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diary: ‘We came to a place called Auschwitz. Apparently, this is a guest house
because people walk around in their pyjamas.’ We did not know anything
about Auschwitz, it is possible that the adults knew, but I did not”, he recalls.
After a few days at Auschwitz, Chaim was transported to Stutthof and became
number 84209. He worked in a concrete factory, and a few weeks later, he
was sent to Stolp (Słupsk), where a railway yard operated. In February 1945,
he was deported to Burggraben from where he went to Hel on a death march.
He almost lost his life on a barge as it tossed on the waves of the Baltic Sea,
which he later vividly described in his diaries. He was then a witness to the
sinking of the German liner, “Cap Arcona”. He was liberated in May 1945,
but had to stay in hospital because of his very low weight (he weighed only
28 kilograms!) and was also suffering from tuberculosis. After three months,
he was taken by the Red Cross to Sweden, where he underwent treatment for
two years. At that time, he began to write a diary, which he kept until 1950.
In the spring of 1947, he managed to get to the coast of Palestine illegally
on the ship, “Chaim Arlozorov”. His grandfather on the father’s side, Jehuda
Kozienicki, as well as his father’s siblings – brother Rafał and sister Rywka, lived
there. Chaim already knew that his brother Ezra had survived the war. He also
had contact with members of the Zionist organization who had survived the
war and also dreamed about Eretz Yisrael. During a fight with the British on
the ship, he was wounded and put in an internment camp in Atlit near Haifa,
from where he later escaped. He joined the Mishmar HaSharon Kibbutz, but
he wanted to fight. In May 1948, he enlisted in the army. He fought in the
Israeli war for independence. He was a member of the elite infantry brigade,
Givati. Then, he started a family. Estera Zalcberg was his wife. They settled
in Givataim. They have two children: their son, Sammy was born in 1954 and
daughter, Orly in 1959. Their grandchildren are Einor, Ido, Gaya and Mia.
For many years, Chaim Kozienicki came to Poland with groups of Israeli youth
to help them learn about the history of the Holocaust, but also about the
history of Polish and Łódź Jews. In 1997, his memoirs entitled Neurim batofet
came out in Hebrew, and in 2009, the Polish translation, Dorastanie w piekle
(Adolescence in Hell) was published. In August of the same year, Chaim
Kozienicki received the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic
of Poland for Polish-Jewish dialogue.

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