CECIL YEKUTIEL NADLER

Email: noyshabtay@gmail.com

Family Name: Nadler

First Name: Cecil; changed to Yekutiel after emigration to Israel

Father Name: Menachem Nadler

Mother Name: Feige (Zipporah; Esther)

Brothers Names: Moshe, Yitzhak Yehuda (Dove)

Sisters Name: Chaya, Hannah

Date of Birth: 25^th October 1929

Country of Birth: Poland (Ukraine of today)

City of Birth: Chortkiv

Places where Cecil was

List of places where Cecil was

Before World War II

Czortkow (also at the beginning of the war)

During the War

Uman
Makhachkala
Mozdok
Turkmenistan
G'orbon
Tashkent
Korhose

After the war

Moscow
Warsaw
Wroclaw
Bolkov
Pravdinsk
Brno
Atlit
Hadera (until today – 2013)

Czortkow

Before World War II

Czortkow, Poland (now Ukraine) had been a home to a large Jewish Community for hundreds of years until it was destroyed by the Nazis and their collaborators in World War Two.
The town lies on the right bank of the Seret River, in a deep valley surrounded by mountains, some covered with forests, others greening with herbs in summer and snowcapped in winter. The river flows from north to south into the Dniester (River). The river crosses the town at two different points and largely add to its charming beauty. One could feast his eyes on the exquisite landscape from the mountain top for hours.

Pictueres of Czorkow before World War II

During the War

At 1939 with the outbreak of World War II, according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact Czortkow was occupied by the Russians again (the first time they entered Poland was in 1918 for 3 months) and was under their control until the German occupation in July 1941.
When the Nazis invaded Czortkow, one of their first acts was, as in other pIaces, to start cutting the "Tree of Life" from the top. As per the demand of the Gestapo, the Judenrat provided a list which included hundreds of those in the liberal professions such as lawyers, teachers and engineers. All of whom were brutally murdered in the "Black Forest" near the town.

After the War – Today

Chrotkiv today

After the Second World War Czortkow was under Soviet control. All Jews left the city for Wrocław Poland in where gathered together in order to make decisions and obtain permits to Israel or America. The Polish population largely left the city and moved to other areas in Poland.
In 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine regained independence and Czortkow became part of independent Ukraine.

Today Chortkiv (Ukrainian: Чортків; Polish: Czortków) is a city in Ternopil Oblast (province) in the western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Chortkiv Raion (district), housing the district's local administration buildings.

Other places

During and after the war Cecil was also in Uman (a city located in the Cherkasy Oblast region in central Ukraine, to the east of Vinnytsia), Makhachkala (the capital city of the Republic of Dagestan, Russia), Mozdok (it is the name of several inhabited localities in Russia), Turkmenistan (formerly also known as Turkmenia, is one of the Turkic states in Central Asia), G'orbon, Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan and of the Tashkent Province), Korhose , Warsaw (known in Polish as Warszawa, it is the capital and largest city of Poland), Wroclaw (situated on the River Oder in Lower Silesia, it is the largest city in western Poland), Moscow (the capital city and the most populous federal subject of Russia), Bolkov (a village and municipality in Plzeň-South District in the Plzeň Region of the Czech Republic), Pravdinsk (known in Polish as Friedland, it is a town and the administrative center of Pravdinsky District of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the Lava River, approximately 30 kilometers east of Bagrationovsk), Brno (by population and area it is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia)Atlit (a coastal city town located south of Haifa, Israel), and Hadera (a city located in the Haifa District of Israel approximately 45 kilometers from the major cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa).

Cecil’s Story

Cecil’s Family

Father: Menachem Nadler.
Mother: Feige (Zipporah; Esther) Nadler daughter of Moses and Hannah Robiner, born in 1893 Czortkow.
Sister: Chaya, daughter of Menahem and Feige Nandler, born in 1915 Czortkow. She married a man from a wealthy family which had a sugar factory in Lvov in 1928.
Brother: Moshe, son of Menahem and Feige Nandler, born in 1917 Czortkow.
Brother: Yitzhak Yehuda, son of Menachem and Feige Nandler, born in 1919 Czortkow. He was also called Dove (Bear in English).
Sister: Hannah, daughter of Menahem and Feige Nandler, born in 1931 Czortkow.

Wife: Ida (Yehudith; nickname - Ithca), daughter of Moshe and Regina Fruchter, born on February 17, 1933 and died on 22 December 2008.

Other people in the story: Władysław Gomułka, Kuznetsov, Mr. Schleicher, Dmitri Kozlov, Nina Vasilivna (daughter of Peter) and Zoya.

The only pictures Yekutiel has of his family. His sister Chaya (on the left), his mother Feige (in the middle) and his brother Moshe (on the right).

Before The War

Cecil Nadler was born in 1929 in Czortkow which had a community of 30,000 Jews who had political parties and youth movements such as Hashomer Hatzair. He is named after a very religious man, because the community members asked his mother to give him this name - Cecil. He believes to this day that thanks to the name of the religious person he has stayed alive.

Main prison building of Bereza Kartunska detention camp.
The white structure on the right is a post-war Soviet monument, dedicated to victims of the camp.

Władysław Gomułka

His father Menachem was arrested because he was active in the Communist Party, and was sent to The Bereza Kartuska detention camp (a prison-like institution in the Second Polish Republic, in Bereza Kartuska, Polesie province) in 1937. Where He stayed for a year and met a Polish Man called Władysław Gomułka, a Polish Communist leader (and the de facto leader of Poland from 1945 to 1948, and again from 1956 to 1970).

During the War

When the Nazis invaded Czortkow Cecil’s Family fled to nearby forests. The women - his mother and two sisters were caught and sent to Belzec. There is no trace of them.

Cecil, his father – Menachem, and his brothers Dove and Moses managed to hide in the woods. They ate what the forest gave them and what they could catch - strawberries, moldy bread, roasted rabbit (which was dangerous because of the light and the smoke) etc. There was no drinking water - the water in the woods was green and full of frogs. Therefore, they used napkins to filter the water. Cecil did not want to drink at first, but his father forced him to. When he belched, he thought a frog was going to come out of his mouth.

One day they came to the house of the forest guard and told him they were running away from the Nazis and asked him for food and drink in exchange for his father's clock. The guard gave them some food and tea. They slept on the floor. His father asked his two older brothers (not Cecil) to be alert because he didn’t trust the forest guard. In the middle of the night when they heard sounds of motorcycles, after the guard went to the village to bring them food, they fled for fear he had sold them out.

His eldest brother Moshe was caught by the Ukrainians and was placed in jail in 1941. A Polish man who worked there told Cecil that one of the Gestapo named Clore killed him.

As they approached the city Uman there was shelling so they returned to the forest. They met Red Army soldiers who had remained in the area and fled to the forest. The family joined the soldiers who gave them food and weapons and they became partisans. The soldiers taught Cecil how to use weapons and ride horses. Dove his brother managed to escape and was drafted into the Soviet army. He was killed at Stalingrad.

Menachem looked for someone who remembered him. After a while a tall man came and asked Cecil if he remembered him. It turned out he was a Jew with a flour mill who was a Russian officer and spy that Cecil’s father transferred across the border and thus saved his life. The officer told Menachem: "You will go with the train to the Caucasus!"

Cecil and his father boarded the train. There were many bags on the train - it was a freight train. Cecil fumbled through the bags and found a lot of money. His father told him not to touch the money, because it was the government's money and forbidden to steal. They arrived in the Caucasus and stayed there from 1941 to 1942.

When Cecil took the train to Makhachkala without any property, the railway station where his father was in Mozdok was bombed. Knowing this, Cecil walked in the city and found a bakery where he gathered breadcrumbs and ate them. Someone who saw him gave him half a loaf of bread. He slept on a public bench and returned to the train station not knowing what to do. An officer went to the child, and Cecil told him what had happened. The officer took him to a military school.

It was a naval academy named after a Russian Field Marshal – Mikhail Kutuzov. The officer said Cecil was his brother's son who had apparently been killed in the bombing and asked that the child be enrolled at the school. The educator at school, Kuznetsov, sent Cecil to the school’s doctor. She had to determine boy's age, because 16 was the minimum age regalement for registration at the school. Cecil was only 12. She knew he was too young and demanded the truth. Cecil told her his story, and she signed that he was born in 1926. She also asked if he was Jewish. It turned out that she was also a Jewish who was recruited in to the Russian army. Although Kuznetsov loved him he used to call him a "dirty Jew" when he didn't want to jump into the cold water of the Caspian Sea. His friends at school loved him too.

In 1944 Cecil was listed as 18 years old even though he was only 14 so he was sent to be examined by the army, who were recruiting soldiers to the front. The doctors did not believe he was an 18 year old man, so he returned to school and became an excellent Sargent (late 1944). He taught young soldiers to March, use weapons and salute.

He was transferred to Turkmenistan where he went to the information center and began searching for his father and his family, hoping they were still alive.

Two months later he received a letter which noted that his brother Dove had fallen as a Russian hero in Stalingrad. Two months later he received a letter which noted that his father Menachem Mendel resided in the city of Korhose, Kazakhstan.

To convince him to give Cecil a travel permit authorization, he brought Kuznetsov a gift of two bottles of vodka. Kuznetsov agreed, granting Cecil a military certificate with approval to travel anywhere. Through the cold and snow of winter, Cecil travelled on the roofs of trains from Turkmenistan to G'orbon, then to Tashkent and finally to Korhose. He found out that his father had run a bakery there, stolen a lot of flour and bread and run away. Cecil returned to the army camp. Although he did not find his father, he knew that his father - the only family he had left - was still alive.

After the War

It was September 1945, the war was over. Cecil didn’t know where to go, thus he stayed in Russia where he received certification as a technician. He was usually called Gregory or Grisha.  One day, while shaving, Kuznetsov brought him a letter. He was surprised because he did not have any friends abroad. He took the letter and saw that it was from his father who had written to him in Ukrainian: “My Dear Son, I was in Poland where I baked bread for the Rohovsky Brigade of the Russian Army…” Gomulka (whom he had met in Bereza Kartuska detention camp) had appointed him. He asked about Dove. Menachem had already known that the Gestapo had murdered Moses and that the women of the family had been sent to Belzec.

Cecil had a Russian identity card, therefore he never said he had been born in Poland. When he sent a request to the Ministry of Interior in Moscow to go to Poland so he could visit his father, they replied that as a Russian citizen he was prohibited to travel to Poland.

Mr. Schleicher - a clever Jew and the manager of a factory which manufactured boots for the army, who occasionally gave Cecil boots to sell, suggested that he go to the NKVD to get the certificate to travel to Poland, by telling Cecil that he is a man who isn’t afraid of anything. This decision could have two results, either getting permission going to Poland or being sent to Siberia. Cecil took his suggestion and went to the NKVD.

He wore his Navy uniform. When he arrived he was so scared that his hat shook on his head. He saluted and stood at attention until they said “at ease”. He handed them the documents and the letter from his father, and explained that he had found his father after six years. The man he was talking to was Dmitri Kozlov. He asked Cecil if he is in Vasilyev Battalion, because he had many good relations there. Cecil answered in the affirmative. Since it was the beginning of the year, Cecil brought 30,000 Ruppin as a gift wrapped in a newspaper (in order to make it look modest like Pork).

Cecil didn’t return to the military camp but cared for a sergeant, Nina Vasilivna (daughter of Peter), who had had surgery and had no family. Three weeks passed and he kept in contact with the Kuznetsov waiting for the answer. During this time he was injured in the leg while jumping into the water. A sergeant, Zoya, received a letter informing him that he needed to come to the NKVD. There was a great fear in the air.

Cecil entered the heavily guarded NKVD headquarters. He came in and saluted. Dmitri Kozlov said to him: “My son, sit. I received a letter from Moscow saying that you will go to your father in Poland.” He also added that his wife asked him to stay with them for the New Year.

They had a big house full of medals. Cecil brought two bottles of wine, dried fruit and two horsemeat sausages to the event. A female sergeant stood at the entrance. There were many generals and Nina was there as well (she was invited because Dmitri’s wife knew that Nina and Cecil knew each other). Dmitri’s wife told him to go and dance with Nina.

Lieutenant colonel called out to Cecil using the name Grisha. Cecil saluted, the lieutenant colonel told him not to because he would be a great man one day. Cecil felt uncomfortable among all these great people. He told Mrs. Kozlov he would go early.

Cecil took a train to Warsaw and then to Wroclaw, where his father ran a big modern bakery for the army. His father didn’t recognize him with all the muscles he had developed. Luckily he had a sign on his leg that his father recognized since they were in a bathhouse. Menachem, his father, married a second wife two weeks before Cecil came to meet him. He didn’t like her. The Poles were having a party and all of them were amazed Cecil drank a whole glass of vodka and poured another cup. His father told him to return to Russia, because getting out from there was very hard, but he stayed in Poland.

Cecil joined the "Haganah" through the people of Kibbutz Naan who were in Bolkov - a village and municipality (obec) in Plzeň-South District in the Plzeň Region of the Czech Republic. Cecil opened an Agricultural school at the Czech Republic border in the town of Friedland (today Pravdinsk). Through the school they transferred Jewish people from the Czech Republic to Brno then to the Alps in Austria and finally to Israel via small ships. In the school he met his wife Ida (Ithca was her nickname and as she arrived in Israel her name was renamed to Judith) Fruchter. She came from a very rich family (they had a textile factory in Bshemesh) which had lost all their money.

Ida and the other people stayed at the school for a month and a half till they were transferred. People began to understand that something strange was happening there so after a while the Russian officer who had been helping them smuggle people decided he needed more money. While trying to kill Cecil, he killed Cecil’s friend - Solomon. Cecil had hid in the water then a gentile helped him escape and cross the border in return for a promise of horses and a wagon. They drove a horse’s cart while Cecil was hidden in a pile of straw. The gentile said he was on his way to bring straw to his sister and bribed the border guard with vodka and meat.

Menachem, Cecil's father decided not to stay in Poland and immigrated to Israel according to the wishes of his second wife. They arrived in Atlit. Cecil followed him and came to Hadera, where by chance Ida had moved to. They were reunited and got married in 1950.

The state of Israel was established and his father set up a bakery where Cecil had worked in addition to his work in the orchards. Ithca worked as a cook at the Arlozorov School. With a little money they managed to buy a house in Shikun Aliya. Later on Cecil established a large bakery - Dagan Bakery in Hadera.

When Cecil moved to Israel his name was changed to Yekutiel (since Cecil in Hebrew means an idiot).

But his ID still says that he was born in 1926, in memory of the age change which saved his life.

He served in the 13th Regiment and then in the Burglars Battalion called Leo in the armored corps of the IDF.

He has two sons, Tzvika and Tzafrir, who served in the Air Force, one daughter, Mira, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Yekutiel is not sorry for what he did for himself, for his family and for his true country. He enjoys seeing his family everyday – he is satisfied.