At the Seder we always set an extra glass of wine along with an empty plate and chair for the prophet Elijah. Since he still hadn’t arrived by the time we were finished eating, we cleared the table but moved his cup of wine to the center and left the front door open for him. Some of the wine evaporated overnight, and the next morning, seeing that the level of the wine was lower in the glass, we children believed that Elijah had actually come.
Many years later, to my horror, I learned the real reason for the tradition of opening the door for Elijah, which had started in Europe in the Middle Ages. During the Seder, Jews would leave their front doors wide open so that, without needing to break down the doors, gentiles could easily see that Elijah’s cup on the table was actually filled with wine and not with Christian blood. How can you explain to a child that some gentiles believed Jews would kill Christian children and drink their blood? So parents made up a tale about opening the door for the prophet so he could drink his glass of wine.
In Leviticus, the Torah says, “And Aaron shall place lots upon two goats: one ‘For the Lord,’ and one ‘For Azazel, the fallen angel of the wilderness.’” We are told that in the time when the Temple still stood, on the Day of Atonement, the goat for Azazel would be given all the sins of the Israelites and sent into the desert, never to be seen again.
This was not just a tradition of the Jews. Throughout history, in religious celebrations, people of different faiths would symbolically put all their sins and troubles on a goat and send it into the desert or push it over a cliff. It was called the “scapegoat,” and was a convenient way to get rid of things that frightened and troubled you. For over two thousand years Jews have been used by other cultures as scapegoats, especially once we were exiled from the Land of Israel and dispersed throughout the world. We have been blamed for any and every catastrophe, from the Black Death of the fourteenth century to droughts and pestilence and the economic downturns of the present. Time and time again Jews have been accused of poisoning wells and killing little children. Over and over, Jews were persecuted—beaten, tortured, murdered, and thrown out of their villages and adopted countries. How easy it has always been to blame the Jews—the new goats—for all sorts of problems.
Anti-Semitism is so easy to foment. Humans all fear the Other. Is it because we Jews keep together in our neighborhoods, and often speak our own language? Because we eat different food, because we dress differently, because we work so hard and are so successful? I don’t understand why we are so suspected, so despised, but I know we are.
Now, in the 1920s, many of the Jews in Germany and Poland and Eastern Europe like my family and neighbors are hardworking, successful middle-class merchants and educated professionals in the few careers that are open to Jews, like teaching, engineering, and law. There are still certain restrictions. Becoming a government worker is not an option in many places. Nonetheless we live in civilized times. I had thought the horror stories of the pogroms belonged to history or to the Old Testament. But I start hearing of the virulent anti-Semitism growing in Fascist Germany. I am getting scared.
As Fascism flourishes in Germany, so Communism grows in Russia. Even before the Russians overthrew their czar in 1917, the Communist doctrine promised to eliminate all sense of class in society; they wanted all people to become economically equal. Yet although two of the founders of Communism, Karl Marx (from Prussia) and Leon Trotsky (born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, from Ukraine), were Jews, the Russians, and especially the Ukrainians, ignore that fact, and like the Fascists, are stirring up anti-Semitism, using the Jews as scapegoats.
We know from our history classes that this hatred is not new. In the nineteenth century the Russians and the Ukrainians and the Cossacks and the Poles had used the Jews as scapegoats in the countless bloody pogroms in their countries. Then Jews were blamed for the starvation and misery after World War I. And so nothing has really changed. It is always “Blame the Jews.” The only thing that changes now and then is what we’re being blamed for.
In the face of all this, small groups of young Jews have banded together to try to make the world a better place. The first step, we believe, is to end our two-thousand-year exile and reestablish the Jewish homeland in what is now called Palestine, an area that fell under British rule after World War I. Our Zionist movement is about Jewish culture more than the Jewish religion. It is about having a place where our heritage will not make us scapegoats or targets of discrimination. We want a place where we can live as ordinary people, a nation like every other; not just merchants or bankers or lawyers or intellectuals, but also farmers and doctors and plumbers and thieves. Normal! We are certain that our new Zionist society, based on freedom, equality, and justice, will allow man’s highest nature to flourish. We will be a model to all the nations and anti-Semitism and discrimination will disappear from the earth. How idealistic we are; how fervent in our beliefs. We never doubt that we can change the world!
At the time that I join Hanoar Hatzioni, I read a book about Theodor Herzl, a major figure in modern Jewish history. Herzl was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1860, and was educated in Vienna, Austria. It was there that he first experienced anti-Semitism and started writing articles and plays trying to figure out a solution to that centuries-old problem of hatred of and prejudice toward the Jews. He moved to Paris in 1894 and worked as a journalist. He was appalled by the trial of the French captain Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus had been falsely accused of treason. Everyone knew that Dreyfus had been framed just because he was Jewish. Herzl heard mobs of people screaming “Death to the Jews.” He was particularly shocked because the French took such pride in adhering to the principles of the Enlightenment and rational thought. They even fought their famous French Revolution to create a society based on liberty, equality, and fraternity! Herzl came to believe that only if the Jews had their own country could they prevail in their battle against the evils of anti-Semitism.
In 1896 he wrote a book called The Jewish State. He proposed that Jews raise money to buy back the land of Palestine, their ancestral home, and end their two-thousand-year exile. Herzl said we needed to return to Zion and named his movement Zionism. I am so moved when I read his book that I copy his words into my journal:
We are a people—one people.
We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities in which we live, seeking only to preserve the faith of our fathers. It is not permitted us. In vain are we loyal patriots, sometimes super-loyal; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens; in vain do we strive to enhance the fame of our native lands in the arts and sciences, or her wealth by trade and commerce. In our native lands where we have lived for centuries we are still decried as aliens, often by men whose ancestors had not yet come at a time when Jewish sighs had long been heard in the country. Oppression and persecution cannot exterminate us. No nation on earth has endured such struggles and sufferings as we have. Jew-baiting has merely winnowed out our weaklings; the strong among us defiantly return to their own whenever persecution breaks out … Wherever we remain politically secure for any length of time, we assimilate. I think this is not praiseworthy … Palestine is our unforgettable historic homeland … Let me repeat once more my opening words: The Jews who will it shall achieve their State. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and in our own homes peacefully die. The world will be liberated by our freedom, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.
I am fired up by these ideas and principles with a passion I’ve never felt before, and so I become an ardent Zionist.
The Gymnasium
He who studies cannot follow a commercial life: neither can the merchant devote his time to study.
—Talmud
1927–1934
Graduating from Maria Konopricka at the end of fifth grade in 1927 is the beginning of our future lives. A few students simply find jobs; thos
e of us who want to continue our education can either learn a trade in the Jewish vocational school or enroll in the Jewish Gymnasium for an academic course of study. Poles and Jews have separate Gymnasiums, and we all have to pay tuition, as free public education in Poland ends after fifth grade. So that is what I do. I attend the Stowarzyszenie Zydowskich Szkol Srednich (Jewish Association Middle School) in Piotrków.
Nothing has really changed since my father forgot to register me in first grade. Each month I need to remind my parents to pay my school fees. They are happy and proud to do this but too distracted by all their other responsibilities to remember on their own. The Gymnasium is an excellent school and it is considered an honor and a privilege to attend it. It is very convenient, only a fifteen-minute walk from home.
I love my classes there, even though we attend six days a week (only off on Shabbos), and the work is extremely demanding. We are given hours of homework every night. But it is so stimulating and exciting that I look forward to school every day. We have classes in math, physics, geography, and history, especially the history of Poland. We study Latin, German, and Hebrew, as well as Polish literature and Greek mythology. The girls have to learn home economics, plus we have gym. My favorite course is Latin. The teacher, Pan Wajsinger, is young and handsome. All of us girls are in love with him. (I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night conjugating Latin verbs, realizing that I have been dreaming of him.)
Pan Wajsinger and I have started off on the wrong foot. The first week I was in his class, we were taking our first test. I had written all my answers on a scratch paper and was re-copying them neatly onto the test when the time was up. I was sitting in the first row on the farthest right (because of my ear), so he picked up my test paper first. But I hadn’t finished copying it. I grabbed it out of his hands and he took it back from me. That seemed so unfair and before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Swinswo” (piggish). I thought I would die of embarrassment. Pan Wajsinger didn’t call on me for many weeks, and I suffered. But then he let it go, and I think he enjoyed having me as his student.
In 1931 Pan Wajsinger, an ardent Zionist, decides to emigrate to Israel, and Latin is never the same after that.
Each day of school begins with two hours of Hebrew classes. The first hour we read the Old Testament, and while we study the Holy Scriptures the boys have to put on their yarmulkes to cover their heads. The second hour we learn Sephardic Hebrew, the language spoken in Israel.
Most of the time, Pan Rosenblum makes us just memorize, memorize, memorize, and the minute he asks a question we have to answer it, automatically and without thinking, like machines. We have hours of homework to memorize as well. This makes me very angry, because I know that memorizing is not learning. There is no thought involved. I want to understand new ideas. I really dislike him intensely and can’t bear to look him in the face.
One day he asks me, “Are you a Hasid’s daughter, Gucia? Is that why you won’t look at me?”
Of course he knows who my father is and that we aren’t Orthodox. I know that he likes me and that makes me terribly uncomfortable.
I feel disgusted by his question, look down to the floor, and say a loud, “No!”
Pan Rosenblum asking such a personal question and forcing us to work like slaves at memorization aggravates me so much that I organize a class strike. The next day, just before Hebrew classes start, we deliver a note to the principal explaining our protest and then all leave the school and go to the park for two hours. The day after the strike, Pan Rosenblum doesn’t say a word about it; no one says anything. I don’t think he ever suspected that I was the organizer of the strike. But from then on the memorization is much less.
We know from the minute we enter the Gymnasium that in order to matriculate we will have to pass the very difficult Matura, the final examination needed to go on to the university. Until recent years, students in both the Polish and Jewish Gymnasiums were tested for the Matura by teachers from their own schools, who had taught them what they would need to know in preparation for the test. But now the Polish government no longer officially recognizes the Jewish Gymnasiums and decrees that teachers from a Polish Gymnasium will come to our schools to test us for the Matura. This means we can be tested on anything, whether it’s on our curriculum or not. We all know that the obvious purpose of this policy is to make the test so hard that few of us will pass. It’s their way of keeping us out of the university without having official quotas.
Preparing to pass the tests becomes a real ordeal. It is a two-day exam, both written and oral, and could cover our knowledge of the Polish language and European literature, as well as the Latin and German languages. It will include mathematics and may also include many of the sciences: biology, chemistry, and physics; plus geography, ancient history, and philosophy. Rumor has it that they may also question us about art history or music history.
Even if we do pass, we know that for Jews it is now becoming virtually impossible to study medicine at the university. If we work very hard we can study engineering, law, languages, or education. We do not have the same rights as gentiles and we know there is nothing we can do about it but try to succeed against the odds.
In 1934, thirty students in my graduating class take the Matura. On Monday we have a four-hour written exam. Then Tuesday is the oral exam. As I walk, exhausted, out of the examination room, I see my father standing in the hall, waiting to hear the results.
I can’t believe my eyes. Until this moment I have had no idea how much Tatte really cares about me. I have never felt especially noticed or appreciated by him. I am his child and I know he loves me like he loves all his children but I am nothing special or unique. Now I feel a sudden shock and then a warm glow when I see my papa at the school, and on a business day! Finally, I understand how much he really loves me and that he is very proud of me.
Only seven of the thirty students pass, and I am one of those seven. This is such an important accomplishment that years later I hear it had been reported in a newspaper in Jerusalem!
Fortunately, none of my twenty-three classmates who fail the exam commit suicide. The year before, several students had killed themselves because they hadn’t passed the Matura.
Love
My beloved is clear-skinned and ruddy,
Preeminent among ten thousand.
His head is finest gold,
His locks are curled
And black as a raven …
His mouth is delicious
And all of him is delightful,
Such is my beloved,
Such is my darling,
O maidens of Jerusalem!
—Song of Solomon 5:10–11, 16
1931–1933
From a very young age I have been close friends with Sala Grinzspan and Rozia Nissenson. Rozia is a striking girl, with dark brown eyes and bouncing black curls. I think Sala is quite beautiful. She has thick, curly blond hair and blue eyes. It is because of Sala that I first become aware of Heniek Wajshof.
The first day I entered the Gymnasium in the sixth grade I noticed Heniek. Although he is short, Heniek stands out because he is extremely smart, suave, and funny. He has sparkly bright blue eyes and wavy brown hair and is popular with all the girls, as well as the boys. Even at just twelve, he had a reputation for dating younger girls and then quickly dropping them. And I was immediately warned to be careful of my heart with him.
I don’t really pay too much attention to Heniek until I am fifteen. That fall, Sala develops a crush on Srulek, Heniek’s cousin, and she makes me stay near her at school as she tries to get Srulek’s attention. Because Heniek and his cousin are always together, I see Heniek every day and I start to like him. He is so witty. He always makes me laugh, but I know that he never notices me.
On the day of the first snowfall in early November 1931, I am walking home with Sala and we see Rozia with Heniek. We start throwing snowballs at her, and Heniek throws a snowball directly at me. It hits me very hard in my face and I know that he hates
me. I run home and cry bitter tears of disappointment quietly into my pillow.
Months later, there is a spring dance at school. Heniek asks Rozia if I am going to go. Rozia knows that I feel too shy to go and, to protect me, tells Heniek that I can’t go because I don’t have the right thing to wear.
“Well, Gucia could wear her blue sweater,” he says. “She looks lovely in that.”
When Rozia tells me his words, I am shocked. Not only has he noticed me, but he thinks I am pretty! I am thrilled and immediately imagine myself going to the dance. I would enter the auditorium feeling confident in my blue sweater, my spirits lifted even higher by the music and dancing. Heniek would see me and come over to invite me to dance.
And then I freeze. Because I realize that he would know Rozia had told me about their conversation and there I would be, wearing my blue sweater for him. I am much too proud to make such a blatant declaration of my feelings. Worse yet, what if he understands all of that and doesn’t even ask me to dance? I would be standing there watching him dance with other girls, feeling like a fool. I feel myself blush at the mere thought of it. Maybe if I had planned on going all along it could have turned out to be the most magical evening of my life. I feel sick at the spot I have boxed myself into, but under the circumstances, going to the dance is impossible.
I spend the evening of the dance at home, in a state of turmoil. All night I ricochet between misery and longing over what I am missing, and joy at the secret knowledge that Heniek likes me.
Claiming My Place Page 5
