Sidney Itzkowitz poses with an old family photo showing himself, far left, his father Dovid, mom Mushke and younger brother Chaim.CHRISTINNE MUSCHI/The Globe and Mail
They were five Jewish brothers in German-occupied Poland. They evaded the death squads that murdered their parents. They took part in a mass escape from a ghetto in a medieval castle. They joined partisan units operating behind enemy lines in the forests and marshes of Belarus.
Three of the brothers survived the war and eventually settled in Montreal, where they became successful entrepreneurs. Now the last of them has passed away.
Sidney Itzkowitz died Friday in Montreal. He was 96.
“You were witness to such evil at such a young age. But you did overcome it all and managed to build such an amazing and successful life,” his daughter Selina said in a eulogy at the funeral service Sunday.
Mr. Itzkowitz and his brothers – Leibel, Zodek, Itzhak and Chaim – were part of a chapter of the Second World War that has only recently been more widely recognized: the Jewish resisters who evaded the Nazi genocidal juggernaut and joined guerrilla groups fighting in rear areas of the eastern front.
Mr. Itzkowitz’s story is told through his memoir, From Mir to Montreal, posted on a University of Oregon history site, and in postwar video testimonies that the surviving brothers gave to the USC Shoah Foundation.
He was born Simcha Itzkowitz on Jan. 3, 1927, the fourth of the five boys. Their parents, Dovid and Mushke, ran a butcher shop in the small town of Mir, southwest of Minsk.
Itzkowitz in Vienna in 1949. Itzkowitz and his brothers were part of a chapter of the Second World War that has only recently been more widely recognized.Courtesy of the Family
At that time, Mir was a Polish town, in a part of the country that was overrun by the Red Army when the Second World War started in 1939. The Soviet authorities nationalized private businesses, so the Itzkowitzes turned to farming.
Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941, and reached Mir within five days. The Germans executed the town’s Jewish leaders and enlisted collaborators into a force of police auxiliaries.
A neighbour informed the Germans that the Itzkowitzes owned a horse, so it was confiscated. The family still had a cow and asked another neighbour if she could keep it for them in return for half the milk. She agreed and added that she could hide them if there was trouble.
On the morning of Nov. 9, the police ordered all the town’s Jews to gather in the main square. The Itzkowitzes knocked on the door of the woman who had their cow, but she didn’t answer.
Simcha, 14, and Chaim, 11, went back home and hid in the attic. Police collaborators searched the house but did not find them. As the men were leaving, Simcha heard his father saying he would go with them. Gunshots rang out. “We heard our father groaning, then silence.”
Their mother was also among the 1,500 to 2,000 people murdered that day. “Jews were shot all over the town,” a prosecutor said in 1997 during a war-crimes trial in Britain against the former police chief of Mir.
The five brothers were among 850 survivors who were eventually rounded up and held in a ghetto set up in a rundown castle on the outskirts of town.
One day, eldest brother, Leibel, told Simcha something “in strict confidence”: The police chief’s Polish interpreter, Oswald Rufeisen, was actually a fugitive Jew who was helping the ghetto’s underground.
In the summer of 1942, Mr. Rufeisen alerted them that he had overheard the Germans making plans to massacre the ghetto survivors on Aug. 13.
Simcha was among a group who tried to run away on Aug. 9. He tied a knapsack packed with food to a rope and was lowering it from the castle’s second storey when he heard a commotion. Other prisoners were trying to stop them, fearing German retaliation. The underground eventually decided to stage a mass breakout on the night of Aug. 10.
Mr. Rufeisen created a diversion that sent the police out of town to chase partisans. Meanwhile, about 200 Jews, including the five brothers, escaped after cutting the iron bars over the castle windows.
Itzkowitz, second front left, repairs boots in a partisans' forest workshop, in 1943.Courtesy of the Family
The brothers took refuge at the farm of a family friend. They built a bunker in the forest, where they sheltered through the winter, getting food from another farmer. In the spring, they had to flee to a swamp ahead of a German raid. Mr. Itzkowitz remembered being “exhausted, wet and freezing cold” while hiding in the marshes.
In May, 1943, Itzhak managed to get a rifle, which enabled the brothers to join a partisan unit. But shortly afterward, Leibel was killed in a clash with antisemitic partisans.
Simcha, 16 by then, became a member of a workshop that converted unexploded ordnance into makeshift explosive devices that the partisans used to blow up railway tracks.
That summer, the Germans launched an anti-insurgency offensive. Simcha became separated from his group as they retreated. “The Germans opened fire on us with machine guns, and the man next to me was hit. He asked that I please shoot him.” But the teenager felt bullets grazing his legs so he kept running.
He wandered in the forest, living off wild berries and water from puddles. At one point, he came upon a burning village. Later, he found a wounded partisan officer and eventually rejoined his unit.
In 1944, the Soviets liberated the area. Zodek and Itzhak enlisted in the Red Army. But on their way to the front, a mine killed Itzhak and wounded Zodek.
Simcha was due to start military training. However, “I decided that because two of our brothers had been killed and another badly wounded, I must do everything possible to ensure that our family not be wiped out completely.”
He applied to study auto mechanics at a trade school in the Ural Mountains. But when he got there after a month-long journey, he found hostile locals and no trade school.
Itzkowitz settled in Montreal after the war, where he opened a furniture store with two of his brothers.Courtesy of the Family
He moved to Canada in 1949, reuniting with Chaim, who had settled in Montreal. They were later joined by Zodek.
Having immigrated at different times, they had anglicized their names in different ways. Simcha became Sidney Itzkowitz. Chaim spelled his name Hyman Itzkovitz, while Zodek went by Jack Itkow.
The three opened a furniture store. Mr. Itzkowitz also ran a mattress company. They visited Mr. Rufeisen, who had survived the war, converted to Catholicism and lived in a monastery in Israel.
In 2003, Mr. Itzkowitz learned that the federal government was trying to deport a Montrealer, Walter Obodzinsky, who was alleged to be one of the police collaborators who took part in the massacre in Mir.
“I lay awake at night thinking about what I could do to see that the man was brought to justice,” Mr. Itzkowitz told The Globe and Mail at the time.
Upset that the case had dragged on for so long, he hired a private investigator, but the detective reported that the suspect had died before the deportation process could be completed.
In his memoir, Mr. Itzkowitz attributed his wartime survival to luck. “I did not really believe I would survive, but I never gave up fighting.”
Diagnosed with cancer at 80, he remained indomitable in spirit, his daughter Selina recalled. “I’ve been through worse things in my life,” he said as he underwent chemotherapy.
Mr. Itzkowitz was predeceased last spring by his wife of 68 years, Bella. He leaves behind three children – Miriam, Selina and Sheldon – five grandchildren and one great-grandson.