In 1967 when the Six Day War broke out, my father was called up. My recollection of that war is of air-raid sirens going off, and of having to immediately rush down to the basement of our apartment building. Everyone who lived in the building, twelve families, sought shelter down there. It was cool and damp and dim, but there was a ping-pong table and people didn’t seem overly frightened. The adults brought food and chatted. The kids played. We had to stay in the cement basement until the all-clear siren went off. The only time I was really scared was one day when I was playing with a neighbor, a boy named Zvika, and the siren went off. Zvika’s mother grabbed each of us kids by the hand and literally ran down the stairs, so fast that I was unable to keep up. She dragged us down to the shelter as we slipped haphazardly on the stairs. To me, her evident fear was scary.
Little did I know that there was ample reason to be afraid. The armies of three Arab countries, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, were at war with Israel’s tiny IDF. A thousand Israeli soldiers would die in this war. My dad contributed to the war effort primarily via his engineering skills.
But when I was eight years old my father decided we should leave Israel, and we moved to England. This move mirrored the one that Bobby had experienced with his parents when he was a child. Just like them, he uprooted his family from the country he loved and believed in completely, to move thousands of miles away to a place where they knew no-one. His children would not grow up with their cousins, aunts, and uncles nearby. Despite his passion for Israel, Bobby left.
After two years in England we moved to the U.S. We eventually settled in a Boston suburb, where we lived until Sharon and I graduated from high school. Interestingly, my grandparents, Melly and Genek, left Israel again too once we were in Boston, and moved “nearby,” settling in Montreal – again. But as soon as Sharon and I were both in college, my parents moved on once again – first to the San Francisco area and later to Florida. Even in Florida they changed homes many times.
When he was in his late fifties my dad retired from engineering and started working as a travel agent in Sarasota, Florida. Fluent in five languages and having lived in Europe, Canada, and Israel, he was quite successful, and enjoyed putting together interesting itineraries for his clients. He sometimes even went along on some trips as a guide.
One day in 1997 when Dad was working at his desk at VIP World Travel, a client came in to ask for help arranging a trip for himself and his wife. The client, a British man, was named Tony Hayes. As he and my dad chatted, they discovered some interesting coincidences. Hayes, then working as an air traffic controller, was based in Brussels where my dad had lived as a child. And, strangely, he and his wife lived on Rue des Ménapiens – the very same street my dad had lived on many decades earlier. The two got to sharing stories, and my dad told Hayes a little of his background and what his family had been through during World War Two. Hayes was fascinated.
Six months later, when he was again in Sarasota, Hayes returned to the travel agency to visit my dad. He brought with him a copy of a magazine called The Bulletin, an English-language publication from Brussels, and tossed it onto my dad’s desk. Thought you might be interested in this, Al, he told him, there’s a story about Jewish children who were hidden and saved during World War Two in Belgium.
My dad started leafing through the magazine, interested, of course, in the story. Suddenly he stopped. Included in the article was an old photograph. The photo was in black and white, and showed a group of little boys all dressed alike, standing in rows, with two nuns beside them. My dad peered at the photo. Oh my God, he said. This is me. I am in this photo. Hayes was incredulous. But it was true. The photo, which my dad had not known was in existence, showed him as a four-year-old child, while he was in hiding in the convent in Banneux more than fifty years before. It was as if decades of time had suddenly been peeled back, transporting my dad to a time and place he thought he would never visit again.
Several months later my dad traveled to Europe as a tour guide. One of his stops was in Brussels. Dad had contacted Tony Hayes to let him know he would be coming to town, and Hayes had insisted they meet for a beer. My dad was on a tight schedule, but Hayes assured him he would come to the Sheraton Hotel in Brussels where the group was staying, and visit him there. Sure enough, one evening after an arduous day of travel, my dad got a call that Hayes was in the lobby waiting for him. My dad, weary but not wanting to disappoint his new friend, took a quick shower, and went down to the lobby to meet him. But Hayes was not alone. With him he had brought a journalist, Vivien Teitelbaum, the author of the article in The Bulletin where Dad had seen a photo of himself as a hidden child. Another woman, a photographer for the magazine, was with them as well.
They explained to my dad that Hayes had contacted them and told them he had serendipitously found one of the hidden children in the photo. The author wanted to interview Dad and write a follow-up piece. Soon the lobby of the Sheraton was cleared, much to my dad’s amazement, as the photographer started snapping photos of him being interviewed by Vivien Teitelbaum. Dad laughs as he recounts the story. They must have thought there was a real celebrity there! On September 24, 1998, a feature article entitled, “How did you survive the war, daddy?” ran in The Bulletin, recounting my dad’s survival story, and featuring a contemporary photo of him sitting on a sofa with Teitelbaum, as well as the original photograph of him as a hidden child in the convent.
Several years later, my parents returned to Belgium again. My dad was becoming more and more interested in learning what he could about what had happened in Belgium during World War Two, and he wanted to see the places he had lived as a child. They discovered that the Holocaust Museum was now housed in Mechelen – also known as Malines, the site of the transit camp where Belgian Jews were imprisoned awaiting transport to Auschwitz. My parents took the train to Mechelen, located halfway between Brussels and Antwerp, the cities that had been home to most of the Jewish population in Belgium before the war. Mechelen, my dad noted, is located right on the train tracks.
My parents started walking around the museum. At one point they wandered away from each other, looking at different things. Suddenly, my mother’s voice shattered the hushed atmosphere of the somber museum. Al, she called, Al, come here, your picture is on the wall. Sure enough, the very photograph that had been included in the article in The Bulletin was hanging on the wall in Mechelen. My parents gazed at the blown-up version of the row of little boys. One boy, not my dad, had a blue light shining on his photo. They later learned that that light signified that the child had been identified as an adult survivor.
The discovery of another actual survivor shown in a photo on exhibit caused a bit of a stir at the museum. My parents met the curator, who told my dad he was only the second person to be identified from the photo of the hidden children. She promised she would arrange to have his face illuminated in the future. She also introduced my parents to a researcher who ushered them into her office to talk. This was when my dad learned the identity of the person who had picked him up from his parents’ apartment when he was a very young child and transported him into hiding in the convent, Andree Geulen. She was now getting on in years, but still fully cognizant, and living in Brussels. The researcher showed my dad documentation from Andree’s notebooks. He gazed in astonishment at the records written in longhand. He had been Child 1068. His sister Irene had been Child 1069. Again, what had seemed like a long-lost watery dream came back in clear bold strokes.
My dad called Andree Geulen, and my parents arranged to visit her in her apartment in Brussels. They found her to be incredibly youthful, welcoming, and engaging on their visit, the day of her eighty-fifth birthday. They spent three hours together. She told my dad that she was in close contact with many of the people she had helped save when they were children. Quite a few of them now resided in Israel; others were scattered around the world. In fact, during my parents’ visit, several of them called to chat with the octogenarian and wish her a happy birthday. Andree told my da
d about what it was like during the war, how the Resistance worked to hide the Jewish children, and about her memories of transporting the young kids away from their parents. She even had her notebooks, where she had kept track of all the children she helped hide, in her apartment. She showed my parents the very entry showing that Child 1068, Alfred Bottner, code name Bobby, had been picked up, and brought into hiding in 1942 and again in 1943.
Over the years, Andree had been recognized and lauded for her work saving children, even receiving the prestigious recognition from Israel as one of the Righteous Amongst the Nations. But let me show you what I am most proud of, she told my parents, before they left, leading them to a room where a plaque hung on the wall. This award is my pride and joy, she beamed. The award was from the City of Brussels. On it was engraved, “Mensch of the Year.”
Now, finally, in their seventies, my parents have stopped moving. They live in Sarasota and seem content in their retirement. Their four grandchildren – my children, Ari and Sophia, and Sharon’s children, Alena and Jacob – are their pride and joy. Dad misses his family in Israel, particularly his sister Irene, and his uncle Nathan, who is like an older brother to him. After my trip to Israel in 2016 I convinced my parents to return for an overdue visit, and they happily reunited with the extended clan.
And so the family survived. Through intuition, chutzpah, and a lot of good luck, those who lived through the darkest times of the European Holocaust managed to evade annihilation. Their descendants – including myself – are here due to their courage.
We owe them all a debt of gratitude. But survival had a price. I believe we inherited their pain and suffering too, and it is embedded in our DNA.
Descendants of Leopold and Gertrude Offner
Full Family Tree
Melly’s Descendants
Nathan’s Descendants
Inge’s Descendants
Sources and Further Reading
Prologue
Tracing family heritage and Jewish archives: JewishGen website. www.jewishgen.org.
Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 2017. “Collections & Exhibitions.” College of Liberal Arts. University of Minnesota. https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/collections-exhibitions.
Genek: Lvov, 1920s and 1930s
Jewish Virtual Library. “Virtual Jewish World: Lvov, Ukraine.” www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lvov-ukraine-jewish-history-tour.
Sport in Lvov:
Godfrey, Mark. 2016 (May 18). “Jewish Clubs of Inter-War Poland: Makkabi Warszawa.” The Football Pink.
https://footballpink.net/2016/05/18/jewish-clubs-of-inter-war-poland-makkabi-warszawa/.
Jacobs, Jack. 2010. “Sport: An Overview.” YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe.
www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Sport/An_Overview.
Lviv Interactive. “Vul. Zolota, 32 – Stadium.” www.lvivcenter.org/en/lia/objects/?ci_objectid=1972.
Rightbankwarsaw. 2013 (January 26). “Jewish Football in Inter-War Warsaw: Gwiazda-Sztern Warsaw.”
https://rightbankwarsaw.com/2013/01/26/jewish-football-in-inter-war-warsaw-gwiazda-sztern-warszawa/.
Rightbankwarsaw. 2013 (December 1). “Ukraina Lviv. The Story of Ukrainian Football in Inter-war Poland.”
https://rightbankwarsaw.com/2013/12/01/ukraina-lviv-the-story-of-ukrainian-football-in-inter-war-poland/.
Stephen Spielberg Film and Video Archive. “Maccabi Atheletes in Antwerp.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. www.ushmm.org/online/film/display/detail.php?file_num=4570.
Wikipedia. 2016 (October 25). “Pogoń Lwów (1904).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo%C5%84_Lw%C3%B3w_(1904).
Yad Vashem. 2017. “Jews and Sport before the Holocaust: A Visual Retrospective.” www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/sport/index.asp.
The Maccabi Games reinstated:
Axelrod, Toby 2015 (July 21). “European Maccabi Games to Be Held at Olympic Venues Built by Nazis.” Jewish Telegraphic Agency. www.jta.org/2015/07/21/news-opinion/world/european-maccabi-games-to-play-at-olympic-venues-built-by-nazis.
Modern-day Lviv:
Apelsyn (Tour Operator). 2013. “The Juice: Lviv.” http://apelsyn.com/en/news-view/items/the-juice-lviv.html.
German Occupation: Belgium, 1940–1941
Gershon-Lehrer.be (blog). 2012 (July 5). “Expulsion Orders from WWII at the FelixArchief – Part 2: Researching The Inventory.” www.gershon-lehrer.be/blog/tag/holocaust-2/.
Wikipedia. 2017 (January 11). “German Occupation of Belgium during World War II.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Belgium_during_World_War_II#Life_in_occupied_Belgium.
Melly: Life under Occupation
The Anti-Jewish Laws: Belgium, 1942
Holocaust Survivors.org. “Survivor Stories: Joseph Sher.” www.holocaustsurvivors.org/data.show.php?di=record&da=survivors&ke=2.
Hunt, Kyle (producer and editor). 2015. “Hellstorm – Exposing the Real Genocide of Nazi Germany.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkQ6J5F01Do; www.hellstormdocumentary.com.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Jews in Prewar Germany.” www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007687.
Andree Geulen and the Resistance: September 1942
Abramowicz, Myriam and Esther Hoffenberg (directors). 1980. “Comme si c'était hier [As If It Were Yesterday].” The National Center for Jewish Film.
Bolinger, Bruce. 2003. “Dutch and Belgian Heroism – Part I.” WWII Netherlands Escape Lines. https://wwii-netherlands-escape-lines.com/airmen-helped/articles-about-the-line/dutch-and-belgian-heroism-part-one/.
Dumont, Frédéric (director) and Willy Perelsztejn. 2003. “Just a Link.” Les Films de la Mémoire.
Belgium and Holland, 1943
Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. 2015. “Apeldoornse Bos: Deportation of Psychiatric Patients to Auschwitz-Birkenau.” Holocaust Research Project. www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/apeldoornsebos.html.
Bobby: 1942 and 1943
Isaacman, Clara. 1984. Clara’s Story. As told to Joan Adess Grossman. The Jewish Publication Society.
Kisliuk, Ingrid. 1988. Unveiled Shadows: The Witness of a Child. Nanomir Press.
Loebl, Suzanne. 1997. At the Mercy of Strangers: Growing Up on the edge of the Holocaust. Pacifica Press.
Marks, Jane. 1993. The Hidden Children: The Secret Survivors of the Holocaust. Fawcett Columbine.
To Life: Stories of Courage and Survival, Told by Hampton Roads Holocaust Survivors, Liberators and Rescuers. United Jewish Federation of Tidewater, Virginia Beach, VA.
Vromen, Suzanne. 2008. Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and Their Daring Rescue of Young Jews from the Nazis. Oxford University Press.
In Hiding: Banneux, 1943
Wikipedia (France). 2015 (June 13). “Albert Van den Berg (résistant).” https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Van_den_Berg_(r%C3%A9sistant).
Back in Lvov
Europe Between East and West (blog). 2015 (November 18). “Traces of the Golden Rose Synagogue – Beyond the End of a History in Lviv (Part One – Text).” Jews of Lviv archive. https://europebetweeneastandwest.wordpress.com/tag/jews-of-lviv/.
Journeyman Pictures. 2012. “The Last Generation – Poland.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2hCH5ANJBE.
Kessler, Edmund. 2010. The Wartime Diary of Edmund Kessler, Lwow, Poland, 1942–1944. Edited by Renata Kessler. Academic Studies Press.
Landfried, Jessica. 2002 (June). “Brief History of the City of Lviv.” UCSB Oral History Project: Resources. www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/holocaust/Resources/history_of_lviv.htm.
Peltz, Diana. “Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv.” Lviv Historical Archives. Roots to Roots Foundation. www.rtrfoundation.org/webart/UkraineChapters-Peltz.pdf.
Stewart, Will. 2015 (August 24). “The Secrets of Ukraine’s Shameful 'Holocaust of Bullets' Killing Centre where 1.6 Million Jews Were Executed.” Daily Mail online. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3205754/Blood-oozed-soil-grave-sites-pits-alive-secrets-
Ukraine-s-shameful-Holocaust-Bullets-killing-centre-1-6million-Jews-executed.html.
Wikipedia. 2017. “Bełżec Extermination Camp.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be%C5%82%C5%BCec_extermination_camp.
Wikipedia. 2017 (March 7). “Lwów Ghetto.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lw%C3%B3w_Ghetto.
Brussels, 1943–1944
Beyer, John C., and Stephen A. Schneider. 1999. “Forced Labor Under the Third Reich.” Two-part study. Nathan Associates Inc. www.nathaninc.com/resources/forced-labor-under-third-reich.
JDC (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee). “Report on Belgian Jews.” Archive Document. http://search.archives.jdc.org/multimedia/Documents/NY_AR3344/33-44_Count_1/AR33-44_Count_05/NY_AR3344_Count_05_00608.pdf.
Pagenstecher, Cord. 2010. “ ‘We Were Treated Like Slaves.’ Remembering Forced Labor for Nazi Germany.” In G. Mackenthun and R. Hormann (eds.), Human Bondage in the Cultural Contact Zone. Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Slavery and Its Discourses. Munster, pp. 275–291. www.cord-pagenstecher.de/pagenstecher-2010b-treated-like-slaves.htm.
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