Other items in today’s column include:
* Jewish Federation issues appeal for House of Israel volunteers
* Political byte
* Recommended reading
*In memoriam
LA MESA, California – A San Diegan who survived the Holocaust as a child by posing as a Catholic boy helped pay tribute Sunday to the 1.5 million children who perished during World War II under the regimes of the German Nazis and their allies. After telling of his life, he joined listeners who painted ceramic butterflies that will be mounted by The Butterfly Project at the Grossmont Shopping Center in their memory.
Lou Pechi told an audience at San Diego Oasis in the shopping center that he was only 7 years old when the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in 1941. Although he and his well-to-do parents lived in Zagreb at the time, he and his mother were visiting friends in Belgrade when the German Luftwaffe attacked that city. Both cities were then part of Yugoslavia; today, Belgrade is the capital of Serbia, and Zagreb is the capital of Croatia.
Pechi told his story to an intergenerational group of more than 100 people, ranging from elementary school pupils to senior citizens. He recalled looking out the window of an apartment building and seeing the German planes flying in V formation, and initially thinking their buzzing was that of insects. But as the warplanes got closer, he realized they were planes, and worried that they might fall to the ground. After the planes strafed and bombed the city, his mother decided to get back to Zagreb as quickly as possible. He got on to a train first, and had to throw his legs across a second seat to prevent panicked people from taking the spot he had reserved for his mother. She came just in time. Once the train got underway, he remembered, the panic subsided, and people even shared food with each other.
The train suddenly stopped, and the conductor explained that a bridge had been bombed over a river it needed to cross. So his mother asked for advice, and they walked for about a mile to a barge where they paid to be taken across the river. Then, they took a freight train to Zagreb. For Pechi, whose first name was Lubo – thus the title of his memoir, My Name is Lubo – the confusing events were like a kaleidoscopic sightseeing trip. Once they got to Zagreb, a maid who greeted them outside the apartment told his mother that two German officers had commandeered their apartment.
Pechi said his mother made her way to a bathroom, fixed her hair, applied lipstick, and then went in to meet the German officers, who were polite, and said they intended to stay only two nights or so. Spotting their rifles, young Pechi went to his room and brought out his toy gun, announcing he had a rifle too. One soldier, laughing, told Peci that was not a rifle, but a toy gun, then put his hat on Pechi’s head. Too big for him, it slipped over his face, causing everyone to laugh. One of the officers showed Pechi a picture of his son, and agreed with the seven-year-old that some day that he and the German boy might play together “when the war is over.”
But this initial, even pleasant, introduction to the German occupation was unlike what was to come. The officers traveled away with their unit, and soon the occupying forces announced that all Jews had to register with the authorities. Then it was announced Jews must observe a 9 p.m., curfew, and after that they were required to wear a badge with the letter “Z” on it, which is the first letter of the word for “Jew” in the Croatian language.
The Germans confiscated cars owned by Jews, and forbade Jews to travel. At this point, his mother and father decided to have themselves—and Lubo—baptized as Catholics. At one point in the ceremony, Pechi recalled, he was given a spoonful of salt, which he thought to be sugar. He took a big bite, then winced from the unexpected taste. The reason his parents were baptized first was so that Pechi’s baptism certificate would say that his parents also were Catholic – protection for him in case he was questioned.
His parents arranged to travel to Trevizo, Italy, but not knowing if they would be allowed in that country, or even arrested, they had Pechi stay with an aunt in the village of Brod, which today is in Kosovo. As his aunt was married to a Catholic man, and their children were being raised Catholic, villagers were not surprised that young Pechi also was Catholic.
His parents, in fact, were turned away at the Yugoslav-Italian border, but they paid a fisherman to take them across the river and land them at a beach. Pechi made children in the audience laugh when he described his parents trying to look inconspicuous as they plodded across the beach filled with people in their bathing suits. Because they knew they would need money wherever they went, his mother was wearing a heavy fur coat into which money had been sewn, and his father had put on heavy shoes into which gold coins had been secreted into the heels. Not exactly beach wear!
Back in Brod, Pechi learned his catechism in a class that was taught by a nun. He told of a time when Jewish students in the class were told to line up against a wall while the Catholic children prayed at their seats. He said that he felt “fear and shame” when he didn’t go with them to the wall, but followed his family’s instructions to always act as a Catholic. “I averted my eyes,” he recalled.
On one occasion, he went with boys to a swimming hole. They did not have swim suits, and when he undressed one of the boys must have noticed that he was circumcised. This information eventually found its way to the police, who marched him off to the jail, where his hair was shaved off and he was put into a cell with women, who cared for him. Eventually a guard took him to the police chief’s office, who had a mustache. Pechi said that made him afraid of the man because he associated mustaches with the town barber who used to tease him, saying he would cut off his ear. After informing Pechi that as police chief he knew everything that happened in town, the officer told him to wait until he counted to 10 and then return to his home.
In essence, the police chief—who had been a friend of Pechi’s uncle—conspired with the boy to let him run away. Clearly, Pechi could not stay in Brod, so his aunt found a woman who took him part way to Trevizo, Italy, turning him over to a Catholic priest who delivered him to his parents. Along the way, the priest quizzed the boy about the Catholic religion, and Pechi said he was delighted that he could answer his questions.
In Trevizo, the family paid rent to another family to stay with them in a big house, and had to report every Sunday to the Italian town’s police headquarters. The visits were friendly; in fact, the chief of police made expresso coffee for the family. One Sunday, he told the family they were no longer required to report, as the fascist government of Benito Mussolini had been overthrown and a peace treaty had been signed with the Allies.
Free to go, the family moved to Venice, but the freedom did not last long. The Germans invaded Italy. At that point, the family made their way to Rome, where Pechi was given a new identity as an Italian boy. It was in Rome that the family was liberated.
Thereafter his father returned to Yugoslavia to fight with Partisans against the Germans, and eventually his mother and father divorced. She later met an American service man, a San Diegan, who brought her to the United States as his wife. Pechi returned to Zagreb, where he lived with his father and caught up on his schooling. Resisting demands that he join the Communist party, the father decided that he and Lubo should emigrate to Israel, where they lived on a kibbutz. “My first job was picking oranges.” He recalled eating too many of them and getting heartburn. Agriculture did not appeal to him, so he joined the Israeli air force, becoming an instrument repairman.
In 1955, two weeks before he turned 21, he was brought to the United States to live with his mother and stepfather.
Although he had posed as a Catholic during the war, Pechi said he never gave up his Jewish identity. While he is not particularly religious, he said, his Judaism is in his heart and his head.
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Jewish Federation issues appeal for House of Israel volunteers
The House of Israel in Balboa Park is required to stay open a certain number of days and hours throughout the year, and volunteers are needed to staff it on weekends. In appealing for people to come forward to greet and inform an estimated 25,000 visitors per year, the Jewish Federation of San Diego County suggested three steps people can take to help assure the Cottage of Israel remains open.
“1. Volunteer! The House of Israel opens its door every Saturday and Sunday in order to secure its prominent presence in Balboa Park. Currently, a small number of amazingly dedicated volunteers are running the show, but they need support. They are looking for new volunteers to join their core group and could commit to helping once every two months.
“2. If you are unable to volunteer but want to help, consider becoming a member (only $18) or give someone the gift of membership.
“3. The House is looking for anyone with a special talent or skill that would be willing to donate his or her time and talent for an activity at the House. Singing, dancing, folk dancing, lectures, and so on – know someone with a talent? Contact the House of Israel via this email.
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Political byte
*Bernie Sanders won a convincing victory in the Nevada caucuses and hopes that momentum will propel him to victories Feb. 29 in South Carolina, where 63 delegates are at stake, and in 16 states, including California, in the March 3 Super Tuesday contests when a total of 1,326 delegates are up for grabs. Moderate Democrats express fear that Sanders’ socialist politics will alienate independents and moderate Republicans who otherwise might vote against President Donald Trump. “Bernie McGovern” is a reference to the last time an idealistic, youth-driven Democratic electorate nominated a left-wing candidate against a Republican president whom every Democrat wanted to replace. In 1972, Richard Nixon won almost everywhere in the country, excepting Massachusetts and Washington D.C, in a landslide trumping of George McGovern.
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Recommended reading
Naomi Kahn of the Israeli NGO Regavim suggests in a JNS column that politicians in Israel and the United States would be wise to wait until after elections in both countries before considering any commitment to the proposed borders recommended for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
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In Memoriam
Longtime Democratic party activist Beverly Cassirer, 99, who with her late husband Claude, pursued a court case to reclaim a painting by impressionist Camille Pissarro that was appropriated by the German Nazis, died Feb. 13, with an appeal in the case still pending, reports Steve Marble in Sunday’s edition of The San Diego Union-Tribune.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com Obituaries in San Diego Jewish World are sponsored by Inland Industries Group LP in memory of long-time San Diego Jewish community leader Marie (Mrs. Gabriel) Berg.