An excerpt from the memoir of Yehuda Erlich: The Days of My Distress

Yehuda Erlich is also the father of David Erlich, founder of Jerusalem’s landmark Tmol Shilshom, who died suddenly in March.

By JONATHAN FELDSTEIN
MEMORIAL TO the victims of the 1942 and 1945 massacres. (photo credit: PATRYK CZERWONY)
MEMORIAL TO the victims of the 1942 and 1945 massacres.
(photo credit: PATRYK CZERWONY)
The following is an excerpt from the memoirs of Kanczuga native Yehuda Erlich, The Days of My Distress. Yehuda Erlich is one of the last survivors from Kanczuga who lived through and witnessed when Jewish life thrived and ended there, including the pogrom in 1945 after the war.
He is also the father of David Erlich, founder of Jerusalem’s landmark Tmol Shilshom, who died suddenly in March. May the Erlich family know no more sorrow and distress.
Seder night 1945
Pesach was approaching, and the survivors who remained in Kanczuga decided to make the Seder together. This Seder is one of my most painful memories. We gathered in the Kramberg’s house, 15 men and a single woman. Each one remembering his family, and the Seders they had shared together in the past. Now we were merged in a kind of strange new family.
One of the men in our group was saved by a Polish woman who hid him. Moshe Rosenholtz, was 60. Before the war, he was a wealthy man. He had a business exporting eggs, and a beautiful family. All six of his children were tall and handsome, a family of beautiful giants. How it happened that, from the whole family, only the father survived, I do not know.
A few days after my release and return to Kanczuga, someone came and told us that Moshe Rosenholtz was sitting alone at the edge of the town, waiting for someone to come and take him to where we were all staying in those first days. We were told that he had trouble walking and needed help. I went with my friend Yankele. When I saw him, I was horrified. The man I remembered as the head of the “family of beautiful giants” stood before me looking shockingly shabby. His hair had grown wild, he did not wear a shirt, but a vest. He was the picture of a poor and miserable man.
All my possessions in the world were 10 zloty. We took him to a barber who cut his hair and shaved him for this amount. Over the next few weeks, he recovered and gained human form again. On the night of the Seder, dressed in fine clothes, he sat at the head of the table as the eldest among us. How he managed to survive those few months, I do not know. His recovery was a miraculous wonder.
This Seder was different than those celebrated by our families in the past. One of the survivors, Azriel Raizfeld, knew how to play the violin. We all enjoyed his music that night, bringing many to tears. I often recall this Seder as one of a kind.
KANCZUGA’S JEWISH cemetery restored. (Patryk Czerwony)
KANCZUGA’S JEWISH cemetery restored. (Patryk Czerwony)
Murder of survivors
I came to the Seder from Pszeworsk. The next day I returned to my office (with the police). That night I went to sleep early, but soon the deputy commander woke me with terrible news: the Jews of Kanczuga had been murdered. I didn’t know how many were murdered. I didn’t know who, or how. It was a terrible night for me.
I prepared to go to back to Kanczuga in the morning, armed. I did not feel any support from the commander of the police, nor from any others. In the morning I called the police chief in Kanczuga and told him I was coming with a group of policemen and asked for his help.
I took a weapon, and a few officers from our squad, and set out to Kanczuga. I discovered that six Jews, who had been staying in two houses, had been killed that night. Kanczuga suddenly filled with swarms of Poles, arriving from the surrounding villages, filling the town square. I don’t know why they came, perhaps purely out of curiosity. However I felt no empathy from them.
Then, we were faced with the matter of burial. According to Jewish law, we needed to bury our neighbors in a Jewish cemetery. However the Jewish cemetery was about two kilometers away. We were hesitant because we had heard rumors and feared that there were plans to attack us en route.
The sight in both places of the murder was terrible. Things were scattered all over the floor next to the victims. Everything was destroyed. It was like a scene from a pogrom against the Jews, pictures of which appeared in the papers in the past. There were two detectives from the Investigations Department of some government agency, but they were not sympathetic at all. Their report was very technical, referring to the form of murder, the entry and exit points of the bullets from the bodies. They prohibited me from photographing the victims and the horrible scenes.
After much consideration, we decided to bury the six victims in the Krieger Family’s grove, where three of our friends were killed, including two daughters, and last survivors of the Krieger family. We dug a big pit and buried the dead in the communal grave. Afterward, my clothes were soaked in blood.
Later, one of our officers told me that they had a suspect. I do not remember what the premise for this man’s involvement in the murder was, however, the officer told me of a well-known Pole from the town, who was one of the suspected murderers. While in town, I spotted the man in a crowd in the market and decided to arrest him. It must have been a strange sight; me, a small Jewish boy, leading this large Polish man by gunpoint, with hundreds of Poles surrounding us, watching. Where I got the courage to do this, I do not know.
It was clear that we could not leave a single Jew in Kanczuga. It was no longer safe. And so we all left; the remaining Jews, the police officers, and the prisoner. We left Kanczuga by wagon and made our way to Pszeworsk. After arriving in Pszeworsk I helped the survivors settle into to the rooms of my fellow officers in the (police) building.
The next day the family of the murder suspect arrived, and attempted to pressure me into releasing him. Among them was the suspect’s cousin, who happened to be a police officer in a nearby town. The family had engaged him to help pressure to release his cousin. He sat before me with a gun in his hand, clearly intended as a threat towards me. I stood my ground and did not allow them to affect me, but unfortunately it was pointless. My commander released the suspect, after the later signed a form committing to cooperate with the government, quite a common method in those times.
We never discovered the true identity of the murderers. I believe that it was Poles who had stolen Jewish property and claimed it as their own. Having Jewish survivors living close by threatened them, and their newly claimed property. However, this is only my assumption, one that I cannot prove.