Imagine spending 18 months in a cramped attic space the size of a queen-size bed, lying next to three other people in a pitch-black ceiling crawl space so small that there’s only room to sit, not stand.
To me that sounds not just impossibly difficult, but literally impossible.
It was possible, however, and it was how a boy named Henry Friedman managed to survive World War II.
Friedman, now silver-haired but hale and hearty, lives in Seattle. He shared his story a few weeks ago in the state Capitol as part of a living history series sponsored and organized by the Secretary of State’s Office.
His Polish accent was still strong, his words clear and matter of fact. He was the picture of dignity as he spoke amid velvet and marble in an ornate state ballroom near the original hand-sewn Washington flag.
He was the age of my oldest son, 11, when the worst horrors of the war began. As the Nazis moved into the region, Friedman’s family lost its security and property. At one point his mother and her cousin refused to wear the yellow star of David that identified them as second-class citizens. Her mom was beaten so badly that she couldn’t raise her arms for a month. Her cousin was forced to empty an outhouse with her bare hands.
In 1942, he said, a 17-year-old Ukranian girl named Julia Symchuck was working in a police station when she overheard the Gestapo saying they would pick up Friedman’s father. This girl, at great risk to her own life, ran through deep snow to warn and save him.
“Because of this young Christian girl, I am alive today,” Friedman told us.
The pressure and danger against Jews continued to increase. The order came down that all Jews were to move to a ghetto, but Friedman’s father was wary. He knew that once they were confined to one place, it would be difficult to leave. He delayed, giving them time to find a place to hide.
Now, like most people of my generation, I grew up reading “The Diary of Anne Frank,” and as a child I couldn’t imagine living for months or years in a small apartment, confined to whispers and tip-toes.
However, after hearing Friedman’s story, it’s clear that — as horrible and difficult as the situation was for Anne and those hiding with her in their “secret annex” — things could be so much worse.
Their father found a place for his wife, two sons and one more woman in a corner space above a chicken coop, living with Julia Symchuck’s parents, Ivan and Marie. This area wasn’t a small apartment, or even a single room. It was just a few feet wide and long, barely big enough for the four of them to lie down next to one another. There was no room to stand.
There also was no food. Their hosts didn’t have enough for themselves in that war-torn land, let alone to adequately feed the four people in hiding.
Marie Symchuck found enough to make soup for them. There was no need to wash the pot — they wiped it clean every day, savoring literally every drop.
“I can’t describe to you that hunger,” Friedman said.
They were there for 18 months, only leaving for a short period after a chilling episode in which a Jewish family was found hiding in the woods. Five hundred people came to witness the execution. They overheard their hosts talking about this. Ivan, shaken and drinking heavily, said that their family could no longer risk harboring the Jews in their attic.
“Enough, enough, enough,” Friedman recounts Ivan Symchuck saying. “I’ve risked our lives for 11 months. The only way out of this is that we will have to poison them.”
Terrified, the Friedmans lowered themselves down that night and secreted themselves to where their father was hiding. His refuge was half the size or theirs, and his host family had even less food. Eventually they went back to the attic — but by then young Friedman was little more than a skeleton. His muscles were so atrophied that his father had to carry him back to the hiding place.
There were greater tragedies and inhumanities that I hesitate to describe in a family newspaper. Friedman tells the whole story on videos on the website of the Holocaust Center for Humanity in Seattle (holocaustcenterseattle.org/survivor-voices/henry-friedman) and I encourage you to watch them.
The sad end of the story is that out of 15,000 Jews who lived in that community before the war, only 100 survived — including Friedman and his family.
Almost a half century later, after the Cold War ended, Friedman and Julia Symchuck were able to meet again in person. Her courage and humanity had earned her the designation “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. This title honors “a small minority who mustered extraordinary courage to uphold human values” during a time of moral collapse.
A 1989 Seattle Times story describes the scene when Friedman arranged for Symchuck to fly the Northwest. He greeted her at SeaTac airport with his wife, children and grandchildren.
When she saw the legacy that her own family had kept alive during those terrible days 47 years before, Julia’s plans to stay dignified and somber during the reunion dissolved.
She burst into tears and fell into Friedman’s embrace.
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Brian Mittge and his family live south of Chehalis. Among the family’s ancestors: Jews, Poles, Russians and Germans — righteous and sinful, as we all could be. Drop him a line at brianmittge@hotmail.com.
