16/12/24 Very interesting document of Polish Holocaust survival. Some parts were repetitive.
A 13 month old infant arrives in Palestine from Germany in the winter of 1948 onto Kibbutz Merchavia.(Place where God is)
From the age of 6 she wanted to know who her biological mother Franka Bursztein was. The children with her had overheard from their parents that she was adopted and they all had siblings while she didn't.
1911 the first Cooperative (Kibbutz) was started but those in the Yizreel valley like Merchavia was in 1929 by Hashomer Hatzier when there was still a problem of malaria.
When she was 28 and already had children she got out of her biological mother's name Franka Lewinska and that she was born Jan 17 1947 in Germany.
Her adopted parents arrived in Palestine on the 4th wave of immigration in 1926 In those days people used to pick cyclamen and anemones for bouquets but later they became scares and so protected were protected till today.
Elana started school at 5 and a half years old. In her group was a boy crippled with polio and the children all looked after his needs. A few other kids from the city whose parents had divorced were taken into the kibbutz. In the 1960 the Plassim factory started on the kibbutz Merkhavia. Children slept in children houses and the parents home were small later on in the 70s that homes were bigger and there was then family accommodation, especially after the 1973 Yom Kippur War where maternal instinct intensified. This war brought about a somber national feeling and soul searching.
When she was 11 she spent time with her aunt in Tel Aviv and was taken to the play "The diary of Anne Frank" and for the first time was exposed to the holocausts. After that she was drawn to reading book on the holocaust.
She and Dubi also a child of the Kibbutz decided to marry but it was postponed because of the 6 Day War 1967. May pioneer parents had, had fictitious marriages to get a visa to British Palestine, and later married their loving partners. Elana was trained as a kindergarten teacher but went to courses to become a dance teacher.
1932 Youth Aliyah was founded by Recha Freier later Henrietta Szold took over at the the Jewish Agency.
Aged 37 Huldah Rosenfeld nee Steinbach was handed the baby and finally became a mother.
In 1947 Elana was born to Franziska Lewinska in Landris Lewinka. Germany. With the help of the registry office in Bergen , also the Arolsen Archives ( international Centre on Nazi Persecution) The ITS ( International Tracing Service. Then in 1977 she went to the District Court in Tel Aviv and requested that her adoption file to be opened. The search Bureau for missing relatives in the Jewish Agency. She wanted to find out the reason her mother had abandoned her, and wanted to meet her biological mother
Franciska was entitled to post war reparation from the German government. 1949 Francisca had come to Israel with her husband Yosef Burstein hoping to find Helen but after living in the austerity situation for 3 years they moved to Montreal.
A large number of births took place in the DP camps from casual encounters. People came from concentration camps , extermination camps , detention camps and finally to refugee absorption camps.
In Warsaw within a short while of the German occupation Warsaw's Electric power plant was out of commission. Even Hitler came to drive through Warsaw in his open Mercedes. Foreign Embassies closed. The Judenrat was put under control of Adam Chernlakov an assimilated Jew who had to do the German bidding. Jews received new ID cards with food ration cards. Going to synagogue was outlawed as was Trade Unions.
Her husband Frederick met Marion who arranged for them to get forged papers that live outside the Ghetto. 2 million Polish Christians were expelled from their homes and Germans were to settle in the country. Franka had studied German at school and got a job as a housekeeper and nanny for rich families she changed jobs when the boss started to get to know her, that would risk her true identity. Her husband Frederick had a job was being looked after by the landladies daughter but had become an alcoholic, they never lived together as it could give them away. From the Ghetto it reached a point that 10 thousand Jews a day were being transported out, to extermination camps, this was only realized later.
1943 Passover saw the start of the Jewish uprising, and the German were burning and destroying the Ghetto with the local Polish cheering them on. 1944 the Polish rebellion against the Germans started. The fighting lasted 2 months leading to the destruction of 80% of the city. Meanwhile the Red army stood on the banks of the Vistula and prevented the allies from using their airfields to help.
With the war ending pregnant Franka and Marion moved to Halmstad, Germany to his mother home. Here she might have been raped but was pregnant again. She heard Yiddish spoken and late at night she got help to flee with baby Danka to the DP camp at Bergen Belson. This was under the IOR the International Refugee Organization under the UN. It was under the British control run by people trained in Australia. They received supplies from the Joint Distribution Committee.
Her second child was born at the Glen Hughes hospital Bergen Belson. At this DP camp she met Yosef Burnstajn who was keen to marry her but not keen on the new baby who could belong to a total stranger. From 1949 till 1952 they lived in Haifa and Yosef worked as a stonemason but the poverty, austerity and rationing was a thing to get away from. Montreal in 1952 was the largest city in Canada.
1957 Wladyslaw Gomulka encouraged Jews to leave Poland many came to Montreal. Many in Europe refused to return to their Jewish identity, there was no God and if that could happen, it can happen again.
1979 Elana flew to NY and then onto Montreal and met the woman who had given birth to her in 1932. Montreal had immigrants from Eastern Europe, Greeks and Italians.
The Daughter Diana on her marriage realizes that Yosef was not her father, this resulted in an estrangement from her mother and later divorced her husband. On the marriage certificate was written Hendrik --- This trauma affected many holocaust survivor families, as survival through secrets and lies has it toll?
In the 1930s about 10,000 Jews arrived in Canada , 1940 about 2000 and in 1947 the Canadian authorities allowed 20,000 Jewish Holocaust survivor refugees in. Franka had the book Mila 18 by Leon Uris next to her bed she knew every street mentioned of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Elana asked her half brother Mike if his mother Franka had ever told him about her life in the Ghetto and survival , he admitted not and that he was not really interested? None of them knew about Elana and her being adopted out.
They had a family reunion of 5 siblings each born in a different city and country. She discovered she was part of the Systen dynasty with branches that extended throughout North America.
Growing up in the home of a Holocaust survivor isn't winning the lottery. Franka had terrible nightmares and often woke her daughter Diane.
Elana went to meet her husband who was taking the Israeli girls sports team delegation for a tournament and she was given digs at a old German couple. In the room was a glass cabinet with medals , the eagle symbol of Nazi Germany and a black visor cap with Reich emblems. She was shocked but said nothing.
Elana realized that she was the daughter of 2 mothers one biological Franka and one Huldah who was both a mother and her parent.
When Franka and Yosef visited the kibbutz they met all the Polish emigres who announced which village they came from. They spoke Polish and Yiddish and Franka even met a classmate from Warsaw. None of them wanted to return to Poland the soil where the holocaust took place.
Kibbutz Merchavia the first stone houses were build there in 1921 and Golda Meir was one of the pioneers in the first group.
In the archive of the Israeli court they found the document signed by Franka waiving her rights as a mother to the female child Helen, for adoption by the Youth Dept of the Jewish Agency. The Father unknown born 17.1.47.
Elana had called Huldah mother till her own children were born and then called Huldah grandmother. She was always jealous of the children on the kibbutz with siblings and large families have greater influence on the kibbutz.
She took Franka and Yosef to the Ghetto Fighter museum. Franka had been waiting all the years and had prepared herself to meet her daughter one day.
Yosef was so apposed to coming to Israel but Franka wanted to come to find her Helen. In 1981 Elana and Dubi went to live in Montreal and their children had to learn in French language. Dubi got a job in plastics industry and she as a Hebrew teacher. The Jewish school was run mostly by Moroccan Jewish immigrants. Being away from kibbutz she had to learn to run a family household for the first time. Working in a foreign country communicating in a foreign language in a much more rigid atmosphere. Living with the extended family she felt was victory to survival.
Back on the kibbutz 4 years later life had changed and children were now living as a family units with parents, but there was a lack of accommodation for this. Thus we understand in retrospect the idea of keeping children separate from parents was to deal with the economic need at the time and when standard of living increased the ideology changed.
Elana later wrote her Master thesis called A Longing To Belong.
Franka's secret of being raped and she did not know who the father really was.
Research through DNA and My Heritage showed she had a Polish Catholic father a survivor of the Armia Krajowa wounded on the first day of the Polish uprising against the Nazis.
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