Seventy Years of Life After the Holocaust

By Bernard Mayer

In this autobiography, Bernard records the many challenges he overcame after surviving the Holocaust: immigration, starting a business and a family, life-threatening illness, divorce, and many career changes. With vivid clarity, he recalls the key events that shaped his life, and describes how perseverance and optimism ultimately triumphed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514403297

Bernard Mayer

Bernard Mayer was born in Drohobycz, Poland (now Ukraine) in 1927. His experience surviving the Holocaust was documented in his first book, Entombed, which relives in detail how he and his family , along with 45 other Jews, evaded the Nazis by hiding underground for 18 months. He lives in Miami, Florida.

Book preview

We the Jews

We are going back four thousand years in the lands of Assyria Babylonia and Egypt. The tribal life prevailed and peoples were seeking lands to cultivate in the Middle East. As history tells us this was the cradle of Western civilization over the centuries.

Abraham lived about 4000 years ago, the father of Judaism, one God. Throughout the centuries many cultures and beliefs prevailed. But all of them vanished except for the Israelites. In the last thousand years before the Christian era, they became the influential people in human history.

Throughout many centuries of slavery in Egypt exile in Babylon, Jews survived; they wrote, had organized institutions. But they were persecuted because of their beliefs.

Eventually Christianity and Islam were born from Judaism. The three main religions are now prevailing in the Western world.

The Jews were persecuted in most of the known world after the Romans conquered Palestine in 70 A.D. and dispersed them all over Europe and North Africa. Beryl Mayer’s family are the ancestors who arrived in Galicia, Poland, area that was ruled by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire at the time (see map). Most likely they came to the area from Germany at the end of the 18th century or beginning of the 19th century because of the fertile land area and liberal attitude to the Jews at that time.

I believe the Mayer family and their descendants are the forefathers who believed in their faith throughout time.

They settled in the area of Lvov, Stryj, and Skole, in the village of Libochore high in the mountains, a plateau of fertile land with a population of a few hundred.

How it all started: Settling in Galicia

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Central Europe map

Libochore, south of Stryj (see map), a village up in the Carpathian Mountains, is located in Galicia, now the Ukraine.

For centuries, large Jewish polulations lived in small towns and villages. Between the years 1772-1918, the area was occupied by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Jews were given priviledges for education, freedom of movement, and land ownerships. Most Jews were artisans but many were very poor, subsisting on very little. All of them were devoted to their Jewish faith. They lived in their traditions and spoke mostly Yiddish.

About 1840, the Mayer family, who made money from commerce, bought fertile land in the village of Libochore where they settled. Beryl’s father bought the land and divided it among his children. Beryl and Basia lived next to a sibling who had a son named Nathan (I vacationed as a child on Nathan’s farm). According to records, land ownership in the Stryj-Skole area was 76% Jewish. The village had only a couple of Jewish families among all Ukrainian peasants.

Please think of the 19th century where there was no electricity, running water, telephone or radios. Notice that transportation was by horse and buggy, high in the mountains where winters were harsh. Basia and Beryl had 11 children and observed the Jewish traditions. Eight healthy children survived to adulthood. They were a prosperous, close family and six of the children emigrated to America.

According to documents and records, the family Meyer owned land in the Libochore area at least since the beginning of the 19th century. Beryl was born in Libochore, in 1838. His brother owned his separate farm. They were gentleman farmers who lived a self-sustained life with many peasants working the land and selling their crop at the markets in the area.

The topography is high mountains all around, summers were beautiful, but winters were long and very cold. It is significant to know that most Jews lived in small communities and they were traders and businessman. The family Meyer were farmers who were close to the Jewish communities that nourished their social and religious needs. They lived in tranquility visiting nearby villages and towns for their supplies.

To reach the village even today is difficult and in those days you needed a horse and buggy or sledding in the winter. We assume that they came from Germany with the names Mayer and Koening (Basia’s maiden name). We have photos of Beryl and Basia. Basia was an attractive woman with pearls and jewels.

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Mayer Family Tree

The house they lived in was made of brick and wood. They had a second floor for the children, which was called the alcove. The main area was large that included the kitchen and a partition for Beryl and Basia’s bedroom. All of the children slept on the second floor. One girl fell from the top of the stairs and was killed. All of this was told by my mother Tonia.

The family was orthodox and a teacher was coming regularly for Hebrew lessons. All the supplies had to be brought to the village from Skole. The children had attended public school down the hill in a village Tuchla. They all attended to the chores of the household.

Skole was the closest town where they had stores. The photo of Basia shows her silk dress jewelry and wig. All those items were purchased in Skole.

None of the members of the family ventured beyond that area most of their lives.

My Memories

During my childhood, I visited Libochore for summer vacations with my mother. Isaac’s cousin, Nathan, still lived on the farm with his 2 sons. They had other vacationers coming from as far as Warsaw. Nathan inherited the farm from his father. He was about 65 years old.

I vividly recall Nathan, who suffered from asthma, sitting in a rocking chair coughing frequently. They had horses, cows, and chickens. I watched them making butter and cheese. They had a beehive where one of the sons put on his mask and retrieved the honey. The mornings were foggy, we usually at breakfast outside on wooden tables and benches.

Beryl’s house and the farm were abandoned after World War I. In 1914, Beryl was taken to Russia as a hostage and returned in 1918