Son of Holocaust survivors pays tribute by writing screenplay

Jan. 27 is designated as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day to honor the millions of lives that were lost. A Jacksonville man is honoring his family’s legacy by writing his parents’ horrifying story of survival.

Lee Gwozdz is the son of two Holocaust survivors, Feliks and Eugenia Gwozdz. He and his four siblings were born and raised in the United States after World War II.

In 1939, his parents met in a German neighborhood, more commonly referred to as the ghetto. She was 15 and he was 18. Lee said she noticed Feliks Gwozdz, a musician, playing at a nearby bar, and they immediately fell in love.

Realizing the oncoming danger, the Jewish couple got married in the ghetto. About a year later in March 1941, the eminent threat was knocking at their door. Lee said Nazi soldiers came to separate and take Jewish community members to concentration camps.

“That one day in March where they told everybody to assemble in the streets, all the old people, all the Jews over here, and it was horrible chaos,” Lee Gwozdz said.

After witnessing most of their families being killed, Feliks and Eugenia Gwozdz were sent to two different concentration camps. Feliks Gwozdz went to Dachau, and Eugenia Gwozdz, along with his sister and mother, went to Auschwitz.

It was several months before they made contact again. Feliks Gwozdz was able to send a small gift to Eugenia Gwozdz at Auschwitz through a Nazi soldier. This was her message that Feliks Gwozdz was alive.

“This is a heart that was carved out of my dad’s leather sole that he wore in prison camp in Dachau,” Lee Gwozdz said. “He kept a picture of them when they were engaged, and that’s the picture that was put in there.”

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She was able to hang on to this leather heart throughout seven concentration camps. Lee Gwozdz showed Action News Jax the piece, which still has the rubber band that she used to keep intact.

“My mom losing her whole family,” Lee Gwozdz said. “My mom losing her little brother and sister to the sewers, losing her parents who were trying to protect their factory. Their factory was then taken over by Schindler.”

His parents were Jewish prisoners from 1941 until 1944. His mother, aunt and grandmother were able to escape during the torturous marches around Germany. They fled to a nearby German farm until the war ended, not knowing if Feliks Gwozdz was alive.

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“People were only given one piece of bread during the day to share with three people,” Lee Gwozdz said. “People were only given watered-down soup every day, and they were showered maybe once a week. It was unbelievable. All of them were forced to witness executions.”

It was several months before Eugenia Gwozdz found an old friend at a train station, a fellow musician’s wife with whom Feliks Gwozdz used to perform for Nazi soldiers. She asked her to take a note to him if they were to ever come in contact with him. A few months later, Feliks Gwozdz was on the next train to Germany to find Eugenia Gwozdz .

Lee Gwozdz said Feliks Gwozdz survived as he was mistaken as another man with the last name Gwozdz. When the couple made the trip to the United States, they kept the name and converted to Catholicism. This story of the Holocaust wasn’t revealed to their children until decades later.

Gwozdz is now working with siblings to write a screenplay of their family’s history called "Heart of Sole."

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“I wanted to tell and share with people the truth of what happened in those camps,” Lee Gwozdz said. “My mom’s testimony and my aunt’s testimony, and my aunt wrote a diary, tells exactly what happened in the camps.”

He currently gives lectures about his family’s experience during the Holocaust, including his mother’s testimony, which was video recorded before she died. He is hoping to have the screenplay written in the coming months.

“Trying to continue to remember this horror so it doesn’t happen again,” Gwozdz said. “Believe it or not, it is happening again in the world, this type of atrocity is happening.”

Cox Media Group