Path to Survival

by Akiva Perlman

Felix Bandos was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1921. He was very happy when he was a young boy, until the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. He and his family were rounded up with other Jewish families and forced to live in one part of the city. In 1940, they had to build their own walls around the area, turning it into a ghetto. There the young man worked very hard, chopping wood, building railroad tracks and doing other jobs. Hunger was never far away.

One day he decided to jump over the wall and see if he could find food for his family. He was successful, so he escaped the ghetto a few times to help his family survive. On one occasion, 10 families asked Mr. Bandos if he could help their daughters escape. Unfortunately, the girls could not climb over the wall without the help of their friends, which created a commotion. Sadly, all of the girls were caught and shot.

Mr. Bandos ran through a forest and hid in a ditch overnight. In the morning he walked to a town nearby where his friend lived. But when he got there, his friend had already been taken away.

He decided to go to Warsaw, which had not yet been completely fenced off. After two weeks, right before the wall around the ghetto was about to be completed, Mr. Bandos left Warsaw. On his journey, he met two non-Jewish girls who were looking for husbands. They had a document meant for a non-Jewish Pole. They gave him the document so he could pretend to be a non-Jew.

Mr. Bandos moved into an apartment building where Germans soldiers were housed. Every day he would say hello to them, as if he had nothing to fear. He also had a German newspaper sticking out of his pocket so people would not think he was Jewish. But after three weeks it became too dangerous to live there, so he went to the train station to try to go to Russia.

Before he could escape, however, a Gestapo officer noticed him, became suspicious, and took him to the police station, where he was locked in a cell on the second floor. Miraculously, he was able to jump out the window and then walk for two days until he crossed the Russian border. He was taken into the Russian army until the end of the war.

After the war, Mr. Bandos met his future wife, Feige Beigel. They married in 1947 in a DP camp set up on the site of Bergen-Belsen. Later they moved to Sweden to join his two sisters. They lived there for six years, and their oldest child, Marcus, was born there.

In 1953 they moved to America, staying briefly in New York before reaching their permanent home, Milwaukee. There they had two daughters, Helen and Marilyn, and Mr. Bandos started the Bandos Recycling and Shredding Co. Mr. and Mrs. Bandos have remained in Milwaukee all of these years and are very proud to be parents, grandparents and now great-grandparents.

Editor's Note: Felix and Feige Bandos, now 90 and 85, are profiled as "Super Seniors" in a Milwaukee Magazine story.