Story of the Bachner family

It all started with this photo found in the archives of the Holocaust Museum in Washington. A young, pretty, smiling girl looks straight into the lens. The year is 1941, Krakow. The photo is needed for a Jewish “Kennkarte” and for a referral to live in the ghetto. The application to which the photo is attached reads that her name is Alfreda Bachner. She gives November 6, 1921 as her date of birth, although her real date of birth is October 29, 1921. It is unclear where the difference of eight days came from. Place of birth: Czarny Dunajec. She lists as her learned and practiced occupation: seamstress. Current place of residence: Borek Fałęcki, Kopernika Street - side street, in Krakow.

Alfreda Bachner in a photo attached to an application for a Kennkarte in Krakow (1941). Photo: Fot. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Before the war Alfreda fell in love with a boy from the neighborhood, Wilek Hollender (1922-1994, Wilhelm survived the war and worked as a production manager on many famous Polish movies), they were a couple for a while, but then their paths parted. Probably even before the war, she moved to Krakow. Here her story breaks off for a while. We do not know what happened to her during the following months. From the scanty information in the archives, we know that she was arrested in March 1941 in Cracow, and from March 13, 1943 she was in the Plaszow camp, from where she was transported to Auschwitz on October 22, 1944. On November 11, 1944, she was transported from Auschwitz III to the women's sub-camp Lichtewerden (now Světlá in the Czech Republic).

Her name appears on the list of female prisoners dated December 23, 1944, with a note that she was a factory worker. She lived in the Lichtewerden camp until her liberation, which took place on May 8, 1945.

Document from post-war records, photo: Yad Vashem archive

On the same day the Brünnlitz camp (today's Brnenec), located just 20 km from the Lichtewerden camp, was liberated. Rescued Jews from Schindler's factory were housed there. Among them was Alfreda's pre-war friend Wolf Weil (1912-1988), known as Wowek. Alfreda attended his wedding before the war. She was an friend of his wife, who later died in the Holocaust. So was their daughter Miriam. Wolf is nine years older than Alfreda. It is not known whether they met while still in Czechoslovakia or already in Krakow. Wolf at Schindler's factory in Krakow was a proxy. This position was assigned to him by his cousin, Abraham Bankier, who before the war was co-owner of the "Rekord" factory, which was later taken over by Oskar Schindler. When Wolf returns to his old factory, the Polish workers greet him with applause and ask him to stay. But Wowek doesn't want to stay in Poland; he associates this country too much with death. Alfreda decides to marry Wolf in Krakow.

Events from then on will move quickly. Wolf has a brother Naftali, with whom he worked in Schindler's factory, but their paths split at some point. Naftali, after his "death march" from the camp, is in Hof, Germany, a town near the border with Czechoslovakia. She goes to visit him. At the same time Naftali goes to see him in Krakow. They pass each other, but Wowek returns to Krakow and they meet. He takes Alfreda and they go together to Hof. In the former barracks, the Americans have organized a camp for displaced persons. Among them are many former Jewish prisoners. And the nearby woods are full of bodies of Jews who died in the "death marches." In Hof, Wolf meets Krakow Jews who, knowing his abilities, convince him to organize help for the needy. Wolf throws himself into the work, helps the living, and wants to bury the dead with dignity. For the burial, Wolf has to get permission from the American commander who is stationed in Hof. The American is an anti-Semite. Wowek enters his office and asks permission to bury hundreds of corpses in the Jewish cemetery in Hof. The commander does not agree. On his way out, Wolf says to his secretary: "I'll bury them anyway, please tell him so." He arranges the funeral, the bodies are placed in a mass grave. The American commander appears at the ceremony. Wolf becomes chairman of the Jewish community in Hof. Most of the refugees have already gone abroad, to the US, to the territories of future Israel. But a few dozen Jews remain in the city.

Among this majority who left was also his older brother Naftali, thanks to whom Wowek probably survived. After their stay at Schindler's factory in Krakow, and before reaching the Brnenc plant, the workers stayed for some time in the Nazi camp Gross Rosen. Naftali exchanged uniforms with numbers with Wolf. He concluded that of the two of them, he would be the one with a better chance of surviving in the camp, thanks to which his younger brother went to the factory. Naftali was transported to the Buchenwald camp and then to Sonnenburg camp. When the Americans approached the camp, the Germans sent the prisoners west in a "death march." Naftali escaped from the convoy and hid with two fellow prisoners in a forest ditch. For two weeks he was afraid to leave his hiding place, and in the meantime his colleagues died. To survive, he hid between their bodies at night and warmed himself that way. After two weeks of hiding, American soldiers found him, fed him and gave him a military uniform. They drove him to Hof, where he met Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who at the time served as commander of the American occupation zone in Germany. Naftali knew German and for a time was an interpreter for the Americans and helped look for Nazis. General Eisenhower gave him two pistols and said to him: "Here you have the guns, you have three days and you can do what you want with the Germans." Naftali did not want to kill Germans. He said he wanted to go to America and asked the general if he could take the two guns with him. Eisenhower gave him permission in writing and Naftali, who had meanwhile changed his name to Henry, left for America with the two guns. He kept them until his death. But life in America was not easy, he did not know the language well and wrote to Wolf, who stayed in Hof: "You'd better stay in Germany." Wolf stayed. Until his death in 1988, he was chairman of the Jewish community in Hof. This is where Alfreda comes in again. She stayed with Wolf in Hof. In 1946 their first son Leopold was born, and in 1949 their second son Heinrich. Alfreda lived to see three granddaughters and two great-granddaughters.

Now we move to Czarny Dunajec. It's 2016 and the first cleaning of the Jewish cemetery is underway. We don't know anything about Alfreda yet. Our notes do mention the name of the butcher Chaim (Henryk) Bachner, who lived on Kmietowicza Street and was a butcher, but that's almost all. From the written accounts of local residents, it still appears that "his wife died before the war after three days of great suffering." They had several children, and the oldest was Alfreda. Meanwhile, in 2016, Alfreda is still alive, 95 years old and still living in Hof.

The end of 2019, we start the "People, Not Numbers" project in Czarny Dunajec. I begin to describe family stories, which I have partially reconstructed based on testimonies and documents from archives. In March 2020, I describe the story of the Bachner family. I already end the entry with the sentence that often ran through our accounts, "Unfortunately, she most likely perished in the Holocaust," but I check her name again on the Internet just to be sure. I find a mention in a local Bavarian newspaper that Alfreda Weil, née Bachner, wife of the former chairman of the Jewish community, died in Hof at the end of January 2020 at the age of 98. The year of birth is correct: 1921. We confirmed her identity in the archives in Bad Arolsen, the documents showed the same date and place of birth: Czarny Dunajec.

With the help of the German consulate in Krakow, we get an email address for Heinrich Weil, her son. I write an email, describe our project, and invite him to the unveiling ceremony of the monument in October. In response, I receive confirmation that she is indeed "our" Alfreda we were looking for. She died at the age of 98 in Hof, where she lived until her death. Until the end of her life, she spoke Polish with her caregivers. But to her family she did not want to tell about life before and during the war, so we learned little more about the times of her youth.

Due to the pandemic, we have to limit the unveiling ceremony of the monument at the Jewish cemetery in Czarny Dunajec in 2020. Invited descendants cannot come to us. It will not be possible until 2022. For the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust, Alfreda's son arrives in Czarny Dunajec with his wife and daughter Miriam. After the celebration we meet, they briefly tell me Alfreda's story and show me photos.

From left: Alfreda Bachner and her siblings: Estera, Sala, Malka and below, Mordechai (circa 1934 Czarny Dunajec, photo probably taken in the Market Square next to the church and school) Photo: Weil family private archive

In the first photo is Alfreda, actually the oldest of five siblings, next to her are three younger sisters, and on the ground is a tiny half-brother. It turns out that Alfreda's father married a second time after the death of his first wife (it is possible that his second wife was Gusta Bachner, who is listed in the 1935 "Jewish Women's Benevolent Association"). The next two photos are of Alfreda's mother, Frimet, who died around 1932.

Frimet Bachner Photo: private archive of the Weil family

In a post-war photograph from 1946 or 1947, Alfreda is with her husband Wolf, his brother Henry and his wife Bianca. There is another mysterious pre-war photo from Poland, but unfortunately it is not known who is in it. Probably Alfreda with her sisters and her mother's family.

From left: Henry (Naftali) Weil, his wife Bianca, Alfreda and Wolf Weil (ca. 1946/47) Photo: Weil family private archive

Thanks to this new information and photos, it has been possible to reconstruct the Bachner family's pre-war fate in part. Chaim Salomon Bachner was born in 1894 in Chrzanow, his parents were Efraim and Etel Bachner. Chaim moved to Czarny Dunajec, and on February 2, 1921, he married Frimet Förster, daughter of Markus and Reza Förster of Jordanów, in Jordanów. The young couple lived in a rented house on Kmietowicza Street in Czarny Dunajec, Chaim worked as a butcher.

On October 29, 1921, their first daughter Alfreda was born, followed by their second daughter Amalia (Malka) on April 3, 1923, their third daughter Salomea (Sala) on April 5, 1925, and their fourth daughter Esther around 1929. After the death of his wife Frimet ca. 1932 Chaim remarried and with his second wife still had a son Mordechai. The archives still hold information about Szendla Bachner from Czarny Dunajec, who was married to Szulem Zinger. They had three children, who were born in Czarny Dunajec in 1928 (Rachel), 1929 (Isaac) and 1931 (Frederica). But it is not known whether Szendla was a relative of Chaim. It is likely that the entire Bachner family, except Alfreda, perished in the Holocaust.

I used the written memoirs of the Weil family, the book "Nach dem Holocaust. Juden in Deutschland 1945-1950" by Michael Brenner, the archives of Yad Vashem and the Auschwitz Museum