Names Not Numbers

Ida Paluch Kersz

Sosnowiec, Poland

Sosnowiec Ghetto

In Hiding

1939

Ida Paluch Kersz

Sosnowiec, Poland

1939

Ida was born in Sosnowiec, Poland, in 1939. When the war broke out on September 1, 1939, her father enlisted in the Polish army. While stationed in Russia, he was captured by the Germans. Soon after the Nazi invasion of Poland, Ida, her mother, twin brother Adam, and older sister Gienia were forced into the Sosnowiec Ghetto.

Tragedy struck in 1942 when Ida’s mother, overwhelmed by fear of losing her children to the Nazis, committed suicide in their ghetto apartment. Following this, Ida and her siblings were taken care of by their aunt Rugia, who arranged to smuggle Ida out of the ghetto with the help of Wilhelm Maj, a Polish Catholic man she had worked with before the war. Ida was smuggled out through a wire fence and taken to Czestochowa.

Once in Czestochowa, Wilhelm and his wife, Josefa, treated Ida as their own child, concealing her Jewish identity from her. They had her christened in their church, changing her name to Irene Maj, and instilling in her a learned fear of Jews. Ida’s adoptive father was later murdered by the Gestapo. The family was told that he was illegally selling items, but much later, Ida found out the true story.

Life became increasingly difficult for Josefa, Ida, and her new baby sister. They supported themselves by selling goods on trains, and at one point, they were arrested by the Gestapo but were later released.

When the war ended, Ida’s biological father returned from Russia and began searching for her. With the help of the Jewish community, he eventually found her, but Ida was reluctant to go with him.

To gain her trust, he pretended to be Catholic during his visits. Eventually, she was compelled to return with him and began to reconnect with her Jewish identity. They settled in Wroclaw, Poland.

In 1957, Ida and her father immigrated to Israel. There, she married and had a daughter, and in 1963, her family moved to Chicago.

Soon after their arrival, Ida’s aunt showed her a photograph of her mother holding Ida and her twin brother, Adam, with her sister Genia in the background. Seeing their faces for the first time filled Ida with a resurgence of hope.

In 1991, Ida attended a gathering for hidden children in New York, where she discovered that other children hidden in Poland had survived. This prompted her to begin searching for her brother and sister.

In 1995, a friend gave her a newspaper article about a Holocaust survivor orphaned in Warsaw who didn’t know his real identity. Ida compared the photo of the man, listed as Jerzy Dolebski, with those she had of her father and grandfather and noted that he closely resembled them.

Ida called Jerzy and arranged to visit him in Poland. On April 28, 1995, the two met and exchanged family photos, reuniting after 52 years.

Jerzy had survived Majdanek but had no memories of his life before the Holocaust. Their emotional reunion attracted attention from Polish and Israeli media. Upon Adam’s subsequent visit to the U.S., it was featured in a front-page story in the Chicago Tribune - https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2013-01-29-ct-met-holocaust-survivor-20130129-story.html

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Eventually, Ida was able to bring her brother to live with her in Skokie in 1995, where he remained until his passing in 2022. Ida later wrote about her experiences in a book entitled Unveiled Memories: Twins Reunited After the Holocaust.

Names Not Numbers

Ida Paluch Kersz

Ida Paluch Kersz

The End