they’re still two bereaved boys who saw the world crumblePhotos: Lior MizrahiThe date is seared into Dov Landau’s memory like the numbers on his arm
a convoy of cattle cars with a batch of human livestock arrived at the rail platform of Auschwitz-Birkenau
and avoiding the corpses of those who’d died on the horrific journey
out stumbled 13-year old Dov Berish and his father
devoted Bobover chassid Reb Binyomin Landau
There on the railway platform young Dov’s childhood ended
He learned that here in this new existence
“The SS began beating us and shouting ‘Schnell
schnell,’ while their dogs strained at the leash
And my father couldn’t say anything to me — it was each person for himself.”
Max Privler was born in Yiddish-speaking Poland
this child of wealthy landowners also had his comfortable childhood shattered
Max wasn’t there as a prisoner: Just 14 years old
At an age when most kids are figuring out how to cut class
he was one of a small number of child-soldiers in the Red Army
operating deep behind enemy lines on intelligence missions
this Jewish boy was a hardened Nazi-killer
driven only by thoughts of avenging his murdered parents
“The other Russian soldiers drowned their shock in drink when they came to Auschwitz,” he says
“but I’d already seen such tragedy that I had no choice but to go on.”
these two men’s extraordinary lives mirror each other
Dov Landau holds up his concentration camp uniform
while Max Privler wears a formidable array of Soviet medals
But the pictures crowding the walls of Dov Landau’s Tel Aviv home tell a different story
And as Max Privler stands in his Bat Yam apartment in his Red Army uniform
the memories of the three mass killings he escaped will never leave him
nor will the scar of the bullet wound in his back
Seventy-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz
as dozens of world leaders have converged on the Jewish state to condemn the Holocaust and global anti-Semitism
these elderly men’s voices crack as they speak of the mothers they were torn away from as young boys
“I remember like yesterday the brachah of the Kedushas Tzion of Bobov,” says Dov Landau in an Ivrit sprinkled with a rich Polish Yiddish
The Rebbe came for the sheva brachos of his relative
offered to give the Rebbe our house while we moved in with our grandparents.”
Eventually the visit drew to a close and it came time for the Rebbe to say goodbye
“He sat on my father’s bed wearing a golden caftan
He put his hands on my head like a Kohein and said Yevarechecha.”
and in his small Tel Aviv apartment near Kikar Rabin
as Dov Landau remembers that long-vanished world
there’s a small part of him that’s still there in Poland of old
baby Dov entered a world of material comfort
His father owned a clothing store and two houses in the town that the Landau family — descendants of the Nodah B’Yehudah — had called home for 150 years
There was another sign of pre-war wealth: a beautiful leather-bound Shas that Binyomin Landau received as a chassan
And in a tale of survival that mirrors his own
Dov today holds the volumes embossed with his father’s name
The Landau’s prosperity was matched by their chassidic warmth
Having spent four years as a bochur in the court of the Bobover Rebbe
was the baal tefillah in the local Bobover shul
Dov’s own voice — still strong at 91 — fills his living room as he waves his hand gently and imitates his father
with the tune that spread from Bobov to Shabbos tables across the world
he’s back with Yossel the wagoner who drove the Rebbe
the local magnate in his princely carriage who came to greet the Jewish leader in the hope of getting his political support; and he’s wearing with pride his own dashik
the little velvet cap that marks him out as the big boy
Dov’s voice thickens as he describes a child’s view of the unfolding destruction
“The war came as a surprise to me,” recalls Reb Dov
“although I remember soldiers breaking into my father’s shop to steal civilian clothes in order to desert
the Germans marched into the town square.”
If young Dov had been unaware of the rising anti-Semitism emanating from pre-war Germany
in September of 1939 he was quickly robbed of his innocence
“The town’s main shul was opposite our house
and I saw the Germans place the sifrei Torah in the middle
Busy subduing Polish resistance until the end of the year
the invaders didn’t immediately move against the Jewish community once they’d torched the shul
the Germans chose 12 leading Jews — including Binyomin Landau — to form the Judenrat
the tool with which they’d control the town’s community
shooting Jews on sight who couldn’t answer in German
It wasn’t long before Jewish life in Krakow descended into constant fear
Dov recalls his own bar mitzvah under the clouds of impending disaster
“Shabbos Nachamu 1941 it was my bar mitzvah
My father got some family and friends to come to a seudah
but there was a very subdued atmosphere,” recalls Dov
Dov was a grown-up under German law as well
He had to report for forced labor along with all others aged 13 to 65
packing bundles of hay for the German cavalry
The Landau family had so far escaped relatively unscathed
things worsened when the Germans demanded a massive bribe from the community as the price of “protection.” This was a standard method of systematically despoiling a Jewish community targeted for liquidation
but the Krakow Jews still hoped that they could satisfy the Germans with this offering
Binyomin Landau was responsible for collecting the quarter-million zlotys and expensive furniture the Gestapo demanded
Scared that his family would suffer for his prominent role
Reb Binyomin sent his youngest sons to Bochnia
Dov volunteered to help his mother prepare the Shabbos food for the journey
‘Let me help you so you can get to Bochnia quicker.’ In the middle of cooking
she sent me to the store across the road to get a kilo of flour for bread.”
That was the last that the young boy ever saw of his mother
and suddenly I saw the square was filled with SS
barging into Jewish houses with drawn guns.”
I ran all the way out of the city to the labor camp where I worked
and when the other laborers asked me what the shooting was
That evening Dov and his friends headed back home
There were lots of bodies lying in pools of blood
A non-Jewish family friend found Dov shaking with fear and asked
“Are you Binyomin’s son?” It turned out that on his way to deliver the community bribe to Gestapo headquarters
Dov’s father had heard what was happening and managed to hide in this friend’s house in a village outside the town
where the seforim had been thrown all over the room by the German killers
Binyomin Landau hired a Polish woman to follow the train that had left carrying the deportees
who told her that Krakow’s Jews had been shipped hundreds of kilometers to the east
no one believed Germans tales of “resettlement” — it was clear that they’d gone to their deaths
“I don’t know how we knew what was awaiting them — how that information spread — but we knew,” he says
the Jews of Brzesko were forced into a ghetto
and Binyomin Landau decided to escape his hometown
and so father and son travelled to Bochnia
the largest remaining ghetto in the region
and where Dov’s two younger brothers had been sent a few months before
“I can’t describe what it was like in that ghetto,” he says
clearly taxed by the narrative as he gets up to brew some tea
There were food shortages and everyone trying to survive in some way.”
that the Germans decided to clear the ghetto
many decided to ignore the selection that would determine whether they were shipped to labor or death
hide inside a bunker with another two dozen men
When the Germans discovered their hiding place
shuddering as if the horrific scene is still in front of his eyes
It was a Shabbos when Dov Landau arrived in Auschwitz
but that was an irrelevant fact belonging to a past life
mother — he’d shed them all on the road to this nightmare
Of the 40 freight cars  containing 4,500 Jews who’d been taken from Bochnia
many didn’t survive the inhuman conditions of the journey
and they emerged into the world of Auschwitz together
“The first thing I saw was the SS with their dogs
I had a feeling of fear,” remembers Dov Landau
“Mengele hit me on the hand to go to the right
which lies in front of us as part of the thick file Dov has from German records
details in clinical language that 952 men were chosen for forced labor
“I sent to the gas chambers.” When Binyomin Landau escaped back into the temporary reprieve of the column to the right
“Mengele dragged another person by the hair from the right to the left,” says Dov
the part of Auschwitz dedicated to working Jews to a slow death instead of gassing them
the young prisoner saw the industrial scale on which the Nazis operated
Equally shocking was the meaning of the number branded on his arm
Imagine how many had come here before me?”
and the harsh Polish winter was setting in
with 420 men housed in a hut without water or heat
they had to shiver in their thin striped uniform
on hard wooden shelves suited for stacking logs
I got a liter of watery soup and a bit of bread
but then I got dysentery so I stopped eating the soup,” says Dov
and the only thought we had was what will be tomorrow.”
On the other side of Auschwitz-Birkenau’s vastness lay the crematoria and gas chambers
Dov and his father were taken to Yavishovitz
a coal-mining labor camp and part of the vast slave empire that the Nazi war machine depended on
“We had to walk two kilometers each day to the mines
and supplied by workers from Birkenau,” Dov remembers
and my father was assigned backbreaking work on the night shift.”
so he was taken to the “clinic,” a cruel name for a hut with no medical facilities
the Germans decided to send him away to a “sanatorium.”
but I didn’t believe them — I knew that they meant a crematorium
and so I tried to jump onto the back of the truck with him
and I have a feeling that you will survive
he uttered his final words: ‘Please remain a Jew.’ ”
the path that the boy from Krakow had taken led
and Divine help took the form of an unlikely angel: a burly Polish coal miner
and he brought an extra sandwich every day for me to eat
and put on a shtikel davar acher,” says Dov Landau
not wanting to mention the treif meat he’d eaten in order to stay alive
we sat and ate those sandwiches and drank tea from his flask
That gave me the strength to endure what came next.”
As the Russians approached in January 1945
Flanked by the SS and their dogs in below-freezing temperatures
the retreating Germans decided to ship the exhausted survivors by train to Buchenwald
Thirteen of Dov’s friends froze to death in the open boxcars — a small portion of the 2,000 who didn’t survive the journey
With his extra strength due to his daily sandwich
Dov was put to work unloading the dead when they arrived at Buchenwald on January 22
one that has been preserved for posterity in an infamous picture of emaciated mussulmen
He was soon transferred to a children’s barracks
A few months later came the sweetest music in the world
the melodious growl and thunder of American planes and artillery pounding the fleeing Germans
was surprised when the emaciated Dov picked him up in the air
where he spent several hours recounting his eyewitness stories to the next generations of the Birnbaum family
Dov himself saved someone — a young boy who went on to become world famous
Dov asked a friend to help bring him to the SS hospital
and he asked Dov to bring him his younger brother
‘I want to take him back to his brother,’ but the man
who had taken Lulek under his protection throughout his time in Buchenwald
only agreed on condition that I promised to return him
“By that time Tulek was lying in the typhus ward
so I lifted up his little brother so that they could see each other through the window
listen — I don’t know if I’m going to live or die
but don’t give the child back to this non-Jew
and bring him to my uncle Rav Vogelman in Kiryat Motzkin.’ ”
the angry would-be guardian demanded to know where the child was
and answered unequivocally that the child was accompanying him — and that’s how Israel gained one of its most famous figures
Because the child Dov Landau saved from Polish adoption went on to become Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau
Dov Landau’s life after reaching Israel is enough to fill another book
He graduated high school and was drafted into the pre-state Haganah
where he fought the Arab Legion in Gush Etzion and spent a year in Jordanian captivity
the sister of a close friend who had fallen in the fighting
Looking around at the walls of his apartment
the past meets the present: Pictures of the Bobover Rebbes are next to those of his grandchildren — many of them high achievers in their professions
his greatest joy is to get together with others and sing his Bobover tunes both in his Tel Aviv shul
and also in front of groups of young olim for whom he’s often called on to speak at communal Shabbos dinners — his strong voice spreading waves of old-time Jewish warmth over these young people whose upbringings in New York and London are a world away from his own
91-year-old Dov Landau is now on the road again
to take part in the Polish government’s commemoration
and the eyes that normally twinkle are clouded over
“My father wanted me to remain a Jew with all 248 limbs,” says Dov simply
If you stand on Ort Yisrael Street in Bat Yam with your eyes closed
you could be mistaken for thinking you were nearer Moscow than Tel Aviv
There’s a head-scarved babushka hanging washing out of a crumbling apartment window; young and old are speaking Russian; and a display in the lobby of Ort number seven shows at least 20 lavishly-beribboned Soviet war veterans
I half expect the loudspeaker to play “Kalinka,” sung by the Red Army choir
This is as good a place as any to discover a liberator of Auschwitz
because it was the Soviets who overran Auschwitz on January 27
I do indeed discover a startling new narrative of someone who survived mass killings
and finally entered Auschwitz as a 14-year-old liberator
born in 1931 into a religious family in Mykulychyn
near Stanislav — then Poland and now Ukraine
The family — known then as Privler-Hershkovits — had been in the area for generations
obviously delighted to speak in mamma loshen
and their purebred steeds were only available by order
and only for the Russian army high command.”
and despite the Jews’ ancient presence in the area
the Ukrainian instigator of the Cossack massacres known as Tach V’Tat
which wiped out Jewish communities in the mid-17th century
The locals were so feared that even Mongol warlord Genghis Khan was said to have avoided the region due to its savage reputation
As suddenly as war hit the Landau family in Krakow
it took the Privlers by surprise in Mykulychyn
The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact seemed to shelter the USSR from war — until Operation Barbarossa
Hitler’s surprise attack on Stalin’s empire
Hungarian troops occupied the city and started to loot Jewish-owned stores
and those who didn’t get off the sidewalk were shot dead on the spot,” says Max Privler
but our parents had no choice but to go out to work — walking because they were forbidden to use public transport.”
Max says his family was kept alive because his father
and he was instructed to oversee it being dismantled and sent to Germany
Max’s mother and brothers were separated and thrown into the ghetto
while he was locked up together with his father
Max’s world was shattered when his father was murdered in front of his eyes
“The Nazis took us both away to a mass grave along with a thousand Jews where we had to undress
My father stood in front of me on the edge of the grave and placed me behind him
tell the world what the Germans did to us because we were Jews.’”
a bullet ripped through his father and entered Max’s shoulder
he made his way to a neighbor who had been a friend of his grandfather
But Max hadn’t accounted for the local anti-Semitism
even from someone who had been well-treated by his family
Taking one look at the child who had come back from the dead
At the house of some more compassionate Ukrainians
Max was allowed in to be washed and bandaged
They  then gave him a letter saying that he was an orphaned Ukrainian boy named Yurko Yeremchuk — and he was sent on his lonely way in the world
and Max found another family to adopt him — his looks and command of the language enabled him to pass himself off as a Ukrainian
and instead talks of how he wanted to get into the Stanislav ghetto to see what was left of his family
Max  was able to smuggle some food and shirts from his host family into the ghetto
but on one time inside he suddenly saw his mother
and younger brothers manhandled by the Germans
and saw the Germans snatch away my youngest brother Berele
“My mother resisted instinctively — she pushed the German soldier and he fell backward
Then the Germans crowded around and killed the baby
and then took Mama off to their headquarters where they hanged her from the second floor.”
and a look of pain crosses his face as he relives the terrible moments when his world collapsed around him
But his headlong flight was interrupted by another Jew who stopped him and told him
It was a dream that led Max to the partisans
His host family assumed the young boy was a Ukrainian like them
until he went with the father to transport some sacks of flour
Suddenly some partisans jumped out of the forest and demanded the food at gunpoint
Young Max watched as they retreated into the forest
as the two of them rested before returning home
and Max disappeared into the forest where he’d seen the partisans go
he was grabbed in a chokehold from behind by a partisan who demanded
It turned out that he knew Max from the ghetto
“I cried so much to see people from my past,” says Max
“I waited next to the road when a German dispatch rider came along
He stopped his motorbike and took out a cognac bottle to have a drink
I saw that he had a very good rifle with an optical scope — the best of the best.”
Max couldn’t tackle a grown man barehanded
he lost his balance and toppled into the fast-flowing stream
I fished out his gun with my suspenders,” says Max
“then I hid it in the forest.” Returning to the partisans
he waited two days to bring back the precious rifle and magazines
But in the cut-throat world of the partisans
there was no rest for the weary — even from those on his own side
“After a few months with no winter clothes
and I was going to be killed because I was a burden on the group.”
in the form of a light plane belonging to the Red Army
A medic had arrived to treat a senior partisan
He took pity on the dying boy laid out in the snow
and transported him to a hospital in Russia
“and I’m still looking for that medic today.”
someone Max’s age would have been sent to an orphanage
But in the unforgiving war conditions of the eastern front
someone thought that the boy who spoke five languages would make a good spy
“I was drafted into military intelligence and sent to a training school in Kursk to learn about surviving behind enemy lines,” says Max
“We watched trains to track German military movements
we were able to infiltrate large ammunition depots and give the coordinates to artillery who destroyed them
No one suspected us because we were children.”
Despite the anti-Semitism that riddled the Soviet army
he was valuable enough to the army to be assigned a driver and officer’s privileges
he killed the occupants and disguised himself as a German
“I was alone and had no choice but to be courageous and clever
I had a tremendous desire to take revenge,” he says
That thirst for retaliation only grew as the Soviets beat the Germans back across Russia
and Max discovered that Europe was nearly judenrein
“There were lots of Jews in the Soviet army
but I hardly met any Jews in the places we liberated — they had all been killed.”
By that time Max was on a rampage to avenge the blood of his brothers
he received a medal of honor for his bravery in the battles across Poland from January 18-22
where he “showed unusual courage… with his actions he saved his unit and killed 25 enemy soldiers
it was a Jewish officer by the name of Anatoly Shapiro who led the advance into Auschwitz
“Soviet intelligence knew about the existence of Auschwitz
Major Shapiro persuaded his commander to take the camp
and he was given command of forces who would engage the SS units and prevent them from destroying the evidence of their crimes.”
Max Privler’s unit approached Auschwitz from the other side in a pincer movement
and that is how the Jewish boy from Poland saw firsthand the horrors that his people had suffered
“For the first few hours we hunted for hiding SS
It was horrible to see them wheeling out these carts full of dead
But then we found Jews who were musselmen — we had to hold them up because they couldn’t stand on their own
I asked them who had remained alive from their towns
Max Privler fixes me with a hard stare when I ask him if there’s a special message he wants to convey to the world
He’s afraid that I won’t get his story right — that his beloved Mama
and the father who took a bullet for him won’t be remembered properly — and says so in a burst of agitated Russian
He’s calmed by a grandson and two great-grandsons who have arrived to take over the work of translation
craggy face softens when he talks about them
“I’m a millionaire,” says the man who lost everything when he was far younger than they are
roads are closed across Jerusalem for heavily-guarded motorcades as dozens of world leaders fly in to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation
and leaders of those whose countries were crushed sit alongside each other as the German president expresses his nation’s eternal shame
It’s hard not to draw parallels between these two 11-year-old boys in Poland — Dov Landau and Max Privler
and prime ministers converging on the Jewish state to denounce the Holocaust
these two men — whose experiences have been so divergent over the last seven decades
the other trapped behind the Iron Curtain — have lived out their very different lives with a vision of that one last message from their fathers: Never forget you’re a Yid
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<a href="https://www.postindependent.com/recent-stories/obituaries">Obituaries</a> | Jul 2
A rosary and visitation will be held Wednesday
Stephens Catholic Church with burial to follow at Highland Cemetery in New Castle
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“Saba” Dov came full circle as he helped guide the Israeli youth of today when he returned to Poland and visited some of the sites of his childhood
along with the concentration camps and other locations across the country as he gave over stories from the life that he had experienced
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