Holocaust survivor to ride bike Auschwitz to Krakow

Marcel Zielinski, right, and his son Betzalel will cycle from Auschwitz to Krakow together, retracing Marcel’s walk 70 years ago.

Seventy years ago, when Marcel Zielinski was 10 and just liberated from Birkenau, alone, weak and scared, he walked back to his hometown of Krakow with a small group of young former camp inmates.

It was a journey of 90 kilometres that took several days.

He did not know what had become of his parents or what would be left of a prewar 70,000-member Jewish community.

On June 5, Zielinski will retrace that route, only this time on bicycle and among about 100 other people from different countries celebrating the revival of Jewish life in Krakow.

The 80-year-old retired Montreal engineer and cycling enthusiast is participating in the Ride for the Living, an event launched last year benefiting the Krakow Jewish Community Centre. Established in 2008, the centre is a hub for the 550 Jews living in the city.

Zielinski will be the only Holocaust survivor, the only Canadian and “probably” the oldest among the cyclists.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” he said. “This is a dream to go back and do this, to follow the same route I did as a child, to show that I survived and to combine all this with my passion for cycling.”

Born in Krakow in September 1934, Zielinski, an only child, lived in the ghetto with his parents until the 1942 liquidation, when the family was interned in the nearby Plaszow labour camp. Despite his tender age, Zielinski was also forced to work, making brushes.

When Plaszow was liquidated in the summer of 1944, he and his father were deported to the Gross-Rosen camp in Germany. His mother was separated from them.

Father and son were soon sent on to Birkenau, part of the Auschwitz death camp complex, where they were tattooed.

Days before the Red Army liberated Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945, his father was sent on a forced march to Germany. Zielinski never saw him again nor was he able to find out how he died.

Left on his own, Zielinski set out on foot with other youngsters to Krakow. “The oldest were probably teenagers. We were cold, not well dressed, hungry. We were helped along the way by farmers who gave us shelter at night, and sometimes we got lifts from the Russians.”

Non-Jews were living in the Zielinskis’ pre-ghetto apartment and no one knew what had become of his parents. The boy was sent to a crowded orphanage run by the remnant of the Jewish community. 

Today’s JCC is the heir to that Jewish orphanage, to which “I am eternally grateful for the several months they took very good care of me, where I received food, warm clothing and medical care,” said Zielinski.

About 100 of today’s Krakow Jews are Holocaust survivors.

One day in August 1945 his mother showed up. “I hardly recognized her, she had changed so much,” he said, after toiling in another German camp.

They moved to a small town in western Poland, where his mother worked in a textile mill, and then to the larger Wroclaw, where he went to university to study electrical engineering.

Zielinski married Maryla in 1957 and left for Israel the following year, where they remained for nine years. His mother never left Poland.

His only child, son Betzalel, 57, who lives in Israel, and Betzalel’s two daughters, will join Zielinski on the Auschwitz-Krakow ride.

Zielinski caught the cycling bug as a child, and after the war, while in Wroclaw, he competed in the sport at a fairly high level.

Too busy getting established, Zielinski abandoned cycling in Israel. He took up another addiction: smoking – up to 50 cigarettes a day. 

In 1967, the family immigrated to Montreal.  Zielinski’s first job was with United Aircraft, now Pratt & Whitney. He spent 20 years at Bombardier before retiring in 1997.

Around 1980, Zielinski went on a health kick. He quit smoking and started running. He and his wife completed the 1981 Montreal Marathon.

He continued to run intensely for another five years, including each day between his Côte St. Luc home and the Bombardier (then Canadair) plant in St. Laurent year round. “I was putting in 80 kilometres a week,” he said.

Then he damaged his knee and, after 30 years, got on a bicycle again.

After his retirement, he became even more avid. In 1998, he cycled across Canada, from Vancouver to Newfoundland,  on an organized trip that took 66 days.

For years after, he kept up a 10,000-kilometre yearly average of cycling. Today, he is pedalling 80 to 90 kilometres a week (he winters in Florida) and in recent years has done some impressive charity rides. 

In 2009, he finished the five-day, 500-kilometre ride benefiting Alyn Hospital for disabled children in Israel, and four years ago, the Enbridge Ride to Conquer Cancer between Montreal and Quebec City for the Jewish General Hospital.

Zielinski heard about the Ride for the Living while in Florida this winter from someone who thought he might be interested, given his history. He was.

“This is exactly what I did on foot. I knew I must do it,” he said. “[The organizers] were shocked when I contacted them. I figure this is the best way to celebrate the 70th anniversary of my freedom.”

Participants are required to find sponsors, and Zielinski quickly raised over $2,000 (US) among fellow members of his Boca Raton Cycling Club. Two of them, with no connection to Poland or the Holocaust, have been inspired by him to do the ride.

Zielinski returned to Poland for the first time in 2007 with his wife and son, but this time will be very different, he said.

Physically, he is prepared, although he is a little concerned that he will be using a bike supplied by the organizers, not his “state-of-the-art” eight-kilo roadrunner.

Emotionally, he is also ready and could not be more eager to enter Krakow, where his family lived for generations, on two wheels.

 “Although it will directly benefit the Krakow Jewish community,” said his friend Mark Bercuvitz, “it is also in honour of the miracle of Marcel who by this ride symbolizes that the Jewish people has survived in spite of all odds and in spite of the evil forces that were committed to our extinction.” 

 

Anyone who wants to sponsor Zielinski can do so through the Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal. Call Bryna Hersh, 514-735-3541.