Mejloch Kleinzahler’s letter

This letter is a very valuable historical document. One of the few remnants of the Jewish community in Czarny Dunajec. The letter was found in the attic of the house where the Kleinzahler family lived before the war. It was saved at the last minute as the building has already been demolished and a parking lot is now in its place.

The letter is 16 pages long and was written by Mejloch Kleinzahler, who was probably 18 at the time, to his cousin. It bears the date of August 17, 1939.

After the first paragraph, we realize that we are dealing with a love letter, and the author is aware that he should not write to his cousin because of "the knots that bind them." So far, we have not had any information about Mejloch, but his name and surname are in his letter, and the signature of such a person with a similar handwriting appears on applications to the occupation administration submitted in 1940 in Krakow, where some Jewish families from Podhale had to leave. We do not know who the cousin from the letter was, maybe the daughter of his aunt from Czarny Dunajec, who left her hometown, or a relative on her mother's side from Gorlice.

During a meeting with Tova Ahidov in Israel, it turned out that Mejloch was the uncle of her husband Lejb Kleinzahler (later he changed his name to Arie Ahidov), who was also born in Czarny Dunajec. We have more information about Mejloch's eldest brother, his wife and children. At the beginning of the war, Menachem (Mendel) Kleinzahler with his wife Reisel and four children (Berek, Lejb, Józef and Lola) fled from Czarny Dunajec to the east. During the war wandering through the Soviet Union, the parents died of typhus and orphaned four children who survived and reached Israel through Teheran. This is probably the only part of the family that survived the Holocaust.

Back to the letter. It is written in pre-war Polish, the author makes spelling mistakes, sometimes he crosses out some words and writes new ones, sometimes inserts sentences or words from Yiddish or Hebrew. The letter mentions the name or designation of a rabbi (Wielopolski, it may also mean Wielkopolski), whose son married the daughter of a rabbi from Czarny Dunajec (“our” rabbi, as Mejloch writes) - it is possible that it is about Izaak Lipszyc, who was this function in the 1930s.

The letter also shows that in 1939 a branch of the orthodox Aguda was active in Czarny Dunajec, because his colleagues from the organization were going to the railway station to welcome the groom. Mejloch himself, who quotes the Holy Bible in the letter and sings one of David's psalms at the wedding, came from a religious and orthodox family. His grandfather, Arie Lejb Kleinzahler, studied to become a rabbi in Nowy Sącz, and his mentor was the famous tzaddik of Nowy Sącz, Chaim Halberstam. Arie Lejb ultimately did not become a rabbi, but he was a mohel and shohet in Czarny Dunajec and its vicinity.

In the letter, Mejloch mentions a recent meeting with his cousin at his aunt's in Czarny Dunajec, her "sweet singing" and the day of the wedding when he "was not himself" because he was thinking about his love all the time. The letter in large fragments describes the customs of Jewish weddings in Podhale, which in itself is a very valuable historical memento. We learn from it, among other things, that the author prepared a wonderful lantern that twirled and shone as a gift for the groom for the wedding. The local rabbi must have also known that Mejloch had a beautiful voice, because at the beginning of the wedding he ordered him to sing something, and when his colleagues joined him, the rabbi ordered them to be silent.

The letter ends with a sentence full of hope for a close meeting with his cousin, but we know that Mejloch did not even manage to send this letter, because the war began in a dozen or so days. He probably never saw his cousin again, and died no later than three years after writing this letter.

This is how the letter begins:
“Czarny Dunajec, August 17th, 1939.
Although, as [you know], I had no intention of writing to you because of the knots that bind us, nevertheless how indescribably my joy was when I learned of the possibility of writing a few words to you, despite these "knots". So what impression you made on me in Dunajec, you could have noticed a little, but I did not show one hundredth part from what I felt and thought. But all this was still "a drop in the ocean" compared to the feelings that overtook me after your departure.