All of us are looking forward to going to the Great Synagogue for the evening of Yom Kippur, because we will finally get to see the new rabbi, Moshe Chaim Lau. We’ve been waiting for months. Everyone has already heard that he is a very learned scholar and a charming, dynamic speaker. Both he and his wife come from long lines of eminent, legendary rabbis going back centuries; on her side even including Rashi, one of Judaism’s most important scholars and authorities. The Laus are eager to return to Poland and establish their permanent family home in Piotrków.
We have heard, too, of his extraordinary bravery and strength of will. Nine months ago, while still chief rabbi of Prešov, Czechoslovakia, he had begun a fund-raising mission for the Hachmei Lublin Yeshiva, and it was during his stop in Piotrków that he was offered and accepted the post of chief rabbi. This was big news, as the post had been vacant for two years. But because of a terrible accident, we had to wait many more months for our new rabbi: just as Rabbi Lau was re-boarding the train at his next stop in Kraków, it lurched forward. The rabbi went flying out the open door. He landed on his back between the rails of the track, beneath the moving train. To protect his head, he covered it with his right arm, and as the wheels rolled over him, they mangled his right elbow. He was rushed to the hospital, but the doctors weren’t able to save his arm. They had to amputate it just above the crushed elbow.
Now, standing before us in his white High Holiday robes, which hide his missing arm, we see a tall, good-looking, healthy man with a neatly trimmed light brown beard and mustache and rimless glasses. Sitting behind the rabbi, on little stools facing the congregation, are his two darling sons: ten-year-old Naphtali (Tulek) and seven-year-old Shmuel Yitzhak (Milek). Rabbi Lau gives such a beautiful and moving service that I have goose bumps on my arms and tears in my eyes.
After the holidays are over, the Laus move into our old apartment. We learn that both the rabbi and his wife, Rebbitzin Chaya Lau, are originally from Kraków. She is sophisticated and elegant and, like my mama, intelligent and warm, extremely beautiful, and always well dressed.
Two years later, Hela and Jacob have a son, Marek, and Chaya Lau has her third son, Yisrael (Lulek). By that time the rebbitzin and I have become good friends. There is always a commotion in her home, people coming to consult with the rabbi on religious matters or to settle disputes. So to escape the chaos, Rebbitzin Lau comes to us across the hall to visit, bringing the new baby and maid with her. Even though Mama is at the store, the rebbitzin seems to enjoy sitting around the table with my friends and me, content that Hela and the maid are taking good care of the babies. We discuss all sorts of things, politics and philosophy and even a little local gossip. For me she is like a window into the larger world, even into the future. And best of all, she is happy to let me use her balcony to sunbathe.
(Little do I know that it will be Rebbitzin Lau whose advice and love will later help me save my life.)
The University
A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
1937
On the one hand, passing the Matura makes me think the world is mine. I am so exhilarated and actually feel taller, as if a heavy weight has been lifted from my shoulders. It is the culmination of all my efforts toward achieving my goals.
On the other hand, I am so mentally and physically exhausted after the rigorous ordeal of going to school six days a week and then the intense stress of studying and worrying about the Matura, that I spend the next three years doing very little. Perhaps I am lazy, but I really can’t do much of anything at this time, and luckily, I don’t have to. Tatte and Mama say their businesses are good enough that I don’t need to work. Janova helps Mama with all the housecleaning and the cooking. I spend most evenings with Heniek, who is busy during the day working as an apprentice for a lawyer here in Piotrków. He wants to practice law but studying at the university is very expensive, and he hopes to learn enough this way to pass the qualifying exam. I haven’t had so much free time and so few responsibilities since I was a small child.
I do a little tutoring, though this has gotten off to a bad start. My first student is a young Jewish girl. It is frustrating work because she is very slow and spoiled. I wonder if this has to do with the circumstances of her birth. Her mother is the sister of the father’s first wife, who died in childbirth. A year after this second marriage, they had this little girl. I think maybe in their grief her parents overindulged her, and although it is hard to tutor her, I feel sorry for them and am happy to help. I tutor her for a month, but when I ask for my wages, the father refuses to pay me. I am furious but say nothing and leave. I should have expected it. People in town had said he was untrustworthy. Sometime later I learn that this dishonest man has gone bankrupt and has had to leave town in shame.
“Well, see, there is justice in this world, after all,” I say to Heniek, when we hear that news.
And this is also when the Dobranski family asks me to tutor their son. They live in a very small, simple cottage just next to the fence at the back of our property. As poor as they are, I am paid for every single lesson. And I get a cup of good hot tea as well.
So I spend these three wonderful last years of my innocence just taking life easy, reading, going to the movies, and walking with Heniek.
Sometimes I get bored with him and tell him we need time apart. We stop seeing each other and then we both suffer terribly. He writes the most wonderfully romantic and witty letters to me and then we get back together again. I care for him deeply but … this dream of real love … this love that we see in the movies … this love we read of in books, I am never sure if what I feel for Heniek is true love. At first when he held my hand I would get goose bumps all over. But now, after five years together, I feel almost nothing at all.
My mama who married for love, my mama who refused to go to a matchmaker and chose my father on her own, who never criticizes any of us or tells us what to do (though we always know where she stands), has made only one comment about my relationship. She says that if Heniek and I marry, what with me being five feet two inches and him only five feet five, we will have short children. But I ignore her concern. Heniek’s height doesn’t bother me at all, nor does the fact that at eighteen he was already losing his curly brown hair. With his great sense of humor, his suave personality, his wit, charisma, and intelligence, I just look into his bright blue eyes and melt. We are so comfortable together. We never fight or argue. But I do get bored. Maybe that is the problem: the fire has gone out.
When the fall weather makes it uncomfortable for us to walk in the park, we go to the library to read or to Heniek’s house to listen to the radio. It was at Heniek’s, back in 1933, that I first heard the voice and words of Adolf Hitler.
It was January 30, and the president of Germany, Von Hindenburg, had appointed an Austrian Nazi named Adolf Hitler to be the chancellor of Germany. Immediately Hitler started making hateful speeches against the Jews. We could feel his charisma over the radio and Heniek and I knew from the cheering, enthusiastic crowds how hypnotized the Germans were.
On that day, religious Jews all over Poland, like Itka Ber’s father, proclaimed a day of praying and fasting. (A lot of good that did. There are many days to come when we will go without food, and not as an act of religious piety.)
That April we learned that Hitler was calling for the Germans to boycott all Jewish shops and businesses. A lot of gentiles who had usually shopped at Jewish stores in Germany began to stay away. I had always loved the German language, but little by little, hearing Hitler’s voice on the radio, I started to hate and fear it. More and more, the radio told us of new, hateful, anti-Semitic laws in Germany. Jews could no longer work in government jobs like the post office or state or city agencies or teach at the universities. Then, on a beautiful spring day in May of 1933, we were horrified to hear that thousands of books written by Jews and Communists had been piled in the streets of Berlin and burned, with crowds chee
ring and fanning the flames and throwing in more and more books.
Hitler kept screaming that the Germans needed Lebensraum—living space. He said that the superior Aryan race was entitled to more land. Hitler said they would soon take back the German-speaking Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, and after that, Germany would take back Austria as well. As the German national anthem proclaimed, it was “Deutschland über alles”—Germany, above all.
“And what about Poland?” we asked one another, horrified at the possibility.
That hot July we learned that Jews who had immigrated to Germany from Poland and other Eastern European countries had lost their German citizenship; Hitler said that Jews from Eastern Europe could never again be considered German.
In our hearts, in our souls, I guess we all knew from the beginning that there would be a war. We knew that Hitler would come to Poland. But we just couldn’t believe it. Heniek and I decided we must put our fears aside and look forward: we would talk about our dreams for the future. We believed the future was still ours to control.
* * *
I know I want to get a university education, but I can’t make up my mind. I still want to go to Palestine but certainly not to live on a kibbutz. So I apply to the famous Hebrew University on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem, and I am accepted! My mama cries when I receive my acceptance letter. She is very proud of me and buys me a lovely ring with a sparkling ruby, but I know she can’t stand the idea that I will be so far away from her. And I am concerned about how expensive it will be. We have recovered from the Depression and my parents can now afford it; still, I feel guilty asking them to pay the high tuition. My parents never say no to any of their children, but I know it would be selfish of me to go to Mount Scopus.
I am happy for Sala that she was able to move to Israel to study, but not because of why she had to leave. She is still in love with Heniek’s cousin Srulek, but she suffered terribly for that love. Srulek took Sala for granted and flirted openly with other women. She forced herself to end the relationship but sank into a deep depression in her grief. Her family thought distance would help mend her broken heart, so with their encouragement, she moved to Eretz Yisrael and enrolled in the Technion in Haifa.
Since Sala left Piotrków, Srulek has continued to visit with Heniek and other friends and they often gather at my house. But I miss Sala and it is strange to be with Srulek without her; he is in such high spirits, as though nothing is different. (At the time I am unable to guess that what then seemed to Sala like such a tragedy is the great luck that saves her life!)
Eventually I start to grow restless and am ready to get on with my future. To our great disappointment, Heniek fails the examination to qualify as a lawyer. He enrolls to study law at the Józef Piłsudskiego University in Warsaw, so it seems natural to go on with my education and join him there, as well. Around this time, Srulek comes to my apartment on his own and he suggests that I apply to the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He is studying chemistry there and thinks it would be a great experience for me to live in such a lovely city as Kraków. He says that English is going to be very popular and important and I should study it.
I want to test my independence and I think it would be a good idea to try a separation from Heniek. Being apart, I can see if what I feel for Heniek is true love or not. Of course Heniek is not happy about this, he says how much he’ll miss me; but he agrees that if we are meant to be together for the rest of our lives, our bond should be strong enough to endure a year apart.
So, at the age of twenty-one, I decide to apply to the university in Kraków and live away from Heniek and the only home I’ve ever had.
Mama thinks it is a wonderful idea and urges me to go. Now that Jacob has been drafted into the Polish army, Hela will be all alone with her new baby, Marek, and Regina is only eleven, so Mama says she will have enough children to get hugs from. And Kraków is not far away like Israel. I can come home whenever I want.
Kraków is part of Galician Poland, a city of more cultured, educated, higher-class Poles. It has a more Austrian-like standard of living and all our teachers at the Gymnasium were from there. I am delighted when I am accepted.
Fortunately, I find lodging through an ad in the newspaper placed by Itka Moskowitz, a girl I had known slightly from Piotrków. She is already a sophomore at Jagiellonian University and is happy to have a friend from Piotrków to share the room she is renting in a private home in the Jewish quarter. In Kraków, the Jewish boys have a dormitory, as do the gentile girls and boys, but there is no place for the Jewish girls. The Jewish family we live with does not allow us to use the kitchen (I suppose they don’t trust us to be perfectly kosher) so we have to eat out all the time. My family often sends me food packages from home: delicious coffee cakes and pies and cookies and Hela always makes my favorite, her special paté.
In the classes, we Jews know that we have to sit in the back of the classroom and keep to ourselves, but I love going to the university. The classes are so stimulating and I am thrilled to learn English. I love the sound of it and the freedom of the grammar and the wide choice of vocabulary. I have never studied that language before, so it is extremely hard and I am never without my dictionary. But I think, soon I will be able to read Shakespeare, and that keeps me going. My favorite teacher is Professor Dybowski. He is ordinary looking but his intellect and enthusiastic love of English make him attractive.
The years of worry and hard work preparing for the Matura have taught me how to think and write and learn. Now I am able to enjoy my classes without all that pressure and without all those boring hours of Hebrew studies and memorization. I have much more time for myself, and living on my own away from home for the first time, I feel free. So even though my studies are challenging, I find my first year at the university easier than the Gymnasium.
It is exciting to meet other Jewish students from different parts of Poland and to sit for hours drinking glasses of tea and debating ideas and strolling around the main square where musicians play Chopin—the great Polish composer—for the coins people toss into their cups. Soon after I arrive in Kraków, Srulek asks me to go to the movies and I invite Itka to join us. The next time he asks me, he says I shouldn’t bring Itka, so I understand that he is interested in me not just as a friend. I am disgusted. I tell him I don’t feel comfortable leaving Itka out, that it would be rude. He doesn’t ask again. Does he think I would consider him, after he has broken my best friend’s heart? And how could he pursue his own cousin’s girlfriend? I think of what Sala or Heniek would feel if they knew of such a betrayal, and I think that Sala’s heartbreak is nothing to what she would have suffered if she’d stayed with him.
* * *
That year in Kraków without Heniek makes me realize how much I miss him. I decide to transfer to the university in Warsaw for my second year, and Heniek is thrilled. He encourages me and says he can get me some work tutoring to help with the tuition. I apply to the university and am accepted. That September, Heniek and I take the train together from Piotrków to Warsaw, where I become a second-year student at the university. Heniek finds me a room to rent in the home of a religious family on Twarda Street, just next to a synagogue. The family is quite nice to me and they trust me to use their kitchen, but whenever the old grandfather hears me go into the kitchen (his room is next to it) he quickly comes in. He wears an old, torn yarmulke and has an unkempt, greasy beard, and he leers at me. As I am making my tea or coffee, he pinches my bottom. I just hate that so much that I stop going into the kitchen and once again have to eat all my meals out.
I am not as happy as I had been rooming with Itka Moskowitz in Kraków, but at least Heniek and I can see each other, and the classes are marvelous. I study English, of course, as well as the history of philosophy, and Old English. We read Beowulf and Chaucer. The Old English is so much like German that those classes are the easiest.
Compared to my English professor in Kraków, whom I looked up to with such high regard, Professor Tretiak in Warsaw is a very dif
ferent sort. One day, I start to enter his office during student hours, but stop short. Sitting on his lap is a girl from my class who always sits in the front row and wears lots of heavy makeup. Luckily, they don’t see me, and I leave very quietly. After getting over my shock, I realize that here at the university there is much to learn outside the classroom as well as inside it. I had always credited people who were intelligent and educated with high morals. But now I understand that character and intellect are not the same thing.
Because of the increasing difficulty for Jews to pass the Matura, there are not a lot of us attending the university, and there is even more anti-Semitism in Warsaw than in Kraków. The Polish political party called Endecja is represented on the campus. We have seen them in Piotrków, carrying signs that say: MOSZKU IDZ DO PALESTYNY! (KIKES TO PALESTINE!). In fact, Endecja had proposed that the Piotrków City Council make a symbolic gesture of allocating one zloty from the city budget to help in a voluntary mass immigration of the Jews of Piotrków to Palestine. They wanted to show how much they hate Jews and want us all to leave.
In support of the Jews, who are one-third of the population of Piotrków, the council refused Endecja that symbolic zloty. And, since Endecja is made up of such a small group of Poles, we all ignored them.
Claiming My Place Page 7
