The Girl in the Cellar

by Gerda Krebs Seifer

  I didn’t do very well in shorthand or typing, because I had trouble understanding the instructions of my teachers, but I kept struggling and plugging along.

  One day, my little Russian Jewish teacher asked if I had any friends my own age. I said no because I couldn’t yet converse with English girls. She asked me if I’d liked to meet a Polish girl who had had similar experiences during the war as I had. I enthusiastically accepted her suggestion. The teacher invited both of us to tea the following Sunday and I looked forward to the meeting. Rose and I struck up a friendship almost at once, one that would last a long time, I was sure.

  Rose was living with relatives, and like me, trying to learn English. She asked me how much longer I was going to perform domestic duties. “Didn’t you do enough menial tasks during the war?” The answer was yes, but now it was different because I was paid for my services, and I was going to night school. She planned to go into nursing, but I told her, “Nursing is not for me.” She told me that she had already been admitted at Leeds General Infirmary for nurses’ training in a few weeks.

  We spent a wonderful couple of hours speaking in Polish together, while our Russian hostess kept pouring more and more tea for us. As we were leaving, Rose looked up at me and said, “Of course, nursing is a very difficult course of study.” That remark did it! As I rode home on the bus, I kept mulling over the implications of her offhanded remark. Nursing isn’t too hard for Rose, but it would be too hard for me?

  The next day, I traveled to Leeds General Infirmary, where Rose was registered for the nurses’ training, to inquire at the nursing office about enrolling for the same course. They said they were very sorry, but the admissions were closed and I’d have to wait six more months for the beginning of the next course. As I was walking out of the hospital, I decided six months was too long a wait. I boarded another bus and rode to St. James’ Hospital at the opposite end of the city. I didn’t call for an appointment, nor did I ask if they needed more student nurses. I simply walked in to the matron’s office and was greeted by an elegant lady.

  “How might I help you, my dear?” she asked in her very British accent, inviting me to have a seat. I told her I wanted to enroll in nurses’ training. Matron picked a letter from her desk and asked me to read it.

  “Do you understand what you’ve read?” she asked. And when I said I had understood, she informed me that I’d been accepted into the next nurses’ training class. The whole visit took fewer than ten minutes and I was going to start my training at St. James at the same time Rose would begin her training at LGI. The matron told me that the first three months all of the new student nurses had to go through pre-training. We’d work on wards, learn how to make hospital beds, tuck the sheets with hospital corners, rub patients’ backs to prevent bedsores, bathe patients, change their nightgowns, feed helpless patients, give bedpans, and many other nursing chores. Then we would take an entrance exam consisting of some basic nursing, some English, and math. You couldn’t fail the entrance exam. If you did, you were out. During the next three years, there would be other exams, which if you failed, you could take again and again, but the entrance exam you had to pass the first time.

  I gave notice to the family I worked for and moved into the nurses’ residence in spring 1947. The residence was like a college dorm and for the first time in my life, I lived with young women my own age and felt that I finally fit in. I loved the social life and having my own room. I was able to take as many showers as I pleased, given that hot water flowed at all times in the nurses’ quarters. I made friends with several of my classmates. And when nurses’ training began in earnest, I knew that Rose and my aunt had been right—nursing was the right decision for me to make. Whenever I had free time, I visited my aunt and on occasion, the Benns and Rose.

  After pre-training, during which we learned how to actually care for sick patients, I took the entrance exam. I passed with flying colors, even helping friends in arithmetic, division and multiplication of fractions. Here were young women, recently graduated from high school, who couldn’t solve simple problems, but I remembered math very well from my own school days in Poland. We all passed our entrance exam. Now began the real work: three years of nurses’ training.

  I worked hard, studied hard, and enjoyed every moment of training. I am proud to say that I never failed a single exam, though nursing wasn’t easy. We worked twelve-hour shifts at night, and eight-hour shifts during the day. Lectures occurred in the morning, but after long nights and little sleep, we’d sometimes fall asleep, listening to the lecturer.

  The nurse in charge was called “Sister,” but the title had nothing to do with nuns. Some of the sisters on the ward were very strict; others were easier to get along with. I became friendly with several nurses, despite my accent and pronunciations. We studied together, went to the movies and dancing together, occasionally vacationed together. We had discussions on many subjects, but they never asked me about my life in Poland or anything about my parents or family, nor did I offer any information about what had happened to them. I don’t think they knew I was Jewish.

  A new friend, Joyce, encouraged me to start smoking, which she said would help me to stay awake on long night shifts. It took some getting used to and made me sick a few times, but soon enough I was hooked. At first, friends supplied cigarettes, but later they told me I’d have to buy my own. We were always short of cash.

  The first year student nurses were paid one pound ten schillings per month. (One pound equaled twenty shillings and one schilling equaled twelve pence. One pence corresponded more or less to one cent.) Part of the money had to be spent on black stockings, which we had to wear with our uniforms, and any other expenses, including sweets, vacations, entertainment, and cigarettes. Food, shoes, and clothing were still rationed at that time, but apart from having coupons for clothing or shoes, we still had to pay for these items. The uniforms, food, and lodging were provided by the hospital. Luckily, nurses were allowed to see some movies for free, and we took advantage of that privilege. Sometimes my girlfriends and I would go to a dance, popular on the weekends in every city. We’d dress up as well as we could on a budget and we’d go out in hopes of meeting nice young men. We had a pact that if we liked a particular young man who wanted to accompany us home to the hospital, we’d let each other know. However, if we didn’t like our partner, we’d say that we’d promised to go back to the hospital with our girlfriends.

  The second year we were paid two pounds, ten shillings per month, but that pay was still very small, leaving little room for luxuries. If one wanted to buy a radio, one had to pay a monthly subscription fee. (There were no commercials then on radio, which was why owners had to pay money each month.) I was the only nurse who’d saved enough money from my time working as a domestic to buy one and to afford the monthly fee. My room was jammed in the afternoons with other nurses who liked to listen to soap operas.

  We were always hungry coming home from a movie or a dance in the evenings. On the way home, we’d stop at the fish and chips shop. It cost six pence (a half shilling) to buy fish and chips, wrapped in newspaper, sprinkled with salt and vinegar. Nothing tasted as good as that piece of fresh fish with its crunchy batter and chips. A tuppence (two cents), would buy chips only, not enough to fill an empty stomach, but on some evenings, it was all we had. Sometimes, we had no money left and we’d sneak into the hospital kitchen to scrounge for leftovers from the previous meal we’d missed.

  We had to study a lot for the upcoming exams. Work on the wards was continuous and demanding with beds to be made, patients to be changed and bathed, medicines to be given, wounds to be dressed, and many other duties. All the nurses complained about conditions, including long hours—sixty hours per week—and very low pay after graduation. When on night duty in the hospital, we had to slice and butter bread for forty patients for breakfast, cook eggs and porridge, and brew tea. Then we had to serve breakfast, help patients on bed rest to wash themselves, make beds and give medicines, all from 6:
00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. We also had to write a report and give a report to the day shift. We learned a lot and worked hard. I have fond memories of my training and the lasting friendships I formed with several nurses, including Rose, who graduated from LGI at the same time as I graduated from St. James Hospital. In England, every nursing school started at the same time, all the exams were given at the same time, and all the graduations were at the same time. We graduated in 1949.

  Graduation from St. James Nursing School, 1949

  (Gerda bottom row, second from left)

  * * *

  9 Katowice is not far from Oświęcim, the site of the concentration camp, Auschwitz.

  10 Mrs. Masłowska had hoped to marry my uncle for companionship in her late years, but the marriage never happened. Uncle Henryk left Poland for Palestine and Mrs. Masłowska emigrated to Israel several years later.

  11 Our friendship continued until Anita passed away two years ago.

  Leaving England

  My cousin, Zygmunt Schwarzer, miraculously survived the war. During an akcja, Zygmunt’s parents and his sweetheart, Renia Spiegel,12 hid in the attic of my Uncle Samuel Goliger’s building at Moniuszki 10. Because my uncle was part of the Judenrat, he was allowed to live outside the ghetto in his old apartment. The Nazis didn’t “find” their hiding place; it was probably hateful neighbors who reported them to the police. Mobile killing squads made up of SS special forces, Einsatzgruppen, took all three out into the street and shot them. In his own words, Zygmunt wrote “Three shots. Three lives lost! It happened last night at 10:30 p.m. Fate has decided to take my dearest ones away from me.” Later on, he was loaded on a train bound for Auschwitz and later, Bergen-Belsen, the first camp liberated by the Americans.

  Like many young survivors, he married shortly after liberation. His wife, Genia (Jean), was a Polish Jew whom he’d met in Feldafing, a Jewish displaced persons (DP) camp in Germany. Zygmunt studied medicine in Stuttgart. After completing his studies, he and his wife immigrated to the United States, settling in Brooklyn. He had to take additional training in New York to obtain an American medical license and to practice pediatrics. After finding each other at the war’s end, we stayed in touch.

  As much as I liked living in England, I had always had a secret wish to live in America, the kind of dream I didn’t think I’d ever realize, like living on the moon. Because Zygmunt was himself a refugee, he was unable to apply for a visa for me. However, he managed to get one from a doctor he worked with at the hospital, a man willing to vouch for me and say he’d support me, so that I wouldn’t be a burden on the United States government. Zygmunt had told his colleague that by the time I arrived in America, I’d be a registered nurse and self-sufficient. I never planned to ask him for any kind of support. Vouching for me, a total stranger, was more than generous, and I was deeply appreciative of his gesture.

  During the war, getting such a document meant saving a person’s life. Many European Jews wrote to American relatives during the war, begging them for that precious piece of paper, one that would save their lives, but sadly, many people believed their families were exaggerating the situation in Europe about the plight of the Jews; they also worried that if their relatives were to come to America, they’d be obligated to support them. And so they remained silent. Only after the war did they find out that there had been no exaggeration and with the smallest help, they might have saved a life.

  After becoming a state registered nurse (SRN) at St. James Hospital, I moved to London in the spring of 1950 to get to know the city better and to be close to the American Embassy.

  America.

  America was a word that always carried a certain mystique for me, even when I was a small child. America, the land of milk and honey, where the streets were paved with gold! America, a land of wonder and beauty, a land of skyscrapers, a land so far away and impossible to attain, that all I could do was dream about it. People in Poland talked about America as the ultimate bliss, more fairytale than real.

  What I knew about America was that it was a powerful country, a free country that I’d seen in Shirley Temple films while I lived in Przemyśl. While in nurses’ training, I corresponded with a woman in New York City who had known my parents. She worked for a television studio and had sent me a parcel from New York that contained, among other gifts, a pair of nylons. I was the envy of all the nurses in the hospital, as nylon manufacturing was so new. That pair lasted a whole year without snagging or developing runs. Making such durable merchandise was bad business, and the manufacturers must have caught on to that idea. By the time I arrived in America, I was unable to find such nylons again. The kind of stockings I had to buy would last a day or two before developing runs, and I had to run out to buy a new pair.

  Aunt Eveline had not been happy about my decision to move to London and certainly not to the United States. She wanted me to stay close to her, but I yearned to see the world. She’d argued that life both in London and in America was very expensive and that I’d fare better by staying in Leeds. Though I agreed with her about the higher cost of living, I also knew that nurses earned much higher salaries in the States than in England. The feelings I had leaving Poznań returned; I felt a bit guilty leaving Leeds and the Mantels,13 but I made the decision to go to London.

  I got a job at West Middlesex Hospital in London as a staff nurse. The nurses’ quarters were situated on vast grounds sloping down to the Thames. The property had belonged to Lord Warkworth in the 19th century. Constructed of wood, the house had a wide, carved staircase leading upstairs to a floor that had been converted into small bedrooms for nurses.

  The ground floor had a large living room, dining room, and several sitting rooms, each equipped with a fireplace. The kitchen and maids’ quarters were on the lower level. We ate breakfast and evening meals in the dining room with its intricately carved walls and doors. Immaculately kept lawns and the large garden kept groundskeepers and gardeners fully occupied. Sometimes, when I was off duty during the day and it didn’t rain, I’d spend time in the garden, sitting on the bench reading a book; other times I’d walk down to the river to watch university students training for crew, rhythmically rowing sculls. As a home for nurses, it was quite luxurious and the grounds were spectacular. It took me a few minutes to reach the hospital by bus, and the bus service was very frequent.

  My friends, Joyce Shackleton and June Lammas, moved to London at the same time as I did; they planned to train as midwives. We met often, visiting museums or going to the movies. London celebrated its first postwar Festival of Britain, which we frequented often since the exhibits were free and we were always short of cash.

  Before I moved to London, I’d corresponded with the American Embassy by mail, but responses were slow in coming. A relatively small quota of Polish citizens was permitted entry into the U.S., yet many Poles wanted to leave Poland, given the difficult postwar living conditions under Communist rule. Because of quota status, it was hard to determine how long one had to wait for their number to come up. Every few weeks I went to the Embassy to check on how long it would take for me to receive my papers.

  The Embassy office occupied a huge circular room with a round table in the center. Clerks sat at individual windows around the room, ready to answer questions. One day I approached a clerk, asking again about my quota status and the departure date. The clerk was neither interested nor well informed, saying she had no definitive answer. Disappointed, I left the window. As I approached the circular table, I noticed a young man having trouble reading the questions on a form. I found out that he was Polish and had little knowledge of the English language. I offered to help by asking him questions in Polish and answering them in English on the form. As we worked together, the clerk taking care of his case approached our table and asked how he was coming along with his form. I explained that I was helping him because we both spoke Polish. She then asked me why I was at the Embassy. I answered her that I too wanted to go to America and was wondering when my quota number would come up. I
didn’t tell her that I’d already talked to another clerk. She asked to see my papers, examined my passport, and said, “Since you haven’t lived in England for a full five years, you can still apply for a visa as a Displaced Person rather than as a Polish citizen. If you’d lived here more than five years, you wouldn’t be considered a DP any longer, but the DP quota is much larger than the Polish quota, so your chances of going will be far better.” She then said that I’d hear from the Embassy soon.

  Six weeks later, my visa came in the mail along with a notification that I was scheduled to leave England within a couple of weeks. I never saw the Polish man who’d struggled to fill out his application nor do I remember his name, but my stopping to help him was a lucky coincidence.

  The Hebrew Immigration Aid Society (HIAS) paid for my passage to America by ocean liner. How HIAS found out that I had no money for the fare is a mystery, but I received the ticket to leave London the first week of July 1951 and enclosed was a fifty-dollar bill to get me started in America.

  There wasn’t much packing to do since I had few possessions, but I was told that I had to wear an evening gown for formal dinners on the ship, when passengers were invited to the Captain’s table. Never in my wildest dreams did I anticipate such excitement. I said goodbye to my cousins Ludwik and Gideon Gottlieb. June and Joyce, my friends from St. James, met me for a farewell dinner and promised to stay in touch. I sailed on the S. S. Washington, sharing a cabin with a young Irish woman, recently divorced, who was headed to America to start a new life. We became friends. I also enjoyed the company of a young Israeli man, but we never saw each other after arriving in New York.

  The sailing was pleasant, the ocean as smooth as glass, the days sunny and warm, but I wasn’t feeling entirely well. I sat at a table with an American family of Irish descent, who were returning home after their first visit to Ireland. The husband, a high-ranking deputy, and his teenage son were both tall, strapping men who ordered steak at the first dinner. Simply hearing their selection made me queasy; I rose from my seat, quietly excused myself, and promptly left the table.