Polek Gastfreund

Four Windermere Children pose with a Union Jack soon after their arrival in England: (left to right) Felix Berger, Jerry Herszberg, unidentified, and Polek Gastfreund

Polek Gastfreund / Paul Gast (M / Poland, 1926), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Lodz Ghetto> <Auschwitz> <Braunschweig> <Watenstedt> <Ravensbruck> <Ludwigslust> -- <Windermere Children> <England> <United States>

Biography

Polek Israel Gastfreund was born in 1926 in Lodz, Germany, to Schlama and Mina.

When the Germans occupied Poland, his father was immediately shot. The rest of the family was forced to live in the Lodz Ghetto. In August 1944 they were deported to Auschwitz. Polek was transferred to Braunschweig and in early 1945 to Ravensbruck and Ludwigslust, where he was liberated.

After the war he fled to Prague to avoid antisemitism and joined the Windermere Children in their journey to England. In 1952 he emigrated to the United States.

USHMM Profile

Paul Gast (born Polek Gastfreund) is the son of Szlama and Mina Gastfreund. He was born on November 16, 1929 in Lodz, where his father owned a textile factory. During the German occupation the family was forced into the ghetto, where Polek's father was killed soon after it was sealed off in the winter of 1940. Polek worked in a ghetto metal shop almost until the liquidation of the ghetto. In August 1944 Polek and his mother were deported to Auschwitz, where Mina perished. Polek remained in Auschwitz for two or three months before being transferred to Braunschweig, where he was put to work at the Büssing Werke trucking factory. From there he was taken to Watenstedt, and later to Ravensbrück and Wöbbelin. Polek was liberated in Wöbbelin on May 2, 1945 at the age of 16. Soon after the end of the war he returned to Lodz to look for surviving family members, but found no one. Polek then decided to go to Palestine and proceeded to Prague on the first leg of his journey. In Prague he learned that England had agreed to admit a large group of child survivors and that such a group was forming in Theresienstadt. Polek changed his plans and proceeded to Theresienstadt, where he joined the first group of Jewish orphans leaving for Britain. He arrived in Windermere on August 14, 1945.

Sources

• USHMM Database (Israel Gasterfreund, 10 [18] Nov 1930) -- YES
• 45aid.org (Israel Gasfreund, 1926) -- YES