The Future President of the US

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Some probably know that Bernie Sanders' family is from Poland, his father was born in the village of Słopnice.

His family house in Słopnice, it was torn down in the '90s:

the place today:

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Below Bernie Sanders in Słopnice two years ago, the people there were mightily impressed by his kindness and friendliness. He promised them to do something about the US visa requirements for the Poles when he become the President.

His grandmother ran an inn and a store there, according to 1929 Polish Business Directory her name maybe was Littman:

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There were 51 people of his origin in that village. Słopnice today:


sources: 1, 2, 3.

[Futurist]

it was torn down in the '90s:

Why exactly, though?

[wm]

As the first photo shows, it was a decrepit old house and even more importantly a wooden house - in the '90 and later a sure sign of poverty. In Poland people generally don't live in wooden houses, they carry the stigma of low social status.

Of course it wasn't like that before the war there. It was a land of grinding poverty, wooden houses were everywhere and it was a nice house then, his family was a part of the local elite - one might say local 1 percenters

[Jan-Hendrik]

oops, I'ven been there....about 25 years ago....

Jan-Hendrik

[wm]

There was a wooden annex on the left side of the family house of Bernie Sanders. It was some kind of a pub, they sold mainly hard booze there. It was a popular place:


In the '90 the owner of the house pulled down that wooden annex. He wanted to build a new larger house for his ever-growing family. They stacked up the recovered planks neatly nearby. Then the catastrophic flood of '97 struck. Everything was washed out straight to the Baltic Sea.

Bernie Sander's grandmother died in 1934 from a heart attack and was buried at a nearby cemetery ten kilometers away, in a small town called Limanowa. This is the place:

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About a quarter of the headstones survived the war. The rest was used for paving streets or as benches. Her headstone is still there, under the streets of Limanowa.

The Sanders family was called Schnitzers, because his grandmother remarried or for some other reason, nobody really knows.
When In 1942 the head of the Limanowa Ghetto Judenrat was executed, some Schnitzer from Slopnice took his place. Shortly afterwards he was ordered to prepare a list of Jews for deportation. He obediently carried out the order and delivered the list. There was only one name on it, his own.

It is not known what exactly happened with the Sanders family, at some point of time they were all murdered:

on September 11th, 1939 the Nazi forces shot 12 Jews in Mordarka (12 kilometers from Słopnice). Jewish children were forbidden to attend schools and the majority of families were prohibited to trade.
A transport of 700 Jews from Łódź arrived to town in March, 1940, they were located in the neighboring villages, 400 of them were transported further to Nowy Sącz. The situation worsened in the next months, with the start of mass-executions.
A year later, in the nearby Stara Wieś, 167 people, mostly elders and sick, were shot dead.
Avenging the escape of two men from SS-transport, Baumach, a gendarme, shot twelve young Jewish women dead on the Jewish cemetery in May. 70 more people were shot next to the wall at Kilińskiego Street in July.
A transition Ghetto was created by the Nazis in Limanowa (10 kilometers from Słopnice) in 1942. It was located between Konopnickiej and Targowa streets and today’s Matki Boskiej Bolesnej Street and the Market Square to the boulevards by the Mordarski stream. Jews from Limanowa and neighboring villages were gathered in that ghetto, which was eliminated by the end of September.
Around 200 men were led to the labor camp in Sowlina and used to build roads at the military base there. They were later executed at Działy Tymbarskie. Around 200 older and sick people were transported to Stara Wieś and killed in the very same place the previous execution took place. The remaining 750 or so people were driven on foot to Nowy Sącz and placed in the ghetto created there.
Some of them were later executed in the vicinity of that town, the remaining ones transported to the mass extermination camp in Bełżec.

Bełżec, on of the markers there:

sources: 1, 2.

[ErnstJan79]

Why en when they moved to the USA?

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Only his father (Eli Sanders) emigrated nobody else - in 1921 at the age of 17. Why, I don't know. Bernie Sander's grandmother remarried two times, so it's possible Eli lost his father early, there was no future for him in Słopnice so he emigrated.
One of her husbands was Maurycy Schnützer so the family was probably was called Schnitzers for this reason.
From that region people emigrated all the time seeking a better life, to make some money, or had no other choice because of the poverty.


Waiting for the president:

Limanowa, A Jewish welcoming committee is waiting for the arrival of the President of Poland Ignacy Mościcki in 1929.
Maybe Bernie Sander's family was there, among the crowd.

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Bernie Sanders frequently says that:

A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932. He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including 6 million Jews. So what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important.

Living nearby in Limanowa the Beck family thought the same. One of them - Józef Beck would be the guy shunning Hitler's friendship advances so stubbornly that Hitler got mad and declared the WW2.

Józef Beck's family house in Limanowa today:

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Young Beck:

with Hitler:

sources: 1, 2.

[wm]

To sum up, this is what's known about the Sanders family:
Bernie Sanders' grandmother name was Elta Sznützer (Schnützer), she ran a general store in the village Słopnice. There were four other similar stores in that village.
She was wife of Leon Sander, Maurycy Schnützer and Abraham, and mother of Elias "Eli" Sanders, Chana Sander, Henry Sanders, Abraham Schnützer and Romek.
Elias "Eli" Sanders, the father of Bernie emigrated to the US. He was to only survivor.
According to Bernie Sanders Romek was the leader of all the Jews in Słopnice and because of that he was executed at the very beginning of the occupation. It seems unlikely, the community was tiny and probably he was an unofficial leader anyway.
But It's possible he was the head of the Limanowa Ghetto Judenrat, murdered in 1942 for refusing to help in deportations of the Jews.

Below Elta Sznützer and her shop in the 1929 Polish Business Directory.

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Jewish shops in Limanowa at the beginning of the Nazi occupation:

[Freebird]

As the first photo shows, it was a decrepit old house and even more importantly a wooden house - in the '90 and later a sure sign of poverty. In Poland people generally don't live in wooden houses, they carry the stigma of low social status.

The guy who pulled it down might be kicking himself soon if it turns out that he tore down a "Presidential Birthplace" (or family home).
Tourists would be flocking to visit...

[wm]

That probably was blessing in disguise. The house could have been declared an object of historical significance - this means severe restrictions of the rights of the owner with no compensation, loss of its value, onerous and costly modification requirements, having to deal with hostile bureaucracy.

More Jews of Limanowa. As can be seen they were mostly Hasidim, today derogatorily called ultra-orthodox. The entire province was one of their strongholds.
They had a prophecy there, that they would be safe as long as quails were reappearing after winter.
In 1942 quails were nowhere to be seen.

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helping to build town's sanitation system in the thirties:

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Renia - a Holocaust survivor, smuggled from the Cracov ghetto in a rucksack, she was in hiding in Limanowa and nearby villages, survived the burning to the ground of the village of Gruszowiec by Ukrainians auxiliaries. Her parents returned to Poland from Palestine three years before the war and didn't survive.

sources: 1, 2, 3.

[Futurist]

Unfortunately it now looks like Bernie Sanders will lose the 2016 Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton.