MZ-431-D

This unique notebook contains the names of several hundred Jews who survived the Holocaust and returned, usually for a short time, to Oświęcim. In addition to the prewar residents of the town, these were also people from other areas. The registry was kept by Maurycy Bodner, who founded the Jewish Committee in Oświęcim in April 1945, the local branch of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (1944-1950). On principle, it was a secular organization that represented Polish Jews politically and included representatives of various political parties. The work of the organization, and especially of the local committees, focused on material aid, provisions and housing for the survivors. Maurycy Bodner, after his liberation from the Gross Rosen camp, was one of the first Jews to return to Oświęcim. It was also here that he met his future wife, Lola, who arrived in town in March 1945 and did not meet with a friendly reception from her former neighbors. Lola was born in Oświęcim in 1927. She and her family lived at 42-44 Jagiellońska Street, in Stare Stawy, where her parents, Natan Silbiger-Haber and Ewa Holtzer, ran a brickyard and owned farmland. Lola attended the Queen Jadwiga elementary school. In 1941 she was deported with her parents and two siblings to Sosnowiec. Lola went through several German labor camps, including Saybusch, Annaberg and Märzdorf. For most of this period she was together with her sister Mirka. In early 1945, the two sisters and other female prisoners escaped from the Christianstadt labor camp by digging under the fence. Until the arrival of Soviet troops, Lola and Mirka hid with a German family in Grünberg. Maurycy and Lola married after the war in Oświęcim and adopted little Mieczysław, a victim of Dr. Mengele’s pseudo-medical experiments in Auschwitz. The Bodners left Oświęcim in 1946. They made their way to Munich, via Cieszyn and Prague. They emigrated from Germany to Israel in 1949. In Israel, Lola was a homemaker, and Maurycy ran a toy factory and later worked at the Lod aircraft plant.