Krzyz Walecznych (Cross of Valor) medal and presentation box awarded to a Jewish conscript in the Soviet Army

Kalman Barakan was born in Bialystok, Poland, on November 2, 1913. He obtained a law degree from University Jozef Pilsudski in Warsaw on October 11, 1937. Kalman was living in Bialystok when the Germans occupied it in June 1941. His home was destroyed. By late summer, he, and all the Jews of Bialystok, were forced to wear the yellow star and were imprisoned in the ghetto, working for the Gestapo doing hard manual labor. Conditions were inhumane with ten family members sharing one room of about 30 square feet. In July 1943, he managed to escape. The ghetto was liquidated in August 1943. Kalman’s entire family was transported to a death camp. He lived in hiding in the area, constantly changing places and on the run, feeling like a hunted animal. He went for long periods of time without any food, close to starvation. He was liberated at the end of July 1944 when the German Army retreated as the Soviets advanced. From July 1944, until the end of the war in May 1945, Kalman served in the Red Army. He was mobilized, despite his Polish citizenship, when the Soviet occupied the eastern part of Poland where he had been living.

Kalman married Pauline Pajes in 1949. She had survived the war in hiding in Grodno. Her family was killled in Treblinka. Kalman worked for the Polish National Enterprise for Foreign Trade in Łódź, Poland. However, he never accepted the ideology of the Communist regime. In 1968, at the age of 55, Kalman was fired for lack of Party activity. He and his wife were forced to leave their apartment and deprived of citizenship. On September 25, 1968, Kalman and Paulina left Poland, and arrived in Italy on October 10, and lived, stateless, in Rome. They were admitted as refugees to the United States on January 21, 1969. They settled in Chicago, Illinois, where Kalman died, age 79, in 1992.