Madeleine Kahn – Bukovina Jewish Heritage Sites

The Unter-Stanestie/ Vivos (Vivis) Pogrom: July 5-6, 1941

My mother and grandparents survived a pogrom which took place on July 5^th and 6^th, 1941 in the small village of Unter-Stanestie (Stanestie de Jos) and in its tiny, neighboring, almost unknown, unmentioned village of Vivis (Vivos) in Romania (now Ukraine). A summary of the events are detailed below as part of a concise and accurate article:

“In Stanesti de Jos, a village east of Chernowitz…the locals organized a Ukrainian national committee to take control of the village, ‘arresting’ the Jews and holding them in the mayor’s office or the saw mill. The Ukrainian nationalists soon began to murder their prisoners, and when the Romanian army reached Stanesti de Jos, the pogrom was intensified. Upon his arrival, the Romanian commander put a stop to the blood bath, but by that time between 80 and 130 Jews had already been killed. The fact that a local gendarmerie commander could stop a massacre underscores the fact that the impetus for pogroms often came from below… The Jews barricaded themselves in their homes, and the Ukrainians ‘patrolled’ usually armed with agricultural tools, for firearms were not widely available. The Ukrainians then decided to ‘fetch’ the Jews from their homes and concentrate them in one place. A list was compiled from which the names of the Jewish men were read out one by one, after which these were led away… Most of the Jewish men were beaten to death – only a few were shot….

Chana Weisenfeld, who was …from Stanesti de Jos, related how Ukrainian neighbors rampaged through the village armed with hammers and sickles. According to Weisenfeld, more than 80 Jews were killed in the pogrom. Close to the village, local perpetrators killed a pregnant woman and beheaded her… The massacres of Jews by the local population sometimes seem especially puzzling because the perpetrators are civilians and the victims are their neighbors…. Later when it became clear that it was possible to murder with impunity, people murdered so that no one would be there to remember the stolen property. (Geissbuhler 2014, 434-439).

No Jews remained in Stanesti. My family’s survival was close to miraculous after my grandfather was captured and escaped. Chana Weisenfeld, mentioned above, is my mother’s first cousin, aged 82 today (2016). The pregnant woman, beheaded in the forest of Vivis, was my grandmother’s sister and my mother’s aunt. Her name was Chaika. I am her namesake in Hebrew; Chaya, and in English; Carol.

References:

Elias, Carol, ” ’I Love You, They Didn’t Say’- Holocaust and Diaspora Survival: the Next Generations”, Orion Books, Israel, 2015.

Geissbuhler, Simon, “‘He Spoke Yiddish Like A Jew’ – Neighbors Contribution to the Mass Killings of Jews in Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia in July, 1941”. “Holocaust and Genocide Studies”, 28, no.3, Winter, 2014, pp. 434-449.

Following are pictures related to Stanesti de Jos – the gravesite now and pictures from then.

Picture 1: The mass Jewish gravesite for the pogrom victims located within the Christian cemetery.

In the 1960’s after a flood the bones came out and then the mass gravesite was built in the Christian cemetery, according to Dr. Kahn, by contributions from either Jews from the US or elsewhere.

Picture 2: My grandfather, Abraham Sussman, in hat, mill manager before WWII, at the pogrom site with Ukrainian workers.

In the following picture you can see the same wood mill which is where the main pogrom took place and a mass grave was dug. Approximately 80-100 men were killed there.

Dr. Madeleine Kahn, like my mother, was 9 years old the day of the pogrom and she visited the village in 1980’s.

The visit of the World Organization of Bukovina Jews to Stanesti de Jos in July 2016 motivated Mr. Irving Osterer from Ottawa, Canada to add additional relevant information about this heritage site.

First – here is a presentation about Stanesti. To see a short Stanesti de jos presentation that Irv created, please click on this link.
stanestie

Additional information about Stanesti will be posted separately by Carol Elias. She has visited Stanesti twice, and recently was able to find the melon farm in Transnistria where her family was sent after the July 1941 pogrom.

This post includes information from Madeleine Kahn, that has given her permission to publish the photos from her book – The credit for the photo is to her. THANKS!!

Her description of the town really gives you an idea of what life was like for Jewish people in the village.

She returned to Stanesti and Basilic is the book she wrote about her experience. She was told that the woman that abandonned her was no longer living in Stanesti. All the others that have been there, say that the locals seem unaware of the Jewish presence. There are no archives or photos to tell the story either.

Basilic written by Madeleine Kahn (Atlantica, Biarritz, 2011 ISBN : 978-2-7588-0399-7)

This photo, documenting one of the massacre locations in Stanesti de Jos, appears on page 148 of her book.

The author’s story is an amazing one. Madeleine Wolloch was born in France, the daughter of a Polish Jewish father and a Romanian Jewish mother. She spent summers with her grandmother in Stanesti de jos. Her vivid description of the town really gives one an idea of what life was like for Jewish people in the village.

She was only six years old when she was separated from her parents at the outbreak of World War 2 in 1939 and was a witness to the massacre of Stanestie’s Jewish men in July 1941. When it appeared that even the women and children were not to be spared, her grandmother appealed to her Ukrainian housekeeper to shelter her grandaughter. The housekeeper gave Madeleine refuge for one night, but the following day took her to the middle of a forest and left her there, alone. It is hard to imagine such cruelty. Madeleine spent a few nights alone in the forest before a sympathetic Romanian soldier found her and reunited her with her grandmother, her aunt and infant son. Many of the Jews in North Bukovina that survived the pogroms made their way to the Czernowitz ghetto only to be herded further east to labour camps in Transnistria. Her beloved grandmother perished there, but Madeleine’s French passport was her salvation and though very ill with typhus, she was placed in a convent and cared for by the nuns through the intervention of the French diplomatic corps in Galatz. After the war Madeleine returned to France, married and had a distinguished career as an academic with the Sorbonne.

She returned to Stanesti when the fall of communism made travel to the Ukraine possible with a French legation. Basilic is the book she wrote about her experience. Particularly poignant was a meeting she had with town officials in Nizhniye Stanovtsy. The Mayor of the town told her that no Jews were harmed there during the war. She was not shy about setting the record straight and even made an attempt to visit her grandmother’s house. She was told that the woman that abandoned her was no longer living in the area.

Mme. Kahn says that an English translation of her book is in the works. She now resides in Israel.

Category: Madeleine Kahn

Stanivtsi – Stanestie pe Ceremus Unter /de Jos – by Carol Simon Elias – July 2016

Stanivtsi – Stanestie pe Ceremus Unter /de Jos – by Irving Osterer – July 2016