April 25, 2012 Survivor: Jack Adelstein “Raus, raus!” (Out,
out!) Jack Adelstein — then Janek Eidelstein, 4 years old — was
abruptly awakened by a dozen SS soldiers and Polish farmers. He
was sleeping in a cave in a dense forest outside Krasnik,
Poland, where he was hiding with his father, brother and an
older sister. His siblings had ventured out earlier on that
bitterly cold November night, as they often did during the six
months they spent in hiding, stealing food from a nearby farm.
This time, however, the farmer tracked them back to the cave,
following their footsteps in the snow, and reported them. The
captured family was trucked to the nearby Budzyn labor camp.
Jack was born on April 15, 1936, to Mordechai and Gertrude
Eidelstein; he was the fifth of six children. The family lived
on a farm, in a house with a straw roof and straw floor. They
weren’t rich, but they had food. And Jack had a pony. “I went to
the river and swam with it,” he said. Everything changed after
Germany invaded Poland in September