A Glass Half Full

By Esther Pinskier

Esther Pinskier began life in Warsaw, Poland in January 1926 - 13 years before the start of World War II. In A Glass Half Full, Esther recounts not only her life, but documents cultural life, social attitudes, living conditions and other historical remembrances which will provide the reader not only an insight into one part of the modern history of the western world, but also into what makes a person keep going forward when confronted with unspeakable horrors. Despite the back story, Esther's positivity and descriptions of life in post-war Paris, Australia and other parts of the world make this a fascinating read and in important social history document.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Mar 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992449834

Esther Pinskier

Esther Pinskier was born in Warsaw in 1926 but has lived in Australia for most of her life. Her life was materially shaped by the tragic events of the Second World War in that she was denied a formal education, displaced and became a refugee. That six year period has in many ways defined her life and raison d'être. Her recollection of the events of that period combined with an ongoing desire for an understanding as to why this occurred, have resulted in her reading hundreds of holocaust books and and attending a similar number of holocaust movies. Her knowledge of that period of history from a Polish Jewish perspective is unsurpassed and at 88 years of age is in many ways a living treasure. This book is her both her catharsis and contribution to the broader holocaust collective of works. It is a story of surviving and ultimate thriving. As Esther keeps reminding us, "The fact that I and my family are here, means that the Nazis failed. Esther lives in Melbourne, Australia. She is self-educated, speaks four languages and her thirst for a continuing education and life remains strong.

Book preview

A Glass Half Full

Esther Pinskier

Text copyright © 2014 Esther Pinskier

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

Shop 1, 197 Great Western Highway

Hazelbrook NSW 2779

http://www.moshpitpublishing.com.au

First Edition © Esther Pinskier 2014

The right of Esther Pinskier to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

Smashwords License Notes

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Cover image: © Esther Pinskier

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Family Trees

Esther’s First Cousins

Esther’s Family Journey

Timeline

Prologue

Chapter One: Warsaw

Chapter Two: Miedzeszyn and the Medem Sanatorium

Chapter Three: Warsaw Cultural Life

Chapter Four: The Nazis Invade Warsaw

Chapter Five: Bialystok

Chapter Six: The Ural Mountains

Chapter Seven: On the move again

Chapter Eight: Mirzachul Uzbekistan

Chapter Nine: The War Ends

Chapter Ten: Paris

Chapter Eleven: Leizor’s Story

Chapter Twelve: Family Life In Australia

Chapter Thirteen: Working in Australia

Chapter Fourteen: Travelling Overseas

Chapter Fifteen: Life After Leizor

Afterword

Appendix One: Family Notes from the Other Side of the World

Appendix Two: The Leizor Pinskier Trilogy

Appendix Three: Extracts from the original Yiddish versions

Appendix Four: Table of Photos and Images

Glossary

Dedication

I dedicate this book to the memory of my beloved husband Leizor Pinskier.

A gentle caring man.

Thank you for the wonderful life you gave us all.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my children Nathan and Henry and their wives Susan and Marcia for their encouragement and support. Without them this book would never have been written.

To my grandchildren, Samuel, Joshua, Belinda, Rebecca, Abby and Jake. Thank you for the joy you each bring to my life.

Foreword

By Professor Marvin S. Zuckerman, Dean Emeritus, Los Angeles Valley College

There have been many accounts written about how people experienced and lived through, if they were very lucky, the Holocaust. Not so very many at all have been written about the travails and survival of those who escaped the Holocaust but lived through the hell of survival behind the Russian lines. Esther’s memoir is such an account.

And what is so remarkable about her account is not so much the record of the terrible privations and sufferings she and her family endured, but how they prevailed, how through sheer grit, determination, and resourcefulness, in addition to their unshakeable devotion to each other, their family made it through to life, and then, with the same grit and resourcefulness, to the building of a new life in Australia.

First Esther paints a clear portrait of her family life before the Nazi invasion — a middle class, comfortable existence by the standards of the time. Her childhood and teenage years were warm and cozy in the bosom of her close — knit family. That closeness and warmth were to stand them in good stead in the hard times to come.

Her story of her family’s encounters with all kinds of people — kind, indifferent, hostile, Jew and Gentile — are not to be easily forgotten.

The small role my family (and hers) played, living in the comfort, but far from the affluence, of life in America, is also mentioned. My mother and father, and Esther’s aunt and uncle, were very close, as was I with her aunt and uncle’s son and Esther’s cousin, Leo. As a child, I heard about my Tante Paulie’s (as we called her; Perl, as Esther’s family called her) family’s hardships in war-torn Europe.

Sadly, many of Esther’s family and practically all of her beloved husband, Leizor’s family, did not survive. But happily and miraculously, through all their troubles, most of Esther’s immediate family did.

I was once in correspondence with her remarkable Uncle Mordechai. He sent me a book in Yiddish that he authored, asking for my opinion about it. Aside from playing a major role in Esther’s family’s survival, he was a gifted writer and artist, as well as politically astute, which made him understand better what was happening around them.

Her husband, Leizor, was an incredibly loving, quiet, modest, very intelligent man. A youthful member of the Jewish Labor Bund in Warsaw, he was active in their youth movement, SKIF. I read a wonderful article he wrote in Yiddish for Undzer Tsayt about the day the bombing of Warsaw took place and how he rushed to the offices of the Bund to see if the archives could be rescued. He was a rare and wonderful human being.

When Esther and Leizor visited me in Los Angeles, I called Lyuba Gilinsky, the wife of Shloyme Gilinsky, the Director of the Medem Sanatorium, and put her on the phone with Leizor. He had been one of the children who enjoyed an unforgettable time in the Bund’s beautiful Medem Sanatorium in the countryside outside of Warsaw. It was a remarkably touching moment. All 200 of the children and their dedicated and courageous teachers were taken by the Nazis from the Medem Sanatorium to the Treblinka gas chambers, to perish there. Esther and Leizor paid a visit to the sanatorium after the war. Nothing of it was left.

In summary, reading this memoir gives the reader a glimpse of pre-war Jewish life in Warsaw; an account of the terrible hardships Jewish people endured who did not endure the Holocaust itself, but escaped to unoccupied Russia to barely survive the life there; and then how they made their way out of the blood-soaked soil of Europe to make a whole new, wonderful life and family in Australia.

It is a moving, touching, heroic tale.

Family Trees

1. The Pinskier Family Tree

2. Menachem & Baile Szuc’s Children

3. Moshe & Sura Lewin’s Children

4. The Szucs and Lewins

Esther’s First Cousins

Szuc Families

1. Born to Menashe Szuc and Sura Szuc

Madeleine Stotvyner [Szuc]

Marcel Szuc

Cecile (Zila) Telem [Szuc] (Dec)

2. Born to Velvl Szuc and Chaja (Helen) Szuc

Daniel Szuc

Fela Strikovsky [Szuc]

Menachem Szuc (Dec)

3. Born to Szmuel (Zygmont) Szperling and Golde Szperling [Szuc]

Marek Szperling (Dec)

Halinka Szperling (Dec)

Lena Chaberman [Szperling]

4. Born to Benyomin (Benjamin) Szuc and Tova (Genia) Szuc [Lerber]

Nira Szuc

5. Born to Szepsel (Sevek) Ajzenman and Chaja Gitel Ajzenman [Szuc]

Michael Ajzenman

Abe Ajzenman

Lena Ginsburg [Ajzenman]

Lewin Families

1. Born to Sam Sugerman and Perl (Pauline) Sugerman [Lewin]

Leo Joseph Sugerman (Dec)

2. Born to Israel Mordechai Lewin and Rivkah Lewin.

Abraham Lewin (Dec)

Alex Lewin

George Lewin

Esther’s Family Journey

5. Esther’s Family’s Journey

Timeline

6. Timeline

Prologue

For many years I did not think I was entitled to consider myself a survivor of the Holocaust. I had not been in a concentration camp; I had not suffered forced labour behind a wire fence or the horrors of the death marches which occurred as Germany collapsed. In fact I always considered myself lucky because my family’s story is largely one of survival. Of my parents’ thirteen siblings, nine survived the war with their families. That is what is unusual about my story.

However I have come to understand that all of us who had to flee our homes and live in strange lands in very difficult conditions in order to remain alive are survivors. As the Nazis tried to murder every Jew in Europe chances were slim for us all. Those of us who were forced to flee east as my family did, did so in order to stay alive. I am alive today because I fled. Had my family remained in Warsaw, no doubt we would have all suffered the same fate experienced by those who were unable or unwilling to leave. Had the war not occurred, I would have probably lived my entire life in Poland, where my family had resided for some eight hundred years. Generations of my family are buried in the Warsaw Cemetery.

The German invasion of Poland turned our world into one of total chaos and destruction. As the war progressed the culture, language and way of life of Jews in cities and shtetlech (small villages) were swept away in a country where Jews had lived for over a thousand years.

I have a very good and clear memory. Both my late husband Leizor and I always told our sons stories about our lives in bits and pieces, for many, many years. Whenever they and their wives asked us to write it all down, I always replied, ‘Who would be interested? There are so many books!’ But I have changed my mind, because although my family was scattered and largely survived, my husband Leizor’s entire family was murdered.

I now feel that it is very important that their names be recorded and that we have a record for our children for all time.

Chapter One: Warsaw

My entire family was native to Warsaw, and I too was born there. My maternal grandparents Abraham and Sarah Lewin had six children: Perl, Dora and Esther – who died at the age of sixteen – Yochevet, my mother Brucha, and the youngest, Marek (also known as Mordechai or Mordtre). Abraham had