Clara's War

by Clara Kramer

  We were fortunate that one of the reminders of our past was the Melmans’ flush toilet. Plenty of envious jokes had made the rounds of the kitchens and back steps that the Melmans had given themselves Tam Genadyn… a taste of the Garden of Eden when they had it installed. Over the card games at the social club Mrs Melman was said to be the instigator. But however it had come about, we no longer cared. We were just grateful that Julia wasn’t running to an outhouse in the yard with bucket after bucket of refuse, which would certainly have alerted the neighbourhood to our presence. While the Russians fought the Nazis in the mud and snow, inching towards Lvov, and the Allies were working their way up the Italian peninsula, our war became the emptying of our refuse. No spy operations were ever conducted with more military precision. However, when the trainmen didn’t move from the house for days, we suffered. It was torture to hold in our bladders and bowels for hours and hours at a time. The children were allowed to go in the dirt and we buried it.

  One day the trainmen had gone off to the movies and, as soon as it was safe, Beck knocked on the hatch so Patrontasch could run upstairs and empty the buckets. We were all waiting for Mr Patrontasch to come down with the empty buckets, when there would be a rush to use them again, children first. But something was wrong. Mr Patrontasch wasn’t coming back. He’d been gone for half an hour, not the minutes we always counted until he was back with clean buckets. Then I saw his head in the hatch. ‘There’s something in the toilet. The farshtinkener thing is stuck. It won’t go down. I stuck my hand down up to the elbow and it wouldn’t budge!’

  It was Mr Melman’s toilet and, expert or not, he went up to help Mr Patrontasch. While the two were trying to figure out how to fix the toilet, Julia carried two heavy buckets out to the backyard. I knew she carried out plenty of night buckets in her time and I’m sure she didn’t care about having to carry out our refuse as much as I did. It was one more way in which Julia had to take care of us. When she handed the buckets back down to us, her cheeks were flushed and her hands were raw from the cold. She had run out without a coat, but she still had a smile for us.

  Mr Patrontasch and Mr Melman came down a few minutes later with unhappy faces. They concluded that the septic tank was full. Twenty-odd people using it over the past year had to be the cause. There would now be no other choice but for the Becks to empty our refuse into the outhouse. Julia told us not to worry. But with the trainmen living upstairs and the constant comings and goings of Beck’s friends and Ala’s boyfriend Adolph, who had just returned from leave, the buckets might be the death of us. If they weren’t emptied, the odour would filter upstairs. Julia could smell when the buckets were full and came to collect them as soon as she could. But if she was seen by the trainmen, by the police or Blue Coats or any of the Poles who were making a living at the cost of Jewish lives, we were dead.

  We had just got the buckets emptied and the trapdoor closed when there was a knock on the door. I thought it was the trainmen back from the movies. I knew I would hear them talking about the film with Beck, Julia and Ala and I was looking forward to the conversation. It was the closest I might ever get to a cinema. But I didn’t hear their voices and their familiar heavy footsteps. I heard another voice, speaking a frantic, guttural and forceful German. I couldn’t make out the words. I panicked. This was the search we had all been dreading. I started praying to the God who brought us Zygush and Zosia, not to the God who allowed all the Jews in Zolkiew to be murdered. I held the children’s hands. I was looking up at the ceiling of the bunker as if it was heaven itself and God was going to tell me if I was going to live or die. No matter how many times I thought I was facing death, the terror never lessened. It only got worse, because I knew our luck couldn’t go on day after day after day until the end of the war with so many forces conspiring against it. I counted six sets of boots and heard Beck telling them they would have to sleep with the trainmen. I heard them bring in their things. I knew they were soldiers. They left after a few minutes and Beck knocked on the trapdoor.

  This was a face I had never seen on Beck before. These six men weren’t soldiers. He told us: ‘They’re SS and I don’t know how long they’ll be here. They told me their car broke down and they have to wait for parts.’ As much as I tried to turn my will to steel with which to face each new terror, I knew this was the end. Beck looked like he knew it as well. Not one of us said a word. We would have to accept the arrival of the SS inches above our heads as just one more of life’s horrible mortal ironies. There was nothing for us to do. Not one solitary thing to help ourselves survive except carry on as we had been living while we waited to die.

  But Beck had more to say. Five peasants had been murdered in the forest where all of Zolkiew’s Jews were shot and buried a year ago. One peasant survived, and he said that Jews had been the killers. Misters Hecht, Hochner, Klein and Fern. I knew that the Fern family had escaped to Russia. As much as I feared the repercussions, I wished this were true. I wished for any Jew to be alive. It didn’t matter to me how many collaborators they killed, if it was they who did the killing. The deaths of the men they killed wouldn’t avenge what had been done to us, not even in the smallest way.

  Beck also told us there was more panic about the Russian advance and that Jewish partisans had been fighting with the Russians when they took Dubno, which was only a few hundred kilometres away near Brody. He said anyone who had given a German a glass of water was terrified of the Russians. Papa again assured Beck that we would never let anything happen to him or his family if and when we were liberated. But Beck knew that Papa’s words were only a sentiment, a hope. If the Russians wanted to shoot the Becks, no matter how we begged and pleaded for their lives, they would shoot them, and then move on to the next Volksdeutsche and collaborators they could get their hands on.

  Papa and the men talked with Beck about the logistics of the new regime upstairs. He gave us a third bucket, which meant that the buckets would only have to be emptied once a day. The problem was how and when to empty the buckets. I knew that if the SS saw Julia emptying a bucket, they would know Jews were hidden in the house. Melman had to try again to fix the toilet upstairs. Beck would keep watch for the trainmen and the SS.

  I had prayed for so many things. For our lives. For Uchka. For Mama when she was taking care of Uchka. For Zygush and Zosia. And for my beloved sister. And now I was asking God to fix our toilet. While Melman was upstairs working, Julia came back with 200 grams of lard and bread. Mama had given her some of our bedding to sell since the weather had become a little warmer. Lard! Fat! I didn’t know where she got it, but she had such a smile on her face as she handed it down to us. Even with the SS about to come back over our heads, all I could think of was fat. Mama started cutting up potatoes to boil. We were going to have mashed potatoes! While the potatoes were boiling, Mr Melman came down with good news. He had fixed the toilet! It had been clogged. His wife actually kissed him. It was the first kiss I had seen in months. I then turned my attention to the lard, which I slathered on the bread and mashed potatoes. Zygush and Zosia couldn’t get it down fast enough. It was better than any feast for any holiday I had had in my life.

  While we ate, the men quickly decided that someone would always be on ‘guard duty’ in the part of the bunker that was under the bathroom. If someone upstairs was in there, they could almost hear us exhale below. The guard would alert the rest of us to be quiet. The person standing guard at night over the snorers also had to stand guard under the bathroom. I volunteered. During the evening, as we enjoyed our mashed potatoes, I thought I had lost all reason. I had begun to think having the SS over our heads was turning out to be a good thing. With the three Becks, the two trainmen, the six SS and Ala’s boyfriend Adolph, there would be such a commotion that no one could possibly hear us. And while Julia was out buying us lard, Beck had found us a trove of books in the trash somewhere. He was always on the lookout for presents for us. Lola, Artek and I were the big readers. We couldn’t finish them fast enough. We gave each other b
ooks the way people give each other colds. Maybe God did work in strange ways. I felt like I was more relaxed than I had been in months with my potatoes and my book.

  But then I noticed the straw bedding and realized we’d soon have new guests. Millions of them. Unless we changed the straw before the weather was warmer, all the dormant flea eggs would hatch. On the other hand, I hoped we’d live long enough to be tormented by the fleas, and their comrades, the bed bugs.

  It was a strange and lonely feeling to be sitting up in the dark, trying to stay awake. I’d listen to the breathing of everyone in the bunker. Kuba Patrontasch was the worst snorer. Every time I had guard duty, I’d have to wake him up. I didn’t know how he got any sleep at all. But of all the sleepers, I liked to listen to Zygush and Zosia the most. In the dark the quiet, small, quick breath of the children was somehow reassuring. With Uchka dead and Mama drifting into God knows where from time to time, I felt like their mother, and it was with a mother’s ears that I listened to them sleep. I liked guard duty. I liked watching over the sleeping children. Any small thing that helped us survive made me stronger, no matter how it exhausted me.

  Poor Zosia. She made more noise sleeping than she did when she was awake. After the episode with the pillow, she was frightened of saying even one word. Of even whispering. She was most terrified of the noise she made when she went to the bathroom. She would put her tiny hands between her legs and hold herself rather than make that noise into the bucket. I now asked every night before she went to bed, ‘Do you have to go?’ She’d move her face next to my ear and whisper, ‘Maybe.’ And then I’d say, ‘Why don’t you try? Why don’t we go together?’ Then I’d take her hand and we’d crawl together to the area we jokingly referred to as the ‘park’, where we had the pails. I would go first so she would know it was okay.

  The entire house was quiet now except for the Becks. I could hear the trainmen and the SS snoring. I could even hear them breathing. It was a miracle that no one had heard us down here in all these months. Beck was whispering to Julia: ‘There are no more Jews left in Germany. Adolph told me. He said the Nazis are planning to send all the Volksdeutsche back to Germany to work…whether we like it or not.’ I couldn’t hear what Julia said in response. Then there was silence. If the Nazis sent the Becks back, we were dead.

  When Mama and Papa got up in the morning, I had to tell them. Mama took a deep breath and fainted. I got a damp cloth to revive her with. When her eyes opened she always looked so startled, as if she were surprised to have come to in this bunker. And then she would look ashamed, as if the woman who fainted was not Mama but an annoying relative who came to stay a night in our house and never left. When the SS and the trainmen went out that day, Beck didn’t relate any of his conversation with Julia about the repatriation of the Volksdeutsche. But he said he had a disturbing conversation with Adolph, who was now convinced that our SS guests were deserters. The idea that SS marauders and murderers were sleeping in the room next to his wife and child terrified him. I had never seen Beck as frightened as we were. I hated that I was powerless to help him in any of the ways he had helped us. He begged the men to watch out for Ala and Julia if the SS tried anything when he was at work. The men said that they would, of course. They’d already promised to keep an eye on Ala and Julia when Beck and the trainmen were out. But what could they possibly do now that the SS were there, except die with Ala and Julia? Beck somehow seemed reassured and told us he was going to get a rifle from the partisans for us. We knew he had some connections with the partisans. He never told us what they were or what his involvement was. But I had a suspicion they were significant. He had access to so much information that would be useful.

  Almost as an afterthought, he gave us some good news. The Russians were only 25 kilometres from Zbaraz, which was in Galicia. Our Galicia. Patrontasch took out his map, where he marked each Russian advance, and each of us was granted a look to lift our spirits. It was on the map so it had to be real.

  Zbaraz was less than 150 kilometres from Zolkiew. I loved Zbaraz. My favourite Sienkiewicz book, With Fire and Sword, was set there and its castle was one of the most famous in Galicia. Sienkiewicz had written the book to inspire the Polish people after our failed January uprising against the Tsar in 1863. To this day, it was a rallying cry for all Poles to fight for their liberty. I had been inspired by the book and it had made me so proud to be a Polish girl. But I wasn’t thrilled now because of any literary nostalgia. Zbaraz was on the road to Tarnopol, which was only 125 kilometres from Lvov. Mr Patrontasch pointed to a semicircle he had drawn round Lvov on the map and said that when the Russians were 35 kilometres away we would be able to hear the music of their artillery.

  I wanted to examine the map more closely, but the SS were just arriving home and Beck slipped back upstairs. We celebrated in silence, each of us now with more hope than we’d had in months. As long as I was one breath short of starving to death when we were liberated, I knew I wouldn’t care. I knew each of us was thinking the same thing at the same moment. Tarnopol!

  The SS didn’t slaughter anyone in their sleep and stayed with us for six days. On the seventh, they left, just after the Russians had taken Tarnopol. The part arrived for their car and after goodbyes to the Becks, they were gone.

  The SS might have gone, but the trainmen seemed to be growing roots in their beds. There hadn’t been any work for them for days and days. They hardly ever went out now and kept to themselves. The only time Mr Patrontasch could empty the buckets was when they were asleep. Julia would wait up, as late as humanly possible, until long after she was sure the trainmen were asleep. Or if, as they did last night, they stayed up almost all night drinking, she’d get up early when she knew the trainmen would still be asleep.

  We all had been up early, waiting for her. No one could sleep because of stomach cramps. I heard her slippered feet on the floor above us, although she had learned to walk with barely a sound. There was her quiet tap on the hatch…Patrontasch opened it with the care of a surgeon. Poor Julia had to lie down on the floor to talk to us because it was painful to kneel and almost impossible for her to crawl in because of her arthritis. Her voice was a frightened whisper: ‘They’re all asleep.’ I watched Julia as she struggled to her feet and Patrontasch slipped upstairs in his socks, which had been darned and redarned by Lola and looked like a patchwork quilt. Melman had one of the buckets in his hand, ready to hand it up. Patrontasch took it.

  Melman was watching Patrontasch wait for the signal. Julia had walked to her bedroom door and opened it. She looked out and then nodded back at Patrontasch. He walked quickly out of the bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom. We heard a flush and then a moment later he walked quickly into the bedroom and gave me the empty bucket and took the other full bucket from Melman. Julia, watching at the door, gestured for him with the crook of an arthritic finger. He slipped into the hall and, after the flush, walked back into the bedroom. In his haste and relief he forgot to close the bedroom door after him.

  The flushing apparently reminded one of the still drunk trainmen that he had to use the bathroom as well. He walked past the bedroom on his way to the bathroom. He stared right at Patrontasch, who was standing with a bucket in his hand right next to the hatch, which was protected from view by the bed. The trainman looked at Patrontasch with curiosity then continued down to the bathroom. Why he just continued past without inquiring about the stranger, I didn’t know.

  Patrontasch jumped quickly down into the bunker and closed the hatch. He turned to us all. ‘One of the trainmen, he saw me.’ The children were asleep, but the rest of us were united by a bolt of electricity that ran through us all. This is how our world would end. After all the close calls and dumb luck and the deaths and the sorrow and the suffering and the hunger: our lives would now be forfeit by our own refuse.

  Upstairs it was happening already. It seemed dozens of feet were scurrying back and forth above us, scouring every inch of the house. All around the bunker families were embracing, yet
careful not to disturb the sleeping children. Artek grabbed Lola. Even Steckel grabbed his wife’s hand. My poor father held my mama as we heard above us, like it was all happening in our own minds, the trainman screaming and pointing to the spot where Patrontasch had been standing. ‘I swear I saw him! Right in the bedroom!’

  My father was mouthing words in the darkness lit by a single candle over and over until I could hear the words in their silence. ‘Just say it was a visitor. Just say it was a visitor. A visitor. A visitor…’

  Julia said, ‘A thief–it must have been a thief.’ A thief! Why did she say a thief? I knew that the trainman would run to the police station and they would be tearing the house apart in a matter of minutes. I could hear Julia’s feet running over to the closet.