Tatte makes the sounds of prayer but there is no force or spirit in his words. It seems there is no one left inside either of us. We are just empty. Only a few people come to visit. Mama was so loved, but everyone is afraid of catching typhus. As we get ready for the funeral, the rabbi tears the left side of my dress to show my mourning. It’s all such a blur.
Four Jewish policemen knock on our door. They have come to escort us because the Jewish cemetery is three kilometers outside the ghetto, and we need special permission to bury our own Jewish mother in her own Jewish grave. We place Mama’s plain pine coffin in the ground next to her two baby daughters, our redheaded sisters, Rifka and Chanusck.
I go through the motions of comforting a sobbing Regina. I envy her. She is able to cry. But I feel dead inside and Tatte seems the same. There have been so many deaths; this is just another one for the ghetto. But for our family it is like the end of the world.
* * *
The weeks pass into months and I feel as if the Gucia I used to be has died with Mama. I care nothing for life and feel nothing except hunger. The only actions I take are the duties of caring for the family, and the housekeeping that Mama used to do.
I go out every day to find rotten potatoes and wilted cabbage and wrinkled carrots. It hardly matters. We are starving and eat whatever we can find, even though we almost choke on the moldy potatoes.
My poor family. Now they have to depend on me to feed them. The only thing I know how to make is potato soup. And that’s what we eat, or at least what I call what we eat, day after day. In October, Josek and Idek go to work at the labor camp at Bugaj.
I didn’t think the house could feel more empty, but it does. I do nothing. I just wait for what comes next, not caring, not caring about anything at all.
The Beginning of the End
One way or another—I will tell you quite openly—we must finish off the Jews.
—Hans Frank (1900–1946), governor of occupied Poland, December 16, 1941
MAY–AUGUST 1942
They sealed the Piotrków ghetto tight last month. What did it matter to us? What more could they do? Before, we could put on those hated blue-and-white armbands and go out before the curfew. Now we are animals trapped in our cage.
We kept hearing more and more horror stories about Jews being taken off to be systematically killed—not just men but women and children, old people. We heard that the Jews were put in trucks or trains or marched, shot in forests, or put in work camps and concentration camps where thousands died from illness and exhaustion. True, we had seen the cruelty of the Nazis from that very first day in September 1939: the blood flowing in our streets, the humiliation, the beards cruelly torn off the faces of the old Hasids, the vicious dogs terrifying the children, but that was just a few madmen. Some soldiers are always brutal. We couldn’t believe that the whole country of Germany—a culture that gave the world Mozart and Beethoven and Brahms, Goethe and Heine and Schiller, a culture of brilliance and elegance—could methodically be planning the final extermination of the Jews. It just could not be true. It had to be hysterical rumors of war.
Many years before the war, Heniek and I had read parts of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. It was frightening and disturbing, but mostly we thought it was rambling and boring. We had wanted to understand who this chancellor of Germany was. He published his book in 1925, raging about “the Jewish peril.” We understood that Hitler viewed the Germans, the Aryans, as Übermenschen, supermen, and we Jews were as low as the Germans were high. Hitler said that Jews were parasites and maggots and bloodsuckers and monsters and filthy and that we Jews were conspiring to keep the Aryans from ruling the world. At the end of Mein Kampf Hitler suggested that twelve to fifteen thousand Jews should have been gassed during World War I instead of the German soldiers.
We saw what horrors Hitler created in Germany in the 1930s, especially the horror of Kristallnacht. And yet, with all the venom and anti-Semitism and racism and hatred and murder and destruction, we had heard it all before. The possibility that Hitler planned to exterminate all the Jews never entered our minds. We had survived pogroms before and we could survive them again.
By December 1941 America had finally entered the war and we knew that, in the end, America would win. We simply needed to hold on, be patient, and wait it out.
* * *
Now Uncle Josef comes to live with us. He is afraid the authorities will come after him at his home because of the rumors that his son, Janek, has escaped the ghetto. This is true. He tells us that Janek has been living as a gentile in Warsaw, where he has Polish connections and some money. Instead of Janek Libeskind, he is now Yannick Zarzycki. He is trying to get false identity papers for his sister Mala and his mother, Sura. They both have blond hair and blue eyes and speak perfect Polish. Uncle Josef, with his brown eyes, dark, curly hair, and Yiddish accent, knows that he can never pass.
We’d heard rumors of some Jews living as Poles outside the ghetto, yet I couldn’t believe this was really possible. The rebbitzin has been urging me to leave for months. With my fair hair and coloring and my perfect Polish and German, she thinks I have a chance. And I have no husband or children to worry about. Now that the ghetto is sealed, time is of the essence. We have news of the German Aktions—mass deportations of the Jews and liquidation of their ghettos in towns near us. The rebbitzin thinks the rumors of the exterminations are true, and each day they are getting closer to Piotrków. She urges me to get out of the ghetto as soon as I can.
Jews have been gassed at Chelmno. There are prison camps in Bełżec and Malkinia. Lublin and Radom are all Judenrein.
For the past year, since Mama died, I’ve been frozen in depression. To think and decide and take any kind of action is impossible. But we know from the movement of the Nazis that liquidation of the Piotrków ghetto is just weeks away. Somehow the urgency of this danger shakes me back to life. I will face a terrible risk of getting caught, and I know that those who get caught get killed. But what about the risk of staying?
My depression lifts. Now I feel rage, the same feeling that made me swear to myself, when pleading with the Nazi colonel to spare Idek and Josek, that I will never submit to them. And there’s something else, a kind of recklessness. After all that’s happened since that meeting, in a way life feels cheap, almost like there’s less to lose; and if I fail, at least it’s my choice how it ends.
Now that I’ve decided I act quickly. I’ve heard rumors that you can buy false identification papers at a house on Zamkowa Street.
Fortunately I still have a spare photo from the ones I’d had taken for my university identification card. I grab some money from my minuscule savings and hurry to the address. It is amazing: there in broad daylight a Jewish man I have never seen before sits in the alcove of the doorway at a rickety table crowded with paper and pens and bottles of ink, rubber stamps and pads, and a typewriter. He is busily making entries in a large account book—I guess so that it looks like he’s doing something legal.
I whisper what I want, he calmly tells me the price, and after I assure him I have the money, he asks me what name I want on my new Kennkarte. Oddly, I hadn’t thought about that before I came.
Gomolinska could be a Polish name, but too many people know my family and our butcher shops. Sura Gitla is a dead giveaway that I am a Jew. Last names come flying into my head. Lewinova, after my old home economics teacher? Grabowska, the teacher I carried the books for? Tretiak, after the horrible professor who failed the Jewish boy in Warsaw?
And my first name, should I be a Krysia or a Magda or an Ana? I don’t know why, but suddenly Danuta pops up, the name of the little daughter of the peasants in Przyglow. So perfectly Polish. And the name Barbara. It’s a name common to both Germans and Poles and sometimes even Jews. I’d always loved that name, which was very popular when I was a small child. And how very apt. It means barbarian. It means alien, it means stranger. Yes!
And then for a last name, Tanska. It just comes—from where, I don’t know. But it
is pure Polish. Perfect.
He is waiting with a pen in hand and a piece of scrap paper, and I know I need to get this over with.
“Danuta Barbara Tanska,” I say confidently, not a quiver in my voice. I spell it for him as he writes it down. We work out other details, too: date of birth, address, and so forth.
Then he gets to work. From between two pages at the back of his account book, he removes what I assume is a phony blank Kennkarte. Relieved, I see he’s using a gray-colored lightweight cardboard paper. That’s what the Poles have for their identification; not the yellow cardboard that’s used for the Jews. He rolls the card into the typewriter and taps out all the information I gave him, starting with Danuta Barbara Tanska. These names could mean my survival. Then he removes the form from the machine. I hand him my photo and he glues it onto the gray paper. Next, after punching holes in two corners of the photo, he taps two tiny metal grommets in place to further secure it. He shows me where to sign the card and, using a black stamp pad, I add in two fingerprints. After that, he takes a blue-inked rubber stamp and presses it down onto the corner of the photo and a bit of the paper. Then he folds the cardboard in two places, making it a three-page booklet. The papers look good enough for casual inspection, though if anyone were suspicious and scrutinized them carefully, I could be in trouble. My hand shakes as I pay him his five hundred zlotys; he gives me the paper and I scurry home. I breathe deeply and feel a sense of hope. Danuta Barbara Tanska will try to survive this horror and be a witness to it.
When I return home, I show my father my new Kennkarte and tell him I have decided to hide from the Germans. We’ve all heard of Poles in the Christian part of Piotrków who are willing to hide a Jew in their homes in exchange for money. My plan is to live outside the ghetto for a month or so while the Nazis carry out the deportations of Jews from Piotrków, and then when things have had a chance to settle down and the Germans have moved on to the next town, I will return to the ghetto.
My tatte is furious. He stands up and shouts, “No! I will not permit this! Whatever happens to us we face together. You will not separate from the family!”
I argue back with my father. “Tatte, I know it would be too dangerous for anyone but me to try this. You and the boys look Jewish, and the Nazis immediately check any men they suspect, for their mark of circumcision. Regina is too young, and Hela has Marek. Even Chaya Lau says my looks could pass, and I have no other attachments. Isn’t it better that at least one of us takes the chance to remain free?”
And for the first time in my life, my father slaps me hard across the face. My father, who has never lifted his hand to anyone in his life. Then he crumples in the chair and sobs.
Uncle Josef speaks in my defense. “Itzak, you cannot take the responsibility for Gucia’s life in your hands. She has the right to decide her own fate. It is her life.” Uncle Josef says this quietly, and my father nods his consent.
That slap. I will never forget the shock and the secret glow. My tatte really does love me. Now I don’t just know it; I feel it.
Over the next few days I work out the details and now I am ready to go. Hela’s brother-in-law, Jacob’s brother Abek, knows a Polish woman who buys clothes from their factory. She sells these to some of the less well-off Poles who can’t afford the custom-made garments of a tailor or seamstress. We have seen her when she has come to the ghetto to do business with Abek. She is not particularly refined or principled, but for a large payment she is willing to take me into her home. I pack a small suitcase. In it I put my favorite dress, peach colored with leather trimmings, and a few others, including two that were Mama’s. I add some underwear and toiletries. I take no photos. The only jewelry is the watch Mama gave me as a reward for the high praise from my ninth-grade teacher, and the ruby ring she gave me when I was accepted to the university in Jerusalem. I have a little money and put it in my bra and carry some change and my new Polish identification card in my purse.
By now it is August and a month after the first yahrtzeit, the anniversary of my mama’s death. I hug Regina and Hela and Marek and Mendel and Sprintza and Beniek and Uncle Josef, and I hold my sobbing tatte very close.
“Please give my love to Josek and Idek,” I whisper into Tatte’s ear. I pray that their work at the labor camp will protect them from deportation, and I wonder if I will ever see any of my family again. I put my armband in a drawer and leave.
I go across the hall to the Laus’ to say goodbye and I give the rebbitzin a little note for Heniek. Even if I am no longer in love with him, I will always love him. He was my first love. God forbid he should be the last. Then I hurry downstairs, go out the front door, and I am on my own. It is well past curfew and I walk into the dark, avoiding the main streets by going through a maze, over garden walls and through the inner courtyards of buildings to the back of the ghetto. I push my small suitcase through a crack in the ghetto wall, squeeze my thin body after it, and I am out. With my suitcase in my sweating hand, I walk through the dark Christian cemetery to the address that Abek has given me.
It is a small house. I knock and the unsmiling Polish woman quickly opens the door. She takes my suitcase and shows me to my room on the ground floor and disappears. The room faces the street and there are no curtains on the windows. Anyone walking past can look right in. This is no place to hide. I am horrified to realize that I have been tricked. It is too dangerous to stay here. I can’t turn on a light. In the daytime, people will see me in a room with only a little furniture and no curtains and they will know that I do not belong. I knock loudly on the woman’s door and demand that she give me back my suitcase, but she doesn’t answer. I keep knocking. Again and again. Louder and louder. Nothing. My knees are shaking and I feel sick. In despair, I walk back through the dark streets of Polish Piotrków, creeping silently through the Christian cemetery and back into the ghetto. I am home, and I have failed.
Some days pass as I try to think of what to do next. Hela is sitting on her balcony one day, looking out onto Piłsudskiego Street, and she sees the Polish woman who stole my suitcase. Hela starts screaming to the Jewish police on the street, “Get her! Get her! She is a thief. Just ask Abek.”
Everyone knows Abek. He’s an excellent tailor and runs the family’s uniform-making business, so he has wonderful connections with both the Jewish police and the Nazis. The policemen grab the woman and take her to Abek. He makes her promise to return my things to me this very day; he warns her that if she does not, she will face prison. Imagine! Jewish police are protecting me from being exploited by a Pole. I feel ashamed to remember how I had despised anyone who would join the Jewish police for betraying their own people to serve the Germans. Again I see that what’s right and moral is not always black and white.
She does bring back my suitcase, but she keeps my favorite peach dress with the leather trimmings. I am learning more than at university. I now understand that the only person you can trust with certainty is yourself.
Escape from the Ghetto
Submit to me as soon as possible a draft showing … the measures already taken for the execution of the intended final solution of the Jewish question.
—Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (1893–1946), in a directive dated July 31, 1941
SEPTEMBER 1942
The Nazis are getting more and more brutal with each passing day. From the radio we follow their course as the army “progresses” from city to city, deporting Jews. They are proud to announce it! The Germans are so methodical and relentless. That our turn is about to come, that our ghetto is about to be liquidated is as inevitable as geography. What will happen after that is the subject of wild rumors: atrocities even worse than anything we’ve imagined before.
The rebbitzin comes to talk to me privately. We go out to the garden. The gazebo is long gone, having been broken apart for firewood, but my old gnarled apple tree is still there and we sit in the shade.
“I know those horrible stories are true. Gucia, you have to try to save yourself. The German soldiers
will be here in less than a week to begin the deportations. You cannot wait even one day longer. Don’t be afraid. Your Polish is perfect and you don’t look or sound like a Jew. Your forged papers are good enough. Go, be Danuta Barbara Tanska, and get out of Piotrków. Get out, now.”
She thinks the safest thing for me to do is to go to the resort town of Nowy Sącz.
“We have heard that it is now completely Judenrein,” she says. She takes my hand. “No one would suspect that a Jew would go there as a tourist.”
“Judenrein? Nowy Sącz? How can that be?” I ask.
Nowy Sącz had more Jews than Piotrków! Maybe twenty-five thousand. Itka Moskowitz and I had always wanted to go there when we were in Kraków, but we never found the time. I remember hearing that it was a famous and cultured place for the Hasidim, with a beautiful synagogue from the eighteenth century. How could there be no Jews?
“They emptied the ghetto within three days. They sent over twenty thousand Jews to a camp called Bełżec. Gucia, go tonight,” she whispers urgently.
In my desperation, I put all my hopes into the only solution I can come up with, to go for help to Pan Dobranski, the kind and honest Pole who used to live behind our property. I often tutored his son, and I feel deep affection for the family. We were all so sad when the Nazis forced them to move away. God forbid that a Pole should live near a Jew after the ghetto was formed.
He had left his address and I know that he has moved to the area called the Schweinemarkt. Pan Dobranski looks like a typical Pole, tall, sturdy, blond, with clear blue eyes and a friendly, open face. If he travels with me on the train I will be less likely to be suspected.
Claiming My Place Page 12
