On a fateful first day of September, 1939, Jacob Bresler was playing at the one-pump gas station near his family’s two room apartment in Uniejow, rolling the metal rim of an automobile wheel with a wire stick. It was no surprise as hoop rolling has been a famous sport among kids of all ages even during the time of Ancient Rome. For the most part, the game was played among friends with the aim of keeping the wheel upright for long hours or to show off tricks. But for some reason, Jacob was playing alone.
Suddenly, a huge deafening sound echoed from the town hall, just across the street. As though knowledgeable about the cause, Jacob hid under the gas station canopy. From the haven, he saw several German Stuka dive bombers streak past, dropping …show more content…
Inside the family’s apartment, now filled with shattered glass and debris, Chaim Bresler quickly gathered the family together. “We are not safe here,” he said with a broken voice and a foreboding expression. “We have to leave the city.”
It must have been heartbreaking to leave the town where he played a major role in other’s lives as representative of 500 Jewish families and textbook supplier for schools. To see the faces of his once neighbors cold and pale as they laid on the dirty streets. Jacob attended public school as well as cheder. At age 9, he also began working evenings as an apprentice for his uncle, making leather shoe uppers and riding boots for the wealthy. The family had a bright future before them, which was unfortunately to be tampered with.
While anti-Semitism was always present, the situation worsened after 1933, as Chaim’s book franchise got confiscated and the family’s general store began losing customers. So, on Sept. 2, 1939, the day after the Stukas bombed Uniejow, the family fled by foot, unsure where to go. Still, Jacob recalled, “We thought we would soon be …show more content…
A few days later, at Chaim’s suggestion, Jacob and Rachel returned alone to Uniejow to check on the situation, discovering that the store and their primary apartment had been stripped bare.
On their second night back, Polish forces attacked the Germans. But when Jacob and others went out to greet the temporarily victorious Polish troops, they found the town square littered with hundreds of massacred men — Polish and Jewish hostages the Germans had released and then machine-gunned before leaving. Soon after, the Germans recaptured the town.
Jacob and Rachel rejoined the family, but a week later, they all returned home, moving everyone into the children’s apartment. This was because the Polish troops no longer attacking the occupying German forces in Uniejow, they all returned home, moving everyone into the children’s apartment. And with both his father and older brother, Josef, emotionally paralyzed, it was up to Jacob to fend for the family.
Fortunately, he found work in a Polish restaurant. As times were hard, he supplemented the food he received as payment by bartering the tobacco he got from cigarette butts discarded by German