Fryderyk Winnykamień

Fryderyk Winnykamień (born February 14, 1922 in Biała Podlaska ) is a contemporary witness as a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto . After emigrating to the United States, he Anglicized his name to Frederick Weinstein .

family

Leopold Winnykamień and Isabella born. Gerszange, the parents, came from Warsaw. The father had studied dentistry, the mother had graduated from the Warsaw Russian Gymnasium. Both married on March 7, 1919 in Warsaw and moved to Biała Podlaska, where Leopold Winnykamień practiced as a young dentist. Other places of residence were Międzyrzecz and Łódź. The couple had three children:

• Apolonia (called Pola) - * February 21, 1920 in Warsaw;
• Fryderyk - born February 14, 1923 in Biała Podlaska ;
• Ryszarda (called Rysia) - * October 27, 1927 in Międzyrzecz.

The Winnykamieńs were largely assimilated into the Polish majority society, which is reflected in the choice of their children's first names. In 1934 Leopold Winnykamień was able to open his first practice in Łódź, and the family lived here until the German invasion of Poland and the subsequent occupation in autumn 1939. Fryderyk, 17 years old, attended the technical college for mechanics in Łódź (ulica Pomorska 46/48 ).

German occupation of Poland

Like many residents of Łódź, the Winnykamieńs fled the city in a panic when the war broke out and returned shortly afterwards. But in late autumn 1939 they moved to live with relatives in Warsaw. After a stay in Otwock near Warsaw, the family took place in autumn 1940 in Gniewoszów, Radom district, a relatively safe place to live. Apolonia Winnykamień left the small town in 1941 to train as a nurse in Warsaw and had to move to the Warsaw Ghetto. On the run from raids, Fryderyk Winnykamień was also smuggled into the Warsaw ghetto in June 1942 for lack of alternatives. The other family members also left Gniewoszów and disguised themselves as non-Jews. Fifteen-year-old Ryszarda Winnykamień signed up under a false name as a volunteer worker "into the Reich" and worked in a factory in Bötzow near Berlin.

In the Warsaw ghetto

While he was living in the so-called “Jewish residential district” (Miłastr. 52), Fryderyk Winnykamień was assigned to forced labor in the Ursus armaments factory as a machinist from July 1, 1942 , so that he commuted daily between the ghetto and the outside world. During work, there were often contacts with Polish colleagues; Among these, the family also found the supporters with whose help they could later survive in hiding.

While all German occupiers appear in Winnykamień's notes as enemies to be wary of, the portrayal of the non-Jewish Poles is ambivalent. In view of a lasting anti-Jewish tradition, Jews “could never be certain whether they were dealing with helpful, ignorant or denouncing Poles.” The author perceives the denied solidarity of the majority society as a deep offense, which is repeatedly addressed in the records. Winnykamień also made negative comments about the Jewish councils installed by the occupiers ; they appear in his notes as "corrupt bureaucrats who are concerned about their own advantages" - the occupiers' calculation of directing the displeasure of the Jewish population onto their own representatives was probably not transparent from his perspective.

Since January 1943, Winnykamień feared that the ghetto would soon be liquidated. He planned to leave the ghetto with his sister. On February 7th, he was assigned to the night shift with Ursus and left the column with a friend, Adek Rozenberg. Persecuted and robbed by criminals, they wandered through the city. Finally, Winnykamień found his mother, who had already rented an apartment in the “Aryan” part of Warsaw (Ulica Wolska 54) in December 1942 under a false name. She lived there as Marianna Giczińska, a supposedly single Catholic Polish woman.

In the basement hideout

At Ulica Wolska 54, father and son were now housed in a confined space in the mother's one-room basement apartment. Here Fryderyk Winnykamień began to retrospectively record his experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto. A Polish family helper obtained ink and waste paper from an office from an unknown source. So it is not about diary entries from the ghetto, but rather retrospectively, but relatively promptly, texts written down in the basement. Fryderyk Winnykamień apparently planned to use these notes to draw up a coherent report later.

From their hiding place, the Winnykamieńs learned of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto . The news that the daughter or sister Apolonia had been murdered while the uprising was being put down led to despair and lethargy, so that Fryderyk Winnykamień probably only found the strength in autumn 1943 to keep records of the destroyed ghetto, so to speak. He also kept a diary more or less at the same time, these dated records begin on December 16, 1943 and end on August 2, 1944 in the fighting of the Warsaw Uprising . The news of the Allied landing in Normandy (June 6, 1944) caused a kind of writing frenzy, which Weinstein referred to in retrospect as an "outburst". The survival of the family and an end to the Nazi dictatorship now appeared to be a possibility. The writing had a therapeutic function in the face of hunger and forced inactivity, which led to self-censorship: the author stylized his former self “outside” as actively acting and optimistic, in order to build on this self-description. Religious issues or the question of joining any resistance groups are not mentioned in these records. All energy was focused on family survival.

At the beginning of August 1944, the family gave up the cellar hiding place and mingled with the townspeople camouflaged as Polish civilians. Since his notes revealed the family's Jewish identity, it was too dangerous to take them away. Fryderyk Winnykamień was arrested by the German occupiers with false papers and, as an alleged Pole, Mieczysław Ambryszewski was sent to forced labor in the trenches of the Nowy Dwor front section - Modlin fortress . Here he was liberated by the Red Army on January 16, 1945 . Half a year later Fryderyk Winnykamień returned to the destroyed house and found his notes where he had left them when he left the cellar hiding place.

After the end of the war

Friedrich Winnykamien left Poland in November 1945 because of the anti-Semitic currents in post-war Poland and in January 1946 was recognized by the City of Berlin as a victim of fascism . At the beginning of 1946 he worked in the administration of the camp for displaced persons in Berlin-Düppel (Potsdamer Chaussee 87).

In May 1946 Weinstein arrived in New York via Bremerhaven and began building a new life for himself. He had initially left his Warsaw notes with a friend in Łódź. In 1946 or 1947 she sent him this bundle of documents. He found work as a precision mechanic , got married and had a family. Only when his children had grown up did he take out the manuscripts and have them translated into English so that the family, who did not speak Polish, could read them.

Contact with the historian Barbara Schieb came about through Weinstein's wife Ruth. Frederick Weinstein agreed to create a German edition of the translation, even if that meant for him to repeatedly face the traumatizing memories of his youth in discussions with the editors.

Web links

• United States Holocaus Memorial Museum : Frederick Weinstein papers ( digital copies )

literature

• Frederick Weinstein: Notes from Hiding: Experiences of a Polish Jew 1939-1946. Translated from Polish by Jolantas Wozniak-Kreutzer, edited and commented by Barbara Schieb and Martina Voigt. Lukas Verlag , Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-936872-70-5 .
• Markus Roth, Andrea Löw: The Warsaw Ghetto: Everyday Life and Resistance in the Face of Destruction. CHBeck, Munich 2013.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biuletyn Informacji Publicznej ( pl ) In: Dane osoby z katalogu funkcjonariuszy aparatu bezpieczeństwa . Instytut Pamięci Narodowej Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu. Retrieved February 24, 2020.
2. ↑ Barbara Schieb, Martina Voigt: Introduction . In: Frederick Weinstein: Notes from the Hiding Place , p. 12.
3. ↑ Frederick Weinstein: Notes from the hiding place. Berlin 2006, p. 45.
4. ↑ Barbara Schieb, Martina Voigt: Introduction . In: Frederick Weinstein: Notes from the Hiding Place , p. 13.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Frederick Weinstein papers: Identification papers: Winnykamien, Fryderyk, 1942–1946. In it: ID for state engineering works, Ursus b. Warsaw.
6. ↑ Barbara Schieb, Martina Voigt: Introduction . In: Frederick Weinstein: Notes from the Hiding Place , p. 26.
7. ↑ Barbara Schieb, Martina Voigt: Introduction . In: Frederick Weinstein: Notes from the Hiding Place , p. 27.
8. ↑ Barbara Schieb, Martina Voigt: Introduction . In: Frederick Weinstein: Notes from the hiding place , p. 27 f.
9. ↑ Barbara Schieb, Martina Voigt: Introduction . In: Frederick Weinstein: Notes from Hiding Place. , P. 28.
10. ↑ Frederick Weinstein: Notes from the hiding place. Berlin 2006, p. 315.
11. ↑ ^{a b} Barbara Schieb, Martina Voigt: Introduction . In: Frederick Weinstein: Notes from the Hiding Place , p. 16.
12. ↑ Barbara Schieb, Martina Voigt: Introduction . In: Frederick Weinstein: Notes from the Hiding Place , p. 20.
13. ↑ Barbara Schieb, Martina Voigt: Introduction . In: Frederick Weinstein: Notes from the Hiding Place , p. 23.
14. ↑ Frederick Weinstein papers: Restitution: Winnykamien, Fryderyk, 1945-1999 .
15. ↑ Barbara Schieb, Martina Voigt: Introduction . In: Frederick Weinstein: Notes from the Hiding Place , p. 17.
16. ↑ https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/politik/dreifach-bedroht-1412845.html Triple Threat Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 25, 2007, No. 21 / Page 7
17. ↑ Frederick Weinstein papers: Certification of Nazi persecution and Soviet forced labor , 1945-1946.
18. ↑ Frederick Weinstein papers: Düppel displaced persons camp documents, 1946–1947.
19. ↑ Barbara Schieb, Martina Voigt: Introduction . In: Frederick Weinstein: Notes from the Hiding Place , p. 9.
20. ↑ Barbara Schieb, Martina Voigt: Introduction . In: Frederick Weinstein: Notes from the hiding place , p. 9 f.