Collections

Memoriabilia of the Terbilers and the Kacmans

Collection of items connected with the wartime Soviet Union experiences of Chana Terbiler, Abram Kacman, and their son, Walisz. Above all, the objects pertain to two stages: until mid-1941 and after the outbreak of the German Soviet war. In addition to the archival material, the collection includes items linked to their lives in the course of the first years after their return to Poland as well as surviving prewar photos of family and friends they had taken with them while fleeing to the East. We know the family history from the account of Perła Kacman, Chana and Abram’s daughter (b. 1948) who

donated the family memorabilia to the museum.

Abram (1904-1983) and Chana (Anna; 1904-1987) came from the Lublin region: Abram from the village of Chromówka near Chełm (his father, apart from working on the land, was a trader), Chana from nearby Zarudni (her parents owned a landed estate there). In his youth Abram studied in a yeshiva in Chełm, but dropped out of school when Chana got involved in the activity of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, which was a part of the illegal Communist Party of Poland. At the end of the 1920s, Chana was arrested for belonging to the Communist Party of Poland and served a 4.5 year sentence at the castle in Lublin. After her release from prison, she moved to Warsaw with Abram. In 1936, their son Walisz was born.

On 1 September 1939 they were on holiday in Chromówka. Upon hearing of the outbreak of war, together with Abram's entire family: his mother, his sisters and his under-age brother, as well as his brother Mojżesz and his wife and son, they crossed the Bug River. They later escaped into the Ukraine and were sent to work at the kolkhoz in Steckowka. After the outbreak of war between the Third Reich and the USSR in June 1941, Abram and Moses were called up into the so-called "labour battalions" (Trudarmia).

The task of Abram's battalion was to move an aircraft factory deep into the USSR (to Kuibyshev on the Volga, now Samara) and then to start production there. There Abram tried to join the Anders Army, but as a Jew he was not accepted (see https://sztetl.org.pl/pl/slownik/zydzi-w-armii-andersa for a complex recruitment issue); he therefore worked at the factory until the end of the war and demobilization.

His family that remained in Steckowka was murdered by the Ukrainians. Only Chana and Walisz and Abram's sister, Żenia, who were not in the village at the time, survived. On the day of the attack, Żenia had gone to town, and when she returned, she was warned by a Ukrainian neighbour and retreated. Chana and Walisz, on the other hand, immediately after Abram's mobilisation, escaped from Steckowka from the Germans further east. They reached Kazakhstan. In late 1943 and early 1944, Chana found Abram by correspondence through the Moscow Red Cross. She reached him with Walisz in the spring of 1944. The family arrived in Poland in late 1945.

Like most Jews who survived in the USSR, they were sent to the so-called Recovered Territories, to Bielawa. Here, after two years, their daughter Perla was born.

At the turn of 1950 and 1951, the Kacmans moved to Warsaw. At that time, Abram Kacman worked briefly in the Warsaw committee of the PZPR (Polish United Workers' Party), and later in the factories of During March '68 Walisz Kacman left Poland, his parents and sister stayed in the country.

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