Chuma Rendler poses with her father Anchel and his cousin Israel Shusterkatz in a studio photo in the Tempelhof DP camp.
Overview
- Caption
- Chuma Rendler poses with her father Anchel and his cousin Israel Shusterkatz in a studio photo in the Tempelhof DP camp.
- Date
-
1946
- Locale
- Berlin, [Berlin] Germany
- Variant Locale
- Berlin-Buckow
Berlin-Mariendorf
Berlin-Ploetzensee
Berlin-Reinickendorf
Berlin-Tempelhof
Berlin-Wannsee
Berlin-Schlachtensee
Berlin-Duppel - Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Natalie Gonenn
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Natalie GonennSource Record ID: Collections: 2006.182
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Natalie Gonenn (born Chuma Rendler) is the daughter of Anshel Rendler and Chana Lezerowicz Rendler. She was born in 1936 in Chelm, Poland where her father was a coachman. Her younger brother Szmuel was born in 1938. An older cousin, Zelda Binstock, also lived with them. When the war broke out in September 1939, Chana was pregnant with her third child. As Chelm was not far from the Soviet border, Anshel fled eastward. However, Chana did not want to flee with young children and in her condition. She decided to remain behind and wait things out, but she changed her mind as conditions worsened in Chelm. Anshel arranged to smuggle his family across the border in a small boat. In the middle of the river, the boat capsized. Russian border guards pulled the refugees out of the river but threw them in jail as illegal immigrants. As a result of this accident, Chana miscarried. Anshel arranged for the release of his wife and children, but since the family did not have proper papers, they lived on the run for the next year and a half. Eventually they came to a small town near Moscow, but they could not remain long there either. After Anshel and Chana refused to assume Soviet citizenship, the family was deported to Siberia. They were incarcerated in a labor camp for approximately one month and then deported to Kolhoz Konsumal in Uzbekistan. While in Uzbekistan, Chana gave birth to a second son, Avraham, and Zelda married. The family suffered privation and starvation, and Chuma, though only a child, worked in the neighboring fields to provide extra food for the family. The family was prohibited from traveling freely, and Anshel was arrested for illegal travel. To escape reimprisonment in a Soviet jail, he volunteered to go to the front. While fighting in Stalingrad, he was shot in the head, and his family believed he had died of his wounds. Left alone, Chana did not have food to feed her family and had to place Chuma and Szmuel in an orphanage. After the war ended in 1945, Soviet authorities allowed Jewish refugees to return to Poland. Chana and the children boarded a train which stopped at every town on the way. To their surprise they found Anshel at one train station. He had spent the past two years in hospitals recuperating from his wounds. Together the family returned to Chelm. However, following the Kielce pogrom in July 1946, they joined the mass exodus of Jews out of Poland. After crossing the border to the American zone of Germany, the lived first in Ulm and then in the Templehof DP camp in Berlin. In 1948 they went to Marseilles to await immigration to Palestine. They boarded the Galila and arrived in Haifa two days after State of Israel was declared. Chuma lived in Israel for 11 years and then immigrated to the United States in 1960.
- Record last modified:
- 2008-09-16 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1147039
