Mark Schonwetter spent part of his childhood in the Holocaust running from house to house through snow and cold with his mother and younger sister in his native Poland, lying motionless in an underground hideaway for months, and scouring the woods for edible mushrooms and berries to stave off starvation.
Yet, thanks to the ingenuity of his mother, the bravery and kindness of a Christian family friend and luck, all but his father survived the Shoah.
On November 9, on the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht—deemed the unofficial start of the Holocaust—Schonwetter appeared at the Paul Robeson Campus Center in a program on the Newark campus of Rutgers University sponsored by Rutgers Newark Hillel, the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest and Hillel of Greater MetroWest.
“I share this with young and old generations because I strongly feel this could happen again,” he said. “We have to remember this happened to prevent a similar event in the future. We are all human beings. It doesn’t matter if you are Christian, Jewish, if you’re Muslim or Hindu. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, Black or brown. It makes no difference. Teach kids we are all equal and all human beings should live in peace and respect each other.”
The Livingston resident appeared with his daughter, Isabella Fiske, founder of the New York City-based Mark Schonwetter Holocaust Education Foundation, who reminded the audience to never forget so that history does not repeat itself.
“We live in a hard time with a lot of hate in the world,” she said. “Instead of progressing in society we are kind of going backward. You are blessed to hear firsthand from a Holocaust survivor. It is my responsibility to tell my dad’s story. I need you to be his voice because there are deniers, people in this world who say it’s false.”
Indeed, Rutgers Hillel Co-President Miriam Brickman of West Orange said although there aren’t significant numbers of Jews at Rutgers-Newark, the event was able to accomplish its goal of educating others.
“Toward the end of the event a non-Jewish student came up to me and told me something I’ll never forget and made all the hard work that went into planning this event worth it,” she said. “He said he knows there are people out there who try to deny the atrocities performed by the Nazis, but hearing a survivor’s story firsthand proves there is nothing to deny; he can’t wait to one day share Mr. Schonwetter’s story with his children and grandchildren and keep his legacy alive.”
The other Hillel co-president, Adina Pinsker of Hillside, added it was important to bring in a survivor because of the dearth of Holocaust education on campus.
Schonwetter’s family had lived for generations in the town of Brzostek, where his father was a farmer and head of the local Jewish community. After the Nazis invaded Poland, he said the Gestapo went to the local police chief to ask about the community’s Jews and was directed to the elder Schonwetter. The Gestapo continued to return with escalating demands and finally confiscated the farm.
Schonwetter’s father was called daily to the police station, but one day did not return. Soon after, the police chief’s wife came to where the rest of the family was staying to inform them she overheard the Gestapo say they were coming for all Jews. She advised them to flee.
They ran to a family friend, Antonio Piwat. Because it was late, he let Mark sleep with his children and found a spot for his sister and mother elsewhere. However, the next morning the Gestapo showed up at the Piwat home after hearing the family was hiding Jews and proceeded to search the property. Before leaving, the oldest Piwat daughter was asked how many siblings she had.
“Without hesitation she said six,” said Schonwetter. “Let me tell you, that was the kindest kid in the world. She included me with her brothers and sisters; otherwise I don’t think I’d be here.”
Piwat quickly reunited the family and took them to a ghetto in another town where no one knew them, thinking they would be safe. The family found it overcrowded and dirty, with no running water or sewage system. Watered-down soup and a slice of bread were their only sustenance.
“We were constantly hungry day and night,” said Schonwetter. “Every day we wore the same clothes. We never washed. We were sick. We were lucky to survive because a lot of people were dying and there was no doctor, no medicine.”
After three months and with rumors circulating that the ghetto would be closed, a little boy told them a man, who turned out to be Piwat, was looking for them. From the other side of the fence Piwat threw a blanket over the barbed wire and told Schonwetter’s mother to throw her children over and then climb over herself.
They walked to the house of another farmer who had agreed to shelter them. However, after the winter ended they were asked to leave because the family was afraid the workers in the field would notice them. The Schonwetters were instructed to go to the forest where they would be safe.
Schonwetter’s mother found hiding places between bushes and tried as best she could to shelter them from the rain. She instructed her offspring about which berries and mushrooms were safe to eat and assured them they would survive. As the cold set in months later, she would go to houses and beg for shelter, but they spent many nights in the snow and cold. In the summer they went back to the forest.
One winter a farmer agreed to shelter them in a hole he had dug in the pigsty and instructed the family to lay in it, placing heavy boards and hay on top. He brought them food, and the only time they moved for months was to relieve themselves.
In the spring they were asked to leave but could hardly move after months lying prone. In the fall of 1944 the family began to hear artillery fire and see groups of farmers running as the front moved closer. Schonwetter’s mother decided to join one, advising her children to pretend to be Christian, tell them only the name of their hometown and say they too were running from the front. When she was questioned by suspicious people, his mother told others the Germans had taken her husband to fight and she didn’t know where he was. Soon after Russian soldiers came and informed them the war was over and to go home.
The family found their home too damaged to live in but stayed in Poland until 1957 when the communist government granted them permission to go to Israel, where Schonwetter’s sister still lives. His mother died there at age 94. After four years in Israel, Schonwetter came to America at the invitation of an aunt. He started to work sweeping floors in a jewelry factory. Eventually he owned a jewelry factory.
The family learned his father’s fate from one of Piwat’s sons when he came to their forest hideout to bring them bread. His mother recognized the shoes he was wearing as belonging to her husband and pressed him on how he acquired them. He reluctantly told her the Nazis had forced him and others to dig a large hole for 250 people who had been stripped and shot. The Nazis told the diggers that as a reward they could take one item taken off the dead. Piwat’s son also recognized the shoes and took them, he told his mother, “because I wanted to have a memory of your husband.”
