This is an article my cousin Peter Jassem wrote.
The Last Chapter in the History of the Lancut Jews
by Peter Jassem
Dedicated to late Giselle Samon née Jassem (a.k.a. Nusia) and her tragically perished Family.
Before the outbreak of the Second World War almost 2800 Jews, constituting 30% of the town’s population, lived in Galitzian town of Lancut. The centuries-old community was thriving. There are records related to Jewish presence in Lancut from as early as the mid 16th century.
When I started my family history research some ten years ago, I thought that the only people bearing my last name that had ever lived in Poland were those from Krakow. All paternal relatives of my late father Marek Jassem had lived there before the war. It was only after I did further research and discovered Lloyd Jassin (the immigration clerk misspelled his Lancut-born grandfather’s name) that I learned about a large branch of Jassems from Lancut. In fact there were likely more Jassems in Lancut than in Krakow in 1939. Upon further research I realized that my ancestors also came from the Rzeszow-Lancut area as indicated on their recovered birth records. I later established contact with a couple of Lancuters and Holocaust survivors, the late Giselle (Nusia) Samon née Jassem of USA and Motek Jassem of Israel. From the Lancut Yizkor book I learned that the Lancut Jassems were very active in the community, in particular in the Poalei Zion (labor Zionist movement) and in a Yiddish theatre. Lloyd’s ancestors were kosher butchers, who reportedly catered to the palace of the local Polish aristocratic family of the Potockis. It is thanks to Count Alfred Potocki’s intervention that the Nazi’s plans of annihilating the local synagogue were abandoned and the structure was preserved. Potocki was said to have helped save some Jews by employing them on his land and pretending that they were indispensable for meeting the Nazi imposed quota for food deliveries. Nusia mentioned that Potocki would discretely smile as a sign of solidarity as Jews passed by during the German occupation. She came face to face with him while hiding in plain sight among the population. Many remember him fondly, among them Benjamin Saurhaft, the last president of the Lancutter Society (Lanzuter Farband) in New York. Lloyd, who is a Manhattan-based copyright lawyer, is trying to collect more information about Potocki’s righteous acts. If you have a family story involving Count Alfred Potocki, please contact me or write to the editor.
Left picture: The family of Naftali Jassem (the older man with beard, Lloyd’s great grandfather), including Sara, Adela, Brindel, Zipora and Rifka (standing, left to right) and Jacob and Shlomo (sitting) were perhaps a typical Jewish family who once lived in Lancut.
Right picture: This elegant woman, Rosalia Jassem, was Nusia’s mother who died in the Belzec death camp.
When I was a child, my grandfather Arnold Jassem took me to Lancut to see the magnificent Potocki palace and the surrounding park. He knew the caretaker and I could see more rooms than regular visitors. I wonder now if the man was a former employee of the Potockis, who knew the pre-war Jassems of Lancut and whether my Krakow-born grandfather kept in touch with his distant cousins of Lancut before the war. Although with no close family ties with the town I have a special love affair with Lancut; to me it is a cradle of all contemporary Jassems – those who now live in Poland, in Israel, in the USA, Canada, Belgium and in other countries of the world. Perhaps the lineage was started by an orphan boy, since the word Jassem (pronounced Yasem) comes from Yatom and Yosem, the Hebrew and Yiddish for orphan. Some Israeli Jassems changed the name to Levadi, “a solitary man”, which translates to Polish as “Ja sam”…
A mysterious power of gravity drew me to the town some 40 years later, about two years ago, and after visiting again the palace, the park and for the first time the beautifully restored synagogue, I met local historians and archivists and I took notes from our conversations. In this short article I will try to the best of my ability to present the facts of which I made notes.
The fate of Lancut Jews was very typical of the fates of the small towns of Western Galicia. The situation in the first days of the war, following Germany’s attack on Poland on September 1st 1939, was very complex. All roads were filled with military people but there were also many civilians, who were let to believe that they, in particular men, would be hunted by the Nazis, and if captured, killed or tortured in the most cruel way. People repeated horrific stories, and some press and radio took up these stories as well. This is why there was a mass escape of the local population, Poles and Jews alike, in a panic to get to the East. Only the bravest remained in town. These were months of great turmoil and confusion. At first the Polish Army kept withdrawing eastward, and civilians escaped alongside; then the German Army arrived. After the September 17th 1939 Soviet attack from the east, the tide was reversed. The civilians realized there was nowhere to run to any longer and they began to return to Lancut en masse. However, as soon as they reached the town, on September 26th, the Nazi occupiers issued an order for all Jews to leave the area immediately. They took what they could carry with them; most left on foot, while some had horses and wagons. But it became impossible to implement the German order since the Jewish refugees were stopped at the banks of the nearby San River by Soviet patrols; the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact had turned the river into a new border between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. These movements were recorded in great detail in a chronicle kept by the town council members. Some people managed to cross the San River but they immediately found themselves under the terrifying Soviet regime and wanted to turn back; their efforts, however, were blocked by the German border patrols. Many people escaped in a rush and had no documents to prove they were even from Lancut. Close relatives and family members, Jews in particular, but also Poles became separated and could not find each other. There were many tragic events on the roads between Lancut and the San River during that period.
Many Lancuters made it back to their town and another chapter, life under Nazi terror, began. An early decree ordered all Jews to resettle to one area of the town. Buildings around the town square were designated for this purpose. The ghetto was not fenced in but was well-defined and guarded by the Nazis. The Germans forced Jews into hard slave labour, or coerced them into serving Germans in restaurants, or performing humiliating tasks. Once they were ordered to dig trenches in the market place; then, as as soon as these were dug out they had to be filled up with dirt again. It should be noted that local Poles were also oppressed at this time and many were deported to the infamous Pustkow camp, where work was exhausting, food scarce, torture and executions not uncommon, and from which most never returned alive.
The Jewish population was removed from Lancut in 1942 and never returned. Only a very small number had escaped earlier and found shelter in the homes of their Polish friends. This was very hard to arrange as a special police force formed by the occupiers was in constant search for hidden Jews, and those who were caught helping them faced the death penalty. In the early weeks of the war three Jews from Lancut found shelter with Polish peasants in the nearby village of Markowa. The Germans caught and killed these Jews and executed the entire Polish family of seven in front of other peasants to create an atmosphere of terror and to discourage others in the area from helping the Jews. They began by executing the youngest child in front of its mother and then shot the mother in front of her other children. Only a few Poles would take similar risks after such a lesson. Other cases are known of the discovery of hiding places and the resulting executions. The chances of surviving five years of war in hiding without being detected were very slim, although a handful of Lancut Jews did in fact survive the Holocaust thanks to righteous gentiles. One woman, who lived alone, and whose name was Flisakowa, kept and fed somewhere between five to seven Jews in her cellar. Close neighbors pretended they did not notice her efforts to accumulate larger amounts of food at a time when one person was entitled to one loaf of bread a week; food rationing was strictly enforced and most people suffered hunger. These hidden Jews, although eventually they became very weak, malnourished, ill and close to death, survived the entire war in this dark cellar.
It took months until the locals knew whom they could and could not trust. In the beginning there was a lot of confusion. The Nazis employed the old method of “divide and conquer.” It was a great shock, for instance, for Poles to discover “the fifth column” among people they knew and were friends with before the war. Shortly after Nazi invasion some individuals declared their German nationality and signed up on the Volksdeutsche list, thus becoming Nazi collaborators. These cowards, often “polonized” for generations, brought up the fact that certain ancestors were of German stock. Some acted out of fear. Many, however, sought benefits; becoming a Volksdeutsche entailed special privileges such as larger food rations, better chances to earn a living and protection from the occupiers. After all Jews were forced out of their stores the Volksdeutsche were the first group invited to take them over; next were the Ukrainians and last were the Poles. The Ukrainian minority was very small and consisted of several families before the war. They came with the Petlura army during the First World War and settled here. They were rather assimilated and many of them were committed to the Polish cause of independence; others, some from out of town, quickly declared their Ukrainian nationality, whether this was true or not, to receive somewhat better treatment from the Nazis. This new division of society, the lack of trust among the townspeople, the collapse of social bonds, and the overwhelming fear, made Flisakowa’s heroic acts a rare exception.
Most Lancut Jews, including Nusia’s mother Rosalia, Father Benjamin and sister Eva, died in the Belzec Death Camp. Last June a major memorial was unveiled there. The Belzec Memorial Museum collects information about the people, who were killed there. If you have such information you may download the questionnaire from
www.belzec.org.pl/wirtualny/questionnaire_eng.doc.
When in August 1942 the Nazis liquidated the ghetto, many Jews had already been killed in various tragic events or had died from the harsh conditions. Those who were still alive were taken to the transfer camp in the fields of Pelkinie near Jaroslaw, where they were kept together with Jews from Jaroslaw, Kanczuga, Pruchnik, Przeworsk, Radymno and other nearby towns for several days before being sent to their final destinations: children and the elderly were murdered in a nearby forest, most women were sent to Belzec death camp, and those who were able to work were sent to slave labour camps. Today there are no Jews in Lancut. The survivors and their descendants are scattered around the world. The only evidence of a once-thriving Jewish community that I could locate in Lancut are a beautifully renovated Old Synagogue and a large menorah in the grand lobby of the Count Potocki's palace. The cemetery was destroyed during the war, and its fence now delineates an empty field, full of fading memories. Perhaps this short text will contribute to the efforts to save these scattered bits of memory from oblivion.
The Lancut Old Synagogue has unique 18th century frescos decorating its walls and a beautiful, perfectly preserved bimah. It serves now as a local Judaic museum.
The giant menorah was a gift from the Jewish community to Count Roman Potocki of Lancut (father of Alfred) some one hundred years ago.
Peter Jassem may be contacted regarding this article by e-mail at
pjassem@rogers.com.
