Sara (Frank) Kornfeld: An Ongoing Life of Loving Care and Generosity 

Tamar (Fink) Arbel

(2000)

 

 

My great grandmother, Sara Frank, daughter of Leibush Frank, married Menahem-Mendel Kornfeld, also known as "der Rostiker" because he came from the town of Rostov, near Sanok. 

 

Sara was in her teens at the time, while he was 26 years older than she, a widower and the father of three grown children.   The couple moved from Poland to Slovakia and settled in the small village of Dlhe on the Cirochou River in an area that had a very small Jewish population.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Menahem-Mendel was a traveling salesman and used to leave his home at the beginning of the week, sell mainly lumber but also grains and livestock and return home for the Shabbat.

 

Sara looked after the household tended to the cows, grew vegetables in the garden and raised her children. By the time she was 30 years old she had given birth to six children, four boys and two girls.

 

Her eldest child was Herman-Martin (Mondek). He had a successful lumber business in Presov, which helped him to stay there during most of the Second World War.

 

Towards the end of the war he hid in the forests with his wife Alice and their two children, Palo and Hedy to survive the Holocaust. He changed his name to Ben-Ya’acov, which sounds like a Slavic name and in 1949 they fled to Israel.

 

Louis (Leibush) emigrated in the twenties to the US and settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where other members of the family were living. He married Bertha, and they both lived in Scranton all their lives.

 

David followed his brother to the US in 1936, served in the American army in Algiers, Italy and the Far East and when the war was over came back to Scranton to marry Mildred (Millie) who had waited for him all those years.

 

Joe (Jocko), the youngest child, was sent by his parents to live with his brother Mondi in Presov and study forestry. When he finished his apprenticeship he worked with Mondek until the Germans finally apprehended him. He went through an astonishing ordeal until he managed to trick the German authorities and get back to Presov.

 

 

His personal story can be read in his book, “A Holocaust Odyssey,” Like his brother Mondek, he changed his name to a Slavic-sounding name, Kalina. When the Communists came to power he left his homeland and migrated to Canada and then to the US, settling in Syracuse, NY.

 

Whereas the boys had the freedom and the drive to study and pursue their futures, the status of the girls in a strict Hassidic home was different. They had only a basic education, five years of mandatory elementary school and an opportunity to listen to the Jewish studies offered to the boys.  

 

 Jewish families in small villages used to hire a “melamed” from the nearby town, give him a place to stay within their homes and thus create a “heder” for their children.

The girls were kept busy helping with the household chores, working in the fields and tending the animals. There were cows to milk, geese to feed, butter to churn and clothes to sew. If there was any spare time they were ordered “to take a Jewish word into their mouth,” namely pray or to read Thilim (Psalms).

 

Their main concern was to find a proper bridegroom. Esther (Emma) was an obedient girl. She married Eli, a relative of the family and had two children, Judith and Alfred.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They were all apprehended by the Germans and taken in cattle train-cars to the death camps in Poland.

 

My mother, Gitta, on the other hand, was a rebel. She wanted to leave her home. Menahem-Mendel called the rabbi to come to Dlhe and persuade his Zionist daughter to change her ways, but she was determined to go to Palestine.

 

At that point he gave her his blessing, together with a gold coin. This coin was later “deposited” in the cornerstone of the house that my parents built in Kiryat Bialik.

 

So in 1934, Gitta went on her own to Palestine, traveling through Romania and Turkey, to the port of Haifa. There she met her stepsister, Chaya (Kornfeld) Schreiber, who had settled with her husband and eight children in the outskirts of Tel Aviv and made a living raising cows and selling milk and dairy products.

 

Without knowledge of the language and with no profession, Gitta could capitalize only on the domestic skills she had acquired at home. She found a job as a cook for a group of young pioneers who settled in Poria, near the Kineret (the Sea of Galilee) and later in the household of the Rocha family, until Mr. Rokah became the Mayor of Tel Aviv.

 

She moved to Haifa and met Ernst Fink, a young pioneer from Vienna, who immigrated to Palestine. He left Austria because of its virulent anti-Semitism, making it virtually impossible for a Jew to get any kind of employment.

 

My parents married and settled in Kiryat, Bialik, a small community of newcomers  mainly from Germany and Austria.

 

They lived there all their lives and raised their two daughters, my sister Ora and myself (Tamar). My mother inherited Sara’s wholehearted generosity and was known to the people of the community for her willingness to help the needy. Her house was open for all.

 

She shared the little she had with a number of “regulars” and extended help to soldiers, volunteered to cook and care for the sick and elderly and made donations to a variety of charitable organizations.  

 

Deborah, Menahem-Mendel’s daughter from his first marriage, married David Littman. David went to America to work and earn money to improve the well being of his family.

While he was away, Deborah died of pneumonia, and Sara and Menahem-Mendel took in the three orphans. They raised them, for eight yeas, as siblings to their other children until their father took them to the US. We kept in touch with those three (Ethel (Mittman), Wolin, Lewis Mittman and Marth-Martilda (Mittman) Asher –and regard them as our proper uncle and aunts.

 

Sara and Menahem-Mendel managed to go to the US in November 1939, just before the gates of Europe were closed for the Jews, and thanks to the affidavits of their children in Scranton. US visas were very scarce then and bureaucratic barriers kept others from getting out in time (the reason why Joe could not join his parents).

 

Sara died in 1945, at the age of 58 and Menahem-Mendel died two years later, at the age of 86. They were both buried in the Jewish cemetery in Dalton, Pennsylvania, where so many members of the family found their last peace.

 

When Sara’s brother Mondek decided to come to Israel in 1949, he first sent his two children. Palo came with a group of pioneers and settled with them in a kibbutz, while Hedy stayed with us and became my “big sister.”

 

When her parents arrived almost a year later, they too stayed with us in the two-room apartment, until they found a place for themselves.

 

In 1935, other members of the family arrived in Palestine. Shoshana (Rushka) Zak settled in Tel-Aviv and raised three children, Yoelit, Ofra and Zevi. Edit-Etka (Ames) Deutch (Celia Drucker’s sister) and her husband Haim-Hugo Deutch joined a new settlement, Moshav  Herut, and built their house there. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

During WWII, Haim volunteered for the Jewish Brigade and went to Europe to join the allied forces in the fight against the Nazis. Etka managed the farm herself and raised their two children Zevi and Mira.

 

The first few years of Israel’s existence, right after its War of Independence, were very difficult in many ways. There was not enough food, especially since waves of new immigrants were arriving daily. We were lucky to get some food and clothing parcels sent by my uncles to their “Zionist rebellious sister.”

 

This link o f generosity that runs in the family proved itself again when I came with my family, my husband and four small children, to study at Syracuse University. We were welcomed by all and realized the importance of a close loving extended family.

 

It would be impossible to mention all the family members and friends who came to visit or to stay in my parent’s house in Kiryat Bialik or in our home in Jerusalem when they visited Israel . We enjoyed these visits very much .

 

It cemented our relationship with our relatives and with the  State of Israel as a binding force, it insured that our family would continue to remember our ancestors.