soldiers who transported us to Auschwitz stayed there because they weren’t allowed to report anything about the camp. Every day we got a piece of bread which was black, and we didn’t even know what was inside it but it was good. The next day we got soup made of potatoe peel and cabbage, which we ate with our own hands. Anytime a German soldier passed by me, I had two options; bowing down or not. In both cases I got hit. One day the gypsies got white bread, chocolates and milk for the children. The next day, when I was walking to the oven to get leftovers of bread in order not to be starved, I noticed that all the gypsies were gone. An entire camp was empty. Afterwards I was going to look for food, so I raised the fence and crawled in the direction of the Germans' shack, and I didn’t even notice that one of the German guards was shooting at me from above, but I didn’t care about that because I had to get something to eat.
Sometime later Germans came by in a truck and asked for job qualifications. My brother got me into the truck so I won't stay in Auschwitz and die. We were going to a concentration camp called Buna. In Buna, the sheds were cleaner and had cleaner beds and blankets. The camp contained sixty-thousand people, who were divided into many sections. At around 5-6 a.m. we got hot coffee, which seemed more like hot black water, but at least it was hot. After breakfast we waited outside the camp approximately two hours in the rain and snow. At around 8 a.m. we marched a few kilometers. We had to march to the band's tempo. We usually marched for an hour and a half. We worked until 4 p.m. and in the evenings we got soup. When the Russians got closer towards Auschwitz in January 1944, we were taken out of the camps. We got a loaf of bread, some pastrami and a blanket and we started marching. We were marching all night to a train station in Czech. The people who were brave, ran into the forest and the German soldiers released their dogs after them. When we arrived in Klivichtz we were put on the train station and stayed there for three hours. This march is called until today "The Death March". Over 60 thousand people started the march, but only 15 thousand finished it. Before the evening, we were packed in open wagons and traveled for seven days. Most of the people died during the ride from the cold and hunger. The people who died were thrown out of the wagon.
Eventually, we arrived in Buchwald, a huge extermination camp in East Germany. It included people from all over the world, not only Jews. Every nation had its own symbol. In Buchwald I was working in quarry. After a month in Buchwald we were taken to another camp, which was in a bunker inside the forest. We traveled inside wagons with no doors for a week. At the same time we saw bomber planes and we already knew the war was about to end. Even the Nazis soldiers, who were not young, felt that the war was about to be over. One day, the SS officers took 7-8 people to their camp to grab some vegetables. During the collection we ate some vegetables and we put some inside our pockets. We were returned to Buchwald. Some people there were taken to "The Death March". In order not to be taken there I hid under my bed.
At the same time, the camp was released because of the rebellion against the Nazi regime. After the camp was released, the Americans arrived at the camp with tanks, and I crawled towards the gate of the camp. When I got there an American soldier gave me a piece of bread. Afterwards, my friend from the camp and I went to the SS officers' room because it had clean beds, sheets and it was a comfortable room. We went to a German village there and asked for some food and people gave us some eggs, bread and more.
Two weeks after the war ended I traveled to London, and before I left, I saw a list of Jewish survivors on the gate. I saw my sister's and my cousin's names on it. A bit later I met my sister and a week later I heard my brother was alive too, and he was in Lodge. Then I traveled to Lodge and my sister stayed in London. When I arrived in Lodge, I saw that the anti-Semitism still existed. Then I traveled to a kibbutz in Frankfurt, and got ready to go to Israel. We traveled to Israel through Cyprus. I stayed there for 21 months. After my time in Cyprus I came back to Europe to tell Jews to go to Israel. Afterward, in January 1949, I immigrated to Israel on a "Maapilim" ship. When I arrived in Israel I immediately joined the army. After I finished my military service I met my wife and I studied many subjects in Jerusalem such as literature, Hebrew, bible studies and more. When I finished my studies I got a job as a teacher in an elementary school in Kfar Saba "Brener". In my life I had taught in; Ort Shapira High School, Shazar Junior School and Kiriat Malachi College.
Wachock:
Wachok originally was a Benedictine monastery. It was founded in the middle of the 12th century. As the time went on more people settled near the monastry. In 1455 Wachock was under the proprietary right of the Polish monarch and King Casimir Jagiello the 4th granted rights to the city. In 1461 the city was under the ownership of the nobleman Mikolai Rodonsky and the group of German traders. In 1511 a German prince, named Matteaus, bought the lands of the area.
In the 19th century tens of Jewish families moved into the town. In 1921 the Jewish community had the greatest number of people ever- 468 people, although, only twenty four of them managed to survive.
The Germans conquered Wachock on 14th of September 1939. The fighting in Wachock ended with a fire that annihilated most of the town's homes. Even in the first days Jews were taken by force for labor. Many were used in rehabilitating the damage which was caused by the fire. There was no ghetto in Wachock and the Jews stayed in their homes until the community was removed. On 20 September 1942, the German soldiers assembled 600 Jews in the center of the market and had a "selection" among them. The Germans selected fifteen Healthy young people that were separated and sent to labor camps. The main labor camp that Wachock's Jews were transported to was Starachowice. Before the Germans occupied it, Starachowice was an iron ore mine. In it first years, the workers were given an extremely low pay of 55 Groszy an hour and a bowl of soup each day. Later on, in 1941 the Germans established an open ghetto in Starachowice which had in it Jews from all the surroundings. However, those who weren’t capable of working, such as older people, women and children were taken to the forest and were murdered there. In addition, many of the town's Jews who weren’t able to work were sent to the extermination camp, Treblinka.
After World War two Jews who lived in Wachock before the war returned there and were murdered by the members of the Polish Army Krayova.
On May 18th 2006 many people assembled around the Jewish cemetery which had been renewed for its rededication. Among the attendees were even three holocaust survivors from Wachock who had come back for the ceremony.
