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February 11, 2005/Adar 12 5765, Volume 57, No. 24
Family receives belongings of relatives killed during WWII
JORDANA ROTHSTEIN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - George Shainfarber survived Auschwitz with his father, Jakub, and his memories, but he died before he could obtain the personal effects of the more than a dozen relatives on his father's side who died together during World War II.
Now Polish officials have returned his relatives' effects - including a thimble, some coins, a knife and some cloth - to his widow and two daughters.
"I feel my father's presence so strongly," said his daughter, Gayle Nadler, in New York on Feb. 6, after viewing the items. "I think that he would be so proud right now. We were able to help him accomplish something so important to him after he helped us accomplish so much."
Shainfarber learned of the deaths of his relatives while still in Auschwitz, where his mother and sister died.
His aunt and uncle, several cousins and close family friends had hidden in a pit in the forest. Men believed to be Polish bandits stumbled onto the hiding place, and shot all 16 people hiding there, including several young children. Shainfarber's uncle, away from the pit at the time, returned to find his family dead and hung himself.
After his liberation in 1945, Shainfarber returned to the site of the massacre.
Shainfarber contemplated marking the site or moving his relatives' remains to a proper graveyard; he eventually decided to leave the dead in peace, leaving an etching on a tree to mark the location.
In 1950, at the age of 22, Shainfarber immigrated to the United States, followed a year later by his father.The younger Shainfarber married an American-born woman, Edna, and had two daughters.
Memories were all that remained of the relatives on his mother's side, his daughter Linda Jaffe said. "The idea of having anything tangible from his family was unreal; he had nothing from any of his relatives," she added.
In September, 2002, a retired Polish truck driver, hunting for artifacts with his metal detector, uncovered the burial site, digging up spoons, a portable stove and a human skull. An exhumation by Polish authorities followed. The government held the items as part of a murder investigation, which Shainfarber fully supported.
With the help of Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich, Shainfarber's relatives were buried in December 2002 in a Polish Jewish cemetery. The family then petitioned the government to release the personal belongings.
Shainfarber wrote, "Words cannot express the value these items have for me. While they have no intrinsic value, they are the only articles left in the world that belonged to my family before they were murdered in the Holocaust. They must look so simple, so old, so ruined. They could probably be mistaken for trash, yet they are so very precious because for me, they hold vitality and strength."
Shainfarber died on Aug. 21, 2004, and was buried two days later, the same day the gravestones of his family members were erected.
On Feb. 6, Schudrich presented the personal remains to Shainfarber's wife and daughters, and the family hopes to display them to honor the memory of all victims of the Holocaust and to show that even 60 years later it is possible to feel a connection with them.
"All these small things bring out the humanness of the suffering that took place," Schudrich said.
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