The hollow trunk of this 650-year-old tree was used as a hideout by two Jewish brothers during World
The hollow trunk of this 650-year-old tree was used as a hideout by two Jewish brothers during World War II.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-jozef
The Oak Jozef, a 650-year-old English Oak in the Wisniowa region of southeast Poland, has long been a Polish symbol of pride. In 1934, its image proudly appeared on the 100-Zloty bill—and that was before it performed one of its most remarkable feats, hiding two Jewish brothers in its trunk during the Nazi occupation of Poland in World War II.
The brothers reportedly took shelter in the lower, larger hollow of the tree, while the upper section of the hollow was used as a lookout point. They are believed to have been in hiding after escaping from either the Nazi-established Fryszstak ghetto, or a nearby labor camp. They were shown the old English Oak by one of many Poles who aided Jews during the war, and successfully survived the occupation. Their fate after the war is unknown.
As for the fate of the Oak Jozef, it was named the 2017 “European Tree of the Year” for its historic significance, narrowly beating out the 500-year-old Brimmon Oak in Wales. The beloved tree is located on the grounds of a mansion owned by the Mycielskis, a noble Polish family, which became an intellectual centre in the region that still attracts visitors today.
Further reading:
Dąb Józef (The Józef Oak) | International Oak Society
[Search domain internationaloaksociety.org] https://internationaloaksociety.org/content/dąb-józef-józef-oak
The oak's second claim to fame is less well documented: local legend has it that during the Second World War two Jewish brothers by the name of Hymi (or a whole family of six, depending on the teller), who had escaped from the labor camp at the nearby shtetl of Frysztak, hid in the hollow trunk of the Józef Oak for several days (or two to three months) and were thus saved.
European Tree of the Year - Oak Józef
[Search domain treeoftheyear.org] https://www.treeoftheyear.org/ETY-2/Stromy/Dub-Josef.aspx
Oak Józef - a tree with history. The special history of Oak Józef is linked to the place where it is growing. The Mycielski family was so charmed by the beauty of the area that they bought a mansion there. The mansion became a cultural and intellectual centre of the region. During WWII the oak became shelter for a Jewish family hiding from ...
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I love hearing about how the Nazis were outsmarted by ordinary people. Thanks so much for posting this. 
Gad Beck
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gerhard "Gad" Beck (30 June 1923 – 24 June 2012)[2] was an Israeli-German educator, author, activist, resistance member, and survivor of the Holocaust.
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As a person of partial Jewish ancestry (a Mischling in Nazi terminology), Beck was not deported with other German Jews. Instead, he remained in Berlin.[6] He recalls in his autobiography borrowing a neighbor's Hitler Youth uniform[7] and marching in 1942[8] into the pre-deportation camp where his lover, Manfred Lewin, had been arrested and detained. He asked the commanding officer for the young man's release for use in a construction project, and it was granted. When outside the building, however, Lewin declined, saying, "Gad, I can't go with you. My family needs me. If I abandon them now, I could never be free."[9] With that, the two parted without saying goodbye. "In those seconds, watching him go," Gad recalls, "I grew up."[4] Lewin and his entire family were murdered at Auschwitz.[10]
Gad Beck joined an underground effort to supply food and hiding places to Jews escaping to neutral Switzerland. In early 1945, a Jewish spy for the Gestapo betrayed him and some of his underground friends. He was subsequently interrogated and interned in a Jewish transit camp in Berlin.[6] His parents and sister did survive the war, thanks to help from their Christian relatives on his mother's side. [11]
After World War II, Beck helped organize efforts to enable Jewish survivors to emigrate to Israel, emigrating himself in 1947. [12]
In the late 1970s, Beck met Julius Laufer. Eventually Laufer joined him in Israel, and the two were together for 35 years.[11]
Beck returned to Berlin in 1979[6] where he was the director of the Jewish Adult Education Center in Berlin. [12]
In 2000, Beck was featured, along with a few other gay Holocaust survivors, in the HBO documentary film Paragraph 175 in which he remembers his "great, great love" lost to the Nazis.[9][13] Also in 2000, the English translation of Beck's 1995 autobiography, An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin, was published, leading to a successful book tour through the United States.[4]
A documentary film on his life was proposed but never realized.[14]
Beck passed away from kidney failure at age 88, survived by his partner Laufer.[12]
Beck died on 24 June 2012, in a Berlin retirement home at the age of 88.[15]
People get resourceful when other people are exterminating or attempting to exterminate them.
I recommend the book Alicia: My Story by Alice Appleman-Jurman. She was 11 years old when the Nazi's invaded her country. She and other young children would collect already fallen wood at night and was attacked by a group while they were gathering wood. She entered a river to get away from them and found a hollowed out tree to hide in. She was hollowing out bunkers underneath floorboards in houses so when the Nazi raids came, she and her family could hide. I often wonder if these bunkers under the houses that they all hollowed out are still there.
Her book is devastating and inspiring to read. I have serious doubts that I would have made it to my 15th year of life if I had to live the way that Alicia did.
Seeing this tree that saved lives is amazing.
Here's to the millions of Jewish people who didn't survive. We may not know all of your faces or all of your names, but you are remembered to this day.
