Joseph Polaniecki was born on 2 January 1924 in Brzesko, Poland to Avraham Alter and Frieda. He grew up in an Orthodox family with his three brothers: Henry, Salomon and Yaakov. Joseph attended a Polish school in the mornings and then went to a heder where he studied from the afternoon until late in the evening. In his spare time, he learned how to play the violin. On the occasion of his Bar Mitzvah in 1937, he received a tefillin (phylacteries) bag from his uncle. The bag was dark green, and was embroidered at his uncle's factory. The bag was decorated on one side with a Star of David, his full name—Joseph Asher Polaniecki—and the Hebrew year of his Bar Mitzvah, 5697; on the other side the initials J.A.P. were embroidered, and adorned with a floral design.
When the war broke out in September 1939, Joseph and his family fled eastward after Brzesko was bombed for the second time. Reaching a city in Eastern Poland, they hid in the attic of the synagogue together with another family. When the Soviets arrived, they summoned all the Jewish families, upon which they were ordered to become Soviet citizens or to return to Nazi-occupied Western Poland. Joseph's family decided to return to the west, but were sent on a three-week train journey to a labor camp in the Novosibirsk region in Siberia, where they were imprisoned for some 18 months and worked chopping trees. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the situation changed and the Jews and Poles in Siberia were no longer considered prisoners. The family moved to Tashkent and then to a Kolhoz (collective farm) in Tajikistan's Leninabad region, where they worked in the cotton fields. Due to the harsh living conditions, all the family members contracted diseases. Joseph safeguarded his tefillin bag throughout all the trials and tribulations, and kept it with him even during the direst circumstances. In 1941, he made small boxes out of white tree bark in order to preserve the tefillin when he moved from place to place.
Joseph and his family survived the Holocaust. After liberation they were given permission to return to Poland, and then moved to Germany. After spending some time in the DP camps, they moved to Belgium, where Joseph met Doris. They got married and in 1951, they moved to Cincinatti, Ohio in the US. The rest of the Polaniecki family followed them a month later, also settling in Cincinatti.
_2.jpg?itok=gYdTa_Sy "The Siddur (Prayer Book) that Gabriele Kohn Received after Liberation")
