The Germans come to our building again. They take all of Hela’s trousseau, all her beautiful laces and linens. They empty all the jewelry from the jewelry box on her dresser, including the gold locket with the only photo of Jacob that she has. Mama’s diamond ring is still safe in the hem of her coat and the candlesticks are at the bottom of the dirty laundry in a basket on the kitchen floor.
Mama and Tatte have never stayed home before. They’ve always worked so hard and had so many goals and challenges and successes. Now they walk from room to room of our apartment like ghosts. At least Mama can sew and clean and cook a little. There is Marek to play with and Regina to hug. The rebbitzin and Lulek come to visit. Lulek and Marek go off and play in the backyard. We cannot permit them to go to the street; it’s too dangerous. But even in the backyard, they’re terrified of the Nazis’ dogs. We assure them that the animals can’t get over the wall and that the backyard is safe, but they are both having nightmares about those vicious flesh-eating beasts. And my poor tatte, once so capable and easygoing and respected, is now like an empty shell. His armchair gone, he looks shrunken, sitting on a hard dining room chair, staring at the wall. And it has been barely two months since the Nazis started turning our world upside down.
Little by little, day by day, hour by hour, we feel the evil. It’s as if we’ve been engulfed by a huge dark thundercloud and will never, ever see a blue sky or sunshine again. Each day there is a new proclamation posted on the buildings, a new order shouted at us from the streets with loudspeakers and bullhorns. Now I need to cover my ears and not understand the horrible sounds of a language I once loved. Each day a new demand. Jews must come and register all their gold. Jews must come and register all their furs. Jews must register all their diamonds and rubies and emeralds. Our possessions and properties and occupations, our lives reduced to inventories and lists. Each day, the Nazis chip away at us, and we become more and more numb as the days go by.
How much can we be ripped apart like this, day after day? It’s not just our things we’re being robbed of, but even our memories of who we are. We have become sad, floating creatures trying to make it through each nightmarish day. Eating, sleeping, trying to stay alive with no real sense of our past or our future. I do not recognize my home. It’s like looking in the mirror and seeing a stranger. I am finding it harder and harder to remember what it felt like to be a happy, secure human being with rights and pride and a future. I wonder how long I can live this way without becoming the inferior creature they want me to be.
The Nazis have ratcheted up the violence. Until now, they have stolen our possessions and taken the occasional random life just for sport. But now they are using the lists the Community Council gave them to round up all the professionals, like teachers and lawyers. Some have tried to escape to Russia. But there is no warning, no time to plan. The Nazis come in the middle of the night and just drag people from their beds, in their pajamas with no shoes, no identification papers, and no time to kiss their wives or children or their mezuzot on the doorposts, leaving them no time to say a final goodbye. Some are taken out and shot, and others just disappear. Not one of them has come back.
NOVEMBER 23, 1939
For us, the days go on and on in their monotony. There are too many people in our house and too little food. And now there is no salt. There is no coffee. There is no sugar. We have no more meat. There is nothing to do except clean and wash. Every day I stand in lines trying to buy stale, coarse dark bread and old potatoes tinged with green, with fat white eyes that look as if maggots are trying to crawl out. The few times I can find a cabbage or carrots I feel a brief flash of delight. Sometimes I am even able to find an onion.
And today the Nazis proclaim that all Jews must wear an armband. We are forced to buy white cloth to make the band and then, with blue thread, to embroider a Jewish star.
We must wear this band on our right arm whenever we are in public and if we do not have this by December 1, we will be killed. The monotony is now broken by our industrious sewing for everyone in our family.
The winter is very cold. We have to use the wood of our back fence to stoke the oven. Not having the protection of our fence allows some people to come in during the night and take down our precious wooden gazebo for firewood. Then they come and dismantle the stable. It’s hard to feel anger at them. At least we have our own home, crowded as it is, and we have such a magnificent large yellow-tiled floor-to-ceiling oven in the kitchen that we can all stay relatively warm.
The constant fear and strain has made us all like zombies. Now Sprintza rarely speaks and Mendel is too hollow to care. Hela has not heard from Jacob for six months and there is a rumor that he was captured by the Russians and is in a Polish prisoner-of-war camp. Even Marek and Lulek play more quietly and sadly now. Without the fence protecting the backyard, they are too afraid of the vicious German dogs to go outside. The days go on and on, endlessly, and every moment we are hungry.
Labor Camps
ARBEIT MACHT FREI (Work sets you free)
—Sign on the entrance gate to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp
1940
Early one morning in October we are startled awake by a loud knock on our door. It’s Szymon Warszawski, deputy president of the Judenrat. He stands there with another man. He tells us that my brothers Josek and Idek are each to bring a small suitcase and report to the Nazi headquarters immediately. They are young and strong and are now to go to Lublin to help build a defense line for the Germans in case the Russians try to take over that part of Poland.
Our blood runs cold. Lublin is a six-hour train ride away. We panic that we may never see them again. Because I can speak German, Mama tells me to go to the headquarters. I must explain that we cannot be without the help of my brothers. And, if they must go to work, at least let them go somewhere close so that they can come home for the nights.
For the first time in over a year I put on a nice blue dress and comb my hair carefully. I put a little Coty powder on my face, a little lipstick on my lips, pinch my cheeks, put on that hated armband, and go to Nazi headquarters. After sitting in an outer office for thirty minutes, trying to pretend I am somewhere else, I am brought by a secretary to the SS man’s office. I speak in my best German to the Nazi in charge. I say that my brothers cannot go to work. They are needed at home. The commander compliments me on my fine German and my elegant appearance, especially for a Jew. Then he smiles at me and politely says, “Either your brothers can come alive or they can come dead, but they will come.”
It takes all my will to remain calm, because inside I am in a rage. I know there is nothing I can say or do. But at that moment in my heart I rebel. I swear to myself that I will never again submit to their will.
And so, that afternoon, with bitter tears, we hug and kiss Josek and Idek. We say a final farewell. We are all sure that this will be the last time we see our dear boys. They quietly take their small suitcases and they are gone.
Each day we hope for some word but nothing comes. And then after one week, a miracle: they return! They do not want to talk about their experiences, and truthfully, we do not want to hear.
A few days later, Rebbitzin Lau comes to us very disturbed. It has been exactly one year since the ghetto was formed and we have so many desperate people forced in from the outskirts of Piotrków and Kalisz and Łódź crowded in these small apartments. There is such need and, from the beginning, the rebbitzin has been helping to feed and take care of people at the orphanage and at the soup kitchen. This October day, she comes to tell us that a typhus epidemic has broken out in the ghetto. We have always feared that, of course: too many people living too close together, not enough fresh food, and not enough water or soap to keep ourselves or our clothes clean. Those lice can live anywhere.They are so tiny and so hard to see. Once they bite you, you get that wretched disease in your blood, and once it is in the home, everyone is in danger.
The Judenrat sets up a sanitary service to keep apartments clean and to empty the containe
rs from the people who have no toilets. Josek, Idek, and even Beniek volunteer to do that horrible work. Our relatives from Kalisz and Łódź, especially Hinda, are busy washing, washing, washing all our clothes and we carefully inspect each other’s seams and hair for lice whenever we come in from the streets.
The typhus epidemic is all we talk about now. Rumors are that over one thousand people have died from it, thousands more have been horribly sick. Every day we see mourners following pine coffins, and little children walking in the streets with shaved heads, to keep the lice from crawling on them. So far none of us in our apartment building has been touched by the typhus. We just boil and wash and check the seams and bathe and boil and wash and check the seams and bathe again.
Heniek
Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books;
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.
—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
MAY 1941
The ghetto is so gray and colorless that it feels impossible spring will ever come. Idek has just given me a letter from Heniek.
He begins by proclaiming his deep love for me and his wish not to cause me any worry, but says that he and Josek left by train last night to smuggle themselves into Russia. Heniek writes that we all know life will only get worse here in the ghetto. Rumors of deportations and concentration camps and extermination are everywhere, and he and Josek feel they must see if there is a possibility for all of us to escape to a better life in Russia. I show the letter to Mama and she cries. I feel sick and frightened. We are so worried and pray they will be safe.
We hear nothing for three weeks and then, a knock on the door and there they are! Triumphant! What a difference from when Josek was at the door returning from the labor camp in Lublin. This Josek is smiling and laughing and talking about their adventures.
Heniek hugs me and asks me to go for a walk. As I clutch his warm hand, he tells me that it was easy for them to get across the border from Poland to Russia. They just got off the train at the stop before the new Soviet border and walked across to the little town of Kovel. There were no soldiers there at all. Heniek believes that if we go to Russia and then move farther east, far from the border, we will be safe from the Germans and the war. He begs me to go with him. I am in shock. I tell him that I need to think about it, and he seems bewildered.
“Gucia, what possible good can come from staying here? We have loved each other for ten years and shared so many dreams for the future. What do you need to think about?”
But going to Russia with Heniek means getting married, and I just don’t feel ready to make this commitment. Of course I love Heniek, just as I love my family. But shouldn’t being in love feel absolutely certain, almost like there’s no choice? Is what we feel for each other really true love? And I don’t know. I want to be sure. Am I numb and empty because of the war or is there a part of me numb and empty because I don’t really love Heniek?
For a painful week we argue and discuss this major decision.
I finally have to say, “No!”
I cannot tell him the truth. I cannot say, “No, I am not ready to marry you. I am not sure I love you.” I lie and say I am too afraid to take the risk, and that I cannot leave my family at a time like this. I urge Heniek to go, to save himself.
But he says he could never go without me. We hug each other and part. After that conversation, it’s no longer the same between us. Slowly, we stop seeing each other. And this time, he doesn’t write to me and try to win me back.
Hendla Libeskind Gomolinska
Love thy wife as thyself; honor her more than thyself.
He who lives unmarried, lives without joy.
If thy wife is small, bend down to her and whisper in her ear.
He who sees his wife die, has, as it were, been present
At the destruction of the sanctuary itself.
—Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, also known as Reish Lakish (c. 200 CE–c. 275 CE)
JULY–OCTOBER 1941
Mama is stirring the potato soup and asks me to get her an aspirin. She has a headache. It is so hot and humid, and stirring the soup makes her hotter. Her face is bright red and I am a little concerned. She brushes me away.
“No! No, I’m fine. Nothing is wrong. It’s just too hot.”
I go to the bathroom to find the aspirin, and when I get back she is lying on the kitchen floor, the dripping soup spoon in her hand. I scream. Hela and Regina and Sprintza and Mendel and Tatte and Beniek all come running, and we carry her to her bed.
She is burning hot. I bathe Mama with alcohol and put cool compresses on her face. I open her blouse to put cool cloths on her breast and I see the ugly truth. There it is. There is an angry red rash on her chest. Little red dots running all over those breasts that once fed and comforted her eight children. No! It’s not possible! For nine months we have checked all of our clothes and hair and seams. Not one louse has been found in our apartment. We have boiled and cleaned and boiled and cleaned for nine months. Mama cannot be sick.
We fear spreading the typhus. Like the homes of every family stricken with this disease, our apartment is quarantined. For the next two weeks I alone care for her all day and sleep with her each night. Everyone else must avoid contact with her. I know this puts me in greater danger of catching it, too, but I try not to think about it.
Mama is getting worse, so with most of the little money we have left, we hire a nurse from the hospital to come every day. Sister is very gentle and kind. She bathes Mama and tries to make her comfortable. Mama is so weak. She has no strength to talk, to hold up her head, to smile. The rabbi says that the name of this disease comes from the Greek word typhos, meaning smoky, and that is how Mama’s brain and body must feel. Wispy and weak and foggy and smoky.
When Sister leaves in the evenings, I get into bed with Mama and I murmur soothing words to her before falling asleep myself. Then one night I say, “Mama, I’m going to sing to you.” There is a little smile on her face. I realize that even through the smoke and fog of her fever, she must be remembering my teenage humiliation at Hashomer Hatsair. We were singing and dancing and I was having such a great time, when Heniek said to me, “Gucia, you really have a terrible voice!” I was so mortified and hurt that I never sang again from that time on. But now I will try anything that might bring her comfort. I sing “Gadolfs Rein,” the song she always sang to us as children.
I don’t need fancy dresses
I don’t need money
I need only my beautiful children
To conquer the world.
I sing this lullaby over and over, thinking what Mama sang is true. As long as we have each other our world still belongs to us. And she puts her hot, hot hand on my head.
The next day, Sister tells me she is going to go to Ogrod Bernardinski, the park on Slowackiego Street outside the ghetto.
“Praise God that it is July,” she says. “The lindens are blooming and they are the sacred tree of the Blessed Mother.”
She goes to gather blossoms to make linden tea. It will make Mama sweat and break her fever. I envy Sister for being free to walk wherever she wants without applying for special permission or having to wear an armband. The idea of just strolling to the park any moment you feel like it—that life is over. But even just imagining the lindens, so magnificent this time of year, and their sweet smell, soothes and calms me a bit. I pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (hoping Mother Mary might overhear) that the tea will work.
When Sister returns, she boils the water and throws in the blossoms and I find a little bit of honey still left in the old beehive of the apple tree. But Mama cannot swallow anything. We try many times, spooning little drops of the healing tea into her mouth, but it just dribbles back out.
“Maybe tomorrow,” says Sister, and leaves for the day.
I climb into bed with Mama and sing to her. It’s now been three weeks since Mama fainted on the kitchen floor, the potato soup ladle in her hand, and even though I k
eep putting cool cloths on her, she is still so hot. She thrashes around and her eyes are glassy. But the rash is gone.
It is sweltering hot outside. Maybe it’s not the fever at all, but just the summer heat and humidity. I feel hot, too, and exhausted, and a little sick, weak, shaky.
By midnight Mama seems to settle down. She swallows a drop of the linden tea. I go out and share this tiny glimmer of hope with the rest of the family. Until now the risk of contagion has kept everyone out of the room, but Tatte can’t stand it anymore. He sticks his head in the bedroom doorway to talk to her, and I leave them alone for a while. When Tatte leaves, I crawl back into bed with Mama. I wish I could hold her burning, trembling, bone-thin body close to mine, the way she would hold me and all the children when we were little. But she is so hot and her skin so sensitive, holding her would not be comforting but only add to her suffering.
“Mamashi,” I chant, “please get well. We need you.”
I am beyond tired but somehow I drift off to sleep.
I wake with a start. It’s already dawn. I see a little bit of sunlight and hear some birds singing. And Mama is so much better. Her fever has broken during the night. She is cool. The tea must have worked. I am so relieved and happy. I hug her and then I realize: She is not cool. She is cold. Ice cold. I scream, “Mama! Mama! Mama!”
Everyone in the house comes running. But it’s over. My mama, the person most dear to me in all the world, is dead.
I feel like I have died along with my mama. I feel totally numb and distant. My body still functions, but it’s as if there’s no one inside. I give Mama one last bath. I feel like a machine making jerky little actions. I am so dried up I have no tears. I dress my mama in a lovely white gown.
Tante Sura comes and covers the mirrors with white cloths just like when my baby sister, Rifka, died. My uncles and cousins come to join Tatte for the ten-man minyan to recite the mourners’ prayer for Mama. And we need to praise God that Josek and Idek can be with us. They have been trying to volunteer for work at the glass factories of Kara and Hortensja and the woodworking camp in Bugaj, where strong young men can gain safety as essential workers. If they’d been chosen, we would have been sitting shiva missing the two oldest sons to say Kaddish for our dead mama.
Claiming My Place Page 11
