Pair of tefillin and bag given to a Czechoslovakian Jewish man by a U.S. Army chaplain

Bernat Berk (born Bernat Berkowitz, 1926-2017) was born in Chust, Czechoslovakia (Khust, modern-day Ukraine), to Israel (1898-1944) and Regina (1900-1944) Berkowitz. Israel owned a brick factory in Chust while Regina was a housewife. Bernat had three brothers, Herman (1928-1985), Samuel (1929-2015), and Isik (c. 1932-1944), and attended a public primary school for eight years. In 1938 and 1939, Germany, Hungary, and Poland annexed territory from Czechoslovakia. Hungary occupied Chust (Huszt in Hungarian) in 1939, increasing anti-Jewish sentiment, violence, and persecution. In 1943, Herman moved to Budapest, Hungary, to begin an iron-working apprenticeship, and the following year was sent to a labor camp in Budapest, where he remained until liberation in 1945.

On March 19, 1944, Germany occupied Hungary, their former ally, when the country attempted to negotiate an armistice with the western Allies. In April, German authorities established three separate ghettos in Huszt, under the management of a five-member Jewish Council and a Jewish police force. On April 20, the Berkowitz family was among the 11,000 Jews forced into a ghetto and soon thereafter was among the 440,000 Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in German occupied Poland. Israel, Regina, and Isik were killed at Auschwitz soon after arrival while Bernat and Samuel were separated and each deported to numerous camps. Samuel was sent to Buchenwald, Bochum, and Dachau concentration camps in Germany, where he was liberated by American forces on May 5, 1945.

Bernat was first deported to Fünfteichen, the largest sub-camp of the Gross-Rosen system in Poland. This sub-camp partnered with an armaments factory that manufactured 75mm and 150mm cannons and torpedo launchers. Most of the prisoners were forced to work in the factory and endured 12-hour shifts and a three-kilometer round trip walk to the plant. On January 21, 1945, the SS began evacuated the prisoners in Fünfteichen, and sent them on a four-day forced march in subzero temperatures back to Gross-Rosen. Approximately 1,000 of the 6,000 prisoners died during the march.

On February 15, 1945, Bernat was deported to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where he was liberated by American forces on May 5. After liberation, Bernat moved to Chemotow, Czechoslovakia, where he worked as an auto mechanic and was able to earn enough money to reunite with his younger brothers . Samuel immigrated to England in August 1945. In May 1946, Bernat and Herman immigrated to the American zone in Germany, settling in Pocking displaced persons (DP) camp. While there, both brothers contracted tuberculosis, and were transferred from the Pocking hospital to the DP hospital in Zaitzkofen, Germany. The brothers’ American uncle Martin, who lived in New York, arranged and paid for their transfer to the Etania Jewish Sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, where they arrived on December 5, 1947. Samuel emigrated from England to Chicago in April 1948. After recovering from TB, Herman left Switzerland in October 1948, and immigrated to Australia in 1949. He immigrated to California in the 1950s.

While in Davos, Bernat met Adela (Ada) Kochanski (1927-?), who was also receiving treatment for tuberculosis. Ada was born in Łódź, Poland, was forced into the Łódź Ghetto. After four years, she was deported to multiple concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Rochlitz, and Kraslitz. The two married in the fall of 1948, and moved to Basel in 1949. On July 24, 1950, the couple left Switzerland for Brisbane, Australia with assistance from the American Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) and the Australian Jewish Welfare Society, and changed their last name to Berk. Around 1954, the couple immigrated to Washington, D.C., where Ada’s parents lived. In 1959, Bernat became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Bernat and Ada had two children and relocated to be close to his brother Samuel near Chicago. After Ada died, Bernat moved to Arizona, where he remarried and belonged to the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors’ Association until his death.