In their own Words: Shlomo Tsam

Apart from Boder's recorded interviews, most other early post-war Holocaust testimonies are written documents. Thousands were taken at the time; many ended up in archives, rather than being published.

In 1945, Shlomo Tsam (1911-1977), a Holocaust survivor and headteacher of the local Hebrew School in Polish Bytom, wrote down the testimonies of 42 of his pupils.

(Right: Tsam in the midst of his pupils in Bytom, 1945. Photo courtesy of Simon Winston)

Tsam

Tsam’s pupils were from small towns and villages in what had been the eastern reaches of Poland. Most had survived by hiding or passing themselves off as non-Jewish. They were between 9 and 17 years old when Tsam spoke to them.

Title page of Tsam’s manuscript, written in Yiddish. The text translates as: What Stories Do Children Tell? Collated by the head teacher of the Hebrew School in Bytom. (Germany). S. Tsam

Extract

Tsam’s pupils describe violent acts of mass persecution such as pogroms, as well as atrocities committed against individuals, for example beatings, torture, or rape. Families often became separated so that the children had to fend for themselves. The enormous hardships they suffered in their struggle for survival, such as hunger and cold, are common themes in their stories. The texts also show how crucial the behaviour of non-Jews was.

Buzha and her sister Shulamit began to wander through the villages, looking for food and shelter.

“Nobody begrudged us bread, but nobody let us stay overnight, so we learned to spend the night in a field or in an orchard, and sometimes, we used to steal into a cowshed.”

When the Germans deported Jews from Rovno, 11-year-old Rachel managed to flee to the village of Krasnoselye.

“Begging for bread, I found favor with a certain Zacharke, who took pity on me and took me into her home. To the neighbors I passed myself off as a Ukrainian girl. I stayed with Zacharke for six weeks, until Ukrainian villages began to burn and, every day, Krasnoselye began to assume that the Germans would come and burn everything. Then Zacharke turned me out.”

 

Excerpts from the testimonies the teacher Shlomo Tsam collected in Polish Bytom in 1945. Quoted from: Boaz Cohen and Beate Müller, “A Teacher and His Students: Child Holocaust Testimonies from Early Postwar Polish Bytom“, East European Jewish Affairs 46.1 (2016), p. 90 and p. 93.