The Borger and Goldberger Families

The Borger family did not live in Mszana Dolna but had relatives there. Borgers came to Mszana during the war, after their displacement from Zembrzyce. Unfortunately, they became the victims of the mass execution at Pańskie on 19.08.1942. and are buried there. Rozalia and Lipman Borger with their son, Bernard, stayed in Mszana with the Goldberger family, with whom they were double related – Rozalia was nee Goldberger and their older daughter, Salomea, married the younger Goldberger, actually her uncle. Together with her husband and two daughters, she was sent to the Wadowice ghetto, and from there to the gas chambers in Auschwitz. The younger of Borgers’ sisters, Golda, was also sent to the Wadowice ghetto and then Gross Rosen concentration camp, but survived. Her daughter, Szoshana, contacted with us; it is thanks to her that we can tell more about the fate of this family. The Borgers, oldest son, Abraham/Roman became an important witness of the Shoah. After escaping from the camp in Pustków, to which he was sent in April 1941, he followed his parents and younger brother to Mszana. On August 19, 1942 he was in a group of young men separated for work and survived both the Massacre and the Holocaust, but also through the hell of the camps. Roman Borger testified about the Holocaust in Mszana Dolna, he was a witness at the trial of the criminals, and his testimony at the Jewish Historical Institute is an important source of knowledge about what happened in Mszana during the occupation and on the tragic day of August 19, 1942. His cousin, Józik Goldberger (the Borger family stayed at his parents’ house), also played an important role for the history of the Jews from Mszana. Before the execution Józik was also separated to a group of young workers who were still to be of use to the Third Reich. After the mass murde he stole a copy of the list of the Jews in Mszana from drunk Nazis. The list was used to methodically murder the Jewish inhabitants, including both the Goldberger and the Borger families. The list went to Eugeniusz Fudryna who kept it until the end of the war and passed it on to posterity. Józik, also described to us by Mr. Henryk Zdanowski as his good friend, later escaped to the Germans, but - whether he had nowhere to hide, or in despair and hopelessness, he returned to Mszana and here - according to Mr. Henryk's account, he was murdered. A slightly different version of his fate is presented by Abraham Borger, but he was no longer in Mszana at that time. Anyway, Józik, unfortunately, did not survive the Holocaust.

The photograph of Rozalia and Lipman Borger, which their granddaughter Szoshana Rosenberg passed on to us, is moving for many reasons. Here are two modestly but well-dressed elderly people looking into the eye of the camera, and we are aware that they are only a few hours away from their death, and beforehand, humiliation and abuse. As a rumor was spread among Jews from Mszana that the next day they were going to work in Volhynia, the Borger family visited a photographer on the eve of their "departure" to take a commemorative photo for their family. They were afraid that they might not come back from such a long journey, hard work, or maybe they sensed what kind of "journey" it would be? And was the picture taken by an attorney from Kraków, Maurycy Gottlieb, who worked as a photographer during the occupation in Mszana Dolna, a baptized Jew, who also died with his family at Pańskie? Very likely. Abraham / Romek retrived the photo when he came to Mszana after the liberation.

Until the outbreak of World War II, Rozalia and Lipman Borger had a house and their own bakery in Zembrzyce. After the Nazi attack and the immediate restrictions on Jews, they lost their possessions, and were forced to relocate. They came to Mszana Dolna, where they had relatives and the opportunity to live.

Born on June 12, 1888 in Tarnawa Dolna, Rozalia, daughter of Józef Goldberger and Estera nee Silberger, her 10 years older husband Lipman (born August 15, 1878) son of Bernard and Gilda née Flach, born in Zembrzyce and their son Bernard (born September 20, 1920) came to Mszana in April 1941 and lived in the house of Fela Goldberger at Piłsudskiego Street 247. We know from his niece that Bernard had some physical disability, he probably had a limp leg - this destroyed his chances of being left alive during the selection at Pańskie on August 19, 1942. When he died, he was less than 22 years old.

The daughter of Rozalia and Lipman, Salomea Goldberger (born December 23, 1919 in Zembrzyce), her husband Izaak, daughters Golda (born 1936) and Lola (born September 7, 1939 in Tarnawa Dolna), were sent to the Wadowice ghetto, and from there to Auschwitz. Salomea with 7-year-old Golda and 4-year-old Lola were murdered on August 12, 1943. Pepi Matzner née Schanzer and Beno Pippersberg saw that Salomea and her daughters were driven into the gas chamber and did not come out from there. Salomea was 44 years old at the time of her death. Izaak Goldberger, their husband and father, was temporarily left to work in Auschwitz and died there as well; we do not know the exact circumstances. The fact of death was confirmed by the Town Court in Wadowice on March 21, 1946.

Abraham / Roman Borger (born 3 June 1912 in Zembrzyce) the eldest of the siblings, before the war, lived in Tarnawa Dolna near Zembrzyce, by the Skawa river, where his mother came from. He was a partner and manager of the export company of his brother-in-law, Isaac Goldberger, which "produced folding chairs and garden furniture for all of Europe" (Testimony recorded on March 15, 1969 in Kfar Chasidim, Israel). After the outbreak of World War II, he moved to Zembrzyce, to his parents, where they lived together until April 1941. He was employed there for various activities by the Germans. On April 21, 1941, the entire Jewish population was forced to register in the nearby Kalwaria Zebrzydowska - strong and able to work, including Abraham, were loaded into wagons and sent to the penal camp in Pustków. He described the conditions there as nightmarish: "people died in masses, were shot, they also died of disease and exhaustion." After the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, between June and July 1941, Abraham escaped from the camp and on foot - through Radomyśl Wielki, Tarnów and Gdów, he reached Mszana Dolna, to his parents and brother. He could not register himself there as Abraham Borger, so he changed his name to Polish-sounding Roman, also his date of birth from 3 to 13 June. Through a friend from Nowy Sącz, he arranged a "Lumpensemmler" card, i.e. a rag collector - this allowed him to make a living, travel and earn additional income. There were approximately 1,000 Jews in Mszana Dolna at that time, including many displaced people. Abraham described the terrible living conditions, forced labor, persecution and acts of crimes: among them the most terrible one, on August 19, 1942, of which he was a direct witness. According to the testimony given after the war, Abraham personally buried two women shot by Gelb in May 1942: about 30-year-old Heublumowa from Kraków and Herzowa from Mszana Dolna: "I buried these women myself, just like they were shot, in clothes" (testimony of June 19, 1946) . On August 19, 1942, he was assigned to a group of 10 young men who were to organize the things of the murdered. "Fate wanted the things from my parents and my brother, who also died there, I had to have in my hand," he recalls. Tese young men left alive  had no illusions about what fate awaited them soon, so they decided to run away. Nine of the ten escaped, including Abraham's cousin Józef Goldberger, whose mother lived with the Borger family. The one who saved the list of the murdered by stealing it from drunk Germans and handing it over to an inhabitant of Mszana for safekeeping. After escaping, he was supposed to hide with a peasant whom he knew, but the man refused to keep him further, so - according to Romek - he got to the vicinity of Tarnów and was not heard of at the turn of 1943 and 1944. Abraham / Romek, due to the lack of a place to hide, decided to get to the Wadowice ghetto, where the rest of his family still stayed. On the way, a peasant hid him in the village of Marcówka near Budzów, and finally a navy blue policeman from Łódź, called Mazur, whom he met in Zembrzyce before the war, helped. "This man did not take any money from me," recalls Romek / Abraham. He calls him "Chasidei umot haolam" - Righteous Among the Nations, although formally he has never received this medal. After getting to Wadowice, Roman made efforts to save his sisters, brother-in-law and nieces - he had no illusions about the fate of all Jews. Unfortunately, as a result of an unfortunate coincidence, it was not possible - Abraham was taken to the "Dulag" camp in Sosnowiec, and from there he was sent to the following camps: Prawde and Sagan (Żagań). His friend, Lejb Gatterer, with whom they escaped from Mszana (Lejb lost his entire family on Pańskie), was taken from Sagan to Auschwitz, but he survived. After the liberation, he founded the rescue of Jewish monuments in our neighborhood, it was he who saved the Jewish cemetery at Zakopiańska street from complete devastation. Abraham, in turn, went to Kittlitstreben, which was a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen, in Lower Silesia. There, for the first time, he received a camp number: 17072 and a striped uniform. Until now, there was a haircut, wearing the Star of David, but without striped uniforms and no tattooing of numbers - he recalled. On July 22, 1944, he was transferred to the last camp, in Bolesławiec (Bunzlau), where he was employed to work on wood yards. He was then so weakened and exhausted that when on January 17, 1945, the Germans evacuated the camp and rushed the prisoners to the so-called Death March, he, as a "Muslim" (indifferent, waiting only for death), was left in the camp, where he would be liberated by the Russians 2 days later. He did not know that his youngest sister, Golda, also survived in one of the Gross-Rosen sub-camps. They met in their hometown on May 9 or 10, 1945 and they left for Bielsko together. Golda got married in 1947 and leaved for Israel in December 1949. In January 1950, Abraham joined her. They lived together near Haifa, in Kiryat Yam. Abraham worked in a porcelain factory until 1960. He got married in 1954 but never had children. But many years later, in 2019, on his birthday, the first male descendant in his sister's family, little Nitai, was born. 

The youngest daughter of the Borgers, Golda (born May 4, 1924 in Zembrzyce) is the one thanks to which the family survives and grows. She remained with her older sister, Salomea, and her family in the Wadowice ghetto. In the photo taken at that time (a visible star on his brother-in-law's clothes), she stands with them, slightly smiling, unaware that only she out of the five people in the photo will survive. We do not know much about her fate during the war - only that, she was sent to one of the Gross Rosen sub-camps in the Sudetes and thanks to her suitability for work, she survived the nightmare of the war. On May 8, 1945, 5 days after her 21st birthday, she was released from the camp. She returned to her hometown, met her brother Abraham, who, since changing his name to Roman, has been using this name more often - also in the stories of Szoshana (his niece), it is always "Romek", pronounced with the hard, pre-war "r" she has learned from her parents. Together they went to Bielsko where they lived for some time. April 1, 1947 Golda married a 13 year older tailor, Salomon Berger, with whom he left for Israel 2 years later. Solomon survived the war in Kamchatka, Russia,  he came from Stryszawa, not far from Zembrzyce. Did they know each other before the war? We do not know. Maybe they met at work - Golda, according to the documents given to us by her daughter, Szoshana, was a corset maker. From this union, Szoshana Berger is born on January 27, 1950, two weeks after her parents' arrival in Israel. Mom spoke to her in Polish, sang Polish lullabies, taught poems - today Szoshana speaks our language freely and sings her grandchildren Polish song "There was a milk and an egg in the room on the table ...". Life has won. In 1970, Szoshana graduated from a teachers' seminar in Haifa and married Yehuda Rosenberg, also a teacher. Szoshana worked as a teacher for 34 years. In 1987, their daughter Shiri was born. When the Rosenbergs visited us for the second time in Mszana Dolna, in 2018, they brought their first granddaughter, Linoy. We had the thought that this family survived by women: Golda-Szoshana-Shiri-Linoy. However, Nitai was born soon after and on April 11, 2021 third granddaughter, Gaya, came to this world.

Golda Berger, née Borger, died on 4th December 2011, her husband, Salomon Berger, in October 1998. Golda had come to Mszana many times to visit her relatives' graves; for the first time in 1989, the last in 1999. Unfortunately, we never met. It was only in 2013 that we had the pleasure of meeting her daughter, Szoshana with her husband, Yehuda, and 5 years later we also hosted their daughter Shiri with her husband Roe and daughter Linoy. How nice it was for us to hear after the meal in our house: "This sour soup tastes as the one my mother did". We also visited Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg in Kiriat Motzkin in Israel. Szoshana, grateful that we care for the grave of her relatives, said: "If my mother knew that there is someone here who cares for this grave, it would be easier for her to die."

We would like to write something more about the Goldberger family who hosted the Borgers in Mszana Dolna during the gloomy times of the Nazi occupation. Unfortunately, little information has survived, apart from their names on the list of the victims of the Massacre, memories about Józik Goldberger, which we quoted above, and annotations in school archives about his sister, Janka, born in 1927. Janka and her mother, Fela Goldberger, were murdered at Pańskie Street. Felicja Goldberger was then 40 years old, Janka only 15. Her data on the list of victims and in the school record are inconsistent. We believe that the mistake lies rather in the list June 15, 1942 – made manually, under pressure and in a hurry. The father and husband, by whom the Borger and Goldberger families were related, must had died before his daughter went to school, i.e. 1934 - only the mother is mentioned in Janka's birth certificate. We know from other sources that the Goldbergers traded in wood. Józik turned 18 on April 28, 1942 - he died before he was 20. We do not know who Urish, Fejgel, Chaim and Samuel Goldberger were, mentioned below on the list of those killed on August 19, 1942. Perhaps they were a brother and uncle of the aforementioned Goldbergers.

Translated by Rachela Antosz-Rekucka