Jack (Izak) Feldman

Srulek “Jack” Feldman

I was born on January 1,1926 in Skarzysko-Kamienna, Poland to Szaja Feldman and Matla (nee Cukier) Feldman. Shortly after my birth, my parents, sister and I moved to Sosnowiec Poland. My father was a cap maker and owned a store on the first floor of our home on Modrejowska street at the corner of Dekarta in Sosnowiec. I had a younger brother Szulim Hersh and an older sister Sura Laja. My father was one of seven children. My paternal grandparents and all of my father’s siblings and their families lived in Skaryzsko-Kamienna.

My parents believed strongly in education. Therefore, I attended school each day and following school, I had an English tutor, a German tutor and a Hebrew tutor who came to the house. I lived a very comfortable life and remember having a maid that helped us around the house. I loved to play soccer with my friends. I attended Shul on Dekarta street and had my Bar Mitzvah there before the war broke out.

I was visiting my aunts and uncles and cousins in Skarzysko-Kamienna when war broke out. Eventually I was able to safely make my way back to my home in Sosnowiec. However, everything started to change, and I could no longer attend school and my father’s cap business was taken over by a German Trueshandler. Eventually, my family was forced to leave our beautiful home and move to a one room apartment with 15 other people in the Ghetto in Sosnowiec. One day when I was in the Ghetto and walking with some boys, a wagon pulled up and grabbed me and took me away. I was thrown into a basement of a building and locked up to await transport to a series of Nazi labor and death camps. I never saw my parents and siblings again. I was 14 years old. I was sent to Bergen Belsen, Buchenwald, Annaberg, Fallsbruck, Gleiwitz, Ludwigsdorf and ultimately Auschwitz Birkenau.

I arrived at Auschwitz on July 23, 1944. I arrived in a transport full of 455 men from Ludigsdorf Camp. 370 men from the transport were sent directly to the gas chambers. 85 men were admitted to the camp and tattooed numbers A-17592 through 17676 on their arms. When I got off the train, Mengele pointed for me to go into the line for the gas chambers but a Kapo (who happen to be a man who worked for my father at the hat company before the war) pulled me out of the gas chamber line and sent me to the work line. I was admitted to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the number A-17606 was tattooed onto my arm. The Kapo who pulled me out of line also assigned me an extra job at Auschwitz-Birkenau of cleaning the Block Elders room. The block elder was a non Jewish pole who was a political prisoner and from Krakow originally. I believe this extra job saved my life as I was able to eat the extra scraps of food he found while cleaning the Block Elders room.

I was never liberated from Auschwitz-Birkenau. On January 17, 1945, as the Russians were approaching Auschwitz, I, along with the other prisoners, were forced on a death march. I marched through the winter of 1945 from January 17 until May 5, from Poland to Germany. During the death march, the Block Elder made me carry the bag of jewels he had stolen from prisoners sent to the gas chambers. I don’t know where he disappeared to after the war, but the Block Elder did survive. I was liberated on May 5, 1945 on the side of a road in Germany. By then, I was 19 years old. In those teenage years, I witnessed some of the worst atrocities perpetrated by mankind.

After liberation I made my way back to my hometown only to learn that none of the members of my immediate family survived. I tried to get into my old house to see if any of my belongings were still there but the residents living in the house did not allow me inside. I then went to Skarzysko-Kamiena to inquire whether any of my extended family had survived. I found my cousins Charlie, Ester and Sara and my future bride Sala. After a pogram in Kielce, my relatives and I made our way to Germany to the Feldafing displaced persons “DP” camp. In the DP camp, I fell in love and married Sala and thereafter had a son named Sammy.

In 1949, I brought my wife and son to the USA on the Marine Flasher. We settled in Rochester, New York. In Rochester, my wife and I gave birth to two additional children, Irving and Rochelle. We opened a fish market. Several people would come into the market saying that they were staving and didn’t have any money to pay for the fish. Because, I knew what hunger was, I would feed anyone who needed food for free. The community loved me. During the 1964 race riots in downtown Rochester, Jack’s Fish Market was one of the only stores left untouched. The community protected my store because I was so good to the community. In 2006, I was shot during a robbery at the Fish Market. However, I was once again resilient and continued to give to the community.

In 2015 I was invited by President Obama to attend the White House Hannukah party with my granddaughter Stacey Saiontz. In 2019, I was asked by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to light a candle in honor of the six million during the annual Days of Remembrance Ceremony in the US Capitol. HBO created a documentary on my story of survival entitled “The Number on Great Grandpa’s Arm.” I am the proud father of three children, grandfather of six grandchildren ,and great-grandfather of seven great grandchildren.

Click above to watch Jack Feldman share his story of survival with his great grandsons

Jack's father Szaja Feldman second from left in white hat. Only picture he has of him

Jack Feldman

List of classmates in Jack Feldman's 1936/37 Class

jack Feldman's report card

Jack Feldman dad's hat company listing in 1928 business directory

Document taking away Jack Feldman's dad business and appointing a German Trueshandler

Order to Jack Feldman's family to move to Ghetto listing their home address and address they needed to move to (#98)

When the Germans occupied Sosnowiec, the Germans appointed trustees (treuhandlers) to take over and operate Jewish businesses. Quite often, the Jewish business owners became employed by the treuhandlers to work in the businesses. The treuhandlers did not pay any salaries to the Jewish employees. Instead, they paid monies to the Jewish Judenraat, which in turn, was supposed to be used to provide support to the Jewish employees by way of, among other things, food rations. The above document is an invoice, signed by Moniek Merin, the head of the Jewish Judenrat, requesting that , the administrator in Sosnowitz, pay a total of 150 Reichsmarks as employment wages for 30 Jews who were employed by Rachmil Szaja Feldman for the five months (May – September 1940) in the hat company. The money was to be sent by wire transfer to the Juderaat’s bank account Nr. 7236 in the Sosnowitz branch of the Commerce and Private Bank. It also shows that Rachmil Szyja Feldman at the time was living on 27 Modrzejowska street. The letterhead is that of the Judenrat of Upper East Silesia in Sosnowitz with an address at Marktstrasser 12 (Targowa 12 in Polish).