A life interrupted

ULLIN, Ill. -- Jerry Koenig's life came to a screeching halt when he was 9.

That was when his family packed their belongings on a horse-drawn wagon to escape from their hometown, a suburb of Warsaw, Poland.

Other families were trying to escape, too, so the roads in Poland were congested. The family learned quickly they couldn't outrun airplanes, tanks or artillery shells. So they turned around and traveled back to Warsaw.

It was Sept. 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, and Koenig's life suddenly changed. A few weeks later, Poland surrendered to Germany.

"I am a Holocaust survivor," Koenig told a group of Illinois high school students on Tuesday at Shawnee Community College in Ullin.

Koenig, now of St. Louis, was born in Poland in 1930. His father owned an apartment building, a packing factory and a 60-acre farm. His family wasn't rich, but they lived comfortably.

The family was a target of the German invasion of Poland because they were Jewish.

The Nazi persecution of the Jews began after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933. By 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were established, and Jews were forced out of their businesses and more than 1,000 synagogues were burned or damaged. Jews were imprisoned in concentration camps or forced to move into ghettos. At the time, less than 1 percent of the population in Germany was Jewish.

In 1939, the German army moved into Poland, starting World War II.

Koenig said the Jews in Poland were forced to wear white armbands with a blue Star of David to identify themselves as Jewish. One out of 11 people in Poland was Jewish at the time.

"If you were walking down the street and a German soldier walked by, you had to get off the sidewalk and bow down," he said.

After Germany invaded Warsaw, Koenig and his family were forced to move into a ghetto. They lived in three-bedroom house with five other families. The ghetto was surrounded by a tall brick wall with barbed wire on the top of it.

"You couldn't leave without permission, and food was rationed," Koenig said. "People starved to death, and the sanitary conditions were horrendous."

They lived in the ghetto for about a year until his father found a way for the family to be smuggled out and taken to a safer location in Kosow, Poland.

"When we got to Kosow, everything was normal. We could not understand why," Koenig said. "Why was nothing bad happening here~"

By 1942, the death camp was introduced. Six death camps were built in Poland -- including one in Kosow.

The family now understood why nothing bad was happening in Kosow. Why there were no ghetto. Why Nazi soldiers didn't bother them.

Kosow served as a supply of labor for the death camps.

"We knew we would not survive in Kosow, and the only way to survive was to go into hiding," Koenig said.

Many of the non-Jewish residents in Poland weren't willing to help the Jews for fear of being killed by the Nazis. But a local farmer agreed to hide the family in return for Koenig's father's farm.

Starting in the winter of 1942, the farmer hid 11 Jews in an underground shelter beneath his barn. The shelter, lined with straw, was 24-by-6-feet and 4 1/2 feet tall. The bathroom was a chicken coop in the barn that could only be used late at night.

"The conditions were very crowded," Koenig said. "And we rarely came out because we had to be careful so no one would see us."

The 11 people in seclusion were brought one loaf of bread and one pot of soup a day to share. Sometimes the meal came at 8 a.m., sometimes at 8 p.m., and sometimes not at all. The family hiding the Jews had to be secretive.

Koenig and his family lived under the barn for 20 months.

"Things were rough, and we doubted we would ever get out of there alive," Koenig said.

Another Jewish woman who shared the underground shelter with the family found out she was pregnant. Months later, a healthy baby girl was born.

"We weren't sure what to do because we couldn't keep a baby in the shelter with us. Unfortunately, the little girl had to die so we wouldn't get caught," Koenig said. "That had a horrible effect on my brother and myself -- it was a horrible thing to witness."

Koenig said the family passed time by playing chess and learning how to speak Russian and German.

By May 1945, Germany surrendered. The farmer told the Jews they could go home.

Koenig and his family did, but they found their home and neighborhood had been destroyed during the war. His father decided to move the family. They traveled to Czechoslovakia, then to Austria and then to the American Zone of Occupation in Germany.

In February 1951, the family got a visa to move to the United States. A small Jewish community in Davenport, Iowa, sponsored the family.

"We ask ourselves today, 'How could this happen just 60 years ago~'" Koenig said. "How did something this horrible happen in Germany~"

When the Holocaust ended, more than 12 million people were killed. Six million Jews and 6 million Gypsies, communists, homosexuals, mentally retarded and physically disabled people died.

If there's a lesson to be learned from the Holocaust, Koenig knows what it is.

"Hate and intolerance have no place in society," he said. "Humans are subject to brainwashing. The Germans were brainwashed."

Koenig will speak about his survival of the Holocaust at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. today at Shawnee Community College. The presentations are open to the public.

jfreeze@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 246