Janet Singer Applefield

speaker

70 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2024 last heard Aug 2024

Janet Singer Applefield’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Let's Talk Legacy · CLIP: Taken, Renamed, Survival, Forgiveness · 28 Aug 2024 podcast

Singer.

So that's why you have the singer still in the middle, right?

Yes.

Did you find a sense of forgiveness for the people that wronged your family? Or is there still a piece of your heart that has a hard time with that?

I'm very fortunate because my dad, who was my hero, did not believe in general responsibility. He felt that there were good Germans and bad Germans, good Poles, bad Poles. And because of that, I adopted the same philosophy. I judge people on the basis of their character and actions. I will never forget what happened, but I'm not hateful. And of course, I don't know who I can forgive.

For me, forgiveness means that someone has to acknowledge what they did wrong and then have some remorse, and then I could forgive. But there's no one I can forgive.

Let's Talk Legacy · Finding Myself in the Holocaust, with Janet Singer Applefield · 21 Aug 2024 podcast

Well, I was born in Krakow, Poland, and I lived with my family in a little town 50 miles south of the city of Krakow. And I had a wonderful, idyllic childhood. First grandchild in the family. I was loved. I was pampered. September 1st, 1939, all this came to an abrupt end. At first, my family tried many, many attempts to escape. We first ran away to Russia, then we returned.

And after so many attempts to escape, my parents ran out of options. And they made this amazing, most difficult decision of their lives, and that is to give me away. And for the several years after that, three and a half years to be exact, I was with different caregivers. I was away from my family. My identity was changed completely. several times, and I ended up on the street.

I was abandoned, and I was picked up by a righteous Christian woman. Ended up on a farm where I spent most of the time with very kind people. I always knew I was Jewish, but I was able to keep my Jewish identity a secret. I was just seven years old when I was separated from my parents. But I was able to keep that a secret. And I ended up in an orphanage after the war.

And miraculously, my dad found me.

But he found me. And we eventually immigrated to the United States.

I remember only that I was crying. My parents were crying. We were hugging. We were kissing. My parents said we would be reunited soon. I should be brave and I should be good. And that's what I remember about that fateful day.

Well, she was a very kind woman. And I wanted to call her mother. And she said to me, you only have one mother. Call me aunt. So I called her aunt, Genya. And when the war ended, my cousin's father, I was with my cousin who was very brutal to me. First, I was with one person, one woman. And then my care was taken over by a cousin who was brutal and violent and abused me.

The war ended. Her dad found me, but he turned me over to a refugee center in Krakow. And that's where I ended up. And from there, I went to an orphanage and my father found me.

Well, it was very, very sad and very tragic because the day that they gave me away, there was an order issued that all the people from that town and the surrounding towns had three days to report in an area outside of Krakow. called Wieliczka. So they went there, although independently, because they decided to separate from each other.

Their thinking was that if they were separate, maybe one of them would survive. So when they arrived at that appointed place, there was a selection. And my father was one of 1,000 men that were selected for slave labor. Another approximately 1,000 old people and children were And they were directly taken to the forest and shot. And the remaining people were put onto boxcars, 53 boxcars.

And my mother was a victim of that selection. And they were sent to Belzec, a death camp. And so my mother and my grandmother, many of my relatives were victims of that camp.

So my story has evolved over time. I first thought that my mother was killed in Auschwitz, and then later on I thought she was shot. But in 2012, I was contacted by a young Polish historian. She had lived in my town, and she always wondered what happened to the Jewish population there. of that town, and she found me on the internet.

And after we were reunited, I learned that she was writing a dissertation on the Holocaust, and she did a huge amount of research on my family. She was the one who found out exactly what happened to all my family members, not only my mom, but my grandparents and uncles and other family members.

Yes, I've been back to Poland four times and each time the trip has been a little different for me. The first time I was obviously very nervous and I really didn't want to enjoy myself. I didn't consider it a vacation. I knocked on the door of the family that saved me, not knowing who I would find. and they were still there in the same apartment and greeted me with open arms.

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