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[Fred Zaidman] What did it mean to me growing up with Holocaust survivors.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
To me it felt like, uh...
Confusion.
I felt like I was the only one
in the world being affected by it.
I felt so,
uh, isolated,
in my feelings as well.
You know, I couldn't express them to anybody.
I couldn't pour it out.
I thought it was so painful that they didn't want to discuss it.
And I think deep down inside
I wanted to know.
And I just couldn't muster the courage to ask.
When I was three years old in 1967,
I was at my aunt and uncle's apartment
And I knew that something was different
then the ordinary family.
And I... I could feel like
a pain in my chest.
I just saw the sorrow in their eyes and in their faces.
[Fred] My father was more carefree.
My mother lived in anxiety and fear.
So she was very over-protective
and was a very tough woman.
She really was.
I remember my mother crying to someone on the phone every morning.
There was a sense of something horrible happened in the past.
But when my mother started to cry, I would start to cry.
I went to Hebrew school, I was bar mitzvaed.
My parents and their friends spoke in Yiddish.
I wanted to be more American.
And I was battling with myself which way to go.
So that's how I grew up.
Shy and by myself.
and, uh, sports.
That gave me a lot of confidence which I didn't even know I had.
I can still do it.
Yeah, look at that.
Was it enough? No.
Because there's more to life than sports.
My parents weren't aware
of what was going on inside me.
They were more into their own world
of survival.
They met in Bergen-Belsen
Shortly after being liberated, they married.
And they had my brother in 1947.
My father and mother didn't know each other in the camps.
So they had men on one side and women on the other side.
They never met, never mingled.
So then when they were liberated
in '45 by the British,
everybody came to the courtyard.
According to my mother, people picked partners,
without love, just to rebuild the population.
My mother met a doctor,
and she met my father the carpenter.
And she took my father the carpenter.
And years later she tells my father she should have taken the doctor.
I think they fell in love later.
But they weren't in love when they got married.
The Holocaust kept them together.
After they were married,
they went back to Poland to look for family
And they found my Aunt Manya, my mother's youngest sister.
[Miriam Ickowicz] 1939 when the Germans came in,
They took me right away.
I was just a kid, 12 years old.
And my parents never saw me again.
I went to Czechoslovakia.
The life was something
nobody should know about it. Nobody.
I was liberated from the Russian army. The whole camp.
And we walked, we walked,
and every time we saw people,
we said, "Maybe it's my sister, maybe it's my brother."
Very, very anxious to find family.
I was in Poland
and somebody knocks on the door.
It was my sister with my brother-in-law.
And we smuggled ourselves
to Germany.
We lived together till I got married.
That was the day. [chuckles]
[Fred] They were there for five years.
And they built a life over there
and did the best they can, it wasn't easy.
We had a relative in Beverly Hills.
Abe Biren.
And so he sponsored my parents
to come to the United States with me.
They moved to Los Angeles in 1950
and I was born in 1954.
The parents were having trouble supporting
two kids because the finances were not good.
And so Fred was temporarily put up
so somebody else could take care of him.
The only thing I couldn't figure out,
which I never asked, was why him and not me, or both of us?
[Fred] I would say my brother was the favorite.
They shared that history back in Bergen-Belsen.
I think there's a special bond because of that.
And with me, I'm the Americano.
Now, I have another person who grew up in our family
His name is Barry Levine.
And we all considered him a brother.
I say I have two brothers.
[Barry Levine] I just fit in. They were so friendly.
So concerned about me,
and I truly called them my second set of parents.
I tried my best to cheer them up.
They were filled with
horror, pictures in their minds about the Holocaust.
And they were sad a lot of times,
really sad, which we could all pick up very easily.
[Fred] My mother was dealing with her past.
There were the nightmares.
Gestapo, Nazis, Gestapo.
[Martin] So you're coming out of the concentration camp,
where's the therapists to help people cope?
As far as I know, they didn't get any.
So whatever happened to them in Germany they brought here.
[Fred] My mother says, "You're lucky, you have a mother.
I don't have my mother.
I don't even know where my mother is buried."
I feel Fred experienced that trauma a lot more than Martin did.
He went with their grief and sorrow.
He lived it.
I didn't allow myself to live with negativity.
It was, like, not me.
[Fred] In the past, I was in various businesses.
And when my parents took ill, I pretty much stopped working to take care of them.
Now they're gone, and my passion now is volunteering.
The food pantry, it's my way of helping out.
I didn't want to be someone who was on the outside looking in.
This was instilled in me by my mother.
She never let anybody who came in the house
leave without eating something.
The constant statement was,
"Fleisch, fleisch, you have to eat, come on.
Come here, eat."
I got the lamb chops
and the tongue. Ugh!
[laughing]
And all these Jewish foods.
[Fred] I've been volunteering here for 18 years.
I discovered many of the kids playing basketball
were not playing in any leagues,
and I started to build a program
where kids had their uniforms
and they got their trophies,
and their achievements were right here.
I've giving you a certificate for all your great work in the park
and for working to get Nick Young here.
Well, thank you.
Keep going.
-[woman talking indistinctly] -Hiya.
I donate platelets at Cedars-Sanai Medical Center
because my father took ill, he was in the ER
and they gave him six pints
of blood from strangers who came in.
And that saved his life.
He has donated 273 times,
and this achievement makes him the donor who has made the most donations
in the history of the blood donor program.
-Mr. Fred. Zaidman. -[crowd applauds]
I accept it for all of us, really,
because if it wasn't for us,
[clears throat] a lot of people would be in a lot of trouble.
So, God bless everybody, thank you so very much,
and, let's get back on that table.
[crowd laughs and applauds]
I have a beautiful dog, a Boston Terrier named Stella.
And I'm in a place in my life where
I'm following my passion of helping others
and having good people in my life.
Everything in my life has sort of settled
and the one part of it that
wasn't settled was knowing my family ancestry.
I wanted to see if I could find a living relative.
I heard they were in Auschwitz,
but I owed it to them that I at least search.
I felt compelled to do it for my parents.
Up here is my father, Wolf.
And my mother, Renya,
Renee.
I just had to know who's there beyond my parents.
Who were my grandparents.
I wanted to break through that wall, that mystery.
I thought my family tree was a twig.
I didn't expect to find anything.
What I discovered was, uh,
a few of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh generation.
And, uh, it's something.
One of my really great discoveries
is the name of my great-grandfather.
Here's the birth of Jakub Wolf Birencwaig in 1847,
in Radomsko, Poland.
My great-grandmother, Chana Frimeta,
And on the other side of the family,
my great-grandfather Kopel Zaidman,
born in 1843.
This one happens to be my father's older brother, Fischel.
My mother's youngest brother, Tadek,
who was killed in a concentration camp.
He was shot in the head
only because he was singing a happy song.
He learned that he was going to be liberated the next day.
Somebody reported him
to a Nazi and they came over and they shot him.
Now I have two pieces of the puzzle,
you know, now I want to get the rest of the piece.
I want the whole family.
I would say that he just misses my parents
and wants to hang on
to someone that could be connected to my parents that are still alive.
So I think he's still dealing with my parents' death.
And hasn't released them.
But he's driven
emotionally, to do this research.
And that's okay, it's just not my calling for me.
My brother doesn't acknowledge
his past,
his Holocaust experience,
his heritage.
He is removed from that.
And I would say I'm the complete opposite.
I'm glad I'm opposite for me. I wouldn't want to be
trapped in the past.
Does it bother me that my brother
has no interest?
Yeah, it bothers me.
It bothers me, but I try not it let it get to me.
It just... It is what it is.
And I just move on.
Hello.
Today I visit a half a dozen Holocaust survivors.
Because I feel very comfortable being with survivors.
I understand them. I feel at home.
Adela's like my member of the family.
[Adela] Today's really my lucky day,
that I meet two guys in my house
when I'm always so lonely.
Fred Zaidman and Philip Raucher,
two people what I know since I was beautiful and young.
[all chuckling]
You know what? My father was in Bedzin.
[Adela] Czeladz.
My father was in Czeladz or Bedzin?
[Adela] Czeladz.
Okay.
There are a lot of Poles who were
very courageous during the war.
Poles were not courageous. Maybe in the east.
East of...
No? There weren't some Poles
-who helped the Jews... -No.
-Hid the Jews? -No.
-No? -No.
[Fred] The photo of my grandparents is number one.
I don't know what they looked like except for one grandmother.
There is nothing
to indicate that they were actually alive in this world.
So finding a document is very important to me.
That'll prove they actually lived.
I think it would bring some kind of, uh,
completion in who I am.
I think he's trying to find love from his grandparents.
He thinks grandparents are angels.
And I think he's trying to find the angel in his life.
They're my link to the past.
Hopefully I can find a photo of my grandparents.
But I would accept whatever I can find.
[Barbara] Hi. [Fred] Hi. Hi, Barbara.
I'm still coming down to Earth.
[Barbara] Yeah, you're here.
-In person. -Yeah, I'm here.
I'm here but I'm not all there.
Because you two are the only ones
that I've met from my father's side of the family.
And we're all Zaidmans in one way or another.
They all came from Poland. Does anybody know
anything that happened to any of them?
-Auschwitz. -Auschwitz is what I hear.
So I imagine that your parents never discussed what happened to them.
Their... Their incarceration...
[Fred] My father did not. You know, I didn't have the guts either.
Honestly, I didn't have the courage to ask them.
I got a glimpse of his history.
He had bypass surgery and he was crying.
I had never seen my father cry before.
-And he was telling the nurse my mother went into the fire. -[Barbara gasps]
That was the first time I heard him talk about
-his parents... -Stella!
-Pretty cousin.
Oh, thank you.
I dropped her down to number one cousin.
I need to stand on my tippy-toes.
[Fred] I got new relatives.
Which is an amazing feeling, you know, from a,
a side of the family that I never knew.
Wow.
Yeah.
I was first told
about this several years ago by my father's first cousin in Australia.
But I wasn't able to connect it until
late, uh, last year.
And that is my father's first cousin, Isser Be'eri.
He became the first director of military intelligence for the IDF.
And the Haganah.
Isser's father would be my grandmother's brother.
Isser Be'eri.
There he is.
Tall and handsome.
1951 to 1958. Director of the Haganah Intelligence Service.
There's the man.
I discovered Issar had a son.
His name is Itay.
I shot him off an email
explaining who I am and I'm waiting to hear back.
My aunt, Manya, and I have been having frequent talks,
and she has opened up that part of the world.
When I go to Poland for the first time,
I don't want to be rushed, I don't want to be bothered by anybody.
-I want to feel-- -You want to be on your own.
I want to be on my own to feel it.
He wants to go to visit where we used to live.
I don't blame him.
You know, memories.
That's what he wants.
[Fred] You and Martin in Bergen-Belsen.
[Manya] Yes.
[Freddy] I think it's going to be very painful for him.
I hope that he discovers, uh,
just where we came from.
Our humble beginnings.
The city's there, the people are not there.
The Jewish people.
[flight attendant speaking foreign language]
[Fred] Just landed on the moon.
That's what it's like for me, I landed on the moon.
[woman on PA] Welcome to Warsaw, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm looking for anything and everything related to my family.
On my father's side, my father was the only one who survived.
He never spoke about anything. He just clammed up.
So each discovery gives me that extra air of oxygen.
It means a lot to me.
[Matan Shefi] So what do you know about your father?
-His parents, Moshe Zaidman. -[Matan] Mmm-hmm.
And he was married to Rywka Birencwaig.
And Moshe's father is Kopel.
[Anna Przybyszewska-Drozd] Where did you find this?
[Fred] Ancestry.com.
[scoffs] Which means nothing.
It's a very difficult situation with your family.
Because the people are from one place,
but the registration is in other archives,
so you have to go all over to see even if there's nothing.
It's like the borderline between a few regions,
so if you live here, the record goes there.
If you live five kilometers farther, the record goes to the other.
It's important the source of information,
which is, "My mother told me, my dad told me."
-[Fred] Right. -"I saw it in a book."
And then, of course, which book?
"I saw it on Ancestry." Okay, but where?
Right, you have to verify.
[Anna] It's not the source.
Were any photos taken at the same time
a document was being written?
[Matan] This is a really problematic thing.
Photos were not very often attached to documents.
Nowadays, we're accustomed to it, like driver's license.
And before the war, photos were taken as private property.
Family photos in official documents only in very rare occasions,
usually passports,
from the '30s onwards.
University applications,
and sometimes army registrations for officers.
And after the war, it gets more common.
I have to say that, you know,
one of my main goals is to, uh,
have my family members
acknowledged as actually existing in this world.
Right now, it's an imagination.
There's not a grave, there's nothing.
[Anna] For whom do you need a grave?
-For the grandparents? -My grandparents.
-For my uncles. -Yeah, but,
if there is a grandson speaking about this,
-there is a real sign of existence. -[Fred] I know.
No, but this is important.
We are forgetting what's real,
and if there is no grave, there is no grave.
So you try to find whatever else you can find.
If you cannot find, that's also okay,
because you still know that the grandfather existed.
So you are the one who's giving them the shape
with whatever you know,
a story you can share with the others.
I think you're bringing your philosophy of
intangible heritage or honor.
I think for other people honoring has different ways.
I don't agree with you because you honor your parents with your life.
Yeah, I know that. That, I know.
It's like... It cannot be more.
My parents can from Bedzin.
-Ah, Bedzin. -Bedzin.
It's here, not so far from Krakow.
Close to...
-To German principalities. -Right.
Very interesting.
So where do they come from
before they got here? So that's...
That's the next question, right?
Jewish issues
were like taboo after '68.
There is this feeling of missing.
That's the reason why I'm here, in Poland,
it's because I'm missing something.
Something. And you even don't know.
Do you know what you're missing?
Well, it's hard to put into words.
My world stops where my father begins.
How did they live? Were they happy, unhappy?
So, that's why I'm determined to
at least come here to Poland and step on the same ground.
Maybe this fascination is us trying to get back
to the world that was before, before this
huge tragedy, yes?
All those who perished were citizens of Poland.
So they felt betrayal.
Betrayal? I think there's a stronger word than betrayal.
Mmm-hmm.
Why my country was so weak
to let such things happen. I can't reverse.
-No, you can't. -I can just talk about it.
There's a very strong pull
that is making me go forward.
And this shtetlhere is what I imagined it used to be.
This is what I've been waiting for
61 years to experience.
-[horn honks] -Yeah, yeah. Excuse me.
I'm going on the wrong side of the street.
When I got to Bedzin,
I was really surprised to meet survivors and second-generation like me.
They invited me to the first Shabbat dinner in 75 years.
In a synagogue in this old apartment building.
-[saying prayers in local language] -Amen.
[Fred] When Mrs. Lior started the blessing,
I sensed my grandmother
and my relatives with me.
That was one of the most profound moments in my entire life.
[woman praying in local language]
[people responding in local language]
-[Fred] Adam! -Oh!
How are you? Finally! Finally we meet.
Mwah! Mwah! Mwah!
I discovered Adam on the Internet.
Thank you for coming.
While I was searching for a genealogist in Bedzin.
You know what, this is the trip of my lifetime.
-Oh, fresh air. -Fresh air.
-Bedzin. -Bedzin, Bedzin air.
Now Adam is going to help me find photos,
more information on the Zaidman family.
There's the castle, the Bedzin castle.
[Adam] And near the castle is the synagogue before the war.
This corner before the war is a Jewish cemetery.
Now only the tree.
[Fred] Right here. [Adam] Yes, here, here.
Adam, my top priority is finding a photo of my grandparents,
and aunts and uncles
that were murdered during the Holocaust.
This is everything the people who are named the Zaidman.
Mmm... Bedzin
born your father, only lives?
Zytno.
Ah, Zytno.
Wolf is your father, tak?
Wolf is my father.
Are you holding the entire records?
-This is... -The entire?
Or could there be names... Information missing?
-Maybe-- -No. no.
This is everything.
Where are the best places I should be looking?
I... I...
Tomorrow in Radomsko.
[violin playing]
[indistinct conversations]
What I think of Cafe Jerusalem?
The Jewish ghetto here in Bedzin
began in 1942?
In 1942, in October, yes.
In October. Okay, so...
My father was in the ghetto.
About how many people were?
-From Bedzin? -Yeah.
About 20-25,000.
-Wow. -25,000.
25,000?
They give order to the people to go out of the houses.
And Jewish people to go in.
Where there was one family,
there come in two or three families.
In 2008,
we decided to come here,
because it's 60 years for Israel.
And we went to the mayor
and he said, "I will bring my army."
[marching band playing]
It's a memory.
Shimshon, I want... Are you okay?
Look...
[tearfully] To hear here in this place the Hattikva,
singing by 180 soldiers.
On this place,
where 30,000 people was taken out to Auschwitz...
This is our victory.
Okay? This is our victory.
We don't have another victory.
I know how you're feeling.
You really... I can't even talk.
This is where my father was born.
And I think my grandfather was born here.
[Adam speaking]
Maybe this woman find for you
maybe first documents.
Waiting many years.
-Please wait two hours. -I can wait two hours.
-Okay. -Yes.
[Adam] Now we go. [Fred] It's very exciting.
It's mind-boggling to me
that there was once a synagogue here,
And now it's all gone and it's replaced by
a telephone company.
Zaidman... Curtla.
-Curtla. -Curtla.
[Fred] When I saw my aunt's name, Curtla,
which I knew from research,
but when I actually saw the birth certificate,
it put me in a new world. It kind of slowed down.
I'm reading, "Curtla Zaidman,"
there is something that
proved that she had lived.
And then I hear, "Oh, here's Lieb Zaidman,
and here's Frimeta..."
I'm still trying to get over
the shock of seeing Curtla
and everything else became a dream.
[indistinct chatter]
[Fred] I still feel I have to go back because I didn't get everything.
This used to be the Zaidman family home.
And now it's a parking lot.
This is the building
that sat next to the building
my grandparents owned, lived, rented...
Come visit the Zaidman home. Come on!
Come inside, take off your shoes.
Here it is. It's a fuckin' parking lot.
Come on!
This is unbelievable.
Very upset.
You know what they did? They erased my family history.
You know? Destroyed all the buildings where they used to live.
One is a high rise, one is a parking lot.
[Adam] Your history is closed.
1939, 1945.
So this is in memory
of the victims of the Holocaust
from Radomsko.
Did you see how the weeds and the grass were at least three feet high?
A lot of grass, nobody cut the grass.
This is the problem. The problem is money.
I'm in Zytno. Zytno, Poland where my father was born,
my grandfather, siblings.
I wish my father was still here so I could show him
what his old town looks like.
It's kind of bittersweet.
I didn't expect it to be
so beautiful and peaceful.
Quite community-oriented.
[camera clicking]
Now, that's a building.
I bet you that's been around since my mother's day.
I like that building.
I'm sure if my mother, if she were alive and here today she would point out,
"I know that building and I know that building."
I'm getting
a really comfortable feeling that this is,
you know, she's been here.
I'm looking for the street where my mother used to live.
And it's across the street from what they called a "gymnasium."
Here it is.
Lukaskiego.
♪ Hallelujah ♪
So I'm looking for number 25.
It's completely different. These are all modern buildings
If they want to come back and see
my mother's history,
They're not gonna find it.
If somebody mentions the gymnasium...
Here it is.
A close friend of mine, Adela Manheimer,
her apartment building, it's obviously gone,
but it would have been right over here.
And Adela would see my mother going to work.
Oh, it's bringing back a lot of, uh,
memories of stories that I've been told.
[spits]
I'd like to destroy the building.
I'm really determined to find this place.
And that place being the Dabrowa-Gornicza cemetery,
the Jewish cemetery, which I hear is very, very small.
There it is, right over there.
Right there.
[exhales deeply]
The letters are faded.
But what I can do,
is fix this one.
That I can do.
Be something if this was a relative, wouldn't it?
[grunts] There.
It looks good, that was a good one.
[exhales]
[quietly reading] It's probably a prayer.
At first I thought there wasn't anything here,
which is pretty much the story of my trip.
My mother's home is gone,
my father's home is gone.
And I thought this was gone.
But it's not, it's still here.
It's a really nice cemetery.
It's obvious that they really care.
Clean, grass is cut.
I just noticed something very, very disturbing.
If I'm correct, I'm looking at
a Nazi insignia.
Uh-uh-uh. Unacceptable.
Not gonna stand for that.
Son of a bitch.
Can I show you something quick?
Can you clean that off?
-I don't know... -I know you don't know.
-[laughs] I don't know... -I know, I know, I know.
But you can clean it off? Wash?
-Wash? -Wash off. Clean.
No more. No more this. See this?
Off.
-I understand. -Off. Okay?
Everything nice I said about this cemetery I'm taking back.
It's hard for me to picture that my mother was here.
Here I am, and I'm seeing it for the first time.
My aunt, Manya, told me a story
that there's the two lines.
The one that goes straight into the gas chamber,
and the one that goes into labor.
And...
My grandparents were in the line to go to the gas chamber.
My mother was with them.
And she didn't want to let go.
She was holding on to them.
And if they were going to go to the gas chamber,
she was going to go with them.
And there was an argument, there was a struggle,
and my mother went to the other line.
And my grandparents went straight into the gas chamber.
I hear the worlds but I couldn't get the feeling...
Until now.
This is the closest I'll ever be to my grandparents.
They're right here.
If I could, I would stay here for a very, very, very long time.
I want to say I love you.
[sniffles]
Zaidman, it would be Rywka
and Moshe.
Fischel Zaidman.
That's my uncle.
In the Book of Names I was able to find two uncles
and an aunt.
Lieb is my uncle, that's the first-born.
Frania. Frania is
my father's, uh, sister.
1918 seems about right.
[archivist] The place of death unknown.
Unbelievable.
So, they're not missing, they're not...
Their name isn't gone in the wind,
and they did live on this planet.
-It could be. -Can you look that up?
So hopefully he can find something.
And even if he doesn't find anything, I can eliminate
Auschwitz.
The fact that my mother did not have numbers
indicates that she was here temporarily.
My grandparents went straight to the ovens.
So the ones that went straight and were killed in the ovens were not recorded.
-[Piotr Supinski] Yes. -All right. So that makes sense.
Before liberation, Germans burned more than 90% of documentation.
-[Fred] More than 90%? -More than 90%.
It's like they gathered
everybody together...
-And they're all gone. -[Piotr] We don't know.
-We don't know. -We don't know.
I got an idea of what they went through.
My parents didn't want to talk about it.
Would you want to tell your child how you were humiliated for four years?
You know,
wondering if you're going to live minute to minute?
Your parents and your siblings
murdered?
My mission now is to retrack those steps,
find out what their experience is.
[man over PA in Hebrew]
[man chanting in Hebrew]
[crowd praying]
[chanting continues]
[Shaya Ben-Yehuda] I remember this country as a child.
It was nothing. It all started with survivors.
Yad Vashem is
to ensure that the memories
of their relatives
will be kept forever in one place.
It's a memorial to the names.
[Gideon Greif] Most of the Jews living in Bedzin
were gassed and cremated in Auschwitz,
except those who were murdered inside the ghettos.
In Bedzin, every second person was a Jew.
50%, half of the city's population was Jewish.
So we can say it was a Jewish town.
The process of annihilation
began with confiscation of all property.
Concentration, ghettoization,
and then deportation to the extermination camp.
And I would say the Jews in Poland were murdered twice.
First,
the spiritual murder, and then the physical murder.
And I can't tell you which was worse.
I think both.
Those who were capable of being slaves,
could for the time being survive.
But the minute the Jews could not provide work,
they were physically too weak,
they had to die.
This is the German logic.
They were not so orderly,
but they had some kind of logic inside the system.
When a Jew arrives in Auschwitz
and they choose him to work,
they give him... They tattoo a number.
All Jews.
Until '44, with no exception
who were selected to life
were tattooed.
All Jews, and non-Jews.
The permanent rule was 75 to 90%
immediately to the gas chambers.
5 to 15%
to become slaves.
Survival was not dependent on your talents,
on your, uh, education.
It was mere luck, pure luck.
[Sima Velkovich] So Moshe Zaidman
-this was your grandfather? -[Fred] Yes.
-And Rywka your grandmother. -Yes.
Lieb Zaidman is your uncle.
-Right. -And do you know that his wife is survived?
No.
Sally Frocht, she's the widow of Lieb Zaidman.
She survived? Is that from a testimony?
No, no. She applied for searching for the documents to international
-Protective Services. -...looking for family.
-[Sima] Yeah. -If my father was alive he's flip out
that his brother's wife...
-Survived. -Survived.
And also I think...
I think I also found a picture of the brother.
This is small photo, like passport photos
used by Gestapo in Bedzin.
You think that's him.
This is her document, it's very interesting.
So, she... Her maiden name is Grunewald.
And Frocht, it seems to me,
is from the second marriage after war.
And she's also Auschwitz survivor, she was Zaidman.
So this is her address in Miami.
So you have an address, you can check in the USA.
[Fred] I did research, but she's passed away
and apparently she doesn't have any children
So it was a dead end.
It's hard, because
Sima at Yad Vashem is convinced
that this is my
uncle, my father's eldest brother
I so desperately wanted to find his photo and here he is.
Right now, I'm going to consider him my uncle.
He's my uncle.
It would be great if I had a photo of my grandparents.
This is Itay with Tovah.
They were there two years?
[speaking Hebrew]
Itay!
Eitana! [speaks Hebrew] How are you?
Mwah!
-It's so nice to meet you. -Yeah.
It's very nice that you have come to Israel.
Yes, it's my first time here.
Yeah, after so many years, after 62 years?
-I know. I feel bad. -Yeah.
This is a sign of good luck
for a house and the people living in a house.
And this is for Fred and the first time
that he visits Israel.
Thank you. It's beautiful.
[greeting in Hebrew]
Our cousin, Adam.
He's our first cousin.
Adam, I'm Fred.
-Issar, Issar. -Pleasure to meet you.
[Fred] Adam Snir was the personal bodyguard for Gold Meir
and for Yitzhak Rabin.
I felt very, very proud to be
among these prestigious people in my family.
[Fred] Let me tell you something.
I have no photos of my grandparents.
Here.
That's... That's our grandmother.
[indistinct chattering]
[Itay] She was married to Mendel.
[Fred] To Mendel. [Itay] Yeah.
[Fred] That's my grandmother's brother.
So it was a huge find.
Later in the week I was invited to
Eitana's parents' Yahrzeit.
Eitana is Itay's wife.
And the Yahrzeit was at a kibbutz.
[praying in Hebrew]
They came on one boat from Europe
and got married here in Israel.
And that was the last time they saw their parents.
All of them died in the Holocaust in concentration camp.
[Fred] Afterwards we met at a cousin's home.
Itay, do you have any hobbies now?
No, I have only one hobby.
Eitana was in Army, her mother saw me
and told her, "Look at the nice guy."
-Because Eitana is quite high. -[Fred] Mmm-hmm.
And her mother was always worried
that she would not find
a boyfriend her size.
And ever since, we're together.
Now it's over 60 years.
[Eitana] I was 21 and he was 22.
[laughs]
Two kids.
This is Itay and me.
Thank you again for everything.
-Thank you. -Have a good trip.
Shabbat shalom.
[Fred] I felt like I walked into my family's home.
They were accepting, they were very loving.
They're really wonderful people.
[Fred] Her grandmother was my grandmother's sister.
My parents came here before the Holocaust.
To Israel.
I was happy that I had grandparents here.
-Yeah, you're lucky. -Otherwise,
-you know... -You have no idea.
-It ends on the grandparents. -That's right.
[Fred] Nitza knew her grandmother.
She lived with her, kissed her.
-Yeah. -I don't even know what mine looks like.
That's why my need is different than her need.
These are our great-grandparents,
our grandmother's parents.
I lost track of them.
I'm filling you in.
[Nitza laughs]
I found a lot of stuff for you.
My grandmother,
grandfather,
My grandmother is taking me on her knees.
-Are you saying that's my grandmother's sister? -[Nitza] Yeah.
She looks like my father.
All of you have the same face.
It's striking.
Now, this is 100%.
It's historical.
I found two relatives since I came to Israel.
Menachem
and your grandmother Hava.
-Yeah. -Brother and sister to my grandmother.
It's the only picture of Hava.
It's the only picture.
-Of her. -Well, all you need is one.
Oh, this is great.
This happens to be
perhaps the greatest surprise of my research.
The most profound,
which is a testimonial
of my grandmother's death.
06-01-43.
Status, murdered.
I can now light a candle,
a Yahrzeit candle on her death date.
My grandmother Rywka,
like my other grandmother and grandfathers,
went into the ovens at Auschwitz,
and the ashes at the bottom were taken into
a mass grave.
I'm thinking, visualizing, they got off the train.
They're... They're in line
and the Gestapos are all over with rifles.
And they weren't sure that
they were going to live or die.
As a result, I grew up with my father,
he kept most of it to himself,
but now that I found this piece of information,
it solidifies what I thought was going on,
uh, with him.
[announcement over PA]
Your mother was liberated at the main camp at Bergen-Belsen,
this is this place here right now,
And your father was liberated also in Bergen-Belsen,
but not at the main camp, but on the barracks camp.
And he met your mother, and then they got married here.
Your brother was one of more than 1,000 children who were born here.
Most of the survivors were the sole survivors of the families.
And so they were happy to build a new family, a new home.
That's why I guess that they fell in love immediately.
I was under the impression
that my mother met my father in the hospital.
He was sick, tuberculosis.
-[Katja] Yes, yes. -And she was a nurse.
And then do you know, May, June, or...
Don't have a clue.
-Well, they married in August. -Yeah, very early.
Yeah, on the 25th, right?
-Yes. -25th,
so knowing my mother they could have met on the 24th.
-[both laugh] -Yes.
[Katja] Bergen-Belsen was not a typical camp for prisoners came in first.
You see, his father was first brought to Auschwitz,
and then from Auschwitz he was brought to Buchenwald,
and from Buchenwald he was brought to Mittelbrau-Dora,
and from Mittelbrau Dora-Ehrlich, he was brought then to Bergen-Belsen.
-It's a holding area. -Yeah.
-It's a place where they went do die. -Yes.
More than 50,000 people died
and about 30,000 prisoners died after the liberation.
[camera clicks]
[Katja] This is the beginning of the former DP camp.
We are not allowed to make photographs because it's a military training area.
The conditions in the main camp were really bad,
and they made mass grave for those people who died.
There's nothing left from the former woman's camp,
so to say, no remains.
[Fred] We're not sure if my mother was over here.
There's two huts, right?
-No, one hut. -One hut.
-But this is the area. -Yeah, this is the area. That's right.
Fred's mother and Anna Frank could have met
because Anna Frank was also in this area of the woman's camp
but if they were in the same hut,
I cannot really say because we have no documents.
I have a pretty good idea what my parents were going through,
where they lived,
and I'm looking forward to tomorrow where we're going to finish looking at
all the records here in Bergen-Belsen.
His grandparents and his father and his mother
were forced to leave their home to a ghetto.
A person named Mr. Woll was taking all of their stuff.
-Furs. -Um...
-Gold. -Gold.
Silver things. Maybe a German neighbor.
This is a picture of your mother.
[Fred] This one's hard to look at.
Her eyelids are deepened.
Yes.
It's like her soul was, um...
-Taken away. -[Klaus] Mmm-hmm.
Okay.
In this list, uh,
the name of your father appears.
The list of Polish Jews.
[Fred] In 1945. [Katja] Yes.
[Klaus] This is another document
which says Mr. Zaidman was here.
We are very lucky that we have this kind of source for you.
My mother stayed in Bergen-Belsen at least one month,
according to this.
Yeah, or maybe some weeks more.
-One or two months. -One or two months?
That's a long time in Bergen-Belsen.
Especially during this time it was very hard to survive because...
[Fred] And my mother survived,
walking among the dead people and watching them die.
So these are things that she kept to herself
-and never talked about. -Mmm.
Now, we know that
not every bride has the possibility
to have a wedding dress on her own.
So they were changing, giving the wedding dresses
to other brides.
Some of these were made here in the camp.
Here she's pregnant.
Beautiful picture.
It's like two stories, one of torture
and then a story of survival and hope.
I always dreamed about going back there
and helping out to make sure everybody was
safe or survived.
I don't know how they made it but they certainly did.
It's a miracle.
I lost my dear aunt.
Her passing away is the end of her generation, my parents' generation.
They're all gone now.
I loved her, she was very dear to me.
It's still fresh in my mind
and just talking about it, you know, I can feel it.
[thunder cracking]
I think I found my cousin David Markowitz.
I found a photo of his grandmother,
and I do a separate search
for Yudis Kochman and I notice she's in the family tree.
His mother and my mother were first cousins.
And, you know, he had the same reaction, it was like, "Wow."
And now there are plans for us to meet in Atlanta.
Hello? Cousin dear!
What took you so long? [chuckles]
-Hi. -Sixty years.
[Fred] Where you been?
I never thought I'd come to Atlanta
to actually meet a cousin.
I thought it was just four people in my family until...
I know that because
we don't know who's alive and who's not.
And what we have and what we don't have.
-So... -[chuckles]
[David] My mom would be so proud.
Before coming in here, I'm thinking of our grandparents
and our great-grandparents and our parents.
And looking down and
seeing the family connecting again,
you know. Hitler destroyed
and separated our family.
-But he couldn't take this away. -This he can't take away.
Come on in. Come on in.
Meet my wife. This is Lisa.
Fred Zaidman. Lisa Markowitz.
-Hi, Lisa. -Welcome.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
-Thank you for coming. -I have so much to show you.
I got things to show you. Things to talk about.
Come on in.
I put this in here on purpose
because this looks like my grandmother.
[Fred] But it's your mother. [David] Yes, it is.
Gucia.
I see similarities to my mother.
-[David] You do? -Yeah.
Well, you know, they're first cousins.
Growing up.
Were you... Were you micro-managed by your parents?
The opposite.
Yeah, they never looked at grades or homework.
My father was strict. Some people today might say it was abusive.
But my father, my parents, my mother didn't know any different.
-Their adolescent years were spent... -Right.
...at the butt of a gun.
Mine was different. I was more...
I'm gonna say, it sounds ridiculous, like a family pet.
As long as my mother knew I was okay,
you know, and I was fed,
then she was okay, that was it.
The funny thing about my experience is
I ended up being who I am despite what I went through.
Yeah.
That's the Kochman, uh, will.
Oh, my God.
[David] What do you see?
That's my parents and my aunt in Bergen-Belsen.
No way. What do you read on the back?
[Fred] "Bergen-Belsen."
-Wow. -Have they got a year?
I've never...
Is there a year here? On the back?
Yeah. There's something different.
Discovering this photo here with you,
which I've only seen
from a collection of my parents and Manya's.
-It's obvious they were all together. -This is unbelievable.
You sent me that picture.
Here I am, 60 years old, for the first time seeing my grandmother.
[Fred] Your mother did have relatives.
And you may have more relatives out there.
I'll be... I'll be looking.
[Steven Reece] Have you ever heard the theory of social Darwinism?
That is the survival of the strongest who wins,
and Hitler bought into that ideology.
[Peter Berg] Steven called me out of the blue one day and said,
"I have started this organization that I'm really passionate about,
the Matzevah Foundation."
He's going to Poland
and he is restoring cemeteries that have been destroyed.
All he's trying to do is perform this act of reconciliation
between the Jewish community,
the Christian church and Poland.
Jan is a journalist
and Steven is a minister,
and I had been speaking to both of them about Poland,
so we decided that they would co-teach a class.
The Germans considered the Poles
people to be enslaved.
They were just a few rungs above Jews.
[Peter] It's a class from the lens of what the Polish communities were like
before the war, and what Poland is like today.
It asks the question, "What is it that we can do now
to leave this world a better place for the next generation?"
Sometimes when I talk to
people who have their roots, Jews who have their roots in Poland,
there's a very strong visceral response
that Poland is a place of death,
it's a graveyard, why should I go back?
There's no Jewish life there.
But I work with Jewish life there.
In that pond
is my family. That's where my grandparents are.
My aunts and my uncles.
What do you think about that right now?
I'm tearing up now, but I was speechless.
You know, I caught up to them.
For the first time in my life it's like...
It sounds strange but,
you know, here they are.
Why do you think that sounds strange?
Because it's, uh,
-it's a pond. -Mmm-hmm.
and there's thousands, millions of Jews
perhaps, you know, all in there.
But what other milestone led you to that grave?
That cemetery in Czeladz.
I walk in and I'm saying to myself, "Wow, this is nice."
Suddenly I see a large Swastika
on one of these tall headstones.
Do you know if anything was done?
No, but when I go back, I'm going to see if it's still there.
Why are you going back?
-To Poland? -Mmm-hmm.
To clean up the Radomsko cemetery.
I discovered my great-grandparents are buried there.
And the cemetery is in bad shape, just like many of them are.
You know, in Poland there are anywhere between 12 and 1,500 cemeteries like that.
You came to the place at Auschwitz where you connected
with your family, this is where they are,
and you recognized something that you didn't recognize before.
That's what reconciliation is.
Reconciliation in its basic sense means "to bring together broken pieces."
To restore, to unite,
to rejoin. "This is what happened, now I'm here."
Just like you did when you shared the photograph
of you standing there in the ash pit.
-There's a cemetery. -Mmm-hmm.
Now it's being neglected and disrespected by
being left alone.
-Well, let's do something about it. -Yeah, let's go!
This is my family street. My ancestors.
This is where they went to school, they went to synagogue.
They erased the whole family memory.
I... I can't even imagine what that must feel like
to have a whole generation, [makes noise] wiped out.
It's very emotional.
For one thing, it's extremely sad.
But take hope, take joy in the fact that you're returning to reclaim that.
[Fred] I have photos of the graves of my great-aunt
and three great-grandparents.
And a researcher in Warsaw sent me a map and GPS coordinates
to locate all of the graves.
[Steven] 43 is right there.
That's your great-grandparent.
[Steven] Right there. [Fred] My great-grandfather.
Great-grandfather.
Can I help make the path?
[speaking in Polish]
He wants to open the way for you only.
This is the original resting place of your great-grandfather.
Yakov Siev Birencwaig.
[speaking in Polish] Miriam Birencwaig.
He found your aunt, Miriam, yes.
All right, you want to go see Miriam?
[Fred] Not right now.
[Steven] He wants to remain here for a minute by himself.
We'll go find the other two locations.
This is her.
"Miriam Birencwaig."
My guess is my Aunt Sala Birencwaig, Great Aunt Sala,
put these in here,
because I have a photo of her standing right next to it.
I feel like I'm looking after my great-grandfather.
Kind of like if he was in a wheelchair,
113 years old.
Okay, we need to find
Chana Kobieta.
-So, who is Chana? -My grandmother, great-grandmother.
[Steven] Okay, his great-grandmother. Chana.
-Chana Frimeta? -[Steven] Yes.
Birencwaig.
-[man speaking Polish] -We have three now.
[speaking indistinctly]
[Steven] This is his great-grandmother, Chana.
This is his moment to connect.
Working in the dirt with your hands is very intimate.
We need to be pathfinders.
And open the way so that Fred can,
with tender loving care,
express that to his great-grandparents and his aunt.
[Fred] I think we're making good progress.
If you go look over here,
compared to what it was, it's fantastic.
But we'll get the rest.
Not to worry. You either. We'll get to you.
We got it!
We got all four.
This is Jacob Zaidman, his great-grandfather.
-Hey, Fred. -What?
I have a plan to help you.
Take as much time as you have,
but you have two days to do what you're doing right now.
-Okay. -So if you do two today like that,
and do two tomorrow, then you'll walk away with something very good.
-Very powerful. -All right. Thank you.
All right, so what's next?
We know where all four points are, all four graves.
The closest one is here.
Okay. So why don't we start on that?
This tree is growing into this matzevah, so this was a clue here.
Then the shape of this was a clue, plus the paint.
Plus that mark, that's how I found this.
[Fred] My great-grandfather. Kopel Zaidman.
It's surreal.
It's kind of exhilarating.
That's what I'm feeling. I'm looking after him.
Your great-grandparents, their grandchildren and children,
some of them were murdered, some of them were executed.
So you're actually doing the mitzvah that they would have been doing.
That's what you've come to replace.
You're in the presence of your family, they stood here.
I'm very aware of that.
-Does that make sense? -100%.
-You now know where your two great-grandfathers are. -Yeah.
So let's go meet your great-grandmother and your aunt.
-All right, captain. -I'm not the captain.
-I'm just the bus driver. -[both laugh]
Okay. This is, uh, this is Miriam.
-[Fred] My great-aunt. -Yes.
-This is hers. -My grandmother's sister.
Okay, why don't I start cleaning?
[weed wacker buzzing]
This is your great-grandmother.
Chana.
It's a beautiful headstone.
Here I am.
I'm with my great-grandmother.
And, I have arrived.
Your great-grandson has arrived.
I've accomplished a major goal.
I don't think I want to go through my whole life without
connecting with my ancestry, with my great-grandmother.
Great-grandfather.
What comes to mind is, uh,
feeling more of a whole person.
And now you have two endpoints.
Your life and their life, and what happened in between
is what you're trying to understand. Is that correct?
Sure.
-You think you can do that today? -No.
[laughs]
-I don't think so. -I don't think so either.
But you have a start. And then you have you,
and your life.
-There's still a gap there. -What is that gap?
My grandparents and aunts and uncles.
-Photos would help. -Something concrete?
Something concrete.
I know my parents had a deep loss.
I inherited it.
I think what I'm trying to do is ease their pain, even though they're dead.
[Steven] The fact is that he put his hands to clear away undergrowth
is a very physical, practical, tangible way to deal with
that tragedy and loss in his family's life.
Because his parents, they never dealt with their loss.
He's dealing with it now for them.
[thanking in Polish]
[Fred] I sense the presence of my father.
It's with me. It's all with me.
I'm with my family. There's no grieving.
It's a get-together, it's a reunion.
There's a mass grave of 1,700 Jews that were murdered from this town.
-Yes. -Near the front gate.
There's also in that number
50 righteous gentiles who were murdered because they harbored the Jews.
What would it look like if we did some cleaning up there?
Okay?
[Fred] We cleared a path not only to my great-grandparents,
but a path where 50 heroic Poles were massacred
together with the Jews.
I was pleasantly surprised to see the three Poles
who helped clean that cemetery. It was very meaningful to them.
You prepared me psychologically for
-my experience, really. -Mmm-hmm.
Because I had high expectations.
What were your expectations?
[Fred] That I'm saving the memory and the integrity of my family.
[Steven] That's awesome.
You see life instead of death.
I've seen you change.
And I just want you to know that.
Am I better-looking?
Wait, wait, wait. Am I?
Oh, yeah, since I first saw you on this trip, you're much better-looking.
-Thank you. -Yeah, I can actually look at you.
[laughs heartily]
I made a decision that if I can't get a photo on this trip,
I would love to have the signatures of my grandparents.
There was only one birth certificate
that wasn't transferred to the state archive.
And that was of my Aunt Curtla.
And here I found my grandmother's signature.
I did something different. I ran my finger across my grandmother's signature.
My grandmother.
And then moved my fingers around the circle where I thought
she had held the page.
It may not sound like much to anybody else, but to me that meant a lot.
The last time I was here,
I made a promise that I would return and make sure
that the graffiti was removed.
I took my time and checked each one of them.
I inched forward kind of, "Uh-oh, am I going to see that
Swastika? Am I going to see Hitler?"
There it is, it's still there.
It's still there.
Instead, there's a lot more.
And I noticed at least a half a dozen
Swastikas and other markings.
And I took a photo this time.
[camera shutter clicks]
There's another one right here.
[camera clicks]
And I went to get the lady who opens the gate.
And we took a nice walk
all the way down to the very end
and all the way back.
I'm pointing and she's acknowledging "yes."
[agreeing in Polish]
And she even saw on her own...
[speaking in Polish]
One, two.
The gatekeeper is aware of it.
I have it on film, and I'll go straight to the police.
Okay.
Oh, and this one, I'm going to show him.
This one says "Hitler." Can you see it?
He was looking, and then there were some symbols that made him stop
and make some kind of sound like, "Whoa, okay, I understand.
This is bad."
This picture on your phone, please send this mail, okay?
This is something that I think they're really going to take seriously
and take care of right away.
[sergeant] Thank you for your information
regarding the destruction of graves.
We will take care of this.
[Fred] I did what I had to do.
I was told the offense is a criminal offense.
And that there's a fine and that if the perpetrator didn't pay the fine,
it's jail time.
If it weren't for Adam,
I wouldn't have the birth certificates
of my aunts and uncles.
I think, uh, it's pretty good.
So if I can get a photo of my grandparents...
I don't think so.
-No? -That we have photos from ghetto.
They lived in Bedzin or they were just in ghetto in Bedzin?
No, they lived in Bedzin. My father lived in Bedzin.
Maybe we can start from the books of citizens, okay?
-Yeah. -So if you find some information
about your family there,
there will be information about their births.
I will transfer you the books to the computer
-and you will check. -Okay.
[Fred] So we proceeded to check and see if there were any records, any home addresses
for my father's side of the family, the Zaidmans.
I didn't find anything. I'm very disappointed.
I think I've exhausted almost any means of finding photos of my grandparents.
[Adam] Everything maybe is in Dabrowa.
Unfortunately, I have nothing about your mother.
We have a birth certificate of this guy, Wolfbeck Kosuch.
Wolf is my grandmother's brother.
There is one street where Wolf lived there.
Stefana Okrzei Street.
Do you have a number, or just the street?
[Aleksandra] Yes, there is a number.
Struck silver.
The neighbors helped me locate the spot.
It doesn't exist at this moment.
[Fred] A married couple took me to the place where the building had stood.
It was an empty strip. Straight down.
And that's where the row of buildings had been.
I accepted it. This is what had happened.
And I learned how to deal with my emotions.
The first trip, I got it all out. All the anger and sadness,
frustrations and everything
that I had been carrying with me.
[woman] Yes, and the next to this block.
And so I was able
to fantasize my grandparents visiting with my mother and the other kids.
So I was able to move forward, I was able to reconcile.
[singing in Hebrew]
[audience clapping]
[Steven] It was a privilege to be acknowledged as
one who is taking part in something that is very unique
and very, um, special.
And to pass that on to the next generation of Jews.
It's pretty cool that I'm a Christian and I get to do something like that.
Adam, you gave me permission to bring photos of my parents
-from Bedzin and put it on your wall. -Yes.
Return to Bedzin.
[kisses]
It was a very moving moment.
Seeing my parents back in Bedzin, in that cafe.
It's going to be there, hopefully, forever.
So, there they are. They're back.
[Donna Kanter] What if you never find a photo of your grandparents?
I don't think about that.
I always feel I'm going to find it.
And I'll never stop looking for it.