Ida Belchatowski

Ida Belchatowski, (nee Brandspiegel)  was born 1934, one of seven children of Rosa and Jakob Brandspiegel. They lived in Pultusk, Poland, a small town near Warsaw.  She grew up poor. Her father, a carpenter, served in World War I. Her mother, a dressmaker, made nightgowns and caps for local farmers.

When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, her family fled to her aunt’s house in Serock, fourteen miles south of Pultusk. Upon arrival, they could not find her. The Germans occupied Serock a few days later and forced Ida’s father into labor as a shoe cleaner. He fled, returning to Pultusk to hide, and so did the rest of the family. The SS and Gestapo arrived soon after. Jews were physically harassed and their property was seized. 

The Brandspiegel family fled east to Soviet-occupied Bialystok, a trek that lasted three months. They begged for shelter and food, slept in barns, and hid from German forces. In Bialystok. Her father was told by Soviet soldiers that the train station would take in refugees. At the station in 1940, the nine members of the family boarded a train full of other refugees that took them further into the Belorussian Soviet Republic, to the city of Orsha.  Ida’s father and older brothers were sent to work on airplane parts, while the able women worked on farms. The women llived in a one-room shelter with another family for three and a half months. When their father was reassigned, the whole family was allocated a new and better room together in another part of Orsha. 

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the family took them further to Moscow. From there, they were sent to Magnitogorsk, an industrial city in Siberia, where Ita’s three-year-old sister, Ruhael, died from tuberculosis. 

They stayed in Russia for the duration of the war. In 1946, they returned to Poland. Because Putulsk had been destroyed in the war, they stayed in another part of Poland. The family went different ways; some siblings married and went to Austria, and others registered in a Displaced Persons camp with plans to travel to Palestine. Their parents brought their children to a DP camp in Austria, but due to financial difficulties, they transferred to DP camps in Italy. One of Ita’s older brothers became engaged to a woman in a DP camp. The father of his fiancé arranged for his family as well as Ida’s family to immigrate to the United States.

The family arrived in New York in 1950 and were placed in an immigrant hotel. After her father secured a job in Philadelphia, they moved there for the next six months. Ida settled into  American life; she attended school and got a job. She married Max Belchatowski and had three children: Steve, Karl, and Judy. Max was also a Holocaust Survivor. He was born in Szczekociny, Poland. He was placed in the Bedzin Ghetto before being sent to Sakrau concentration camp. Max was sent to multiple concentration camps before ending up at Blechhammer, a satellite camp of Auschwitz where he was ordered on a death march to Gross-Rosen concentration camp and then to Buchenwald. He ended up in Mauthausen and was liberated by the U.S. Army in 1945. When her children grew and moved away, Ida and Max bought a condominium in Margate, New Jersey to use as a summer home. Max passed away in 2007.