A Canton Family’s Holocaust Story

By Joan Florek Schottenfeld

The Canton Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee (CDEI) held its first ever Jewish High Holidays celebration on Sunday, September 18, in the Canton High School cafeteria. The event served as a kickoff to Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year (Sept. 25-27), which is followed one week later by Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement — the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. The event was open to the public and included remarks by the spiritual leaders of the three Jewish congregations in Canton; musical performances by Abigale Reisman; and a reflection by Canton resident and Citizen columnist Joan Schottenfeld on her family’s Holocaust story. Schottenfeld’s speech is reprinted below with her permission.

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My parents came from two different worlds and would never have met if it weren’t for the Holocaust.

My mom, Rose Mlawer, was born into a wealthy family in the city of Lodz, Poland. Her father, Simon, was a pharmacist who owned his own store, home and many other properties throughout the city. Her stepmother, Gita, wore furs and jewels and spent holidays in spas in Switzerland. Once when Mom and I visited the Museum of Fine Arts we saw a portrait of a lovely wealthy lady decked out in her furs and Mom told me it looked just like her stepmother. My jaw fell open.

Joan Schottenfeld shares her family’s story. (CDEI photo)

They had servants and their home was filled with paintings. Simon was a Zionist who dreamed of living in Israel one day. He was an accomplished violinist who loved playing for my mother. My mom, an incorrigible tomboy, went to private schools and summer camps and wriggled through fittings with the family dressmaker who made her custom clothing. She adored her father and missed the birth mother she never knew.

My father, Murray Florek, was the youngest of seven brothers in a poor family who lived in the small town of Plotzk, Poland. They were a family of tailors and klezmers. When the boys were young, everyone slept in the same room with a few chickens and a goose. By the time the Second World War broke out, all of Dad’s brothers were married with children of their own.

Mom told me that she assumed that hatred of Jews was normal. She experienced it every day of her life growing up. One morning, shortly after her 15th birthday, the Germans overran Poland. That morning she looked out her window to see that every house on the street had a huge flag with swastikas hanging out of their windows.

Simon wanted desperately to sell everything while he still could and leave for Israel, but his wife kept insisting that it would pass. She said that until they were exiled to the Lodz ghetto.

When they were taken on their final journey to Auschwitz, Simon told my mother that she had to live for him and find her way to Israel. Then he and Gita went left toward the gas chambers and my mother went right to life. She often told me that there were three reasons that she survived — for her father, because she spoke fluent German and so could work in the camp office and not outside in the cold, and because the German guard in charge of her barracks loved her singing voice and would smuggle her an extra bowl of soup each evening.

My father’s father, Shlomo, was killed on the way home from shul. The rest of the family was rounded up and taken to the camps. My father never saw them again. He was the only survivor. He himself barely survived Buchenwald. He told me that he survived because he was young and strong and so was assigned to the work gangs where his overseer made sure they were fed well.

My parents met in a Displaced Persons camp in Landesberg, Germany. They married there and planned to emigrate to Israel until my father discovered that he had family in Brooklyn New York. You went where you had family and so they sailed for Brooklyn on the General Hahn battleship, landing in Brooklyn. They lived there for 35 years, enjoying life with their many friends, raising me to enjoy life as well, before finally making Aliyah to Israel.

I lived in Israel for six years, living through the Yom Kippur War and terrorist attacks before I returned to the U.S. to marry Steve, my high school sweetheart.

Eventually we moved to Canton in 1989 and have enjoyed our life here. We joined Temple Beth Abraham, and our children went through the Canton Public Schools. We have felt welcomed here, but there has always been a feeling of “otherness” that I could never dispel. Though I never met Simon, my grandfather, I, like my mother, survived and thrived in my adopted town. And I thank all the people who have welcomed me throughout the years.

I would like to wish everyone a Shanah Tova, a sweet and happy New Year.

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