Claiming My Place

by Planaria Price

  His first name, Kazimierz, is the same as that of the enlightened king who welcomed Jewish immigration into Poland in 1334. Maybe this is a sign, and the namesake of that great king will give me sanctuary.

  I pack a small suitcase. I say goodbye to my family. I do not cry. Tatte tries to give me Mama’s diamond ring, but I refuse. If they are deported he must keep it. He might need that money to feed and take care of our family.

  Again I take off my hated armband and sneak out of the ghetto late at night after curfew, with my small suitcase in my sweating hand. Again I squeeze through a crack in the ghetto wall, and walk in the pitch-dark through the Christian cemetery.

  I’m barely breathing.

  I go to the address I had memorized, careful to stay away from busy streets. If Pan Dobranski turns me away I don’t know what I will do. I knock. I wait.

  What will happen if he’s not there? I can’t possibly go back to the ghetto.

  I feel so exposed. But he does open the door and I realize I have been holding my breath since I knocked. He greets me with shock, but then he smiles warmly and hurries me inside his house. Helping a Jew escape the ghetto puts him in great danger, of course, but he doesn’t hesitate a moment.

  I am so relieved by his reaction that I must force myself to hold back tears. I ask if he will let me spend the night in his house and then go to Nowy Sącz with me on the first train in the morning.

  I offer to pay him for the great risk he will be taking. He tells me that his family has often worried about us and hoped that we were safe. He says he is happy to return the help to me as I was so helpful to his son, and of course he will go with me to Nowy Sącz. He says there is a daily train that leaves at seven in the morning.

  We drink some hot tea and then he shows me a little cot behind a curtain in the kitchen. I am exhausted and fall asleep immediately.

  In the middle of the night I wake up with a start. Someone is getting onto the cot; someone large who smells very bad, of sweat and vodka and filth.

  He whispers, “I am the brother-in-law of Kazimierz! You are so beautiful.”

  I am more enraged than frightened. Even though he could denounce me as a Jew, I angrily whisper that if he doesn’t leave me alone, immediately, I will scream so loudly the roof will fall in.

  He seems surprised, disappointed. How could I refuse this great gift he is offering? What nerve! He leaves and I spend the rest of the night sitting up in the bed shaking with fear and anger and disgust.

  Hugging my knees, shivering on my small cot, I realize that it has been only five hours since I was saying goodbye to my family in the ghetto.

  * * *

  In the early morning, Pan Dobranski and I walk to the train station. I give him the money we had agreed upon. As we walk through the train station I see an old babushka sitting alone on a bench. It’s my aunt Sura! Our eyes meet and then we quickly look away. I pray that we both make it out of this nightmare. My heart is pounding as I search for police in the crowd; if I am discovered, Pan Dobranski will be denounced. Pangs of guilt rush through me.

  Fortunately, it is unseasonably cold and we are covered up; no one will notice who we are or wonder why we do not talk to each other. We board the train.

  I am hoping Pan Dobranski hadn’t noticed my panic after the train first left the station, when I couldn’t find my Kennkarte and started desperately hunting through my pockets for it. I didn’t want to make him afraid that I might give us away.

  It is at least two hours after we have settled into our seats before I feel the tension start to drain from my aching muscles. For the rest of our six-hour journey I feel blessedly still. At least for now I have nothing to do but be invisible.

  I wish the train would never stop and I could stay in this empty state forever—be nowhere and feel nothing and be no one. But I know that soon enough we will arrive and I will have to begin the work of transforming into someone else: a simple Polish girl named Basia.

  The truth is, I’ve always had such a terror of public humiliation, ever since those embarrassing early weeks of first grade. So from a young age I cultivated a manner that would not draw attention to myself. People have often said that before they got to know me, they thought I was reserved or shy. Now there is a lot more at stake than humiliation, and I am counting on this natural camouflage to help save my life.

  As we get close to Nowy Sącz my heart starts to race. We pull into the station and it is like coming out of a dreamless sleep into a waking nightmare.

  Pan Dobranski gets off the train with me, walks to the street, hugs me, and then disappears back into the train station to return to Piotrków.

  I pick up my suitcase and walk to the center of town.

  Nowy Sącz

  Suspense is worse than the ordeal.

  —Yiddish proverb

  SEPTEMBER 1942

  Walking to the center of this charming little town in southern Poland, I find a crowded café, buy a newspaper, and sip my tea while reading the advertisements for rooms for rent. I go to seven different apartments and they all say the vacancy has been filled.

  Are they afraid to rent to me because they suspect I’m a Jew?

  It’s getting very late and starting to rain, so I go to a guesthouse and take a room for the week. They demand that I leave my ID because the police come every evening to check who is staying there. I sleep very little that night.

  For the next few days I wander around beautiful, peaceful Nowy Sącz. There is an enormous, picturesque old marketplace similar to the Rynek of Kraków. Past the city hall I see the old castle of Kazimierz the Great and the now-empty ghetto.

  I quickly avert my eyes from that painful vacancy and determine never to go near that sad area again.

  The lovely River Dunajec has made Nowy Sącz famous for its therapeutic baths and spas. The rebbitzin was right. This is a perfect place for a Polish transient like me. Maybe the waters are truly therapeutic. I begin to relax, breathe deeply, and feel the tight band across my chest loosen a little.

  Every morning I wake up when the sun shines through the window, dress, and go to a café and drink coffee. I buy the paper, read it in the park, stroll on the banks of the river, eat an apple for lunch, walk around the river again, go to a cheap restaurant and have soup for dinner, and walk around some more. There is no plan, no structure, except to avoid notice for one month until I can return to Piotrków. I am absolutely rudderless. The days feel endless.

  My ID is working. The police have checked it each day and there are no questions so far. The owner of the guesthouse is friendly enough. The days melt into one another and my loneliness and worry about my family are almost unbearable.

  Then one evening, as I am just about ready for bed, I hear a muffled knocking on my door. My heart stops and then pounds violently. When I open the door I see two men standing there whom I recognize from the Piotrków ghetto. They say they are staying in the room just next door: two brothers, their wives, and a mother-in-law.

  At first they were afraid to talk to me; there is no way to know who else might be under suspicion. But after a few days they figured it was safe. I am thrilled with this incredibly lucky coincidence. They invite me next door and I spend a nice evening visiting with them and their family. They have been in Nowy Sącz a few weeks already and the men have gotten jobs at Stowaszyszenie Odszcurzania Malapolski, the Southern Poland Extermination Company.

  They mention that the company needs more workers and wants to hire women. One of the wives will be starting tomorrow. Am I interested? I do need the money and working will help quiet my brain. But I cannot believe the irony! I have fled the extermination of the Nazis to find work in an extermination company!

  In the morning the four of us go to work. We are to make sample packages of rat poison. Simple enough. A Volksdeutsche, a German who lives in Poland, works with us and shows us what to do. We take the little dried biscuits from the conveyor belt and put eighteen of them into a tin that has a picture of a dead rat lying on its back
with its legs in the air, a skull and crossbones over it. The woman assures us that the biscuits are dangerous only to rats. They are made of flour and sugar and a toxic plant called red squill, but we are careful to wear gloves and as soon as we get home, we scrub our hands until they are raw.

  We have been here one week when the Volksdeutsche comes to us and says that the Nazi supervisor has some concerns about us. We are to come back to meet with him that evening. We walk silently to the guesthouse and meet in their room.

  “We must escape immediately,” I say. “They suspect we are Jews and, especially for the men, they can find out so easily.”

  But they are not willing to flee. The older woman cannot move so quickly, and they have all their possessions in that room. Their suitcases are bursting with silver and china and clothing. They had even brought some small pieces of furniture.

  “No, don’t panic,” they say. “This will be just another bureaucratic meeting of no consequence. If you run and they catch you, you know what will happen.”

  But I am certain we are in great danger.

  I go to my room and quickly pack my small suitcase. I tell the owner I have just learned that my mother and sister will be in Zakopane and I am rushing to meet them. I pretend to be happy and excited that I will see them. I pay her for that night and she gives Danuta Barbara Tanska back her identification card.

  By the time I set off for the train station the sun has set and it’s starting to rain. The meeting with the Nazi supervisor is supposed to begin just moments from now.

  I take the back roads to the train station, running in the dark on the slippery, uneven ground. There is no moon and I cannot see a thing. I keep falling and running, falling and running.

  I keep looking back to see if I’m being chased. I pray to God that when I get to the train station I won’t find the SS there waiting for me. The whole time my heart pounds so violently I’m afraid this might be what kills me. I have never been so frightened in my entire life.

  As I sit on the station bench waiting, I expect the Nazis to come for me at any moment. I am a helpless observer, with my life at stake, watching to see who will win the race between the Nazis and the train.

  For the fifteen minutes that I sit waiting, I concentrate all my energy on keeping still, freezing my face and watching the entrance, willing the train to come before the SS. At last a train pulls in, and I force myself to walk calmly and slowly onto the first car.

  Once the train is under way and I settle down, my mind wanders, oddly enough, to my high school Hebrew teacher, Pan Rosenblum. He would ask us questions so fast and we had to give him an immediate answer without thinking. I resented him then, but now I feel deep gratitude. His training has helped me make a split-second decision. Without thinking, Basia is out of Nowy Sącz and on a train to another tourist resort. I am on my way to Rabka.

  The train ride is not long. It’s about ten p.m. when I disembark and go out into the pouring rain.

  I realize I can’t just show up at a guesthouse late at night sopping wet without arousing suspicion. So I find cover under a doorway where I spend the night standing and hoping the rain will end and I will have time to dry off before daylight, when people come into the street and might expose me.

  Am I shaking from the fear or from the cold or from both? After a while the rain does stop. I walk to a park at dawn and try to get dry. I comb my hair and put on some lipstick. I must be a middle-class Polish tourist who is in Rabka for a little rest.

  The guesthouse I find is very nice and I start to feel better. The sun is out and the sky is blue. But I am still chilled by the experience at the extermination company.

  The next day I go to a pharmacy and buy some peroxide. I have always had ash-blond hair but I feel so frightened about being found out as a Jew, I go to my room and bleach my hair blonder. I bleach it so much that a lot of it breaks and falls off into the sink. Fortunately, it turns quite cold again and I can cover my hair with a kerchief.

  Again, like in Nowy Sącz, there is nothing to do. I walk to a café and have coffee. I buy a newspaper and sit in the park. I eat an apple for lunch and walk around this beautiful little town at the foot of the Tatra Mountains. I walk some more and then I go to a café and have soup for dinner. How much longer will my money hold out? I go back to the guesthouse and try to sleep. Try to shut up my noisy brain.

  What is happening in Piotrków?

  Going Home

  Alas!

  Lonely sits the city

  Once great with people!

  She that was great among nations

  Is become like a widow.

  —Lamentations 1:1

  NOVEMBER 1942

  After nearly getting caught at the extermination company and my panicked flight from Nowy Sącz, I have been wandering around this small Judenrein tourist town of Rabka for a month, and I want to go home. I realize now how hard it would have been to hide in Piotrków and that the Polish woman who tricked me really did me a favor. At least here I’ve been able to move around freely and feel safe for the moment. How awful it would have been to be stuck in one small room, waiting for time to pass and feeling frightened with every sound.

  But I can no longer stand this limbo and am ready to take the risk of going back to Piotrków.

  My plan had been to disappear from the ghetto during the deportations and then, after the month or so it would take for the Nazis to finish and move on to the next town, I would return. I am desperate to learn what has happened to my family and whether I still have a home to return to. I have had no news. The papers say nothing. There is no news at all. Well, no real news. Just that the Germans are winning and the British and the French and the Americans and the Soviets are weak and afraid and losing. There is no mention of Jews. There is no gossip in the streets. I can no longer stand the suspense and I am so bored.

  I tell the owner of the guesthouse that I will be meeting some friends in Zakopane for the weekend and ask if I can leave my things with her. Arriving in Piotrków with a suitcase would draw attention, and I can carry a few essentials in my purse.

  On my way to the train station, I walk through the park and notice a young woman sitting on a bench reading the paper. There is something very familiar about her, but I am in such a rush to find out about my family, I do not stop. I buy a ticket for Piotrków.

  I get off the train and walk to the ghetto. It’s pouring rain and cold and dark, which is fine. I don’t want anyone to see me. I can’t stop my shaking. I go to the main entrance of the ghetto and it is eerily quiet. There is no activity, no people rushing to and fro.

  A huge Ukrainian standing guard there points his gun at me. “What do you want?” he barks.

  I say, “A Jew owes me some money and I want it back.”

  “The Jews are gone and so is your money,” he says.

  I try to go in.

  “And I will kill you if you come one step nearer.”

  I turn and go around to the back wall of the Christian cemetery. I can’t get his words out of my head: “The Jews are gone.”

  I analyze his words, diagramming them like a grammar exercise in college. “The Jews”? All the Jews? “Gone”? Does that mean all gone? Do all the words mean the same in Ukrainian as in Polish?

  I cross the cemetery and go to where the pig market used to be. As I knock on Kazimierz Dobranski’s door, I feel torn between eagerness and dread to hear what news he may have for me. He opens the door; seeing me, his kind eyes fill with tears.

  “Oh, Pani Gomolinska,” he says gently. He hugs me and ushers me into the room.

  I sit near the fire and he gives me some hot tea with a little sugar (where did he find that?).

  We don’t speak for a while. I don’t want to hear what he is going to say and he doesn’t want to say it. Finally, I tell him about what happened in Nowy Sącz and that I have been in Rabka. He says, “I think your brothers are all right. Josek and Idek. They are at the Dietrich and Fischer woodworking plant on the banks of the River B
ugaj. The rabbi’s son, Naphtali, and your cousin Elkanah are working at the glass factory at Hortensja. They are protected and safe because they are considered essential workers.”

  He looks at the floor. His voice goes flat. “Unfortunately, Milek didn’t go to work on the day when they liquidated the ghetto.”

  “Liquidated?”

  Pan Dobranski starts talking like a radio news reporter. He sounds like he is reading from a particularly uninteresting script.

  “On October 13, the Aktion began. They picked up as many Jews as they could who had work cards and took them to their workplaces. Over the next two days the Nazis organized their information and started the deportations. They made all the Jews go to the Main Square, the Deportation Platz, and read from a list of names. The Nazis had forty old train cars, the ones they use for cattle, and they squeezed one hundred and fifty Jews into each one, six thousand altogether. If they called your name you went, if not, you came back two days later. They had four transports of those trains, one every other day until October 21.”

  “That’s twenty-four thousand people,” I whisper.

  “It was terrible,” he says, tears in his eyes, still focused on the floor. “I saw it happening. The women, the children, the men, all being pushed and hit, forced into the cattle cars, stuffed in like sardines. I saw the sign on the cars. It said maximum six cows, or thirty-five people. The Nazis stuffed one hundred and fifty people into each car. There was no water, no food. Most cars didn’t have toilets or even buckets. Some of the people threw photos and letters and rings through the small slats in the sidings. There were no windows and the doors were chained tight. I have some of their photos here.”

  He shows me, but neither of us recognizes the people.

  “The last transport on October 21 was the cruelest. The Nazis realized that they didn’t have six thousand names on the list and several of the cars were still empty. So they started rounding up people who thought they were secure and protected: the Jewish policemen, some of the tailors, those who had been promised they were important to the Reich. They say they have taken all those people to a concentration camp called Treblinka, near Malkinia. It is not a labor camp.” Tears well up in his eyes and his hands are shaking. “They say the people are gassed immediately.”