This is a real true story
of Dr. Bronisław / Beril / Bruno Lieblein
“Mami, Who are those two beautiful
children in the photo?” – asked a little girl, pointing at a big photo standing
on the piano in the living room. In the photo a girl and a boy are standing and
embracing a very big dog.
Her mother answered
shortly: “They were your brother and sister who were taken by Hitler…” The
little girl glanced again at the photo and continued helping her mother to
prepare a family dinner.
Today this girl is 64 years
old and has never stopped asking herself “why didn't I ask my parents more? It’s
horrible that I got this answer as a ‘normal’
answer...”
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After her father had died
she discovered (slowly) more and more details of her father life story.
Her father was the youngest
child of a wealthy Jewish family living in a village near Rohatyn. He was sent
by his father to study medicine at the university of Vienna – the best Europe
university in those days.
When he had finished his
studies he got his medical license in Lwów. When he was 29 years old (in 1926)
he went with his young wife Zunya to Śniatyn. They lived in a nice house and he
worked at the medical center of the town. He was famous as a very good doctor; most
of the compliments he got was because he didn't take
money when he saw the poor
lives of the village families around Śniatyn.
The Polish Army recruited
him (as a medicine colonel) in September 1939 when Germany and the Soviet Union
attacked Poland. The army withdrawn east to Russia and from there the Polish
doctors were forced to move to Siberia or to the Soviet territories in Asia.
In Siberia he received the
tragic news: His wife was beaten to death in Śniatyn woods and his two children
were taken to the train station and from there to Bełżec. He still believed
that in those disordered days
nobody could say anything for sure.
From Siberia he was
transferred to a hospital in Samarkand (Uzbekistan), and there he helped a young
Jewish woman, Mathilda Seiden, who was about to die of typhus.
The two lonely and weak fell
in love. Dr. Lieblein said to his young woman that he will marry her only after
he will get evidence about extermination of his family.
In 1945 they went as a
refugees to Sweden.
The stories about Jewish
people who tried to come back to their
homes and were killed by the local people prevented them to go to Sniatyn or to
Poland. In Sweden his family's tragic end was confirmed. Then he married
Mathilda. Within a year Mathilda was pregnant. Their relatives tried to bring
them to the USA but doctors forbidden Mathilda to go by ship as she was
pregnant. So they decided (in the end of 1947) to unite with Mathilda’s family in the south-west Poland (in Bielawa,
Silesia).
Their daughter, Helenka, was born, there, in the spring of 1948.
Once again he started his
life as a local doctor. The family lived a peaceful life in Poland.
The tragic past taught them
to be afraid anywhere. Dr. Lieblein wanted to come to Israel because he
believed that in Israel all Jews can live safely. October 16, 1956 was the
first wave of the Jewish immigration from Poland to Israel, so the family sold
everything and came to Israel. In those days the "Sinai war" begun – but,
nevertheless, Dr. Leiblein and his wife
were happy to come to Israel, with their little daughter who
changed her name
to Ilana.
Once again Dr. Lieblein
lived a peaceful life in a quiet
neighborhood, working as a radiologist
in Haifa and
in the Poriya hospital in Tverya.
Dr. Lieblein died in 1981
at the age of 86.
On his grave there are
written names of Mathilda (his second wife and Ilana's mother) and his two
children: Blanka Lieblein (born in
1928), and Klimek (Kalman – Klement) Lieblein (born in 1930).
“Man makes plans and
God laughs up there in the sky...”
In 2010 Ilana took a trip
to Ukraine. She went with her husband to to Chernovitz to seek for his family
roots. A Ukraine guide mentioned Śniatyn as a town in the Chernovitz region.
She said that her father lived
there. So we decided to go to Śniatyn, without
having any details about his life there.
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The guide was reading about Śniatyn from a Ukraine book and suddenly we heard her father's name .
We came to the town hall but
nobody there could help us.
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We didn't know what to do.
We stood near the statue of the town, thinking about leaving the place
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Suddenly a nice and gentle
lady came to us and told us that she is working in the local museum. She took down
some details and told us to return two hours later
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We came to the local museum
and the manager of the museum read us the history of the town. Then my wife
heard again about the important work that her father did in Śniatyn.
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But the real miracle came
after. The lady who run this museum told us that the museum house was Dr.
Lieblein’s home before the war...
Here is the moment Ilana
heard the news...
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And then she cried saying: “My
father had been walking here for 15 years”
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This is the garden, today,
where Blanka and Klimak, Ilana's half-sister and half-brother stood with their
beloved dog – in the only one photo Ilana has.
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And again:
“We are making plans and
God is laughing...”
