Day 2

2nd day: 18 October 2005

We woke up in the morning and had a decent breakfast. The hotel staff was pleasant. Today was an important day, one of the most important of our journey since we were supposed to visit the concentration camp Stutthof. Mom was brought there after she was held in Auschwitz II-Birkenau (she was in Birkenau). Stutthof was approximately an hour drive from Gdańsk. There was much information to be revealed, and we would also be searching the archive in order to find Sarah's certificates. On our way to Stutthof we drove through a small town named Sztutowo (pronounced Shtutu), which was on the northeastern edge of the Visla Delta. We toured the town and visited the beach on the Baltic coast. Since it was almost winter, the beach was empty and the kiosks and caravans near the area seemed abandoned. The beach itself was iSołated and had no lifeguard tower, or anything else for that matter, except sand.

When we arrived at the Stutthof concentration camp, the excitement was high. After all, not many Israeli's arrive here due to its obscure location and necessary forward planning. Even most of the Israeli delegations to Poland don't go there. There was an exhibition of prisoner outfits, shoes, old photos and maps of the original shacks that were preserved, similar to the ones in Auschwitz or Majdanek (pronounced Meidanek). Both were big concentration camps. In Stutthof, however, all of the explanations were in Polish. Tomash was a valuable asset as he was the only one fluent in the language. He served as our translator at the archive and museum since none of the employees spoke English.

We saw a group of German and Swedish youth at the entrance to the Stutthof concentration camp. The schools bring them there to see what the German Nazi regime had done. In this specific camp, over 60,000 people came to their death, a part of them were Jewish, but not all. Mom was brought here from Auschwitz in 1944, along with 1,200 other Hungarian women, as a laborer.

We approached the archive to try and find out if there are any details regarding Sarah, who was then named Sari Zauber. It turns out the museum had received the email I had sent two months earlier (they have a website so I tried to make contact in order to tell them about our arrival). They had prepared an answer, but had sent it by regular post to Israel (we received the mail only after returning to Israel). Ironically, the reply was in Polish, mind the logic: Sarah is a native Hungarian, we are from Israel and I wrote to them in English, so clearly their reply must have been in Polish. This made no sense (Polish is not an international language after all).

Here we see for the first time the original document of mom's arrival to Stutthof and the number she received. She was very excited and emotional. "You see", she said, "I did not make this up, I was really here." Her excitement became stronger as we showed her the original signage on the document; signed 60 years ago!

(Picture of the document at Stutthof- 3 pages).

We received a copy of the document along with a copy of the letter that was made for mom from the museum (in the picture above). There was an addition added to the letter: It turned out mom stayed in Stutthof only 2 weeks and then was transferred to a sub-camp named Bromberg- Brahnau, located in northern Poland, on the Brda and Visla rivers. The sub-camp was located approximately 200 kilometers from Stutthof.

We planned on locating it the next day during our trip back to Warsaw. Mom's name did not appear on the list of 100 women that were moved to the Bromberg- Brahnau camp, however. As indicated in the museum registrations, the camp was established on 14 July 1944 and mom had been transferred there from Stutthof the day after, 15 July 1944. She was moved there apparently to work on the railways, but it wasn't clear on what exactly. Another piece of information we discovered was that mom was transferred from Auschwitz to Stutthof by train, but she remembered being transferred by truck.

At the museum there was also a wing completely dedicated to the war. Actually, WWII began in Gdańsk, it's where the first bullet was shot.

For the post: Polish heroism in Westerplatte, located on the Baltic Sea coast, mouth of the Dead Visla, the location is of a Polish Military Transit Depot (WST) - sanctioned within the territory of the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk).

It was famous for the Battle of Westerplatte, which was the first clash between Polish and German forces during the Invasion of Poland, and thus the first battle of the European theater of WWII. The Polish defense against the Germans lasted for three weeks. There is a monument in the memorial for the Polish defenders. Below you can see the barricade that the German soldiers removed while entering Poland.

At the end of the camp there were the gas chambers, the crematorium (chambers used to cremate the bodies), and the train carts.

We stood near the monument of the Polish defenders. It was designed by a Polish sculptor named Tolkin, who had been a prisoner in the camp. He also designed the monument at the entrance to Majdanek.

We were about to watch an hour long movie about the camp, in English.

As it turned out, however, the movie didn't reveal much information we hadn't already known, to our disappointment. Afterwards we returned to the archive in order to receive the copies of the documents and hear if there was more about Sarah's past.

The Specialist-Historian on-site was Dr. Danuta Drywa who worked at the Stutthof museum.

We would see later, at the museum store that she had published a book in English titled, "The Destruction of the Jews in the Concentration Camp Stutthof between 1939-1945."

We bought a copy of the book. In the picture below we are conversing with her. Tomash was translating since she didn't speak English.

She told Tomash that there was an article published a while ago in a local newspaper about the Bromberg-Brahnau camp. Tomash asked to receive a copy of the article and she gave us one in Polish. This article would be our main lead for further discoveries on the next day.

We left the Stutthof concentration camp as it was closing at 3:00 p.m. and headed towards Gdańsk. On the way, we crossed the Visla River once again, this time on a shuttle in order to spare us the drive on the close bridge, which would have taken at least another half an hour.

Predictably, mom refused to take the shuttle, but we persuaded her somehow. (We told her it was a short journey and that there was a view of the other side of the river). She sighed, closed her eyes and prayed that it would all happen as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, Avi and I were taking pictures from the shuttle.

On the way to Gdańsk we remembered that we hadn't eaten anything since the morning and decide to search for a nearby restaurant. Over the next few days we wouldn't stop for a proper lunch since we were short on time. Our only full meals would come in the evenings. We were racing against time as the sun was setting early, around 5:30 p.m., and it was almost winter. Shops were also closing early. For that reason we came up with our own routine. During the day we would eat crackers and light snacks (apples and pears) and drink tea from the thermos along with the cookies we had prepared in the morning. When we decided to stop for a meal, we would stop at a fish restaurant. Mom, Tomash and Avi ate fish; I settled for potato-filled dumplings

Before we arrived at the hotel, we toured around with Tomash; it was getting dark. We visit the Westerplatte monument that overlooks the port of Gdańsk, the city itself and Sopot, a nearby town. Sopot is a small and pleasant resort town. There is barely anything to do there since it's not tourist season and winter is approaching. We found a few open kiosks down the promenade, near the beach. We stopped to take a closer look at the seashells, jewelry and other designed souvenirs for tourists. We bought a few souvenirs for the family. Afterwards we visited the synagogue at Gdańsk, but it was already closed due to the late hour. We did get to see the Sukkah on the side of the building, however, before moving on. We returned to the hotel tired, but pleased.

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