by Debra Rubin
NJJN Bureau Chief/Middlesex

November 18, 2008

Despite his internment in two concentration camps and the loss of his parents in another, Jack Polak, 95, believes he is a lucky man.

“We are able to call ourselves happy Holocaust survivors,” he said, including his wife of 62 years. “We are lucky. We are very healthy and at 95 I do everything. But the most important thing I try to do is with the Anne Frank Center, where I have been able to tell thousands of children my story.”

A longtime leader of the American branch of the center, which is located in lower Manhattan, Polak has served as its director, president, and chair and has been chair emeritus for more than 20 years. The center in Amsterdam perpetuates the memory of the young girl who wrote her world-famous diary while her family was in hiding in the building in which it is housed.

On Nov. 9 Polak and his wife, Ina, spoke at a brunch at the East Brunswick home of Shirley and Bruce Sommers to raise money toward a matching a grant of up to $50,000 — from the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany — for services to local Holocaust survivors (see sidebar).

In encouraging support for the grant, Jack and Ina told their own story of persecution and survival.

The couple, who first met in Amsterdam, were incarcerated in the same barracks at Bergen-Belsen and were able to exchange daily letters. At the time, Jack was unhappily married to another woman.

“We didn’t know then, but those were our love letters,” said Ina.

Jack explained, “Survival in the Holocaust was 97 percent luck and three percent willpower. But if you didn’t have that willpower, you were dead in two days.”

Ina’s father, a wealthy diamond dealer, was president of Amsterdam’s Jewish community.

Even after Holland fell to the Germans in five days in 1940, he and many other Jews were unaware of what lay ahead. However, Ina’s brother was arrested in 1942 and would later die in Mauthausen.

Meanwhile, Jack had married in 1939, but within months the couple realized the marriage was a mistake. Nonetheless, they thought it best “to get through the war together” before separating.

Ina and Jack met in 1943 when she was invited through friends to the Polak home for Shabbat. The next month Jack and his wife were deported to Westerbork, the Dutch transit camp, where Ina and her family were sent two months later. His parents were also deported around the same time, and unknown then to Jack, were killed within days in the Sobibor death camp.

Afterward, both Jack and his wife and Ina and her family were deported to Bergen-Belsen.

Even during the Holocaust, wealth could buy privileges. Ina’s family lived together in a section of Bergen-Belsen where they wore their own clothes and were not threatened with extermination.

“I later found out my parents had gotten papers that said we were born in El Salvador,” said Ina. “That probably saved us.”

Jack was liberated by the Russian army in 1945. Suffering from typhus, he had dropped to about 50 pounds. Ina was liberated by the Americans from a train heading away from Bergen-Belsen.

Ina, who had been waiting for the return of her boyfriend, Rudi, found out he had been gassed at Auschwitz. Jack and his wife divorced. He and Ina married in January 1946 and came to the United States in 1951. The Eastchester, NY, residents are now great-grandparents.

Their diary of life in the camps, Steal a Pencil for Me, was published in 2000 and made into a documentary by the same name last year.

Speaking soon after Election Day, Jack noted that he had a special affinity for African-Americans. At one point he held up the yellow star he was forced to wear, as well as a special pass he used to get around the ban preventing Jews from riding public transportation.

“When I speak to black audiences I feel very close to them. I know what it is to be different. This Jewish star made me different,” said Polak.

“The fact that a black man was able to be elected president of the United States this week for us, and for all Holocaust survivors, is so unbelievable.”

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‘Dignity’ for survivors

THE JEWISH FAMILY & Vocational Service of Middlesex County hopes to raise $50,000 by Dec. 31 to fully match a grant given to it by the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany for elderly Holocaust survivors.

The grant has been given annually for a number of years, according to JFVS acting interim director Sara Levine, and was matched through a special state grant. However, that grant dried up this year, a victim of the state’s economic woes.

In addition, the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County, said its president, Lee Livingston, “is proud to offer a challenge grant, which will match every new dollar contributed for this effort.”

The grant was used to fund transportation services, socialization programs, health aides, day-care programs, housekeeping services, kosher meals-on-wheels, and case management services.

Shirley Sommers, a JFVS board member who chaired a Nov. 9 luncheon at her East Brunswick home to raise matching funds, said grant requirements disallow community funds from the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County from being used to match the grant.

The conference grant will be reduced to whatever money is brought in by the end of the year.

“This really resonates for me because I am the child of Holocaust survivors, who are deceased,” said Sommers. “I get very emotional about this because, although they were never in a situation where they required financial or social help from the community, these people have already suffered more than anyone should have to in a lifetime. I only hope we can help these members of our community live out their final years with dignity and respect.”

For those who want to contribute, checks should be sent to the Jewish Family & Vocational Service of Middlesex County, 32 Ford Ave., Milltown 08850. Write “Holocaust survivor grant” in the memo line.

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