From Hell To Paradise

The following is a synopsis of Jack Aizenberg’s book which recounts his life. Before, during and after the Holocaust.

Jack [Yankel] Aizenberg was born in 1928 in Staszow, Poland.

His family moved to Lodz in 1932 to explore opportunities there but returned to Staszow after the German invasion of Poland in 1939. The family felt safer in a small town.

Staszow’s Jews were deported in November 1942. It was the last Polish town to be evacuated of its Jews.

Jack was offered a choice by his father: To stay with his parents and brother, or to go into hiding with his uncles and extended family. He chose to go into hiding and parted from his parents and brother. He never saw them again. Jack later learned that they were murdered in Treblinka.

Jack’s hiding place was soon discovered. He was sent to work in a German munitions factory in Kielce. Jack was allocated work in transport, which gave him access to food arriving into the work camp. He considered himself fortunate. He remained there until the end of 1944, when he was sent to a larger munitions factory in Czestochowa.

As the Red army drew closer, the work camp was liquidated. Jack and his camp mates were loaded onto cattle trucks and taken to Buchenwald, where he was forced to work in a quarry. He describes difficult, degrading conditions.

In February 1945 he was sent to Colditz where conditions were slightly better. Four weeks later, as the American army approached, Jack, along with 600 prisoners, was forced to march 200 miles- the death march- to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. It took two weeks. Many died or were shot along the way; only 50 prisoners endured.

Jack was finally liberated in Theresienstadt on April 27^th, 1945.

He was offered the opportunity to live in Britain. The Anglo Jewish Association arranged for the passage and rehabilitation of 650 Jewish children to Windermere in the Lake District. He went on to settle in Manchester, where together with other ‘Windermere boys’ he set up a successful business. He married Rhona and had two children and three grandchildren.

"I wasn’t frightened. I was too young and didn’t know what it all meant. However, very quickly, practically within a week, I realised it didn’t look good."

"Out of the train, undressed and straight to the gas chamber. That’s what happened to my family."

"My brother was gassed at nine years old. What kind of a world is that? What had he done wrong? He was a Jew."

"My first impressions were of the order, peace and civility.….We were used to hell and here was paradise."

"It is very painful for me to speak about the past, but I feel that it is my little contribution, so that people will know what happened. Some people deny that it ever happened. Well, I am the evidence."

From Hell To Paradise

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