The Girl in the Cellar

by Gerda Krebs Seifer

  After weeks of cat and mouse games, hiding and sleeping in different homes so as not to be rounded up as foreigners, Uncle Henryk and his old parents7 were “found” and resettled to Russia. Aunt Helena and Richard chose to stay with us, hiding each night in different places until my aunt obtained false documents.

  One morning, Aunt Helena gathered coupons to go get bread for all of us. By the afternoon, she still hadn’t returned home, and we were terribly worried. When my father returned from work, he went to the nearby police station to inquire about her whereabouts. The police reassured him that she had been taken off to some job and that she’d return the next day, not to worry. But she didn’t return the next day, or the next, or the day after that. It was the last we saw of her. Richard became part of our family.

  One day, my parents asked me if I would be brave enough to go on the streetcar to do an errand for them. It was too far for either of my parents to walk and be back home before curfew. And because I did not look Jewish, my parents felt it would be safe for me to travel on a streetcar in their stead.

  At fourteen years of age, I felt capable of fooling others and that with a little chutzpah and luck, I could do anything. I told my parents I’d be happy to take care of their errand. Traveling on the streetcar, I didn’t wear an armband nor did I take my identification card with me. I behaved as I had before the war. As the streetcar passed a church (and there are many, many churches in Poland) I made the sign of the cross like any good Catholic girl. At the appointed stop, I got off and went to the address my parents had given me. The exact errand is lost in the haze of time, but all went smoothly—no glitches or suspicious glances from the other streetcar passengers. I was quite pleased with my small accomplishment. I got off at my stop feeling satisfied that I could still perform normal, everyday chores and behave as a normal person. As I was walking home, two Schutzpolizei approached me. One said to me in German, “Bist du Jude?” I was frightened but tried my best to appear calm. I replied innocently, “Nie rozumię po niemiecku.” I don’t understand German. But of course, the meaning of his question was crystal clear. He turned to the other policeman and jokingly said, “Huh, she doesn’t understand German.” Then in very broken Polish, he asked me again if I was Jewish. This time there was a cold threat in his tone. I had to do some fast thinking because my answer could mean life or death.

  I answered calmly, “Yes, I’m Jewish.”

  “Why then are you not wearing an armband?” he said, his voice sharper. My legs went numb and my mind raced. I had to remain calm and think quickly to give the proper answers. All through the war, in order to protect our safety and in order to survive, I had to try to stay ahead of my enemies and their intentions.

  “I’m not quite thirteen yet,” I lied.

  He looked me up and down, not quite believing me because I was tall even at fourteen.

  “And where do you live?”

  I had to quickly decide if I should give my real address or make one up. If I made one up and the German decided to go home with me to check my papers, it would spell the end for my parents and me, so I gave him my actual address. He then asked what my father did, and I said he’d had a business that the Russians had taken over. I didn’t mention the fact that it has been the Nazis who’d first emptied the store of all inventory at the beginning of the war.

  I think the police would have escorted me home if they’d thought they could loot valuables, but I was convincing enough that he believed the Russians had taken everything worth taking. He told me he’d come to our house the following day to check my papers. I behaved calmly and normally, as if being questioned by Schutzpolizei was an everyday event. Betraying any nervousness was out of the question. When the Nazis finally let me go, I realized how terribly nervous I had been during the questioning. Though I appeared calm on the outside, my heart seemed to beat in my shoulder.

  When I got home, I told my mother what had happened. Then and there we decided that I should go to the school I’d attended during the Russian occupation to ask one of my former teachers to attest to my age. The document might look more like a birth certificate if it were written on school stationery, especially since the Germans could not read or speak Polish well. As it turned out, the teacher was somewhat reluctant to issue this “certificate,” saying I was thirteen but eventually gave in. Luckily, the police did not return to check the validity of my papers.

  On the outskirts of Lwów near Janowska Street was a sand mountain. Before the war, the sand had been used in construction, but after the Nazi invasion of Poland, sands—piaski— were used for a much better purpose, in this case, the murder of Jews. The Nazis were endlessly resourceful in devising new ways to annihilate Jews.

  People were rounded up every day on any pretext—walking down the street, for example, or standing in line for food rations. They were ordered to climb into open trucks and were driven to Piaski Mountain. Ukrainian militiamen who had welcomed the German occupiers, sat on each of the four corners of the truck, making sure that victims would not try to escape. The passengers had to keep their heads between their knees so they weren’t able to see the direction they were headed. When they arrived at the top of the mountain, they were instructed to get out of the truck, strip naked, and stand at the edge of the ravine, facing the bottom of the mountain. German soldiers would then shoot them in the back and they would roll down the mountain while Ukrainian militiamen covered the bodies with sand to prevent the putrid odor of decomposition. Children were sometimes thrown alive into the ravine, the weight of dead bodies falling on them, suffocating them. The Germans were petrified of infection, especially typhus spread by lice, a disease they believed Jews, in particular, carried.

  Stories of such murders circulated in the ghetto, but we didn’t want to believe them. They were too preposterous to be true, so we thought of them as wild rumors and denied them. Everyone looked for ways to escape. The problem was how and where to go. No country would accept Jews. Stories circulated about “safe” places, but the sources were doubtful and we believed them to be fictitious.

  People who had relatives in foreign countries weren’t able to obtain visas for them, and in America, many officials were ordered to delay or curtail the issuing of such visas. There were some righteous officials in different areas who saved many lives by issuing illegal visas, but we were unaware such miracles were happening. In acts of bravery and desperation, some Jews tried going over the Carpathian Mountains to Hungary and later to Italy, a country believed to be safer for Jews. This was risky, since border guards could stop them at any moment, and passage on mountain roads at night was hazardous at best; leaders had to know the way. Unfortunately, many Poles claiming to be the guides would demand outrageous sums from Jewish families, immediately turning them over to German guards for certain execution. There were the intrepid and fortunate few who did succeed in getting over the mountains into other countries, but most of the stories ended in disaster; thus escaping over the mountains ceased to be an option. The Nazis continued to round up people on the streets, but they came to realize it was not the most efficient method of culling Jews, not for efficient Germans.

  By November of 1941, all Jews in what used to be eastern Poland were ordered to move into ghettos.

  In Lwów, the Nazis ordered Jews to build a high wall that would surround the slums, becoming the Lwów Ghetto. The ghetto was situated in a section of the city that was originally populated by poor Jewish families. Barbed wire and broken glass topped the walls of the ghetto, discouraging escape; armed SS police and their vicious dogs guarded the gates. The ghetto became very crowded with Jews from outlying villages, perhaps more than 100,000.

  By the time my family moved to the ghetto, the only available shelter was a greenhouse where farmers once grew vegetables and flowers in winter. It had a dirt floor with neither electricity nor running water and eighteen families lived there already—we were the nineteenth. The glass roof was cracked and we often had to sleep with umbrellas over our beds. We d
idn’t know any families living in the greenhouse and my mother put up a sheet on the roof for a little privacy. There was a single gas burner to cook our meager meals. Daddy had an Ausweis, a good “identity” card, because he was a “useful” Jew who helped in the war effort by making fabrics for German army uniforms. My mother, cousin Richard, and I did not have IDs because we didn’t have jobs. This was dangerous because the Germans considered us a burden to the Third Reich if we didn’t work and, therefore, candidates for extermination.

  The German administration required Jews to organize a Judenrat, a council of Jewish elders to oversee business, food, sanitation, and other municipal duties within every ghetto in the occupied territories. The Nazis demanded that the council organize a militia of about 500 young Jewish men in Lwów. Almost daily Nazis would demand a certain amount of people for labor detail, which usually meant they were sent to Piaski or to a concentration camp. They also demanded money and jewelry to be brought to the SS Office, and it was up to the militiamen to obtain it. The SS dealt only with the Judenrat, not with individual Jews. If the quota of Jews to be “delivered” to the Nazis was not met, members of the Judenrat and their families were beaten or executed.

  From time to time when I walked outside, the militia would round up Jews to load or unload German trucks. Sometimes I’d be ordered to rid the ghetto streets of dead bodies by loading them onto a cart, hauling them to a section of the ghetto where we’d unload them into mass graves. The corpses included people who had died the previous night, mostly old sick people or starved children whose parents had been deported or murdered. It was a common sight to see emaciated people sitting on the street, leaning against buildings, begging for food. Some people gave bits of food or coins; others had nothing to give.

  Each time I was called to work outside the ghetto, I didn’t know if I’d return to the greenhouse. Most of the time I stayed inside, though there was nothing to do and no books to read. Few friends visited us in our “new home” nor did we visit them. We didn’t want to be seen on the streets of the ghetto. When my father returned from work from “outside,” he’d occasionally have news of the wider world or a small treat of food. Before we moved into the ghetto, the Gestapo had offered my father a job as a Dolmetscher, an interpreter. He was told that if he took the job, he and his family would remain together and safe. But because he knew that such a job meant he’d have to spy on his own people, he declined. He refused to endanger others in order to save himself. One couldn’t trust Nazi promises, and our safety may have lasted only as long as it was convenient for the Gestapo.

  Life in the ghetto was dreadful. Lack of cleaning supplies, food, and medicines caused the spread of typhoid fever, lice, and fleas. Bedbugs were everywhere, thriving in our overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. Every few days, there was another akcja of the sick, elderly, orphans, and people who weren’t working. They were taken for “resettling.” We knew what akcja meant: it was a death warrant. Yet we always kept the dream of hope alive, that those who were resettled really did go somewhere else to work, somewhere better, and perhaps a place where there was more food to eat.

  There came a time during the summer of 1941 when my father felt it would be safer for me to stay in the countryside. He had heard of a farmer who would let me stay at his farm for a price. My father used the excuse that I had problems with my lungs and that country air was better than city air. Actually, there was nothing wrong with my lungs, but Daddy felt I’d be safer away from the ghetto. Accounts of deportations and shootings increased. Desperation and the sense of being trapped worsened with each passing day.

  I didn’t have false papers, identifying me as a Christian. In order to fit in on the farm, I tried to behave as one of the farm hands, wearing my hair in braids, a long skirt and a simple, embroidered blouse like other country girls. I was useful in the kitchen and doing chores around the farm. I shelled peas, peeled and chopped vegetables. There was another young woman staying there, one who I was sure was also Jewish, but she and I never broached the subject of religion. I’d go to church every morning, and she would go with me. I was far more familiar with how to behave in church than she was, but I noticed that she copied my every move. When I knelt, she knelt; when I crossed myself, she crossed herself. She never made a mistake and was a quick study. Our conversation was limited to inconsequential subjects. The days passed without problems, though it was clear that neither of us was a natural at farming. We did not look as if we belonged on the farm.

  One Sunday evening, a few young people gathered in the farmhouse kitchen. I was joking with a young man, when he suddenly looked at me carefully and said, “You know, you look Jewish.” His words were more accusatory than casual, and my blood froze in my veins. Perhaps he was suspicious because I didn’t quite look as if I belonged there, that I didn’t look like the other peasant girls.

  The young man’s remark took me by surprise because a moment earlier, we’d been joking and suddenly he was accusing me of being in a forbidden place and having no right to be there. I quickly replied, “You know, my cousin always tells me I look Jewish when he wants to tease me. That really makes me mad!” The young man appeared taken aback, probably expecting a flat out denial that I was Jewish. I pivoted to another subject, but the conversation evaporated, and the evening came to an end.

  All night I lay awake, worried that despite not admitting to being Jewish, I may have given him reason to think otherwise. He might call the police the next morning to be absolutely sure that I was telling the truth.

  As soon as I could, I phoned Daddy the next morning and told him I had a cold—the code we’d worked out if I sensed danger. He told me to board a train as soon as possible and return to the ghetto. My “safe” place in the country did not last very long.

  All through the war, people had to make such sudden decisions, not knowing whether they were right or wrong. If you were lucky, you were right and stayed alive; if you were wrong, you died. Making any decision, even the smallest, was cause for great anguish. My reply to the young man in the farm kitchen was quick and smart. I don’t know exactly why I answered in such a manner, but I knew that denying his statement would have been the wrong move.

  On an evening in July, my father returned from work to tell us that there was going to be a huge akcja in the ghetto. He arranged a hiding place for me in an Aryan area of Lwów. In Poland, those who hid Jews or even helped them by giving them water or some food were punished by death. Those who were caught would be strung up, cords around their necks, swaying in the breeze on the streets. It was a very effective way to discourage other Poles from helping or hiding Jews. In other countries like France, Denmark, or Hungary, those who aided Jews were jailed, but in Poland they were killed. However, we had known a Polish woman and former neighbor before we moved to the ghetto, who promised to hide me for the duration of the akcja. Of course, my father paid her in advance. All apartment buildings had cellars that were divided into cubicles used for winter storage: vegetables and heating fuels like wood or coal. Each family and each apartment had its own cubicle.

  There was no time for discussion with Daddy. I had to hurry because the Polish woman was waiting for me outside the ghetto walls. I turned to Mamusia, hugged and kissed her, and begged her to hide, too. She promised me she would. One last kiss and I hurried outside into the dark night.

  The woman was where Daddy said she’d be. There was no conversation between us; we just walked quickly to her building. She led me to her cellar, a cubicle six feet by four, gave me a wooden box to sit on, and cautioned me not to make noise. She gave me a candle and matches, saying to use them only in an emergency; the light in my cubicle might filter through the boards into another, making any neighbor who came down to the cellar suspicious. It was quite possible one might suspect that a Jew was being hidden.

  The woman left a jug of water and a chamber pot and said she’d come in the following morning, bringing food. There was precious little I could do in the cellar. Hours stretched out, lasti
ng forever. I didn’t allow myself to think how long I’d have to be cooped up in darkness and cold. Instead, my thoughts centered on my mother, my father, my cousin Richard. How and what were they doing? Had Mother gone into hiding? In the blackness, I had only memories to keep me company. I thought about relatives and where they were now, school friends, vacations, books I’d read, films I’d seen, the wonderful meals my mother used to cook, and the mouthwatering tortes she’d bake for my birthday and holidays. I thought about the high holidays with relatives sitting at our table, eating chicken soup with matzo balls, light as air.

  After a while, I ran out of things to think about, and I grew cold. Though initially frightened, I’d become bored, and my fears lessened a little. Above me, just beneath the ceiling, was a small window with a metal cover used for pouring coal into the cellar before the winter months set in. In daytime, the window let in a sliver of light; I heard people walking above, their steps and their voices. I could distinguish women’s steps from German soldier’s boots. How I longed to see the sun and the sky! My greatest wish was to be able to run barefoot through a field of grass with green blades poking between my toes and the wind blowing gently through my hair. What an innocent and unfulfilled wish it was! Hearing German boots coming closer made me shudder; they could be coming to search the building.

  There were many Poles and Ukrainians, who were constantly looking for Jews. The situation on the “outside” changed all the time and was very dangerous. Yes, there were some Poles who were very helpful and generous in their actions, even willing to sacrifice their own lives. Then there were those who were sorry for our lot but were afraid to help Jews in any way. They simply were afraid that they’d be killed. Had I been in their position, I don’t know how I would have acted. But there was a third group of Poles and Ukrainians checking faces for “Semitic features,” always ready, even eager, to see another Jew murdered. These people did so with such viciousness and satisfaction, often not knowing the person they accused. Sometimes they received a loaf of bread or a bottle of liquor for their “services,” but in most cases they reported Jews out of pure hatred.