Approver Comments:
Since this is a feature article, I wouldn't categorize it as "proof." However, it is very convincing, and provides lots of good leads to explore. For everyone else, I am pasting in a Google translation of the article (which appears online in Polish):
Leon Kovner return to Lodz Print
Dr. Margaret Domagalska
Magazine Online Forum: Jews - Christians - Muslims
Christian Culture Foundation "Mark"
Since 1989, he sometimes leaves Israel to the time when this became possible once again, go to the country where he was born. He was born in Lodz in 1927 and lived here until the war had not destroyed the existing, recognized, secure world.
Comes to friends and favorite places. We proudly says that he is and proudly displays an Israeli identity card of the Republic of Polish, received at the office of governor a few days ago. - I wanted to have him - he says simply.
Meets with school and with students of the University of Lodz in order to talk about the times in which he had to live and the family. Of the fifty people were saved from destruction only two: he and his father's brother, Joseph Kovner, a painter, living in Sweden after the war.
In Lodz, feels at home. I have also and this is his place. Before the war, Orla Street, opposite the square where the gallery was built out of Lodz, stands the house where his parents lived. Elion's father Kovner - legionnaire, a participant of the Polish-Bolshevik War, Polish engineer was in love with. Pesa's mother, called for all fields, from an Orthodox Jewish family, and insisted, contrary to tradition, did his doctorate at the Jagiellonian University. After getting married look into bringing up their children: Leo and Nina.
And life toczyłoby calmly, if not for Germany, who entered the Lodz September 8, 1939 year. Dwunastoletniemu Leon reminded the German soldiers heroes, when the rubber coats, riding on motorcycles, began their reign triumphantly. For nothing seemed to warnings of a neighbor who has the Nazi party badge in his lapel Elion Kovner urged to flee to the east. But he would not. Remembering Polish-Russian war of 1920, as well as the behavior of deployed before regaining independence in Lodz, the Germans still believed that a civilized nation and worse than that of the Bolsheviks will not be here.
In 1940, the poorest district in the Lodz ghetto was established. Moving on Baluty for a boy from a good, prosperous home seemed to be enough anguish. In ruderze without sewer frost frost covered the walls. Poignant sense of cold, hunger intensified. Until he found a house railwayman, small, wooden, but better than the previous. New and old owner entered into an agreement that will provide the first house in which he may not live longer, and the second job for dahlias, favorite flowers first. And the summer in the ghetto street Gniezno blossomed flowers, colorful as a phenomenon from another world. Autumn carefully dug bulbs are hidden in the basement. Doczekałyby probably next spring, if not for Fields Kovner. Like many other mothers in the Ghetto Litzmannstadt, hardly seek to feed his family during the great famine in the winter of 1941. Roasted cakes. Dahlias were nutritious. Family survived famine.
- What are the chances of marrying a millionaire real? - Asked Leon Kovner Polish language students at a meeting in November 2008 at the Faculty of Philology, University of Lodz. - No - replied. - Well - he said. That my mother had a chance to get to work in the ghetto kitchen, but she succeeded. Once again, persistence proved to be an advantage. First, the cold front of the kitchen peeling potatoes for hours, until he was Kotlarek. I have not eaten at home, then ate her portion of husband and children. Again survived.
4 September 1942, was heard in the ghetto dramatically superior Eldest of the Jews of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, who urged Jewish families: Give me your children! In a slave labor camp in which they transformed into a ghetto, children under 10 age and elderly people above 65 years had no right to live. Ban on leaving the house, to facilitate deportation, lasted nine days. Seven Nina's fate seemed sealed. When you all stood on the yard and waited for the verdict, a small girl hid behind Leon and his mother. With horror waited for their turn. Miraculously remained unnoticed. Watchful eyes of the Gestapo are not spotted, trembling behind his brother. Rummage survived. There were no more children in the street, alone. Its very existence reminded of the loss. Aroused jealousy and grief of other parents, because she lived.
And besides, even despair, life went on, the teacher has become a teenage Melanie Fogelbaum Leon, poet, painter, sculptor. Dying of tuberculosis, a disease that half of the ghetto from hunger, she taught young people confined behind barbed wire love life. Summoned motto that the students remembered forever, and repeated it twice listener to students:
From hot, let the blood flow years,
Strong wine let the dreams of beating feet
And do not let them know how the black clay
House pours his soul, when God will come from it.
(Jack London, Martin Eden)
Works by Melanie Fogelbaum survived. Books of poems were found in the Lodz ghetto, and later transferred to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Her picture in the top of the garbage found Leon Kovner, when he returned in 1945 to house the Gniezno. Then they did not live longer or Melania Fogelbaum, murdered in Auschwitz gas chamber, nor the father of Leon, shot to death march or the railroad, which he so loved dahlias, and killed before the end of the war. Do not live or mother of Leo, which is separated on the ramp with her husband and son, then movement of the German stock life spared while his daughter was sentenced to death. Do not leave me Mama - asked Nina Kovner and Fields did not leave her daughter. Did not benefit from the grace of a Nazi. Deliberately chose death.
Her son survived. Transported after a few days from Auschwitz to Gliwice worked slavishly at the factory. Live to see liberation. He returned to Lodz. Not find anyone. In search of personal happiness went to Prague. Polish left the love of Sonia, a girl, which in the ghetto love. Although the youthful feeling of not survive, remained faithful to the teachings learned from the ghetto, the words of Melanie Fogelbaum. Not ceased to live creatively, proactively, with passion. Emigrated to Israel, fought for a new country. Started a family, sailed the seven seas, swam and came back home in Haifa. In the second home began the next phase of life, whose beginning was here, in the place of birth, in Lodz.
