Three years in the pit: the story of Yaakov Grundman

Like all other games later in life, this game by Jacob Grodman was attended by 11 players.

The incredible story of the man who hid in a tiny pit in his first three years and later became the coach of the Israeli national team, from the book "Football - A Love Story" by the author and biographer Shlomo Abramovich

Walla!

sport

28/04/2022

Thursday, April 28, 2022, 8 p.m.

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In May 1942, less than three years after he was born, the most fateful game in Yankele Grundman's life began.

A hide-and-seek game for life and death, against the Nazi extermination beast that conquered Poland.

Klagsi SS.

And local collaborators searched for Yankele and his family very intensively, to send them, along with the rest of the Kielce district Jews, to the gas chambers.

But the hiding place found for the Grundman family turned out to be an effective hideout.

A 2 meter by 2 meter pit, covered with a large wooden board, planks and straw and which had not been discovered for three years.

Like all other games later in his life, this one of Grundman's games was attended by 11 players.

He himself, who was the only little boy in the pit;

His mother, the late Handel, from whom Yankele inherited the swollen cheeks and the eternal smile; his father, the late Gabriel;

His eldest sister Rushka Tavdal; his sister Lifsha;

His late brother Leon; his brother Yoske; cousin Yitzhak Stigovsky and three other uncles.

A total of 11 people, crammed into the tiny pit at the bottom of a gentile farmer's barn, a resident of a small village on the outskirts of the city of Pruszowice, 30 km from Krakow.

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A young boy in a pit.

Toddler Jacob Grundman after he was released (Photo: courtesy of the family)

The farmer was the only Christian in the area who dared to change the instructions of the Nazi occupation army, taking a terrible risk on himself and his family.

His house was five kilometers away from the city. The patrols of the Nazi army guards around the house were not frequent and so he succeeded in hiding, until the end of January 1945.

The connection with the Polish farmer was made with the help of one of Yankele's uncles, who had an Aryan occupation, before the occupation. The Nazi was a horse lover and before the war broke out he ran a small business with the farmer, not imagining that he would soon have to ask the farmer to protect his family from being sent to the death camps

. The father was engaged in the grain trade, he had two houses and a flour mill and it was clear to the farmer that he could be properly rewarded.

After the decision was made to hide in the farmer's house, a two-meter-by-two-meter-long pit was dug in the barn next to the farmer's house.

The barn was used to hold straw for the horses raised by the farmer.

A large wooden board was placed above the pit.

The wooden board was hidden in piles of straw, from which the horses chewed.

In this pit Yankele grows from the age of 3 to the age of 6, most of the time lying down, in the little space left for him.

The needs were done by all 11 tenants in the pit itself.

Inside this cramped, dark space, the adults smoked pieces of rolled newspaper, in which they put some of the straw that covered the pit.

Occasionally one of the adults dared to lift the wooden board and the straw casing above it, climb a small ladder attached to the side of the pit, and clear the feces.

The dense, smelly pit was infested with lice and creeps, which came out of the ground and from the straw piles that covered it.

The garment that Yankele wore throughout that period was an oversized fabric shirt.

Thanks to its size, little Yankele could continue to wear it even though his body was growing during those years.

The little food that reached the pit was dry bread and potatoes, which would reach the 11 hiding places once a week.

One of Yankele's uncles, the Aryan-looking horse-dealer, would dare to come out of the pit under cover of darkness and find some food.

Sometimes he also dared to go out to the city itself and take care of slightly better quality food than bread and potatoes.

But during the three years there were also very tense periods.

The Nazis went berserk.

The gossip about Jews hiding increased and the supply of food to the small and crowded pit almost completely ceased.

One of the most tense periods was after about a year in the pit.

Five Christians from Pruszowicz were murdered by the Nazis, just because they did not have an identity card.

Other villagers, suspected of hiding Jews, were executed.

In the situation that arose, there was a real fear of whistleblowing on the part of each of the occupants of the small village and therefore the food raids of the uncle were completely stopped.

As a result, more than two weeks passed without a food supply to the pit.

"The Pole."

Grundman in Bnei Yehuda (Photo: Courtesy of the family)

The longest period of time in which no crumb of bread reached the 11 in hiding was 17 days, during which Yankele, the four-year-old hungry boy, was not allowed to utter a single rudder of protest, or of crying.

In some cases, when he could no longer bear the hunger, the adults let him suck a little of their straw cigarettes.

Immediately afterwards little Yankele would fall asleep.

On days when little food came to the pit, Handela, Yankele's mother, would hide the portion allotted to her under her shirt and when she found a workout she would grope in the narrow space between those lying in the pit, find her way to Yankele's lying belly and place the slice of bread on it. Or the piece of potato.

When Yankele felt the food lying on his stomach, he would send one of his hands down, feel the dish allotted to him and carefully pull it towards his mouth.

While Yankele was lying on his back in the darkness and the stench of the pit, for 30 months, all the Jews in and around the town were caught and taken by train to travel in one direction, to the extermination camps.

The memorial plaque later erected by the Pruszowicz family read:

"This stone will be an eternal memento in memory of our holy parents, brothers, sisters, wives and widowers from the city of Pruszowicz and the surrounding area. Q, During the Holocaust: 1930-1945.

Little Yankele and his family survived the fate of all the other Jews in the district.

After three years underground, he and his family went out into the light and into freedom.

The person who saw him at the moment he left the pit was Pela Stigovsky, now a resident of Ramat Gan, who was nicknamed "Aunt Pela" by Yankele.

She later married Yankele's cousin, Yitzhak Stigovsky, who was also in the pit for the entire period.

Pele: "I saw Yankele on the first day after he left the pit. It was a horrible sight. A pale boy, with a big head, suitable for a six-year-old boy, a tiny body of a four-year-old boy who did not grow or develop in the narrow space in the pit. .

In the group coming out of the pit, Pela also saw Yitzhak Stigovsky, who later became her husband.

- "He was 1.88 meters tall and weighed 38 kg at the time.

A real walking skeleton, who barely walked, dragging his feet.

He entered the bunker at the age of 24 and left at the age of 27. Three years in that dark and awful alcove, next to little Yankele. "

Reached the Israeli national team.

Grundman on the lines (Photo: Flash 90, Moshe Shai)

When the Grundman family came out of the pit, Yankele cried.

This was probably his first significant cry since entering the pit.

The people around still walked on toes.

Whispering.

Scared.

Do not believe that the danger has passed.

Little Yankele's loud cry terrified them and everyone told Yankele to shut up.

His cousin, Isaac took him under his coat and whispered in his ear, "If you do not stop crying now, I will throw you into the water."

The threat did its thing.

Yankele, the little one, hungry and exhausted, stopped crying immediately.

After leaving the pit, Gabriel Grundman returned to the flour trade and also ran a small bakery.

Some of his profits he set aside for the gentile farmer.

Later, before the family immigrated from Poland to Israel, Gabriel Grundman decided to compensate the farmer for the risk he took during the war and gave him two houses and the flour shop he owned.

The connection with the Polish farmer continued even after the family immigrated to Israel.

Gabriel continued to mail him boxes of oranges made in Jaffa.

The precious oranges of reality were eaten by the farmer and his family.

From the skins he made jams and wine.

Yankele Grundman's many acquaintances and admirers often wonder what of his character and lifestyles was shaped during those years of horror, in a pit in Pruszowicz.

Is his faith in God?

The extraordinary willingness to help others?

The erupting optimism?

The perpetual smile?

Silence?

Forgiveness?

Respecting others?

true friendship?

National pride?

Tolerance after?

Confidence in the ability to win even when everything seems lost?

Apparently the answer is "all in all."

All of these came together and were embodied into the same and unique Yankele Grundman, the subject of the admiration of thousands throughout the country.

From a notebook secretly written to a bestseller

The Hebrew Writers' Association, in collaboration with the Center for Cultural and Creative Rooms in Haifa, is holding a literature meeting on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day under the title "A Skilled Manuscript for an Open Holocaust."

The event will take place on Thursday, April 28, at 8:00 PM in the "Room Center" (Kiryat Sefer 25) and will also be broadcast live on Zoom and Facebook.

Among the topics of the meeting: the exposure and decipherment of "The Diary Hidden from the Jado Concentration Camp in Libya" - a book by Shlomo Abramovich, a resident of Haifa.

The book became a bestseller and was approved for inclusion in the high school curriculum.

The conversation will reveal how a notebook written in secret in 1942 became a bestseller in Israel in 2022. Oded Peled, a former Haifa poet, will read from his book "Letters from Bergen-Belsen".

Songs by three poets will also be performed - three generations after the Holocaust, all residents of Haifa.

Rachel Oshroff - First Generation.

Zivia Forer Peltz - second generation.

Sabrina de Rita - third generation.

Actor Amnon Wolf will read excerpts from the hidden diary.

The event is open to the general public at no cost.

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