Pawel Hodys
Pawel Hodys (M / Poland, 1930), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <Lodz Ghetto> <Auschwitz> <Dachau> <Liberation of Dachau>
Biography
Pawel "Paul" Hodys was born July 24, 1930 in Lodz, Poland, the first son of an upper-middle class family. His father, Alexander Hodys, was the director of a textile factory, and his mother, Regina, worked as a secretary and translator for an export-import firm. Pawel’s brother, Henrik, was five years younger. The boys attended a Jewish day school, and at home their family kept kosher and celebrated the Jewish holidays with their many relatives.
Life changed for all of Pawel’s family and the entire Jewish community of Lodz within weeks of the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Pawel was only nine years old at the time. His school was immediately closed down.
By May 1, 1940 all of the Jews of Lodz had been moved into the ghetto. Conditions were appalling.
Pawel’s father got a job in one factory as the head of accounting, and his mother worked at another factory. Pawel, at age 10, began working as a mechanic fixing sewing machines. He also helped his parents take care of Henrik and the household chores. But there was never enough food, and everyone was always hungry.
In August 1944, the Nazis conducted a final liquidation of the ghetto, forcing the remaining Lodz Ghetto residents to report to the train station. They were sent to Auschwitz.
Both Pawel and his father were selected for work. In early September 1944, after a few weeks in Auschwitz, Pawel and his father were taken to a smaller concentration camp called Kaufbeuren which was a sub-camp of Dachau, in the southern part of Germany. His father perished and Pawel was now alone.
Pawel was transferred to Dachau, where with the help of a Polish priest he was able to survive until liberation on April 29, 1945.
Pawel emigrated to America on May 20, 1946. Paul continued with his schooling, finishing high school and then City College of New York. He then went on to law school at New York University, received his law degree in 1956. He married an American-born woman from Brooklyn in 1959 with whom he had two children.