Prior
to World War Two, Rose and David Honig led a happy
life in Cracow, the third largest city in Poland with
60,000 Jewish citizens. David worked as a salesman in a
hardware store and Rose was a dressmaker. Their life was
highlighted by the birth of Bronislaw on October 8,
1935.
The
Honig family's feelings of security collapsed, however,
when the Nazis stormed into the country and took control
of Cracow, on September 6, 1939. Extremely harsh anti-Jewish
measures were immediately put into action. The Nazis
forced the Jews into the newly established ghetto and
brutality accelerated with murder, violence and terror.
The Nazis enacted their usual pattern of confiscation of
Jewish property, personal humiliations and deprivations of
every sort, forced labor, and deportation to KZ camps. In
late 1941, eighteen thousand Jews were imprisoned in the
ghetto and many died from starvation, disease, and
exposure.
Bronislaw
Honig was a well-mannered,
handsome little boy and 7 years old, when the Nazis
finally liquidated the Cracow ghetto March, 1943.
Oscar
Schindler, who
saved 1200 Cracow Jews from the Nazi deathcamps, viewed
the murder and brutality of the liquidation of the Cracow
ghetto from atop an adjacent hill - on horseback. He
witnessed the madness and chaos in the street. Men, women
and children machine-gunned. It was at that moment that
Oscar Schindler vowed that he would do everything within
his power to protect his Jews and destroy the Nazi Regime.
Rose
and David Honig were sent to the workcamp Plaszow after
the liquidation of the Cracow ghetto and they miraculously
managed to smuggle little Bronislaw into Plaszow with
them, hidden in a suitcase, piled onto a cart filled with
clothes.
With
the help of other inmates they managed to hide the child
from the Nazis, but when other Jewish children were being
discovered and shot, they arranged for Bronislaw to be
smuggled out of the camp. A young non-Jewish woman, Jarosh,
offered to take the child. With a stern warning to keep
absolutely quiet Bronislaw was hidden in a backpack and
given to the woman, who waited outside the camp.
This
woman would take Bronislaw to a street corner to allow the
parents to see their son on their way between their
workplace and the Plaszow camp. The last time they saw him
was in September, 1943.
Rose
and David Honig survived the Holocaust and went back to
Cracow to search for their son. The apartment was empty -
seven year-old Bronislaw and the young woman were never
found ...
