“We weren’t rich, but we had everything we needed and life was going on. We built a new house, with a new bakery, in 1938. We moved into it and we didn’t live in it too long because the war broke out in 1939.”
Sigmund Jucker’s family had owned a bakery in the small town of Chrzanów, Poland for about 200 years. Jucker himself began working in the bakery when he was about ten years old. He remembered getting in fights in school with other students who picked on Hasidic Jewish children. Sigmund was 17 when the Germany army invaded Poland in September 1939. All the flour from the bakery was confiscated and Sigmund and his brother hid under the roof of a building to avoid capture by the Nazis. Jucker fled to Russia, where he worked in bakeries in exchange for a place to sleep and meager rations of food. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Sigmund returned home to find the rest of his family was living in the confined Jewish area of the city. He was arrested and transported to multiple camps over the next four years, all of which he managed to survive. Jucker was liberated by the Soviet army on May 8, 1945. In 1949, Jucker and his brothers immigrated to the United States. Settling in Houston, they opened the Three Brothers Bakery in 1949.
Parents:
Morris Jucker, d. Auschwitz
Bertha Siegel Jucker, d. Auschwitz
Siblings:
Jeannie Rudy, survived
Sol Jucker, survived
Max Jucker, survived