Anna Żalińska

Hermina Gelb, married name Templer, was born on 30 November 1903 in Bujne, a few kilometers east of Rożnow. Her naming ceremony took place in the nearby Paleśnica five days later, i.e. on December 5. Her parents were Wolf Gelb and Mirjam, the daughter of Jakub Horn and Neche née Volkmann, from Żbikowice.[1]

When they lived in Bujne, Wolf was a tenant of the surrounding forests.[2] It is not known when exactly the family moved to Nowy Sącz. The Gelbs were a well-to-do, as before the outbreak of the Second World War Wolf was a landowner[3] and co-owner of a beer, sweet spirits and marmalade factory. It was a plant called “Bocoń” or “Miodystynia”, located in the Przetakówka district at Zdrojowa 32 Str. The Gelb family lived nearby, on Na rurach Str.[4] The last address where Hermina lived with her husband and children just before the outbreak of the war is Na Rurach 53 Str.[5], it may have been her family home. In a surviving photograph from the 1930s. Hermina stands with several-year-old boys against the background of a large, two-story tenement house surrounded by a garden on every side[6].

Hermina attended the Female Gymnasium in Nowy Sącz. Then the family still lived on Zdrojowa Street. The evidences of those times are not only school catalogs, which preserve her name[7], but also a pencil portrait of her sister Regina, sketched together with faces of other students of the Gymnasium by Bolesław Barbacki[8], who was a drawing teacher at this school in 1920s. Gelbówna’s siblings were quite numerous, among them there were brothers Alfred and Ferdynand and sisters: Regina and Natalia, who was born in 1916.[9] Hermina married a Captain of the Polish Army, Izydor Templer, born in 1892, the only Jewish officer of the 1st Podhale Rifle Regiment, promoted to an officer rank of the second lieutenant still in the time of the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Army. Templer fought in the Polish-Ukrainian war, he served in the rank of Captain from 1931.[10] Izydor, actually – Izrael, Templer, jovally called “Iziu”, was an avid athlete (cyclist).[11] The couple had two sons: Mieczysław vel Mordechaja (born 12.06.1928[12]) and Ludwik – Leib (born 6.04.1932[13]). When the war broke out, Major Izydor Templer, went to the front as a regiment quartermaster. After his unit was destroyed, he fled with others to Romania or Hungary, where he was interned and directed to a POW camp. Paradoxically, despite his Jewish descent, as a Polish officer, he survived the war in a German oflag. After the war, he served in the Polish People’s Army in Warsaw, and in the 1950s. he supposedly went to Israel and gained the rank of general there.[14]

Meanwhile, immediately after the Germans attacked Poland, on 1 September 1939, the Gelb family began evacuation to Lviv. Hermina probably stayed with her sons in Nowy Sącz, while her siblings and parents found themselves in the Soviet occupation zone. There, according to the family accounts for refusing to accept the Soviet citizenship, they were were sentenced to be sent to Siberia. Even before the deportation, the father – the head of the family, Wolf Gelb, died in Lviv of a heart attack. Regina and Alfred somehow managed to stay in Podolia. Ferdynand – Fredek (a lawyer by education, born in 1902) and Natalia – Netka (born in 1916, a pre-war graduate of a two-year gardening course at the Jagiellonian University) with the mother, Maria were transported deep into Russia. The exiles lived in deplorable conditions. In a surviving letter to her family from May 1941[15] Regina writes that she is sending them seeds (carrot, parsley, lettuce, dill, onions and cucumber) and 100 cigarettes for her brother. She herself worked as a presser in a kit fabric manufacture. In her letter, she assures her family that she will send the next package soon and complains that her loved ones do not receive her letters. We can presume how much the conditions of Regina and her brother changed after the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941 They both died in unknown circumstances.[16]

Meanwhile, Hermina stayed in the ghetto created by the Germans in Nowy Sącz.[17] On 23 June 1942, the ghetto liquidation, executions and mass train transports to the Bełżec extermination camp began. We don’t know how, but Hermin managed to escape from the ghetto and hide with her two sons (younger one, Ludwik, was less than 10 years old). Her hiding place was located in the wicker thicket over the Łubinka river.[18] Reportedly, she was provided with food by the service from the estate of a German from Nowy Sącz, Aleksander (the so-called “Aleksandrówka” manor house, the building still exists at Tarnowska Str.).[19] According to the tradition kept in the family, Hermina was ill, and that is why she did not decide to keep running away, and her sons did not want to leave their mother. They were supposedly denounced to the police for a piece of bread.[20] According to another – seemingly more plausible – account, the family was given away to the German police by a “blue” policeman, a pre-war neighbor of Gelbs and Templers from Przetakówka. It was not dictated by personal revenge, but rather by fear of punishment for failure to fulfill their duty when the hiding place was discovered.[21] What happened next? About that the two stories – oral family tradition and official written account – differ again. Natalia Gelb, during her stay in Poland after the war, heard – and that is what she passed down to the next generations – that her beloved sister and her sons were shot on the bridge over Łubinka.[22] However, the archives of the Municipal Court in Nowy Sącz preserved a record of a hearing of a witness, Edward Pawlikowski, about the circumstances of Hermina’s death (nota bene recorded by another victim of Nazi torturers, who survived the war, Janina Stefaniszyn[23]): the documents clearly show that Hermina died at the execution site in Rdziostów. We do not know how long Hermina and her sons were kept in prison or in the Greko arrest at Czarnieckiego 13 Str.[24] In any case, probably not later than a few days (or maybe even the same day) after their arrest, the mother and her sons were added to the transport of people sent to be shot in Rdziostów. They were recognized there by Edward Pawlikowski, then a 20-year-old man, an employee of the Baudienst[25], who lived in Sącz on the Rybacka Street, who remembered Hermina from before the war, as she was an officer’s wife, a widely recognized person. Pawlikowski left a touching account of that moment: The Germans shot the Jews lying on the ground next to the dug out grave. The execution lasted about 20 minutes, because the prisoners were shot in lots. It was at that time that Templerowa and her children were shot […] before her death, she pulled her sons close to her and died together with them.[26] Pawlikowski, together with other young men from the Baudienst, buried the corpses, and at that moment he also recognized Hermina’s dead body. Unfortunately, we do not know the names of the other victims of this execution, as well as their number or exact date of death. Pawlikowski testifies that these events took place in the autumn of 1942, after the liquidation of the ghetto (i.e. after 28 August), but before the All Saints’ Day, i.e. 1 November.[27]

The tragedy of the war was survived by Hermina’s sister and brother – Netka and Ferdinand – and their mother Maria Gelb, who were sent to Siberia. Together with them was Beno Szwarzbart, later Netka’s husband. Born in Jarosław in 1910, son of a professional soldier, a successful cross-country skiing athlete, soldier of the Polish Army in the September campaign, after being captured, he escaped from a German hospital to Lviv. From there he was sent to Siberia together with the Gelb family. When political relations between Soviet Russia and the Polish Government-in-exile were restored with the Sikorski-Mayski agreement, many Polish prisoners and exiles were released to join the Polish Armed Forces in the East being formed in the USSR. Beno enlisted in Anders’ Army in 1941. In 1942 Natalia and Beno got married, and because of that it was possible for them to leave Russia together. Natalia served in the Women’s Auxiliary Service. Her brother, Ferdynand, officially enlisted in the Polish military ranks, and her mother, Maria also left Russia together with the Anders’ Army. When the Army reached Israel, Miriam Gelb remained there. Beno and Fredek went through the entire combat trails of their units, fighting on the Italian front in 1944. Beno, as an officer, was released from service in 1947. Then he left permanently for Israel and re-connected with Netka. Ferdinand emigrated to the USA after the war. Natalia gave birth to a son before the war was over. She died in Israel in 2005.[28]

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[1]     Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie Oddział w Nowym Sączu (later as: ANKr O/NS), Izraelicki Okręg Metrykalny w Nowym Sączu, ref. 31/494/137, Księga urodzeń z 1903 r., Akt urodzenia Herminy Gelb, certificate 293, p. 148.

[2]     Ibidem.

[3]    In the source material he is literally referred to as the “owner of estates”, cf. ANKr O/NS, Żeńskie Gimnazjum w Nowym Sączu, ref. 31/234/7, Katalog główny klasy III na rok szkolny 1917/1918, Karta ucznia Gelbówna Hermina

[4]     http://www.sadeckisztetl.com/przetakowka-dzielnica-z-historia.html, accessed on: 6.06.2021.

[5]     In the source material “Rury 53”, cf. IPN Kr 18/869, Sąd Grodzki w Nowym Sączu, Sprawa uznania za zmarłą Herminę Templer z synami, Poświadczenie Zarządu Miejskiego w Nowym Sączu z 22 września 1946 r., p. 4.

[6]     Photograph of Hermina and her sons – family property, copy received from Shachar Grembek from Israel, grandson of Natalia Gelb, correspondence dated 6.07.2021.

[7]     ANKr O/NS, Gimnazjum w Nowym Sączu, ref. 31/234/7, Katalog główny klasy III na rok szkolny 1917/1918, Karta ucznia Gelbówna Hermina

[8]     Reproduction of a portrait in the album (R. Gelbówna presented together with Anna Ćwikówna): Bolesław Barbacki (1891–1941) Mistrz portretu. Collections of the Muzeum Okręgowe w Nowym Sączu, Nowy Sącz 2001.

[9]     Account of Shachar Grembek from Israel, correspondence dated 6.07.2021.

[10]    Cf. biography of Izydor Templer in: Stanisław Korusiewicz, Apel Podhalański, Nowy Sącz 2018, p. 631.

[11]   Personal interview by Anna Żalińska with an Anonymous Interlocutor from Nowy Sącz, 3/15/2021

[12]   Ibidem, Account of Shachar Grembek, correspondence dated 18.03.2021.

[13]   Ibidem.

[14]   https://sadeczanin.info/i-pulk-strzelcow-podhalanskich/100-lat-temu-w-nowym-saczu-powstal-1-pulk-strzelcow-podhalanskich?page=0%2C1, accessed on: 7.07.2021; cf. also: ,„Bóg, honor, ojczyzna. Sądeccy żołnierze i generałowie w służbie niepodległej Rzeczypospolitej”, ed. by. J. Leśniak i H. Szewczyk, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej & Fundacja Sądecka, Nowy Sącz – Warszawa 2009, S. Korusiewicz, op. cit., p. 631.

[15]   Letter of Regina Gelb dated 22 May 1941 in Podhajce (near Brzeżany, Tarnopol district), property of the family.

[16]   Account of Shachar Grembek, correspondence dated 18.03.2021, cf. also: A Facebook post: From Anders Army to the Israel Army https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=154034476558722&id=100479871914183, accessed on 20.03.2021.

[17]   IPN Kr 18/869, Akta sprawy Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu uznania za zmarłą Herminę Templer z synami, Protokół Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu z dnia 15 października 1946 r., p. 2.

[18]   Ibidem, p. 6.

[19]   Personal interview by Anna Żalińska with an Anonymous Interlocutor from Nowy Sącz, 3/15/2021

[20]   Account of Shachar Grembek, correspondence dated 3/18/2021

[21]   Personal interview by Anna Żalińska with an Anonymous Interlocutor from Nowy Sącz, 3/15/2021

[22]   Account of Shachar Grembek, correspondence dated 18.03.2021.

[23]   Janina Stefaniszyn, a scout, AK runner, she was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück camp, in 1946–1952 she worked in the Municipal Court in Nowy Sącz, cf. Stefaniszyn Janina [in:] Encyklopedia Sądecka, ed. by J. Leśniak, Nowy Sącz 2000, cf. also IPN Kr 18/869, Akta sprawy Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu uznania za zmarłą Herminę Templer z synami, Protokół Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu z dnia 15 października 1946 r., p. 2.

[24]   The Border Commissariat of Security Police, Greko in short (commonly and mistakenly called Gestapo), whose head at the time was Heinrich Hamann, cf. Dawid Golik, Obsada personalna niemieckiej policji bezpieczeństwa i służby bezpieczeństwa w powiecie nowosądeckim w latach 1939–1945, Rocznik Sądecki 2020, vol. 48, p. 214

[25]   It was the Construction Service created by the Germans in the General Government; a form of forced labor for teenagers and young men. Boys from the Baudienst were often sent to fill in the mass graves in Rdziostów, they were often given vodka beforehand. Cf. Jan Wróbel, Monografia miejsca pamięci narodowej w Rdziostowie [in:] Miejsce Pamięci Narodowej w Rdziostowie, ed. Katarzyna Godek, Stowarzyszenie Korzenie i Skrzydła, 2013, p. 13.

[26]   IPN Kr 18/869, Akta sprawy Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu uznania za zmarłą Herminę Templer z synami, Protokół Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu z dnia 15 października 1946 r., p. 2; The confirmation of the death of Hermina Templer and her sons in Rdziostów can also be found in the publication iejsce Pamięci Narodowej w Rdziostowie ed. by. Katarzyna Godek, pp. 13 and 18, however, this study counts Hermina among about 600 victims shot in Rdziostów in May and June 1941 From Pawlikowski’s account it is clear that it must have been later, in the autumn. And so people keep the memory of Hermina and her place of death, only the dates of the event are inconsistent.

[27]   IPN Kr 18/869, Akta sprawy Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu uznania za zmarłą Herminę Templer z synami, Protokół Sądu Grodzkiego w Nowym Sączu z dnia 15 października 1946 r., p. 2.

[28]   Account of Shachar Grembek, correspondence dated 18.03.2021, cf. also A Facebook post From Anders Army to the Israel Army https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=154034476558722&id=100479871914183, accessed on 20.03.2021.