Max Kandler

My name is Max Kandler and I was born December 16, 1918 in Braunau, Czechoslovakia to Abraham and Irena. I had three siblings- an older brother and two sisters. We were a close-knit family. My siblings and I liked to hike together and collect mushrooms. We would give these to my mother who would cook them up for us.

I was raised in a conservative Jewish family. Our city was 1/3 Jewish, 1/3 Ukrainian and 1/3 Polish people. My family and I went to Shul every Saturday. I enjoyed this very much. We kept shabbos and observed kosher laws.

As a child, I did not feel any anti-Semitism. However, later on in life, I felt a little bit of anti-Semitism.

My father owned a mill. He sent me to school in Germany to learn how to build a flour factory and how to build a mill. This saved me during the war.

My wife Fanny was my high school sweetheart. We met in 1933 and we were both part of a Zionist student organization. I fell in love right away with her. I married in May 25, 1941 in the midst of the war.

In 1939, our city of Lysets was invaded by the Russians. I was visiting Fanny and her family when war started. The communists nationalized my father’s flour mill and took it away from my father. My brother and I were allowed to still work in the flour mill. They appointed my father to be a night-man to watch the mill. We stayed like this until 1941. In 1941, the Russians ran away and the Hungarians occupied our city for two-three weeks. Then, the Hungarians retreated and the German Nazi’s invaded my Polish city. It didn’t take long for the Nazi’s to force all the Jews to move into the Stanislawow ghetto. I got a job from the Germans to go outside of the Ghetto and to collect metals, steel, iron and clothing and other raw materials to bring to a point for collection. This job allowed me to visit my parents who lived in Lysets because I would push the cart to see them. I would smuggle in flour from our mill into the Ghetto.

I did have one scary encounter with a German. A German asked me to light his cigarette and he was on a horse. So I lit a match and when I held it up to him on the horse, wind blew and it went out. This happen three times. The German got angry and went to grab his gun and so I ran in a zig zag and he started shooting me. Thankfully he never hit me. A miracle.

While living in the Ghetto, I found out that my father was shot on the road because he wasn’t walking fast enough.

The first aktion in our city was on Jewish holiday and they killed 8000 Jews at the cemetery. They told all the people to take your valuables because we are going to be repatriated (sent someplace else), no one knew they were going to kill them. A friend of ours in Lysets made a hiding place for my family in Lysets at their house in the back of the flour mill. My family went into hiding. However, I did not go into hiding because I ran away because I was afraid I would get killed.

Around February 1943, my wife and I escaped by stealing papers that identified us as Gentiles. I went to visit a fellow miller and knew he had papers (similar to a passport). I asked him to show me his papers and he took them out. I looked at them and figured out how to take the papers. I asked him to get me something from his basement and while he went away, I took the papers and ran away. With those papers, I found my wife and we took off our armbands and went to the railroad station to go to another city during the evening. I used to wear a fur coat, and Jews could not wear fur coats and since I hid it and didn’t turn it in, I wore it. At midnight, we arrived in another city and went to a corridor with Germans and Ukrainians and dogs. Somehow, we were lucky and they did not stop us. We were stopped several times, but I had the Gentile papers and they let us go.

After settling in another city, I found work as a miller. We lived in an apartment complex for factory employees. I presented my gentile papers and got a job and I was a very good worker. I was one of the best workers and they made me a foreman. Eventually, I had a couple workers who were Jewish from the nearby Ghetto, who came to me and told me that they were shooting in the Ghetto and I hid them upstairs in the factory and they were saved. One of those Jews, one day burned me on purpose with hot glass because they didn’t know I was not a gentile. I was supposed to kill the Jew who did it, but I didn’t. I just cursed him instead. After a while, a half Polish and half German worker tells me that he suspected me of being Jewish. I told him, come with me to the bathroom and I will show you I am not Jewish. A week earlier I had pulled my skin and put rubber around so it would look like I was not circumcised. When I had to pull down my pants, they sang “You are one of us.” Prior to this incident, they caught two Jews with gentile papers and they took out all of us and shot the Jews in front of all of us.

At this time, I was too scared so my wife Fanny and I along with 20 others fled to the forest, where we stayed for two winters. Our shelter was a hole in the ground. At night we walked, and during the day we were hiding. During the day we were sitting near tall grains and suddenly we hear two Germans with a German shepherd. They let the dog loose and it came through the weeds and the grain to us. But I grabbed the dog and tried to calm the dog and it stayed with us until they whistled for him to come back. He never revealed that we were there. A miracle!

For food, we survived by drinking melted snow and eating bread that was smuggled to them by friends. The bread was green and we learned later that penicillin is made from mold and that’s why we never got sick.

When I was in the woods, some Jewish boys robbed me. I still had my fur coat. I traded my fur coat to a Ukrainian for a rifle. I thought a rifle would be able to help me get more food in the woods. I didn’t ever shoot anybody. I did shoot a bird on at tree just to make sure the rifle worked- my first and last shot.

We were about three hundred Jewish people in the woods with two Ukrainians who managed the whole thing. At one time, my cousin was with us in the forest. We were sitting together one morning on a hill and I saw military people approaching with dogs. I ran to my friends, including my cousin, if the dogs will come to you and they bark, you should not move. I found a hole and put my wife in the hole and covered her with leaves all around her. She could breathe but I covered her with wood so no one could step on her. I started running from one hill to another. While I was running, they military started shooting at me. Finally I get out of the woods and they had surrounded the other people and I am still free. I don’t know what happen to me. In one minute, I was standing near a tall tree and somehow I went up the tree to the top and I saw everything that happen, including them catching all the people including my cousin. I saw my cousin and she screamed for ten minutes in Jewish asking me where I was and I saw she was with them so I didn’t answer. They took her into the truck and went away. It got dark and I climbed down the tree to find my wife in the hole. We had a special whistle in the forest that is a sound like a bird. I found her in the hole and she crawled out. We stayed alive. This was a miracle!

The Ukrainians used to try to come to try to catch us and kill us. In the end, there were only 22 survivors, including my wife and I.

In July, 1944, the Russian army liberated the area and we came down from the mountains and woods. At this time, I was barefoot and the Russians gave us some shoes and clothing.

My wife and I went back to our hometown, but there was no one left alive. They gave me a good job at a mill, so I didn’t get put in the army. I looked for my family but found out they were all killed. I learned from the Ukrainians in Lysets about how my brother and two sisters and mother were discovered in hiding and got killed.

After living there for a little while, we packed up and headed toward Munich, where we were put in a displaced persons camp. I made a living as a peddler. As a displaced person, they gave me food at the camp. I wanted to make extra money so I peddled it. From there I registered to go to America.

My wife’s cousin sponsored us to come to the United States. We came on the General Holbroke to Boston and then took the railroad to New York. A cousin met us there and we stayed with my cousin for two weeks. In 1949, we settled in Brooklyn, New York.

My wife and I had three sons- Bernard, Edward and Charles. We opened a leather goods factory. Upon retirement, two of our sons took over the factory. Our third son is a physician. We have 10 grandchildren.

In 1981, I testified in a denaturalization trial of Bohdan Koziy. At Bohdan Koziy’s trial I learned exactly how my relatives were marched into the town’s Jewish graveyard and shot down. For me, there is no time limit on war crimes. Koziy is the Holocaust.

My message is that I survived not because I was smarter or better but because of many miracles.