by Clara Kramer
Mama couldn’t stand it. Her face was buried in her hands and Zygush was crying. So was I. Her voice filled the bunker with memories of Uchka, who was so alive in her daughter’s mind.
But Mama didn’t come back. We waited days and she still didn’t come for us. Zygush told me not to cry, but I couldn’t stop. I missed her. I was so scared. I heard guns all the time and people screaming and I was afraid it was Mama. I was afraid she’d be shot like everybody else. Then Uncle Dudio came. He said Mama was here and for Zygush to take me. Dudio said there would be lots of friends to watch out for us and not to be scared. Zygush wouldn’t leave the attic until he wrapped all the underwear around him. That made Uncle Dudio laugh. We walked by the big church and heard the singing. Then we came here. But Mama wasn’t here. Clarutchka told me that Mama was with Auntie Rosa and that I’d see her soon. I really want to see my mama.’ I heard her voice catch and I knew her cheeks would be wet when she came downstairs.
The sister-in-law said, ‘A brave girl. I don’t think I’ve ever met such a nice and brave girl.’ I now understood why Beck had brought Zosia upstairs. He wanted the sister-in-law to know exactly whom she would be betraying if she informed on us. He didn’t trust her entirely and had wanted to ignite her conscience before allowing her to live with us. Zosia was the match. He gave Zosia a piece of candy and lifted her down to me. As I helped her back down into the bunker, Zosia said the lady was nice. The memory of her mother was still in her eyes. I could see Uchka there.
The weather had got suddenly warm and with the warmth came the expected invasion of fleas. When there was light, at least we could pick the fleas off each other. The children excelled at this task. Zygush and Zosia would be kept busy for hours, their eyes squinting, almost cross-eyed in concentration. I could tell by the way that Lola and Artek picked the fleas from each other that there was growing affection between them. I didn’t know if I was the only one to have noticed what was happening between them, but I did know that Lola would never allow herself or Artek to be compromised in any way in our tiny society. They had found each other, and I was glad for them. Lola had become a kind of surrogate sister to me. Any happiness she could find made me happy too.
At the beginning of April, bringing down some food Beck informed us that Von Pappen had ordered all the Volksdeutsche to leave. They were needed in Germany to work. He said Beck and Ala were exempted because of their work at the alcohol depot and the post office. But Von Pappen had told him that if they wanted to, they could go. Over the past month, we had heard Beck tell us that almost every family, every friend, every acquaintance the Becks had were on one train or another. But still the Becks stayed. And even though Ala was not leaving on the train, she still went to the station every time to watch it head west. If she went to see it off, I knew how much she wanted to be on it.
The war would end in a matter of months. We knew that. We didn’t know if we would be discovered or liberated first. It was a race to freedom or death. And as the pressure built on the Becks with the news of every Russian advance and German retreat, Ala knew time was running out for her as well. She was free, young, beautiful. While we were trapped, she had no reason except her goodness to keep her in Zolkiew. As Beck went upstairs, I sat with the knowledge that as much as the Becks had our lives in their hands, they had put their lives in ours. I didn’t even know if I could look Ala in the eye now.
The trainmen had gone out and we heard a knock on the trapdoor. When Patrontasch opened the hatch, we were surprised to see that it was Julia. In her hands were two trays. Potatoes of course. And then we recognized the smell of meat. Somewhere she had found a piece of veal and had roasted it. I was starving. I wanted the veal, but I knew I would pay for it worse than I had with the apples last year. Potatoes. Potatoes and bread. It was all my stomach could tolerate. I was tempted by the delicious aroma of roasted meat with the slightly crusted edges, but it would be insanity for any of us to eat it. Eighteen people with diarrhoea–which would inevitably result–in a house full of Nazis and only sporadic times when we could empty the pails.
On the other tray was a small roasted chicken neck, a bowl of salt water, some bitter herbs and a tiny bowl of apple mixed up with crushed walnuts. All the ingredients for a Seder. Where she had found them was a mystery. We had known that it was Passover. Papa kept the calendar with religious commitment. But Julia had remembered for us too, and for that we were grateful.
The other tray held food. Now there was a plateful on my lap but I could hardly eat it, even though I knew I needed to. Every day I thought of my sister. Every time I looked at Zygush and Zosia, I thought of Uchka. But on this holiday, their spirits were more present and palpable than I could bear. It was like one of those dreams that felt so real. It was alluring and terrifying all at once. Yet I craved the presence of their ghosts, despite the cost in grief.
We ate our meal and didn’t even explain to the children the meaning of the bitter herbs and the Haroseth and the other things on the Seder plate.
The next morning, we woke up to the roar of airplanes and the ground shaking from explosions. The Russians were bombing Lvov. I had no idea that the explosions could be powerful enough to shake the ground where we lay. Almost immediately the electricity went out. They must have hit the electric works. We should have been elated, but like everything else, this victory had a double edge. They were bombing Lvov, but we would be in the dark and without food.
Beck returned home from an Easter visit to the sister-in-law shortly after the bombing ended and came into the bunker to show us a rifle he had got for protection. This was the second rifle he had acquired. I knew it wouldn’t guarantee our safety, but I hoped it would give Beck the confidence to stay with us. I was wrong. He looked over at Klara and said, ‘I’ve been thinking it over. I can’t take it. Those Ukrainians are bastards. I’ve got to join the partisans before they kill every Polack left in Zolkiew. I’d be a coward if I didn’t. I can’t even look myself in the mirror. But don’t worry, Julia’s sister Maria will take care of you.’ I knew Maria couldn’t cope with a tenth of what the Becks did for us. I was sure she would disappear at the first sign of trouble. I no longer felt like a real person. I was a reflection of Beck. If he was depressed, I was depressed. If he was confident, I was confident. If he wanted to kill the Ukrainians, so did I. If Beck had hope, I had hope. If he had none, I was also hopeless. I felt if I looked in the mirror I would see his reflection looking back at me.
The next time the trainmen left the house, Papa, Mr Melman and Mr Patrontasch crawled into the far bunker where the Steckels were living. They had finally decided to ask Mr Steckel for money. Beck had run out of zloty. There was nothing left to sell in the black market and nobody left to buy it. A loaf of bread was so expensive not even Steckel could afford it. I couldn’t understand why, when we were starving, the men didn’t just take the money from Mr Steckel. I couldn’t imagine anyone not sharing their money. I knew Mr Steckel was paying the Becks ‘rent’, as we had when we had the money. Even Beck, who deserved it for risking his life for the Steckels, didn’t ask him for a zloty more. They were all too bababatish, too ‘fine’ for their own good.
If it was up to me, I would take their money in about two minutes. At the point of Beck’s gun if I had to. Each of the three families had small children who were starving. But still the men hadn’t asked before now.
Papa came back a few minutes later. At first Mr Steckel had outright refused, but finally he had given them a shiny gold English pound sterling. It might have been a rock or a lump of coal. To try and use this gold coin to buy anything would send every policeman, Blue Coat and Gestapo agent left in Zolkiew to this house. Any meal bought with the coin would have been the last supper. But the men looked at it like an answered prayer. When Beck came down and they showed it to him, he refused to buy anything with it. Nobody would touch it. Before the war and up to a few months ago, a pound sterling would have fetched much more in zloty than its value. But now, fear had overcome even greed. Pap
a told Beck not to worry about trying to sell it. That as long as he stayed with us, we could endure the hunger. Beck didn’t say a word. We didn’t know what to think of it. How could a useless one-pound sterling piece keep the Becks with us? I feared the Becks leaving even more than I feared the Nazis. As long as they were here, we still had a chance. He finally took the pound sterling from Papa’s hand and said he would try to find someone he could trust to exchange it for zloty.
On the eve of 18 April, the day Mania had been murdered, I went to sleep knowing what we would be facing the next day. It was hot at night now and the fleas were relentless, but I had still managed to find some sleep every night. But that night there was very little sleep. I knew Mama and Papa were lying in silence, awake, next to me. The next morning, we said yahrzeit, the mourner’s prayer, and as we lit one of the few candles we had for her memory, I wondered if perhaps my beloved sister wasn’t the lucky one. Her suffering had been shorter than ours. But I also knew that Mania would have fought for every second of her life. I owed it to her to survive. To fight for every second as she would. That to give in now would desecrate her memory. I would live for both of us.
There was another knock on the door. I heard four soldiers informing Beck he had new tenants. They walked through the house, from one room to another, pausing before moving on. They stopped in the room right above the hatch. One was standing on the hatch itself and said, ‘This room will do.’ If the soldiers took this room, we might as well use the can of petrol. But Julia in her sweet and honest voice asked, ‘Please, sirs, if my husband and I could keep this room, we would be very grateful.’ There was a moment of silence and then a kind voice, that I would come to know as Norbert, said, ‘We don’t want to put you out. Stick us anywhere. We’ll be fine. And don’t worry. We’ll stay out of your hair. We’ll be gone most of the day.’ That’s what they all said before they got used to the comforts and Beck’s radio and card games that went on despite the fact that the card table was resting on quicksand and bullets were whistling past their ears.
Chapter 14
WE ARE JUST STARTING TO SUFFER
23 April to May 1944
Tuesday, 9 May. You could think that a person who looks into the eyes of death as many times as we do would get used to it. But it’s the opposite with us. The more we are in danger of dying, the more we are frightened. One wants to live no matter what and no matter how. Every day we look death in the eyes and every day has its own history. If at least we had a verdict, a time, how long we will suffer. We are sitting here and we don’t even know if it’s for nothing.
Beck moved the soldiers into the room next to theirs, and Ala moved in with her parents. The soldiers would be sleeping right above the bunker where Lola, Gedalo, Kuba, Artek and the Steckels slept. Unlike the trainmen, whose names I hadn’t discovered in the two months they’d been with us, within minutes I learned that the soldiers were Norbert, Dieter, Richard and Hans. With six Germans living above us, water, food, the pails would all be impossible. If the soldiers were here, the trainmen would be gone, and vice versa. It was like one of those theatrical farces where characters run in and out of doors, barely missing each other in a ridiculous chase, except the comedy going on above our head had lethal consequences.
As soon as Norbert’s duffel landed on the floor, he fiddled with the radio until he’d found a station that played popular music and light opera. He started singing right away and suddenly reverberating through the floorboards was a clear and vibrant tenor. Most people when they sang to themselves, especially when others were around, were at least a little inhibited, even if they adored their own voices. But Norbert was singing to the audience in the balcony. He knew, it seemed, every song on the radio. My life couldn’t have felt any stranger to me at that moment. I didn’t know who Norbert was, what he looked like, where he came from, or whether he would turn out to be one of those Germans who’d regale the Becks with his proficiency in killing Jews. All I knew of him was that he had a voice that people would have paid money to hear and I had been moved by music in a way that had not happened since Mania sang at her concert three springs ago. I didn’t want to love his voice. I didn’t want to be moved by a man who had perhaps murdered Jews, but I was helpless. ‘You’re Mine Tonight’, ‘My Song Goes Round The World’, You Are My Heart’s Delight’, ‘Today I Feel So Happy’ were popular German cabaret songs innocuous enough to survive the censors. I had heard them on the radio before the war and while we were in the bunker. Listening to the radio through the floorboards was one of our only respites and when there was music on, it was a diversion, fleeting as it might have been. But when Norbert sang, I had a box seat at a concert. I listened to Schubert’s ‘The Miller’s Daughter’ in both fear and rapture.
You have wept, too,
Your dear eyes are so wet,
A tear fell out of the window,
A rose grew there in the grass.
We all did. The song was about death and lost love and I fought the emotion it was bringing up in me. How dare a German have such a beautiful voice when his finger was on the trigger of a gun and there was a Jew in his sights.
Mama was so upset by the arrival of so many soldiers upstairs, she fainted. Yet neither I nor Papa dared move to help her because we were afraid of being heard, despite the noise upstairs. Life in the bunker had trained me to resist almost every natural impulse I had, so I watched the rise and fall of her chest as if she were in a pleasant sleep, and hoped she would come out of her faint without making any noise at all.
The second after all of them had gone out, Beck came down and said that God was sending an army to watch over us and keep suspicion far from our door. I didn’t know how much longer I could believe in Beck’s luck. I tried to see in the dim light if he believed his own words or was just encouraging us. But I couldn’t see his eyes, and then there was a knock on the door, and Beck ran back up. The groaning trapdoor closing was covered by the sound of Beck’s feet rushing to get the door. The hotel was full. I didn’t see how they could fit anyone else. But it wasn’t another guest. It was a Nazi policeman.
He was telling Beck to come with him to the chief of police. Immediately. Beck hadn’t been ordered to the police station for months and months and this policeman was a stranger. Beck went away whistling, but we didn’t believe it. One onerous reason after another swept through the bunker. He had been reported for hiding Jews; for dealing with the partisans; for selling English pounds on the black market; for stealing vodka, and any of the other treasonable sins. Otherwise we would have heard laughter, gossip, an easy-going greeting and the reason Beck had been called. I prayed for Beck the way I prayed for Uchka, for Mania, for Zygush and Zosia. I prayed for him in the way I prayed for my dearest loved ones.
Waiting for Beck and our fate in darkness would have been too frightening to bear. Since the initial bombing of Lvov last week, we never knew if we’d have electricity or not. I didn’t know if Beck would come back unharmed, or the police would break down the door and kill us. Ever since Beck had been taken away, we had all been so on edge that I feared we were going insane. Mr Patrontasch was calculating seconds, minutes, hours and days in his book again. Gedalo was writing madly, but wouldn’t show it to anyone. Lola had her hand to her mouth, suppressing her laughter. The more everyone looked at her, begging with their eyes for her to stop, the harder it was. She turned her face to the wall until she calmed down. It had to be hysteria because there was nothing funny going on this morning. The Steckels fingered the cyanide capsules around their necks as they always did when we were threatened. Zosia grabbed a pillow and put it over her own face and started to cry silently. And there was Mama in the dirt. At least we had light this morning.
When we were alone in the house again, I asked Lola to tell us why she had been laughing so hard.
‘I was looking around the bunker and saw that everybody’s hair had turned white or grey and so I didn’t feel so bad about my hair.’
She was right. I hadn’t noticed bef
ore. Mama, Papa, the Melmans, Artek, Gedalo, the Patrontasches all had grey hair now. Only the children and I had any colour at all. Some of us looked at Lola like she had snapped. But I understood. No one could control the crazy things that went in and out of our minds down here. Yet unless we were able to exert self-discipline and control our fears and our suspicions, the society we had built in the bunker would disintegrate. Lola’s laughter was the kettle singing. It was a warning that her emotions were boiling over inside her. I knew how she felt. At times I thought I couldn’t stand it one minute longer. If there were guests upstairs, I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs and bang my fists against the ceiling, just wanting it to be over. Beck had told us stories of Jews running to the wire in the camps and the ghettos. That might have been my fate if I was not in the bunker.
Beck must have run into the soldiers because he came back into the house with them. He was whistling ‘All’s Well…’ At least we knew Beck was all right and we were not dead yet. I knew we’d have to wait until the soldiers and the trainmen next went out before we found out the reason Beck was called by the police chief.
When he was finally able to come down, he told us that they wanted him to stand guard at the train station in addition to his regular job. He was still a trusted Volksdeutscher, and a vital part of the local German war machine. He was given a new gun, and he said he would give one of his guns to us as soon as he had the chance. I didn’t know if there was a man in our bunker who had actually fired a weapon. But Beck was relieved and so were we. He also told us that the soldiers promised him they wouldn’t be a bother to the Becks because they would be spending most of their time at their jobs, which were preparing the German motor pool for retreat. As soon as I had heard what they’d be doing, I knew they’d be here until the bitter end. The arrival of these soldiers caused so many changes for us that I felt despite all the suffering of the past 17 months, in so many new ways our suffering had just begun.
