by Debra Rubin
NJJN Bureau Chief/Middlesex

April 14, 2009

Seventeen-year-old Aida Brydbord and her new husband didn’t wait for the Nazis to liquidate the Jewish ghetto in the Polish town of Pruzhany, which had been occupied by the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II.

They escaped into the woods, spending the rest of the war fighting with Russian partisans, scrounging for food, digging holes under the snow to sleep, and moving under cover of night.

“We didn’t even know anything about the concentration camps,” said Brydbord. “We were in hiding.”

More than 60 years later, Brydbord came to grandson Paul Brydbord’s religious school class at the East Brunswick Jewish Center on March 31 to share her tale of survival.

In the EBJC hey class, seventh-grader Paul has been studying the Holocaust through the Coming of Age During the Holocaust-Coming of Age Now curriculum of the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, located in Manhattan.

Aida Brydbord, a resident of Passaic and Florida, sat on a chair, holding a cane as she recalled how two partisans — one Jewish and the other Christian — came into her town’s ghetto to rally support.

Brydbord’s boyfriend, Paul — or Faivel as he was known in Yiddish — began helping to smuggle arms into the ghetto. His 15-year-old brother, Tuvia, had left to join the first group of partisans.

Paul and Aida married on their last day in the ghetto in January 1943 with “just a huppa and a mazel tov,” she said; there was no reception and no wine.

“My father said we should run because maybe you will be the one to survive and go to the United States to tell your sisters of our suffering,” said Brydbord. Her two older sisters had moved to America before the war.

The newlyweds made their escape that night, but became separated in the forest. Eventually they and 60 other ghetto escapees met, but, she told the students, “we never saw any partisans.”

Cold and hungry, several members of her group went to the village to bring back food, but as it was being unloaded gunfire erupted.

“We started running like animals,” said Brydbord. “I saw the bread on the sled and I said to myself, ‘I don’t care if I die, I am so hungry.’”

At night when it quieted down, they regrouped only to find among the dead her husband’s 21-year-old brother.

“Somehow you don’t cry; you don’t feel anything,” recalled Brydbord. “You don’t think about your parents.”

They wandered throughout the bitter winter without proper shoes and little food.

“We were so dirty,” recalled Brydbord. “We just would shake out our clothes to get the lice out. The lice were eating us alive.”

No one left

In the spring a group of partisans, including Tuvia Brydbord, finally located the Jews in the woods. They took them back to their traveling “otrad,” or community, which had about 500 people, including 30 Jews.

Aida Brydbord was assigned to cooking detail but learned how to clean and use a rifle and gun.

One summer day, she and four men went out to dynamite a bridge.

“We had just put the dynamite down and the Germans began shooting at us,” said Brydbord. “They sent their dogs after us. We were very afraid of the dogs because they were killers. We ran into the water with the dogs barking.” The bridge was blown up.

Later on, Brydbord would sneak off in the middle of the night to assist the otrad’s Jewish doctor.

After liberation, the couple returned to Pruzhany, located 50 miles outside Minsk. They found that local residents had taken over Jewish property. Former partisans, however, forced out the family that was living in the house of Paul’s wealthy parents.

No one else was left from the Jewish community. She later learned her parents had been taken away with other Jews and were killed at Auschwitz days after her escape.

The Brydbords decided to leave after Tuvia, despite being heavily decorated by Stalin’s government, was arrested as a spy because of his family’s prior wealth and sentenced to life in Siberia.

Escaping with their baby daughter through Lodz, Poland, and into the American quarter of Berlin, they came to the United States. Tuvia was eventually released and immigrated to Israel.

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For every generation

LEARNING ABOUT the suffering and survival of so many children in Nazi Europe has given students in the hey class at the East Brunswick Jewish Center a deeper understanding of the Holocaust.

The class has been studying all year through the Coming of Age During the Holocaust-Coming of Age Now curriculum in conjunction with the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.

“Through this curriculum, the students have been reading stories of people their own age who lived through the Holocaust,” said teacher Judy Hecht. “They are stories not of death, but survival.”

“We learned each survivor has a different story,” said seventh-grader Sydnie Young. “Different people went through different things.”

Another seventh-grader, Zachary Benson, said the Holocaust “was an important time, never to be forgotten because so many people died.”

Supplemented by stories on DVDs, the program is geared to bar and bat mitzva-age children and focuses on the meaning and responsibilities of being part of the Jewish community.

The class will go to the museum in Manhattan on April 19 to tour the exhibit run in conjunction with the curriculum.

The students heard from two survivors. Speaking on March 24 was Hans Fisher, a passenger on the ill-fated ship, the St. Louis.

Aida Brydbord, who fought with Russian partisans along with her husband, spoke to the class on March 31.

Her grandson, hey class member Paul Brydbord — named in memory of his grandfather, who died 20 years ago — said, “I think it is important for every generation to learn from these survivors so they will never forget that this horrible thing happened.”

— DEBRA RUBIN

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