A father's lessons
Yehuda Bronicki is better known as the chairman and CTO of geothermal energy company Ormat. But 60 years ago during World War Two, his father, Naftali Backenroth, was an entrepreneur of a different kind. "Globes" tells the story of a man who used his flair for business enterprise to rescue fellow Jews from the clutches of the Nazi machine.
Merav Ankori 1 May 08 17:06
Talking about his childhood during the Holocaust is something that Yehuda Bronicki, chairman and CTO of geothermal energy company Ormat Industries (TASE: ORMT) finds difficult, but he overcomes his reluctance, as a tribute to his father who saved the lives of hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust. As the story unfolds, the full extent of the trauma Bronicki went through as a child becomes clear, as does the bravery of his father. This is the story of Polish Jew, who managed to outwit the Nazis and initiate entrepreneurial ventures that saved many lives.
Born into an oil family Yehuda Bronicki was born in 1934 to Naftali and Ann (Hanna) Backenroth in Lvov, then part of Poland and now part of the Ukraine. From very early times Naftali showed an entrepreneurial flair and the same passion for ideas. He was born into family that founded a global business in oil and petroleum refining (ironically, the "green" Bronicki was born to an oil family), and dairies called "Backenroth Brothers." The business later became part of the Rothschild family businesses.
But Naftali Backenroth wanted to do something else with his life. He was drawn to agriculture and began studying agronomy. He encountered anti-Semitism when he started his studies in Lvov and then later on in Vienna as well, but he refused to let that stop him from completing his studies. His next port of call was France, where he enrolled at the special agricultural institute for the French colonies, under a scheme initiated by Baron Rothschild to support Jews interested in working in agriculture in Eretz Israel. And that, undoubtedly, was Backenroth's goal.
But as fate would have it, Backenroth's father, Bronicki's grandfather, died, and the oil refinery went bankrupt. Backenroth senior had to put his plans on hold and return to Lvov to help support the family. Incidentally, Backenroth also studied geology during the course of his agronomy studies, a knowledge that he would later put to good use when he carried out oil exploration in Poland for French oil companies. "It was in a beautiful region," Bronicki recalls. "My first memories of father are the trips with him in the Carpathian region, where he carried out the oil exploration."
The Ukraine's agronomist
And then war broke out. "We were living in the Klimubka region where father had rented an apartment," recalls Bronicki. The region is part of what is now Ukrainian territory, south of Drohobycz, (an industrial city on the Carpathian border which had a population of 60,000, at least of half them Jews). He wasn't rich. And then he was drafted into the Polish army as cavalry officer, and my mother and I left for large a town called Pashmishel (on the current Polish-Ukrainian border). I have no idea how he managed it, but the moment the Polish army fell apart, he found us.
"In 1941, the region was captured by the Germans," Bronicki continues. "The pogroms against local Jews began even before the Gestapo arrived, when there were only German and Ukrainian troops. They started by killing all the men in Schodnica, near the region where we lived.
"We never had any food shortages until the Germans arrived, we lived in the grain shed of Europe. And after they came, the Jews were the only ones to starve. Being hungry is not something you can explain. It's not just going hungry, but also not knowing whether there'll be any food tomorrow. You can't explain it to anyone who hasn't experienced it either, what a lack of freedom feels like. But overall, anyone who wasn't broken during this period emerged a stronger person in the aftermath."
Backenroth faces the Gestapo
Between 1941-1942, the Backenroth family was imprisoned in the Drohobycz ghetto, and it was during this time that most of Backenroth's acts of valor took place. When the Gestapo began "recruiting" Jews for forced labor, Backenroth, on learning that Jewish laborers from a nearby town had been murdered shortly after being "recruited", set about saving the lives of local Jews in the reality that now prevailed. First he negotiated with the Judenratt and Gestapo and secured increased food rations for workers at forced labor sites. The Nazis gave every Jewish laborer just 200 grams of bread for an entire day, but Backenroth persuaded them to give the Jews the same rations as those for non-Jewish slave laborers.
"Because there were incidents where the Nazis murdered Jewish laborers who didn't always understand orders in German, father suggested to the Gestapo that they employ 40 German-speaking people, thereby saving their lives. He also invented all kinds of tasks to find work for more people," says Bronicki.
Thanks to Backenroth's mediation, some of these Jews began working in workshops that supported the Nazi war effort, but the actions had already begun in the Drohobycz ghetto, and the workshops were gradually closed down. Backenroth then set about forming an agricultural farm to provide an excuse to employ Jews. He persuaded the Nazis that it would pay for them to increase their available food supplies, and even organized the farm together with a Nazi officer. He saved the lives of 250 Jews through this.
Backenroth continued to pursue every possible option for creating jobs, so that the Nazis would need people for labor, rather than murdering them. His next venture was a horse riding farm to entertain the Nazis. In the ghetto center, he set up a recreation center for the Nazis near the Gestapo headquarters, from whose torture chamber the screams of pain could be heard far and wide. He also managed to rescue the relatives of those people that already been selected for forced labor on the grounds that laborers would find it difficult to work if their relatives were murdered. He even plucked Jews right out of a major action in 1942, and got them into work details, risking his own life in the process. He was constantly engaged in an extremely precarious battle of wits with the Nazis where one small mistake could have spelled the end for him and for his workers.
Obviously, not all of Drohobycz's Jews survived, quite the contrary - many of them were murdered in actions that took place in the nearby Bronica forest. Backenroth decided to change his name to Bronicki, in memory of the victims that died at the site. Bronicki junior eventually visited the site during a trip in 1992 together with his wife Dita, but found himself and unable to say a word as he stood next to the memorial to the victims. The emotion and tears overwhelmed him.
Starting over
The war years were one long episode of mass murder and desperate attempts to survive and rescue others. "The Russians liberated us in August 1944," says Bronicki. We wanted to get to the West by going over the border into Poland, (which was not yet under communist rule, an event that came two years later in 1946), because things in Russia were horrendous, and then make our way from there to Israel. My father did not reveal that we wanted to leave for Poland and we managed to escape across the border.
"We traveled on an ordinary train but we had to hide. It was the three of us, plus my cousin, father's sister's son, whose parents sent him to us at the age of 12. They were later sent to Treblinka where they died, but they managed to save him. He lived with us from then on and died 20 years ago. We were also joined by another boy whose parents were murdered towards the end of the war, so I actually had two brothers.
"We got to Cracow and father found work in a factory owned by Jews. Mother began producing cosmetics and selling them to individuals and stores," says Bronicki.
"It wasn't until we arrived in Israel in 1958 that I stopped dreaming about the war. As a child, I watched from the windows as Jews were killed, but most things I didn't see with my own eyes. After years like these, you see everything in life differently," says Bronicki.
Globes: Did your father ever talk about what happened?
Bronicki:"No. My children asked him about that period and always wanted to know why he wouldn't say more. He told me that every time he thought of someone he'd managed to rescue, he immediately recalled ten more people whom he failed to rescue. It's not that he hid things, but I could see he didn't like talking about it, so I didn't push it. With people who were less close he found it easier to talk to people."
One outsider that Bronicki senior did talk to was television presenter and former Channel 1 director general Motti Kirshenbaum, who in 1992 made a film about Bronicki's bravery, a year before Naftali Bronicki died. The film features testimony from many survivors, who recalled Naftali's activity during the war, and he himself appeared too, looking very youthful and lucid.
"Father worked until the age of 86," recalls Bronicki. "In 1961 he and a partner set up a waste recycling plant in Yavne, at a time when nobody understood a thing about this. He and Dita's father helped us found our company, Ormat, in the yard of their plant, which later closed." Bronicki notes.
Was your father proud of your achievements as industrialists?
"He was not the type that handed out compliments, and Dita and I weren't looking for complements either, but we could see our work gave him a lot pleasure. I also consulted him frequently on issues such as, for example, fluid for the turbines. The small turbines still use the type of fluid he recommended to this day. He also helped us obtain materials."
Naftali Backenroth died in 1993 in Israel, the country he intended to make his home in long before World War Two, but whose life took a different turn. The man, who saved the lives of many Jews, was tormented to his last day by all those he failed to rescue.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 1, 2008
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