VIII. Frumit and Yoel Porat

Text: Magdalena Krysińska-Kałużna, Konin, May 12th, 2022

Frumit Porat’s family lived in Konin until the beginning of the World War II. Frumit herself lives in Israel. I’m on a Zoom call with her and her husband, Yoel.

Frumit’s father was the only family member to survive the war. He was 13 when it started. Frumit remembers her father’s story about the time when, soon after his bar mitzvah, the Germans broke into Konin’s synagogue and arrested, among others, the rabbi and the cantor, H. L. Rosenberg, who was Frumit’s great-grandfather (her paternal grandmother’s father).

The rabbi was sent to a ghetto in Józefów, where he died. “While Jews were being driven to the city square, the last rabbi of Konin, Jakub Lipszyc, was shot in his bed. His father, Hillel Arie Lipszyc, was a rabbi in Lublin half a century earlier” writes Robert Kuwałek, the author of a text about Jews of Józefów.*

David Traube, Frumit’s father, was sent to a labor camp first, then a concentration camp.

“My grandfather, Zvi Eliezer, had a candy store at the present-day Plac Wolności, while my great-grandfather had land near the Warta River. He was a wealthy man” recalls Frumit. “When the war broke out, my father’s sister, Channa Golda, was two years old. The family put her in the monastery in Konin, hoping that this would save the girl. My father, who died 30 years ago, always believed that his sister was alive, but couldn’t find her. When he returned to the city after the war, the Jews were gone. We visited Konin a few years ago. They told us that the Nazis came to the monastery and killed all children.”

Frumit’s father and his family were Ger Hasids, followers of a tzadik from Góra Kalwaria, a town in central Poland. It was one of the largest and most influential Hasidic groups in Poland, established by Icchak Meir Rothenberg Alter (1789-1866), a.k.a. Icie Majer. It is known that at the end of 19th century there were around 80 Hasidic families in the city.

Frumit didn’t ask her father about Konin. Now she regrets it. She doesn’t know where her grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s houses once stood. She knows, however, that David Traube, Zvi Eliezer’s son, was the eldest of five children.

“My father said that there was a beautiful synagogue in Konin, as well as a wonderful library. He was five or six when he started studying at cheder. My grandma, Frimit née Rozenberg, was very intelligent. Women wouldn’t usually receive education, but she had private tutors. She knew foreign languages, and when someone had a letter to translate into English or German, they would come to her.”

Frumit is named after her grandmother.

We agree to meet in Konin when Frumit and Yoel visit again. They want to. They still hope that Channa is alive and can be found. I hope so too.

* https://rzeczpospolitajozefowska.wordpress.com/artykuly/terror-i-eksterminacja-ludnosci-gminy-jozefowskiej-aleksandrowskiej/

Translation: Ada Kałużna

Zvi Eliezer and Frimit Traube circa 1940