[Walter Ruby interviewed Max Mermelstein in August 2012 as he began research to co-author the autobiography of Michael Edelstein.]

You are five years older than Michael Edelstein, and therefore have more memories of Skala before the devastation. Can you describe the former Jewish life of Skala?

I was born in Skala in 1926. In those post World War I years, Skala had total population of around 5,500 souls, and half of those were Jews. Most of the other half was Ukrainian and there were about 10 percent Poles. After that, there was a decline in the Jewish population. By the outbreak of World War II, the Jewish population was 1,800. 

Ninety percent of the Jews lived in the center of town. They had their homes, their businesses, their institutions. The Beth Am was the cultural center. 

The Polish government was interested in Polonizing that part of Galicia because it was predominantly Ukrainian and Jewish. And the government wanted to exert influence on that population. Especially the teachers were imported. The municipal administrators, the school director. The teachers were almost all Poles with a few Ukrainian. 

This was in the public school, which I attended in the morning. In the afternoon I went to the Hebrew Tarbut school. Tarbut means culture. It was a network of wonderful schools all over Poland. The Tarbut school in Skala was established in 1909. In that respect, Skala was a very progressive and modern community, even though the town leadership after the First World War was still mostly Orthodox. 

Why do you say that Skala was progressive?

The mere fact that a Hebrew school—not orthodox, modern—was established in 1909 tells the story. We studied modern Hebrew. We had planted in us the love for the Holy Land, for Israel. Besides the school, the Beth Am also housed the Zionist youth groups, the library and there was a hall for public events—weddings, the Yiddish theater, political speeches. Lecturers came from all over to speak. 

I don’t really know why it happened but this [emphasis on Jewish culture] was the trend in postwar Poland, especially in Galicia, which was different from central or northern Poland. Galicia had a unique culture—its progressivism, its open-mindedness, its tolerance.

[By contrast], the neighboring town Borschow was larger but didn’t have a Hebrew school. They had a gymnasium. It was a district town. They had Jewish lawyers there. Skala had one lawyer, maybe.

Another thing, Skala was the home of the famous Count Goluchowski, who had been the foreign minister in the Austro-Hungarian empire. On every Jewish holiday, his estate would send potatoes for the winter to all the poor Jews. 

So this was the milieu in Skala at the time. It was a small but vibrant community. It is all in the book.

Talk about relations among different groups of Jews in Skala.

There were six or seven synagogues in Skala, including two affiliated with the Czortkower and the Vizhnitzer hassidic sects. The synagogue frequented by working people, the rabotchi narot, is the only synagogue building that survived and we have a picture of it in the book. Tradespeople prayed in this synagogue—tailors, bakers, cobblers, tinsmiths. 

Michael’s grandfather, Shlome Peretz, was the shammus of that synagogue. He was also in charge of the cemetery. I remember him very well. He was a personality in Skala and everyone respected him. 

My father of blessed memory, who had a dry goods store, went to a synagogue of merchants, along with storekeepers and many leaders of the community. They were modern Orthodox—not extreme orthodox but what in America was called modern Orthodox. 
In Skala, there were only three wealthy Jewish families. My grandfather was poor but his brother was wealthy. He had hundreds of acres of land, a forest. He had a farm that was administered by others.

But most everybody else was poor, whether they were merchants or tradespeople. The baker lived on our street and his sons were my best friends. The mother was my mother’s friend. There was no class distinction because my father had a store and the other one had a bakery. 

Despite the poverty, social life in Skala was very good. We had a lot of fun. In the summer, we went to the river Zbrucz to bathe or play soccer and volleyball. 

What languages did you speak growing up? What books did you read?

I spoke Hebrew, Polish, Ukrainian, German, Russian, and of course Yiddish. It was typical to speak so many languages. The wonderful Beth Am library had books in every language.  Yes, I read Sholom Aleichem in Yiddish. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in translation. Mostly Polish and Hebrew books.

Since you attended public school together with gentiles, what were the relations like among classmates?
There was a great deal of antisemitism at the time. The classes were large, up to 40 kids in a class. I had a few Ukrainian friends, one whom survived the war and came to America. He came from a family of local Ukrainian intelligentsia. Yes, the Ukrainians were very pro-Nazi, but among the intelligentsia they were tolerant. They helped some of the Jews. Without them there would have been no survivors.

In your case, you received help from Nikola Martyuk.

Yes, when the war broke out, I was in Lvov. I had gone there for hip surgery. We got stuck in a spa 40 miles from the German border and we escaped with our lives to Lvov. The person who helped us to get back to our home in Skala was Martyuk, who was a leader of the Ukrainian national movement. The nationalists collaborated with the Nazis but soon became disillusioned. Martyuk was one of three or four leaders of the national movement who was killed by the Nazis. His nephew was a good friend of mine. He lives in Toronto and we are still friends.

The other family that helped me were the parents of a classmate of mine, a Ukrainian girl. Her parents hid me for a time. Then when I was in the forest, the father used to bring me food. She just passed away two years ago. I keep in touch now with her daughter and son-in-law. I just sent $1000 for the year [for their work] to maintain the cemetery.

How was Ukrainian antisemitism related to its nationalism? What does that say about the situation today?

Jews were not unfamiliar to them in their daily lives, since the trades in town were in Jewish hands. Ukrainians were the majority and they already wanted independence from Poland. The Jews were mostly allied with the Poles for control the municipal governments. It was politics, ethnic politics. Jews held the balance of power, and that was a threat to Ukrainian [aspirations].

Today is a different story. Now we are no threat. There are no Jews left in the Ukraine. Just in Kiev. I have no problem with the Ukrainians today. Back then, most of them were antisemitic but without individual Ukrainians like those I mentioned none of us would have survived.

Going back to the mid- to late-1930s, was there a sense of foreboding?

In 1936-37, we did not feel threatened, because Germany was not so aggressive. Somehow the major European powers kept the Nazis in check. Only in 1939 when they attacked Poland, then we felt the threat. But we did not realize at that time how far Nazi Germany would go against the Jews. Even when the war started and Germany occupied our area as well, we did not believe it. 

My father’s generation remembers the Germans from World War I. They were civilized. Skala and the immediate area changed hands many times between the Russians and Austrians, during World War I. The Jews prayed for the Austrians to come back because the Russians, the czarist Russians, they had cossacks who plundered and stole. But Austria was civilized. 

Ribbentrop and Molotov made a pact and then overnight this is what happens. It was a big surprise to Stalin and the Soviets. 

What happened in 1939 when the Soviets came?

All Jewish institutions were closed. No Hebrew school, library, organizations, anything. They were considered counter revolutionary. But they didn’t touch the rabbis. My father, the store owner, used to do roadwork after that—physical labor. The Soviet city hall organized that. My brother who was part of intelligentsia because he had graduated from gymnasium, he became secretary in the flour mill. Later, when the war started, he was drafted and I never saw him again. 

In 1941, you made your way back to Skala from Lvov. Why go back when some were evacuating?
For me in Lvov, there was such disarray. We were trying to get back to Skala, but there were no trains. Where else could we go? We thought we would be safer in Skala. On the one side was the Soviet Union, and on the other Germans. We were between the hammer and sickle. 

A handful of Communist Jews tried to escape and some made it and some didn’t. Some survived in Soviet Union, some didn’t. Those were the ones in political jobs. 

What was it like at first under German occupation?

In 1941, after the German occupation in Skala, the Judenrat [was assembled]. These were the finest Jews of Skala who believed they could help the community. They could negotiate. They could bribe if necessary. Of course, they regretted it later.

[At this point, the interview was interrupted and plans were made to continue at a later time. However, a followup interview did not take place.]