Danka & Henry Cyngler

Title: Going Through Fire Without Getting Burned: Memoirs of two Holocaust Survivors.
Author: Danka and Henry Cyngler
Publisher: Self-Published
Place of publication: Melbourne
Year of Publication: 2013
Location of Book: Lamm Jewish Library
Cities/town/camps: Poland: Pabianice ghetto, Lodz ghetto, Lvov ghetto, Wobbelin concentration camp, Brauschweig, Ravensbruck; Germany: Biberach; Italy: Rome, Naples; France: Marseille; Israel-Palestine: Atlit DP camp, Tel Aviv, Haifa; Australia: Melbourne.
Note: those cities/towns/camps underlined are those which are most central to the narrative.
Genre: Memoir
Key events/experiences: ghetto; concentration camp; hiding in Catholic convent; Aliyah Bet Movement.

Going Through Fire presents the accounts of Danka and Henry Cyngler, two Polish-Jews who survived the Holocaust before emigrating to Israel with the Aliyah Bet movement, where they met and fell in love. Pages 1-50 centre on Henry’s wartime experiences with pages 51-80 presenting a map illustrating Henry and Danka’s wartime journey, photographs and a family tree. The rest of the memoir is written from Danka’s perspective, with pages 83-111 describing the lives of her extended family and her own childhood in Lvov. Pages 112-155 detail her wartime experiences with pages 155-178 recounting her emigration to Israel, marriage to Henry and the couple’s life in Australia. Pages 179-99 contain reflections by Danka on her Holocaust experiences and a glossary of terms.

Hersz (Henry) Cyngler was born on 20 May 1925, in Pabianice, a town near the city of Lodz, in Poland. Henry was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, the second child of Chaim and Gittel Cyngler. He had an older brother Perec and a younger sister Pearl. The Cyngler family spoke Yiddish and Henry and his brother attended Cheder. When Henry was fourteen, the Nazis invaded Poland and he and his brother were hidden by German friends for a few weeks whilst the Germans rounded up Jewish men for labour. In February 1940, the Pabianice ghetto was established. Henry was incarcerated in the ghetto with his family until May 1942 when the ghetto was liquidated and the family was transported to the Lodz ghetto. Henry worked in a factory making saddles. Sometime in 1943, Henry’s 11-year-old sister Pearl was deported to the death camp Treblinka. Henry and his surviving family continued to work in the Lodz ghetto enduring back-breaking conditions and starvation. In August 1944, with liquidation of the Lodz ghetto approaching, the family hid for three weeks but were eventually discovered and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival, the men and women were separated and this was the last time Henry saw his mother. Both Perec and Henry were sent to the camp hospital. Henry was released after a day and got word that the remaining inmates in the hospital were to be sent to the gas chambers. He warned his brother Perec, who luckily escaped in time.

On Yom Kippur 1944, Henry and his brother were caught in an Aktion and interned in a barrack full of young inmates who had been selected for the gas chambers. In the night, a few boys pried a plank loose and seven escaped, including Henry and Perec. The next day around 1200 boys were murdered. In November 1944, Henry and Perec were deported from Auschwitz to the Bussing plant in the Braunschweig forced labour camp. After six months, working at the factory, they were sent on a death march to Watenstadt in the freezing winter. They were then deported to Ravensbruck, the former women’s camp which had recently begun to accept male prisoners as part of a “prisoner exchange” organised by the Red Cross in Sweden. The boys were then marched to the Wobbelin concentration camp where they were liberated by the American army. They travelled back to Pabianice by train through Czechoslovakia and eventually reached Italy. On 27 June 1946, with the assistance of Hashomer Hatzair, they took illegal passage from Naples to Haifa. Upon arrival, they were arrested by the British and interned at the Atlit displaced person’s camp. It was there that Henry and Danka met.

Danka was born in a small Polish town, Komarno, the third child of Yecheskiel and Sarah Heller. Danka’s parents ran a successful family business in Komarno. However, they tired of small-town life and moved to the city of Lvov, where Danka’s younger sister Genia was born. Danka’s extended family was Hasidic, and though her parents were less religious they kept a kosher household. Even so, Danka was close to her large extended family. In Lvov, Danka had a good relationship with her Catholic neighbours, however she experienced antisemitism when she visited her Aunt and cousins in Jaworow.

In September 1939, when war broke out, the family, who anxiously watched as antisemitic measures  increased in Nazi Germany, were overjoyed when the Russian army occupied eastern Poland. From September 1939 until June 1941, Lvov was under Soviet occupation and though the family business suffered, life continued largely as normal. However, on 22 June 1941, the German army invaded and occupied Lvov and deportations to the camps began soon thereafter. In early November 1941, the Lvov ghetto was established. Over many months, Danka endured Aktion after Aktion and by the end of 1941, both her mother and sister had been sent to the death camp Belzec. Twice, twelve-year-old Danka survived a transport by jumping off a moving train. The second time she threw her five-year-old sister off the train.

As her sister had badly injured her leg, Danka had to carry her to the Lvov ghetto. With the assistance of a Catholic Ukrainian, the girls were reunited with their father and brother and put into hiding. When the next Aktion took place the girls were moved to a Catholic convent where Danka underwent training as a novice nun. The girls survived the remainder of the war in hiding in the Convent before being liberated by the Russian Army in late 1944. Genia was sent to an orphanage in the Polish resort town Zakopane whilst Danka remained in Lvov at the International Orphanage. Shortly after liberation, when she was seventeen, Danka witnessed antisemitic violence at the orphanage and decided to emigrate to Israel after representatives from the Zionist Aliyah Bet Movement came to the orphanage. Genia was sent to a children’s centre in Biberach, Germany, run by the UNRRA. With the help of Hashomer Hatzair, Danka was smuggled into Germany where she was reunited with Genia.

Genia was then sent legally to a Kibbutz in Israel, but Danka was smuggled to Marseille where, in July 1946, she boarded an illegal ship “The Haganah” to Haifa. The boat was intercepted in Haifa by the British Navy and Danka was sent to Atlit where she met Henry. After several weeks, Danka was released from Atlilt and moved to Tel Aviv where she married Henry in 1947. In March 1949, they had a son Charles and, three years later, another son, Yeheskial was born. In 1952, Henry’s brother Perec and his wife emigrated to Melbourne, having been sponsored by members of Danka’s family who had emigrated before the war. In 1955, the Cyngler family secured sponsorship and emigrated to Melbourne.

The memoir is written chronologically with chapter headings indicating key events. Henry’s account is succinct, detailing only his wartime experiences, whereas Danka spends much of the memoir writing about her extended family and early childhood. Writing the memoir was a collective family effort; Danka and Henry’s grandson recorded their stories and other family members helped with the writing and editing. Danka also received the assistance of a translator to help translate her story from Polish to English. The memoir is in the form of a stream-of-consciousness transcript, with some important details missing.