(Jewish Group) In Poland, Canadian Holocaust survivor returns to native village as sole local Jew

[Behind the Aegis]

When Sol Nayman left this village in 1939, it had a small but thriving Jewish community that coexisted harmoniously with its non-Jewish neighbors.

But not long after the departure of Nayman, who is now 87, and his family, German troops murdered the entire community, adding it to the long list of Polish municipalities where the Holocaust ended centuries of Jewish presence.

Nayman’s family fled eastward, ending up in a Soviet labor camp before they eventually settled in Canada, where Nayman became a successful businessman and co-founded the Club Monaco chain of men’s fashion stores.

But Nayman had long wondered what became of the family home and the village where he grew up and experienced his last moments of careless childhood, which was cut short by the horrendous realities of life through World War II in Eastern Europe.

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[marble falls]

1. My friend Irvin's family was reduced to six people in Poland. He had his father's tailoring tools ..

... a brief case full of prewar photos. I never understood how his family could have kept these things going through the camps. He told me of when he was a child born here in the states, he was caught by his mother stuffing coins and dollars between the floorboard of their dining room, maybe at age three or four.

I found out later his mother and father and aunt and uncle at liberation from the camp walked back to their home and dug up things they had buried under the floors of their home when the Germans came for them. Then they walked to a displaced persons camp in West Germany.

It made the story of Irv hiding money very special to me.