Adam Adams (Izrael Natan Melamed)

Izrael Natan Melamed (Adam Adams) was born in Lublin, Poland in 1923. His father had a wholesale textile business and was considered one of the wealthiest men in town. At the outbreak of WW2, the Jews who lived outside the Jewish Quarter were given five minutes to leave their flats and all their possessions and move into the Jewish Quarter. After this, Adam, his father and about 20 other males left Lublin hoping to cross into Russia along with other males from the Jewish Community. They mistakenly believed that the Germans would not harm the women and children. They were caught by a German patrol and imprisoned in Lublin Castle for a year, where the prisoners were repeatedly beaten, degraded and starved. He remembers being always hungry, only being given just enough food to survive.

After they were released they were sent to the Lublin Ghetto which was home to approximately 40,000 residents and located near Majdanek extermination camp. There was great fear in the Ghetto and Adam’s family would hide in a space built especially to conceal them during ‘Actions’ when the Germans would round up people and take them to the Lipowa work camp. Adam was caught during an Action and taken to this camp, where on one occasion he was lined up with nine other men under the camp wall by the Camp Commander to be shot. He was saved from death at the last moment.

Adam spent time with his father in the Warsaw Ghetto, where it was normal to see dead bodies on the street covered in newspaper. He says the weapons the Germans used were hunger and fear. He managed to escape with his father and return to Lublin Ghetto where he was to lose his entire family, including both his parents and his 3 sisters. One of his sisters had an infant son who was brutally murdered by the Gestapo. Adam, who was with his school friend Julian Fogelgaren, cried bitterly for a week after the death of his family, but he says after that hunger overtook him and he had to focus on finding food. It was at this point he began living.

Julian, who was a year younger than Adam, knew of a Polish woman called, Maria. She was kind and she agreed to hide them for a night or two. Maria couldn’t read or write but Adam states that she had a golden heart. The punishment for her whole family should they be discovered hiding Jews was death.

Realising the cost to Maria should she be found to be hiding them, Adam and Julian decided to go one night and find some money that Adam’s father had hidden in the loft of their house. Maria’s oldest son only tolerated them as he knew Adam came from a very wealthy family and Adam told him that at the end of the war he would give him everything. The boy was uneducated, and it was only the hope of becoming rich that prevented him from turning them in.

When the boys arrived at Adam’s home they found the money had gone. When they ventured back outside someone noticed them and shouted, “Here is a Jew!” They ran to escape but as they fled through a muddy field Adam tore the muscle on his leg to the bone. The only place the boys could find refuge was back at Maria’s house. It wasn’t safe for them to enter the home that night, so they slept in the garden, however the next day they decided to dig a hole under the cellar in Maria’s home to conceal themselves.

The hole was just over a meter deep and a meter wide. They placed straw in the bottom and hid in complete darkness wearing only their underwear. Maria’s oldest son had taken all their possessions and continually threated them that he would tell the Nazis where they were.

The boys were covered in lice and lived in constant fear of betrayal. Maria was very poor, and as she had three children she was unable to give them much food. Occasionally they would be given a piece of bread or potato pancake and sometimes Maria’s 7-year-old son would bring them apples which had fallen from a tree.

Adam and Julian spent 8 months living underneath this cellar, unwashed, unclean, near starvation and crippled with the fear of discovery.  They lived in complete darkness, losing all sense of time. Adam blames this darkness for the loss of his memories. Today he wonders “How did I survive?” He cannot imagine spending even a short period of time living like that now and attributes their survival to the fact that they were so ‘terribly young.’

When word came that the Russians were fighting the Germans in Lublin, Adam and Julian emerged from the hole. The Germans were slowly withdrawing. He has no memory of how they found clothes to wear but says you can imagine how they looked after such a long time without being able to care for themselves in any way.

Adam returned to his family’s flat which was now empty, and the caretaker recognised him. He bent down and addressed Adam as ‘Sir’ (in Polish), just as he had before the war. Adam gathered a handful of other survivors and they stayed in the flat. He was able to discover the fate of his relatives and found his father had died in a concentration camp but does not know how his mother died. The Polish Army Headquarters were in Lublin and were attached to the Russian Army. He enrolled there, and met the Chief Rabbi of the Polish Forces, who was also there at the time. His name was Dr Kahane, a very educated man. Adam became his assistant and worked with him at the Polish Army Headquarters in Lublin and Warsaw.

Adam met his future wife Alicia in Waldenberg. They were the sole survivors in their respective families. The young couple married in the ruined City of Warsaw, which was almost completely destroyed by the war. Adam decided to leave Poland because he was afraid of being brainwashed by the Communist Government and after a time spent living in France, the couple emigrated to the U.K. and have one son, Charles.

With thanks to Adam Adams. 2018

Sadly Adam passed away in June 2020. He is greatly missed by his family and all who loved him.

May his memory be a blessing.

Listen to Adam’s oral testimony at the Imerial War Museum: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80017704

For Further Information Please contact : jenniemilne76@gmail.com

https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/9642707-living-witness-adam-and-alicia-adams