{Zupa} is a source of constant entertainment, joy and today education

Yes education! I’ll tell you why I don’t eat Prince Polo wafers

and replaced them with other bars

I’m a gourmand, I like chocolate wafers, but I put Prince Polo away

Why? You’ are just about to find out

I am not calling for a boycott of this factory here, but personally knowing the history of this factory

Full of suffering, blood and injustice, I say NO!

To better understand the history of the factory, let’s go to 1918, when Poland regained its independence

The city where history is developing is Cieszyn, which is located in the south of Upper Silesia

It is a small, beautifully situated, charming town

Cieszyn, which from 1742 was within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is inhabited by

Poles, Czechs, Germans and Jews. Each of these nations tries to find themselves in a new reality

People live in harmony with each other and are optimistic about the future

And that’s when the owner of the tenement house at 42 Głęboka Street in Cieszyn, Hermina Schramek, starts selling roasted by her coffee

How was Tip Top Brothers Schramek factory established?

Hermina certainly contributed to the establishment of this factory

With this house in such a strategic point of the town and a store in it, she could sell her products

And there were the beginnings of the factory that today produces Prince Polo, you might say

So Hermina Schramek, the owner of this tenement house, had two sons, Wilhelm and Bruno

And it is them who opened the Tip Top Brothers Schramek factory

Let’s be honest, they had no idea about baking chocolate products

They employed 10 women and 2 bakers to produce their products

and it is with the help of these people that they managed to make high-quality cakes, wafers and biscuits

They were selling like hot cakes, well…maybe like hot waffles..

They bought a plot of land at Liburna 15 in Cieszyn and built a larger factory

It is here that the legendary Prince Polo wafer is produced to this day

But what was the real reason for the tremendous commercial success of Tip Top Bracia Schramek?

This factory thirived because the Schrameks had a flair for business

They were the first in independent Poland to set up a network of distributors throughout Poland

It was good quality, good price, good marketing and it was a success

How much chocolate was produced in the factory before the war?

This factory produced approximately 45,000 kilos of wafers per day

It was one of the largest factories in Poland, please remember

Can you describe life of the Schrameks before The War?

The Schrameks did not speak Polish, the Schrameks had to learn Polish

Therefore, they hired a nanny who spoke Polish, so that Hans and Wilhelm could learn Polish

At school they had problems because they made fun of them because they didn’t know certain owls

Hans remembers being ridiculed when he tried to learn Polish at school

When he was in first grade, the teacher told a story about a pigeon in Polish

Hans was just starting to learn the language, so he didn’t understand the word

When he asked about its meaning, the teacher thought he had no respect for her and was trying to be funny.

She instructed him in front of the entire class

There was a Jewish temple in Cieszyn, which was later burned down by the Germans

and never rebuilt

What do Schrameks think about anti-Semitism in Poland?

According to the Schramks, there was no anti-Semitism in Cieszyn

It was only before the war that students from eastern Poland made some such demonstrations about Jews

in 1932 one of the brothers, Brunon, died in an operation to remove stones from the gallbladder

He orphaned his son Hans, who stayed in Cieszyn with his mother Camilla, who was a pianist from Brno.

Before his death, he managed to break his wife’s heart, leaving her for… Attention, for a spinster, limp accountant

The second brother, Wilhelm, sensing the coming danger packed his belongings and left for Lviv

What has happen after The War broke out?

It didn’t take long for the Gestapo to knock on the Schramek’s door

Hitler declared war on Poland on September 1, 1939, at 5 a.m.

at 9 am Cieszyn was renamed Teschen and incorporated into the German Reich

After the Gestapo’s visit, Hitler’s SS special service threw Kamila and Hans onto the street

Hans was then 19 years old. The Germans took over all their property and brought the mother and son to the temporary ghetto in Sosnowiec

Thousands of people lived in several blocks in the ghetto

Almost everything was missing. Hans and Kamila were new, so they were always the last ones in line for food rations or any privileges

Fortunately, they had some money aside and a few gold coins

After a few months, transports to Auschwitz began

Hans and Kamila were assigned to the 3rd transport

They took them at night, they were only told to take everything they had and hurry up

German SS troops loaded them on trucks that took them to the railway station, where the cattle wagons were waiting for them

They weretransferred to the wagons by force and were carefully guarded

They traveled by train to a previously unknown to them place, it was called Auschwitz

The journey from Sosnowiec to Auschwitz would normally take about 3 hours

However, it took them all day and the conditions were terrible.There was no air, food or water. People died in the wagons

Then they were told: Now you will go to the shower room and you will be deloused!

Hans and Kamila were separated already during the selection on the railway ramp

Fortunately, Oświęcim in 1939 was not an extermination camp yet, but a forced labor camp

At the same time in Cieszyn at the special order of the President General, Field Marshal Herman Goring

On November 1, 1939, the East Trust Bureau takes over the factory

In 1943 the right to pre-emption was given to the new Nazi Juliusz Pietschman

It was a German whom the Schramks hired before the war because he had experience in another factory in the Czech Republic with a similar profile

and they hired him for their production, he was sort of a manager

He was often invited to the Schramek family meetings, he was a friend of the family

The Germans made Pietchman as factory director and continued to produce only for the Reich

During the war, the Germans sold the factory to Pietchman, for some peanuts, but sold it

An announcement about the takeover of the factory by Pietschmann was published in a local German newspaper

At the same time, the legitimate owner of the Tip Top factory, the Schramek brothers, are forced to work hard in Auschwitz

Hans Schramek, the son of the founder of the factory, thanks to the people who knew him, as the author Lynn Schramek tells …

My father-in-law, Brad’s father, and grandmother were both transported to Auschwitz

Fortunately, in Auschwitz, someone there knew them from the factory

And they didn’t have the authority to release them but they did have the authority to transfer them to a camp they could survive

As Lynn Schramek, author of the book “They stole our chocolate factory”, tells

[Hans] is transported to the forced labor camp in Ebensee, Austria

A few months after Hans left, the Nazis [in Auschwitz] were building gas chambers

and from a concentration camp, Oświęcim becomes an extermination camp

After the war, it turns out that Walter Von P was behind the transfer to the new camp, with whom Hans used to sit in the same bench in primary school.

In Ebensee he works in metal factories and gets better food than in Auschwitz

Despite this, he develops a typhoid fever called typhus

He goes to the hospital where he is treated by a doctor from Bielsko Biała

He knows the Schramek family and helps the boy to get better by striking a deal with the capo from Hans’s block

Thanks to which Hans stayed in the block for 2 weeks while other prisoners went to work

He was liberated by the Allies in Ebensee

And after the war he goes to Vienna where he looks for his mother Camilla

and he does manage to meet his mother and they plan the future together

They return to Cieszyn, they want to regain the factory and their property

Depressing news awaits them in Cieszyn

After the Nazi regime, another one, this time Stalin’s one takes root

The Bolsheviks introduce Stalin’s hard-handed socialism and nationalize Polish industry

Factories in selected sectors fall victim to the act on the takeover of the basic branches of the national economy to the state (January 3, 1946)

The iron curtain is falling

At that time, the Schrameks, as US citizens, had no chance of negotiating the regain of the factory

Hans dies, leaving Brad as the only son

In 1989, Brad managed to bring a lawsuit against the Polish state

which he lost

Poland believes that the Act of 1946 is still valid

and did not pay Schrameks not even a penny

Why has the Polish State not officially apologized to these people so far?

Since 1989, Polish governments have changed in democratic elections

However, none of them wants to deal with the issue of the repatriation of Jewish property

or the act nationalizing the factory

Perhaps we, contemporary Poles, should get acquainted with this still living history?

For now, opinions are divided, as are the opinions of the audience who took part in the premiere of the book “They stole our chocolate factory”

How can the Polish government give back a factory that currently belongs to the company Kraft?

The factory that is already bought by the Kraft concern cannot be returned

The Schrameks received nothing, no payment for this factory. They were not covered by any compensation program

but the factory is already sold

But you cannot sell a property that does not belong to you!

If we are talking about possible compensations etc …

The Polish State first sold the factory to Olza company, then Olza sold it to Kraft, and then to Kraft Mondalez

and now, we do not know who is supposed to pay it back

I think we should remember such stories

Because we do not even realize how much our Polish culture is saturated with Jewish culture

We lived in symbiosis, fifty-fifty, I’d say for several hundred years

In the east of Poland, there were cities that were dominated by the Jewish population

It’s hard to just cut off this piece of history and forget it

Our culture, music and food are steeped in Jewry

Whether we like it or not

maybe I will play something for you?

If I were a rich man ….