This article appeared in the June 2, 2011 Jewish Advocate.

 

New translation pays tribute to Polish Jews who fought the Nazis

By Susie Davidson

Special to the Advocate

Julian Bussgang of Dedham is helping to tell a little known chapter in the story of Polish Jewry during World War II.

It is about people like him, Jews who served in the Polish army.

Bussgang translated “Polish Jew – Polish Soldier: 1939-1945” (“Zyd Polski –

Zolnierz Polski”), a collection of essays first published in Poland in 1945 by Rabbi Nathan Rübner, Jewish chaplain of the Polish Army, 2nd Corps.

The booklet was re-released this year – in the original Polish with Bussgang’s English translation – by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, thanks to a grant from the the New York-based American Society for Jewish Heritage in Poland.

Bussgang, who is 86 and lives at NewBridge on the Charles, was an officer in the 2nd Corps and later fought in Italy with the British.

His American-born wife, Fay – an avid genealogist whose relatives perished in the Lodz Ghetto – helped with the editing. It was a volunteer undertaking for both of them, on a subject close to their hearts.

“There has been a prevailing notion among many that Polish Jews died passively during the war without offering any resistance,” said Bussgang at a May 8 presentation at Harvard Hillel. “Clearly, there were situations where fighting was impossible. But this booklet makes more widely known the fact that there were Polish Jews who fought valiantly during the war.”

Bussgang said the book pays tribute to Jewish soldiers who served in the Polish Army within and outside Poland, or in underground and partisan units. It also

honors those who battled in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the 1944

Warsaw Uprising, in which Jewish volunteers aided Polish soldiers. Bussgang

quoted from Rabbi Rübner’s original foreword: “May [this] be an eternal monument recounting to future generations the heroism and bravery of the Jewish soldiers in this most horrible, bloodiest and most merciless of all wars.”

Jewish chaplains like Rübner conducted religious services in the field and presided over burials for fallen soldiers. Besides serving in the underground Jewish Fighting Organization, Jews campaigned with the regular Polish army. “Fighting alongside their Catholic colleagues against a common enemy, they felt no separation,” he said.

Bussgang was born in Lwow, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), which was home

to 138,000 Jews. Most of them perished during the war. When they saw Polish

authorities evacuating the city, Bussgang, his sister and parents managed to escape south, bribing a border guard so they could walk over a bridge into Romania. After obtaining a visa, they found refuge in Palestine.

After the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin freed Polish political

prisoners from various camps in the Soviet Union. They formed the Polish 2nd Corps, which was also known as Anders Army after its commander, General Władysław Anders. Allowed to leave the USSR, the corps traveled to Palestine, via Iran and Iraq. There, it became part of the British 8th Army, as a distinct Polish division. Only about 5 percent of its members were Jewish, said Bussgang. “The Anders Army limited the number of Jews who could join.”

After graduating from the Polish High School in Tel Aviv, Bussgang volunteered for military service and was sent to the Polish Officers’ School in Gedera, Palestine.

“After finishing, one became a cadet officer, but had to go through all the non-

commissioned ranks to become an officer,” said Bussgang, who was promoted to second lieutenant at the end of the war.

He was shipped out to Italy, where he saw considerable action, including at the Battle of Monte Cassino. “I was first in tanks, then light anti-anti-aircraft artillery, but, like everyone else, was in infantry at Monte Cassino,” he said.

Photographs in the booklet show Jewish graves with Stars of David upon them in the Polish Military Cemetery at the foot of the Cassino monastery.

After the war, Bussgang studied in Italy and Great Britain before immigrating to the United States in 1949. He holds a doctorate in applied physics from Harvard and a master’s in electrical engineering from MIT. He worked at the MIT Lincoln

Laboratory, RCA Aerospace Division and, in 1962, founded Signatron, Inc. in

Lexington.

In 2008 at age 83, Bussgang returned to his hometown – now Lviv, Ukraine – to

celebrate his second bar mitzvah. It was almost exactly 70 years after he celebrated his first, held at the Progressive Great Synagogue of Lwow, one of 45 shuls in the city destroyed during the war.

Accompanying him on the trip was his wife; his children and their spouses; and

his eight grandchildren. Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny, the World Union’s senior

Progressive rabbi in Ukraine, led the service at Hesed-Arieh, a Jewish community center in Lviv.

In his talk at Harvard Hillel, Bussgang explained that “70 is a normal lifespan, and 13 years is traditionally added to that figure for a second bar mitzvah.”

Bussgang still has the key to his childhood home. In making the 2009 trip, he fulfilled the wish of his children – who had traveled to Eastern Europe with him in 1989 – to show their own children their grandfather’s roots.

Outside of Harvard Hillel, grandsons J.J. and Jonah Bussgang recalled how touched they were to see their grandfather’s hometown. The boys attend the Rashi School, which is on the NewBridge campus.

“I interviewed Grandpa for an immigration project for school,” said Jonah, who

displayed copies of his grandfather’s immigration documents in class. “I also put

stickers on a map showing where he and his parents were born,” he said.

The boys’ father, Jeffrey Bussgang, is vice chair of the board of Facing History and Ourselves, the Holocaust awareness organization based in Brookline. Bussgang is a general partner with Flybridge Capital Partners and co-chairs the Progressive Business Leaders Network.

The soldiers’ book wasn’t Julian Bussgang’s first translation project. He and his wife translated two volumes of accounts of Jewish children who survived the Holocaust and belong to the Children of the Holocaust Association in Poland. They were published as “The Last Eyewitnesses: Children of the Holocaust Speak.”

The elder Bussgangs are former members of Temple Isaiah in Lexington, where

Julian was active in town affairs. His story is included in the 1994 Temple Isaiah

congregant compilation “We Shall Not Forget: Memories of the Holocaust.”


Original submission:

New translation pays tribute to Polish Jews who fought the Nazis
 
By Susie Davidson
 
 
The publication of a historic World War II booklet makes the stories of Jews who fought in the Polish Army during World War II available to Polish, and thanks to the efforts of a local member of their ranks, English-speaking readers as well.
 
Zyd Polski - Zolnierz Polski (1939-1945), or “Polish Jew - Polish Soldier,” was first published in 1945 by Rabbi Nathan Rübner, Jewish Chaplain of the Polish Army, 2nd Corps. A 2008 grant from the New York based American Society for Jewish Heritage in Poland allowed the Jewish Historical Institute (JHI) in Warsaw to release a new, reprinted edition this year, the 71st anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.
 
The book’s essays detail the contributions of Jewish soldiers, one of whom is Dedham’s Newbridge on the Charles resident Julian Bussgang, who was an officer of the Polish 2nd Corps. An electronics entrepreneur who holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard and an MSEE from M.I.T., Bussgang translated the original work following a joint decision with JHI Director Dr. Eleonora Bergman to produce an English version. Bussgang’s American-born wife Fay, an avid genealogist whose relatives perished in the Lodz Ghetto, helped with the editing. It was a volunteer undertaking for both of them, but an issue close to their hearts.
 
“There has been a prevailing notion among many that Polish Jews died passively during the war without offering any resistance,” said Bussgang at a May 8 presentation at Harvard Hillel. “Clearly, there were situations where fighting was impossible. But this booklet makes more widely known the fact that there were Polish Jews who fought valiantly during the war.”
 
Bussgang said that the goal of the booklet, about Jewish soldiers who served in the Polish Army in underground and partisan units within and outside Poland as well as in major uprisings, was to pay tribute to their bravery. He quoted Chief Rabbi Nathan’s original Foreword: “May [this] be an eternal monument recounting to future generations the heroism and bravery of the Jewish soldiers in this most horrible, bloodiest and most merciless of all wars.”

Bussgang explained that Polish-Jewish soldiers had military rabbis as chaplains, religious services were conducted in the field, and soldiers were given Jewish burials when they fell in battle. Many gave their lives in the underground Jewish Fighting Organization and as soldiers, fighting side-by-side with Catholic Poles. “Fighting alongside their Catholic colleagues against a common enemy, they felt no separation,” he said.
 
Some of the essays’ authors were not Jews, but high officials of the Polish government-in-exile in London. “They expressed their hope for good postwar Polish-Jewish relations,” Bussgang recounted, “because they said ‘the Jewish people suffered the greatest and most painful losses in the struggle with the occupiers.’”

The booklet ends with a poem, “To the Jews,” by poet and journalist Kazimierz Wierzy
ński, followed by the reprint of “Kaddish,” an article by novelist, politician and 2nd Corps soldier Jan Bielatowicz.
 
The talk in Cambridge, which was also a meeting of the American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies (AAPJS), of which Bussgang is a board member, drew a capacity crowd that included Honorary Polish Consul Marek Lesniewski-Laas.
 
Bussgang was born in Lwow, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) and returned there in 2008 with his wife, children, their spouses, and his eight grandchildren for a second bar mitzvah. Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny, the World Union’s senior Progressive rabbi in Ukraine, led the service at Hesed-Arieh. Bussgang was 83. “70 is a normal lifespan,” he explained at Harvard, “and 13 years is traditionally added to that figure for a second Bar Mitzvah.”
 
Bussgang, who still has the key to his childhood home, fulfilled the wish of his children, who had traveled to Eastern Europe with him in 1989, to show their own children their grandfather’s roots. The extended family also traveled to Warsaw and attended a Passover Seder at Warsaw’s Progressive Jewish congregation, Beit Warszawa.
 
Outside of Harvard Hillel, grandsons J.J. and Jonah Bussgang said it was meaningful and touching to see their grandfather’s hometown. The boys attend the Rashi School adjacent to their grandparents’ home. “I interviewed Grandpa for an immigration project for school,” said Jonah, who displayed Julian’s scanned immigration documents. “I also put stickers on a map showing where he and his parents were born,” he said. The boys’ father, venture capitalist Jeffrey Bussgang of Flybridge Capital Partners—who co-chairs the Progressive Business Leaders Network, is vice-chair of the board of Facing History and Ourselves, and was appointed to the education reform initiative Readiness Finance Commission by Gov. Patrick—videotaped his father's talk.
 
The 2008 trip marked almost exactly 70 years since Bussgang had celebrated his bar mitzvah in the Progressive Great Synagogue of Lwow, one of 45 pre-war synagogues burned down during World War II. Of 138,000 Jewish residents, few survived. Among them were Bussgang, his sister and parents, who decided to travel toward Romania in the South, where they saw the Polish government officials evacuating, and opted to follow. When his father bribed a border guard, they were able to walk over a bridge into Romania, prior to obtaining a visa to Palestine.
 
A Polish Army was formed after Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June of 1941, and Stalin, in exchange for British assistance, released Polish prisoners from Soviet labor camps. Thus the Polish 2nd Corps, also known as the Anders Army from the name of its commander, General W
ładysław Anders, was allowed to leave the USSR. They arrived in Palestine via Iran and Iraq and became part of the British 8th Army.
 
Bussgang, who had graduated from the Polish wartime high school in Tel Aviv, volunteered for Army service, was sent to Polish officers’ school, and then shipped to Italy where he participated in many battles, including the Battle of Monte Cassino.
 
Photographs in the booklet show Jewish graves with Stars of David upon them in the Polish Military Cemetery at the foot of the Cassino monastery.

 

After the war, Bussgang studied in Italy and Great Britain and immigrated to the U.S. in 1949. His work involved military applications of electronics. He and his wife have also translated two volumes of accounts of Jewish children who survived the Holocaust and belong to the Children of the Holocaust Association in Poland, called “The Last Eyewitnesses: Children of the Holocaust Speak.” They are former members of Temple Isaiah in Lexington, where Julian was active in town affairs. His story is included in the 1994 Temple Isaiah congregant compilation “We Shall Not Forget: Memories of the Holocaust.”

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