Fela Steinbok
Author: Fela Steinbok
Publisher: Makor Jewish Community Library
Place of publication: Caulfield South, VIC.
Year of Publication: 2007
Location of Book: Lamm Jewish Library, Sydney Jewish Museum, Monash University, and other public libraries.
Cities/towns/camps: Poland: Zaglembie district, Sosnowiec, Rybach; Ukraine: Zolkiew, Donbas, Kremetchuk, Primorsk, Mariopol; Russia: Siberia; Kazakhstan: Ushtube, Lepsin; Germany: Hesse Lichtenau DP camp; France: Paris; Australia: Melbourne
Note: those cities/towns/camps underlined are those which are most central to the narrative
Genre: Memoir
Key events/experiences: Jewish refugee; Siberian labour camp.
My Life is the story of Fela Steinbok who fled Nazi occupied Poland and survived the war in a Siberian labour camp with her husband.
The memoir is 212 pages long. Pages 1-17 briefly describe the Jewish history of Poland and the author’s personal family history. Pages 18-67 recount her life in pre-war Sosnowiec with pages 68-84 detailing the Nazi occupation and her subsequent flight to Russia shortly after. Pages 85-115 recount their time in the Siberian labour camps from May 1940 to October 1941, their subsequent emigration to Kazakhstan and Ukraine and eventual settlement in a German DP camp in 1946. Pages 116-212 describe their life in Paris and emigration to Australia in 1950, followed by an account of their life in Melbourne.
Fela Steinbok was born in Sosnowiec, Poland on 13 October 1916, the second-child of Hershel and Adela Oksenhendler. She grew up in a large, middle-class family of seven children, with three brothers and three sisters. During her adolescence and early adulthood, Fela was active in various Zionists movements. In 1931, she was enrolled in a ladies college in Bedzin. When the Nazis invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 her brother Jakub joined the Polish army. On 9 September, the Sonsowiec synagogue was bombed. Fela married her husband Samuel, on 11 October and four days later the couple left Sonsowiec for Zolkiew, in Soviet occupied Ukraine, the town of Samuel’s birth. They stayed there briefly before travelling to the Donbas region in present-day Ukraine to work in the coal mines. After a time they moved to Kremetchuk for work in the fur industry. When Fela fell pregnant, they decided to return to Zolkiew where they were briefly reunited with Fela’s brother Jakub, who soon returned to Lwow. It was the last they ever saw him.
Samuel’s family arrived in Zolkiew from German-occupied Poland. In May 1940, two Russian soldiers arrived in the middle of the night and ordered the Steinboks to pack their belongings. The heavily-pregnant Fela and her family were then loaded onto trucks for deportation to Siberia. After days without adequate food or water they arrived in an isolated town where they lived in crowded wooden barracks and were forced to perform hard labour producing timber. Conditions were brutal and several people died. In July, Fela gave birth to her daughter, Ruth. Samuel was forced to work backbreaking labour to earn adequate rations to feed the family. The Steinboks lived for two years in Siberia until, in July 1941, the Russian government agreed to release the Polish refugees from the labour camps. In October 1941, the Steinboks left for Atchinsk, a small town in Siberia, and shortly thereafter, to Ushtube, Kazakhstan.
In December 1941, Ruth fell ill with measles and tragically passed away due to inadequate medical care and brutal conditions in the region. Heartbroken from the loss of their child, Fela and Samuel travelled to Lepsi, near Almaty, Kazakhstan, to be with Samuel’s family. There, Samuel worked on a farm and, later, in a fur factory. The couple lived in Kazakhstan from late 1941 until 1943 when Samuel was sent back to Siberia, to Kiselevsk, to work in a coal mine. In early 1944, Fela and Samuel were resettled by the Soviet government in Primorsk, Ukraine, where they worked on a grain farm. They were then sent to the city of Mariupol. On 11 July 1945, Fela gave birth to her second child, Julie, and in February 1946, the Steinbok’s returned to Sosnowiec where they learned that Fela’s parents and younger brothers had been murdered in Auschwitz. They then travelled onto a small town of Rybach were they were reunited with Samuel’s father, brother and sister.
Hoping to leave Europe, the Steinbok’s travelled to Wroclaw where they sought assistance from the JDC who organised transport to the UNRRA run DP camp, Hess Lichtenau in the American zone of Germany. There Fela was reunited with her only surviving sibling, Regina, who emigrated shortly thereafter to America. The Steinbok’s remained in Hess Lichtenau until mid-1947, before travelling to Paris in preparation for emigration to Israel with the Zionist organisation Bricha. However, whilst in Paris, Fela received what was to prove a false report that her brother Jakub was detained in a Soviet prison, which delayed their plans and Fela obtained permits from the Red Cross to remain in Paris until 1950. However, despite Fela’s efforts, Jakob was never found. In 1950, Fela learnt that her Uncle Sam had emigrated to Australia. With the help of Jewish Welfare, they obtained permits for Australia and left from the port of Genoa. They arrived in Melbourne on 1 September 1950. Fela and Samuel began working in the fur industry, eventually establishing their own business. Samuel’s surviving family emigrated to Israel.
My Life memoir is a detailed autobiography of the author’s life which provides insight into the experiences of Jewish deportees to the Siberian labour camps. Not limited to wartime events, the author devotes much of her memoir to describing pre-war Jewish life in Poland, particularly her political and religious activities, as well as life in her adoptive country, Australia. However, specific dates are not provided. It was written and published through the Makor Jewish Community Library’s “Write Your Story” program.