Henni Polak

Henni Polak, 94
PORTLAND – Henni Polak, 94, died peacefully on Sunday, April 5, 2015 at her home at the Osher Inn in Portland after a long illness.
Henni was born in Mannheim, Germany on July 21, 1920 to Solomon and Leah Elter, Polish Jews. Her childhood in Germany was made very difficult by the rise of the Nazis. One of her first experiences with German anti Semitism was in school when one of her teachers instructed the class on the racial inferiority of Jews. She contradicted him with the bravery that was a hallmark of her life, by forcefully refuting her teacher’s accusations in front of the entire class.
In November 1938, she personally experienced Kristallnacht, the infamous day when over 1000 German synagogues were burned and 30,000 arrested and sent to concentration camps. Nazi thugs came up to her family’s apartment and threatened her and her family but she stood up to them and didn’t back down.
Her two sisters and two of her brothers were able to get out of Germany early enough and they immigrated to Israel. In October of 1940, Henni and her mother Leah, along with all the Jews in the upper Rhine area of Germany, were deported to the Gurs Concentration Camp in in the French Pyrenees. In 1940 before the Final Solution was established, the Nazis were planning to ship all the Jews to Madagascar, then a French colony, and it would have been easier to ship them from southern France.
She was able to get out of Gurs Concentration Camp with the help of Abbé Alexandre Glasberg, a Catholic priest who was born Jewish. Unfortunately, her freedom was short lived as she was re-arrested by the French authorities and placed in another concentration camp, Les Milles, near Marseilles. The Vichy French government was periodically emptying these camps and sending the Jews to Auschwitz. She avoided numerous selections and eventually escaped Les Milles by climbing over mattresses placed on the barbed wire.
Her mother, left behind in Gurs, eventually was transported by SNCF, the French national railroad, to her death in Auschwitz. Ironically, her mother was born in Oswiecim, the nearby Polish town that was translated into the German name, Auschwitz. Another brother, Gustav Elter, was murdered in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp months before the end of the war. Her father, Solomon, who was deported from Germany in the 1930’s, disappeared in Italy during the war, and the family never found out what happened to him.
Henni was able to survive the rest of WW 2 in France as Marie Louise Roth, with the help of Arthur Schneirer, the father of her eldest son, Raymond, and with false identity papers given to her by the French Resistance.
She had to be brave to bluff the French police who stopped her a number of times to check her identity papers. Once, while in Lyons France, she entered a public building to visit a Jewish social agency. Her sixth sense told her something was wrong and she quickly backtracked and got out just in time. The Gestapo was in that office arresting everyone and deported them all to Auschwitz.
Betty and Roger Langman, two French Jews and themselves in hiding, helped her survive the war. They are the parents and grandparents respectively of Claude Berri, the French film director and Thomas Langman, French film producer, both Academy award winners. After the war ended, she went to Paris and eventually through the Langmans’ matchmaking she was introduced to and married Bernard Polak, her husband of many years.
She and her family immigrated to New York in 1953, settling in Brooklyn and then the Rockaways in Queens. Like many immigrants, she worked in a garment factory sewing labels into sweaters. She was very proud to be able to complete the education denied her in Germany by finishing a high school equivalency diploma. With that diploma she was able to get a clerical job in an insurance company.
In 2001, after her husband Bernard Polak passed away, she moved to the Atrium at The Cedars in Portland, Maine where she lived happily for many years until 2013 when due to her declining health she moved next door to assisted living at the Osher Inn. She was treated with great dignity, respect and love in both places.
She loved reading, especially biographies. She had an excellent self-taught knowledge of world geography, history, and politics. Her other interests included needlepoint and traveling. Henni spoke 4 languages: German, Yiddish, French, and English.
The family especially wants to thank the staffs of The Cedars in Portland, the VNA Hospice program, and Lincs to Home, who all provided extraordinary care and love during her last days.
She is survived by her son, Marcel Polak, and daughter in law, Emily Ecker, of Woodstock Maine, and son, Raymond Polak, and daughter in law, Marline Polak, of Cinnaminson, NJ; four grandchildren, Alicia Polak of Berkeley, Calif., Amanda Tesciuba of Toronto, Canada, Allan Polak of Durham, NC, and Rachel Silver of Capitola, Calif.; six great-grandchildren; and many nephews and nieces, also survive her. Her brothers and sisters predeceased her.
Arrangements by The Jewish Funeral Home, Portland.