Written by: Dr. Sylwia Szymańska-Smolkin
Chasia Bornstein-Bielicka (16 January 1921 – 15 July 2012) was a member of Hashomer Hatzair and the underground Jewish resistance in the Grodno and Bialystok ghettos. She had been involved in work with children as a counselor before and after the war. After the war, she ran a home for Jewish children in Lodz. In 1946, she left Poland with the children for Eretz Israel. Through Germany and France and an internment in Cyprus, they finally reached Palestine in 1947. Bornstein-Bielicka settled with her husband Heini Bornstein in kibbutz Lehavot Habashan, where she continued to work with children. From 1967 until her retirement, she taught pottery at the Tel Hai Regional College. She then returned to kibbutz Lehavot Habashan, where she sewed clothing for women and children. Throughout her life, Bornstein-Bielicka was a dedicated member of Hashomer Hatzair and an educator.
Bio:
Chasia Bornstein-Bielicka was born on January 16, 1921, in Grodno (then in Poland) to Yehuda Bielicki and Devorah Bielicka (née Jabłońska). She came from a traditional Jewish family with Zionist attitudes. Chasia had an older brother Avramele and two younger sisters Rocheleh and Zipporka. She was the only one of her family to survive the Holocaust.
In 1928, Chasia began her education at the Tarbut Hebrew primary school but due to financial difficulties, she moved to a municipal Jewish school with Polish as the language of instruction. She then graduated from the ORT vocational school for girls in Grodno where she took tailoring courses. Thanks to her studies at both schools, Chasia became fluent in Polish, which became a lifesaving skill in her underground work as a liaison and while living on the "Aryan side" during the Holocaust. Her sewing skills enabled her to earn a living in the ghetto and on the "Aryan side."
In 1933, Chasia joined the Zionist youth organization Hashomer Hatzair. She closely identified with the movement, which in her own words was “a school-away-from-school, a home-away-from-home”. In her opinion, Zionism and the Zionist youth movements were the Jewish response to the sense of isolation from the Poles and the feeling of being foreign and unwanted. Bornstein-Bielicka was chosen to be a counselor during her tenure as a Scout. She remained associated with the movement throughout her life.
When in 1939 Grodno came under the Soviet occupation and all political parties and youth movements were dissolved by the Soviet authorities, members of the Grodno Hashomer Hatzair continued their activities and met secretly in the Bielicki family's garden. Despite all the hardships of the Soviet occupation, Chasia credited the regime for enabling her to finish the last two years of gymnasium and complete high school. After graduating from the gymnasium, she planned to study interior design in Leningrad. She graduated from the school on the eve of Germany's attack on the Soviet Union.
When the German occupation of Grodno began in 1941, Chasia, taking advantage of her "good looks," began going out to other parts of the city to buy bread. She also obtained food in exchange for sewing work for her Polish neighbors. After the establishment of the ghetto in November 1941, Chasia, her parents, and sisters moved into Ghetto No. 1 where they lived with Chasia’s friend and her grandparents’ apartment and another family. Thanks to a special transit pass (Schein) Chasia was allowed to move between ghettos and visit relatives in Ghetto No. 2 and later to care for a group of young children as a counselor.
In 1941, Bornstein-Bielicka, together with other members of Hashomer Hatzair, formed the organization's underground leadership in the Grodno ghetto. They looked after and educated the children they had gathered from the streets. They also created a mutual aid project in the ghetto - they visited the wards in their homes, brought them bread, clothing, and shoes. Chasia registered for work outside the ghetto to support her family with bread rations and to obtain food from Poles in exchange for sewing work. She worked at an underwear factory and then in sugar beets field. She gave it up to work with children in both ghettos.
When the members of the youth movements in Grodno became aware of the mass murders in Ponary and the fate of Jewish towns around Grodno, they understood that Grodno Jews would not be exempted. They learned about resistance groups in Vilna, Warsaw and Bialystok and began to prepare secret passages, escape routes and manufacture and acquire weapons.
In January 1943, Chasia, together with Cyla Szachnes, transported forgery lab equipment from Grodno to the Bialystok ghetto. At that time, Chasia was working in Grodno at a Wehrmacht shop that produced handbags for the wives of the Wehrmacht and Gestapo officers. She designed handbag models, which were sewn from leather scraps from the shoe factory. She transported the lab equipment in a purse taken from the store. When she arrived in the Bialystok ghetto, the underground leadership there decided that Chasia would not return to Grodno but would be their courier on the "Aryan side." She agreed on the condition that when the liquidation of the ghetto begins, she would be able to participate in the resistance.
Chasia lived on the "Aryan side" as Halina Stasiuk, a Pole from the village of Koszewo near Druskininkai, who fled the village out of fear of being deported to Germany for labor. Thanks to her education Chasia spoke Polish with a Grodno accent and could easily pass for a Pole. She worked as a domestic servant for the family of SS-man Luchterhand and in the kitchen for the Germans, where her friend from the underground Liza Czapnik also worked. This arrangement enabled them to communicate regarding their underground work. She worked there until the ghetto was liquidated. Chasia stole ammunition from Luchterhand's house and smuggled it into the ghetto. Bornstein-Bielicka and other liaisons (all young women) were the connection between the resistance and the outside world - they delivered documents, letters, medicine, and ammunition, and helped Jews in hiding. They also maintained contact with the local non-Jewish underground.
On the eve of the liquidation of the Bialystok ghetto in August 1943, Chasia noticed increased traffic in the city and the presence of Ukrainian and Lithuanian soldiers. She entered the ghetto to warn her comrades of the impending action and participate in the fight. She was not believed but when the ghetto was surrounded, Chasia was ordered to leave it and organize the liaisons on the "Aryan side." After the resistance collapsed in the Bialystok ghetto, Chajka Grossman, who was also a courier, moved in with her. Chasia supported herself by repairing, designing and making clothes for the Polish neighbors. She was one of the couriers (along with Chajka Grossman, Bronia Winicka (later Klibańska), Marylka Różycka, Liza Czapnik, Ania Rod and Rywka Madajska) who worked on the Aryan side and helped Jewish survivors join the partisans.
In September 1943, in Bialystok, Chasia started working for Otto Busse, a German civilian working for the Wehrmacht who helped Jews in hiding, first as a domestic help and then as his secretary. Until the liberation of Bialystok, Busse was of great assistance to her, e.g., he helped her obtain weapons and arranged a pass for her to enter the former ghetto. Chasia also established contact with German communist Arthur Schade, who helped Jews as well. Chasia and the other couriers established cooperation with the partisans. They delivered weapons and ammunition, medicine, batteries, and food for the partisan units, and provided them with intelligence on German forces in the area.
Along with the other female liaisons, Chasia became a member of the Bialystok Anti-Fascist Committee. They collected intelligence on the positions of German forces and in the summer of 1944 drew a detailed map of German positions using, among other things, information provided by Busse and Schade. The Soviets used this map during the liberation of Bialystok, thanks to which the Red Army and partisans took Bialystok without major casualties. Chasia took part in partisan activities during the liberation of Bialystok in August 1944 and entered the city along with the Red Army. For her service to the Red Army, Chasia was awarded the highest civilian medal.
In 1944, she returned to Grodno together with Ania Rod and Liza Czapnik. They received a scholarship and began studying at a teachers' college. In 1945, Chasia illegally crossed the border into Poland. In June 1945, she arrived in Lodz. In Lodz she ran the first children’s home of the Zionist Coordination for the Redemption of Jewish Children in Liberated Poland (Koordynacja), an organization whose purpose was to find surviving Jewish children in Poland to place them in children's homes and then take them to Palestine. The children had been claimed from the covenants and Poles who had concealed them, others had survived in the Soviet Union and had been found by the organization in the streets and train stations.
In January 1946, Chasia attended the first post-war Hashomer Hatzair congress in Fontainebleau, France, as a member of a delegation from Poland. There, for the first time she shared the story of the resistance movements in the Grodno, Bialystok and Warsaw ghettos and about the annihilation of Jewish communities. For two months she traveled throughout Europe visiting Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. Together with Israel Szklar Chasia traveled across Switzerland, raising funds for the centers for Jewish youth in Poland.
In 1946, Bornstein-Bielicka left Poland illegally with 70 Jewish children for Palestine with the help of the Bricha. Against the Koordynacja’s order to remain in Lodz and open a new orphanage, Chasia left Poland with her charges. They spent five months in the DP camp in Salzheim, and in October 1946 were transferred to DP camp in Dornstadt. In both locations, Chasia continued her educational work with children. In March 1947, she was put in charge of more than 200 children, counselors and organizing the departure from Germany to France. On April 1, 1947, they left France with 500 children aboard the clandestine immigrants’ vessel Theodor Herzl. After a two-week journey, they were interned in Cyprus. In August 1947, the children were allowed to make aliyah but without guardians, who could only accompany the children to Camp Atlit. In September, Chasia was secretly taken to kibbutz Gan Shmuel, where she spent two months with the children.
In the winter of 1947, Chasia and her husband Heini (Henri) Bornstein (whom she met in Switzerland) settled in the kibbutz Lehavot Habashan near the Syrian border. During the War of Independence, she was in charge of first aid. She gave birth to three daughters, Yehudit, Racheli and Dorit. She worked with immigrant youth in the vegetable garden and established the first kindergarten at the immigrants’ transit camp in Kiryat Shmona. Hashomer Hatzair sent Chasia and Heini on two missions: to South Africa and then to France. In 1967 Bielicka-Bornstein began working at Tel Hai Regional College, where she produced and taught ceramics for the next 20 years. After retiring, she returned to kibbutz Lehavot Habashan and took up designing and making clothing for children and women. She passed away on July 15, 2012, in Israel.
Memoirs
The first edition of Chasia’s memoirs was published in Hebrew as Ahat mi-meatim in 2003; an English translation One of the Few. A Resistance Fighter and Educator 1939-1947 was published in 2009. The memoirs were based on transcripts of conversations with Noemi Yitzhar of kibbutz Gan Shmuel.
Central Bibliography:
Cohen, Boaz. “Survivor Caregivers and Child Survivors: Rebuilding Lives and the Home in
the Postwar Period.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 32.1 (2018): 49–65.
Dawidowicz, Grażyna. “„Jedna z wielu”. Krótki szkic o Chasi Bornstein-Bielickiej.” Żydzi wschodniej Polski. Seria III: kobieta żydowska. Białystok: Wydawnictwo Alter Studio. Wydział Filologiczny Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, Katedra Badań Filologicznych „Wschód-Zachód”, 2015, 27-40.
Izhar, Neomi. Chasia Bornstein-Bielicka. One of the Few. A Resistance Fighter and Educator
1939–1947. Yad Vashem: Jerusalem 2009.
Ławski, Jarosław. “Kobieta żydowska: w kręgu inspiracji Chasi Bornstein-Bielickiej.” Żydzi wschodniej Polski. Seria III: kobieta żydowska. Białystok: Wydawnictwo Alter Studio. Wydział Filologiczny Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, Katedra Badań Filologicznych „Wschód-Zachód”, 2015, 15-25.
Sylwia Szymańska-Smolkin
Södertörn University
Milena Jesenska & Margarete Buber-Neumann