Claiming My Place
Page 22
Sabina Sheratska, née Markowitz (Barbara’s wartime companion): Died in Munich, Germany, two years after the war from an infection four days after giving birth. Her husband, Abram Altus, and one-year-old son, Joel, immigrated to Detroit, Michigan. Joel now lives in Seattle, Washington. One of his children is a daughter named Sabina.
Sala Grinzspan (Basia’s school friend): Left Poland before the war to study at the Technion University in Haifa, Israel, where she made her home after the war.
Sala Jacobowitz Reichmann (Leon Reichmann’s first wife): Killed with her newborn daughter after leaving the Piotrków ghetto to give birth in the Catholic hospital, where she was denounced as a Jew.
GLOSSARY
Ach, wunderbar (German): Oh, wonderful
Aktion (German): Non-military action to further Nazi ideals of race; generally refers to the assembly and deportation of Jews to concentration or death camps
Arbeitsampt (German): Employment agency set up by the Germans in Poland for Poles to find work in Germany
babushka (Russian): Grandmother
borscht (Russian/Yiddish): Soup made from beets
challah (Hebrew/Yiddish): Jewish braided egg bread served on Sabbath and holidays
charoset (Hebrew): One of the symbolic Passover Seder foods; made of chopped apples, almonds, raisins, cinnamon, and wine; symbolizes the mortar the Jews had to make when they were slaves of Pharaoh
cholent (Yiddish): A casserole, generally made of meat and beans or potatoes; cooked overnight and usually eaten on the Sabbath
chuppa (Hebrew): Ritual marriage canopy held over the bride and groom
davening (Yiddish): Praying, facing in the direction of Jerusalem; done three times a day
Diaspora (Greek): Historical mass involuntary dispersion, such as the expulsion of the Jews from Judea
dobra (Polish): Good
DP camp: Refugee camp for displaced persons
Eretz Yisrael (Hebrew): The land of Israel, the Jewish Holy Land
gefilte fish (Yiddish): Ground carp made into balls or small cakes
gentile (English): Non-Jew
Haggadah (Hebrew): The book read at the Passover Seder that tells the story of the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt, and also contains instructions for conducting the Seder service
Hasid (Hebrew): Member of a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality through a popularization of Jewish teachings, especially mysticism; founded in Eastern Europe in the eighteenth century
HIAS (English): Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society
Judenrat (German): Council of Jews in the ghetto
Judenrein (German): Free of Jews
Kaddish (Hebrew): Mourners’ prayer
Kennkarte (German): Official identification card
kibbutz (Hebrew): Agricultural commune in Israel
kosher (Hebrew): Satisfying the guidelines of Jewish law
kugel (Yiddish): Baked noodle dish
kvuca (Hebrew): Term for the small groups into which members of Zionist groups were divided
landsman (Yiddish): Fellow Jew
Lebensraum (German): Living space
machzor (Hebrew): Prayer book used by Jews on the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
Mamashi (Yiddish): “My mama”
mandelbrot (Yiddish): Almond cookies popular among Eastern European Jews
maror (Hebrew): Bitter herbs, e.g., horseradish, eaten during the Seder, alludes to the bitterness of the lives of the Jews as slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt
matzo (Hebrew): Unleavened bread eaten during Passover; matzot plural
matzo balls: Dumplings made from matzo meal and served in chicken soup
Mein Kampf (German): My Struggle, manifesto published by Adolf Hitler in 1925
mezuzah (Hebrew): Small decorative scroll containing Torah excerpts placed on the door frame of a home; mezuzot plural
minyan (Hebrew): Group of at least ten Jewish men; the smallest number who may say certain communal prayers
Mensch (German/Yiddish): Upright, honest, decent person
mitzvah (Hebrew): Torah commandment; also used to mean a good deed; mitzvot plural
ouroboros (Greek): Ancient circular symbol of a serpent swallowing its tail, representing the message of renewal, infinity, and wholeness in the cyclic nature of the universe
Paschal Lamb: The Passover Lamb, eaten on the first night of the holiday with bitter herbs and matzo
Pesach (Hebrew/Yiddish): The eight-day spring holiday of Passover
Rosh Hashanah (Hebrew): Jewish New Year
Schnell! (German): Hurry up!
Seder (Hebrew): The ritual meal that begins the eight-day celebration of Passover
Shabbos (Yiddish): The Sabbath, a day of religious observance from sundown on Friday night to shortly after sundown on Saturday night
shiva (Hebrew): Traditional seven days of mourning
shochet (Yiddish): The ritual slaughterer, who kills animals for butchers according to Jewish law
shpetzia (Yiddish): Walking outside with friends
siddur (Hebrew): Jewish prayer book
SS (German): Schutzstaffel (“Protective Squadron”)—part of the Nazi army, particularly involved in carrying out the Holocaust
tatte (Yiddish): Papa, an endearment
tikkun olam (Hebrew): Healing the world
Torah (Hebrew): The Hebrew Bible
Volksdeutsche (German): Ethnic German living in another country, e.g., Poland
Wehrmacht (German): The unified armed forces of Germany from 1935 to 1945
wojna (Polish): War
yarmulke (Yiddish): Skullcap worn especially during prayer or religious study by Jewish males
Yom Kippur (Hebrew): The Day of Atonement; ten days after Rosh Hashanah
zayde (Yiddish): Grandfather
Zhid (Polish): Jew
zloty (Polish): The basic currency unit of Poland
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PLANARIA PRICE
This book owes its inception and completion to Helen West, who shared her mother’s story with me, and who invited me to meet and interview her ninety-year-old mother, Barbara, in Washington, DC. Through this twelve-year project, Helen has been my partner in every aspect of creating and developing this book. In particular she has been invaluable in assuring the accuracy of this biography, introducing me to family members, and helping to tweak my sentences and choice of words to echo Barbara’s voice.
My deepest gratitude to Barbara (Basia) Reichmann, who lovingly let me into her life and shared her most intimate memories with me, both the joy and the pain.
The warmest of thank-yous to Ronna Magy, who patiently listened to my whining, year in, year out, about not being able to find an agent, and for her suggestion that I contact Erica Silverman who, not even knowing me, spent copious amounts of time to counsel, advise, and encourage me and who suggested I contact the Deborah Harris Agency. Thank you to George Eltman of that agency, who so carefully polished the manuscript, and to our wonderful agent, Rena Rossner, who introduced this book to Farrar Straus Giroux. Rena has always been there to advise and support.
A most deep, heartfelt thank-you to our brilliant, understanding, and patient editors at FSG, first Susan Dobinick, and then Wesley Adams and his assistant, Megan Abbate, for eagle-eyed editing, marvelous advice, warm support, and for believing in this project.
Gratitude to Dr. David H. Lindquist, co-director of the Indiana University, Purdue, Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, for his extremely reinforcing review of the first draft. His very positive feedback gave me the strength to go forward.
Kudos to my earliest readers for their warm encouragement and wonderful editing suggestions: Bradford Richardson (the very first to read), Judith Simon Prager, Diane Pershing, Euphronia Awakuni, and Mark Thaler.
It is with sadness that, with the passing of Ben Giladi, I cannot personally thank him for his help and the richness of the information in The Voice of Piotrków Survivors. I wish I could tell him how much hi
s intensive research helped me to keep the memories alive.
The deepest of thank-yous to Moshe (Marek) Brem for sharing his moving story with me and to his wife, Aliza, for her lovely translation of Marek’s words.
Thanks to Michael Schwarber, my computer guru, for saving my sanity and the manuscript.
It is my fervent hope that after reading the story of Basia and Sabina, young adults of today will work for tikkun olam, trying to repair the world, and fighting against all genocides and horrors in our future.
HELEN REICHMANN WEST
Planaria Price—alchemist, artist, magician, storyteller—you have my boundless gratitude. Through your uncanny vision and freewheeling imagination, you transformed the raw ingredients of my mother’s memories into a living presence and brought a vibrant world back to life. Following your lead as we’ve worked together over these twelve years, I’ve been in awe of your unflagging energy for fine-tuning, polishing, and refining this book. Your dogged determination and unquestioning faith that this book would find a home have been inspirational.
On her ninetieth birthday, just a few weeks after my mother agreed to proceed with this book, she commented on my friendships, observing, “You’re all so lucky. You’re like family but you like each other!” I am deeply touched by the gift of true friendship from my family of choice, and give particular thanks to Marcia Litman Greene, Molly Pauker, Steve Shere, and David Waldman for your enthusiastic engagement in this project and your honest, insightful, and invaluable critiques every step of the way. What good luck that my dearest friends happen also to be such thoughtful, sophisticated, and sensitive readers.
Of the remaining family I am lucky to have been born into, thanks to my cousins Irving Gomolin, Moshe (Marek) Brem, Shlomo Libeskind, and Sarah (Mrs. Henry) Marton. You are part of this story. You knew and loved my mother and helped keep this rendering real. To my friends and gifted writers Bettie Banks and Del McNeely, you didn’t know my mother and helped keep this story true.
I wish Naphtali Lau-Lavie and Ben Giladi, friends and admirers of my mother when they were young people in Piotrków, were still with us. I would thank them for extending their friendship to me and for their contributions to our re-creation here of the rich world they all once shared. Thanks, too, to Jacek Bednajac of Piotrków, Poland, for your research into the archives and your devotion to honoring the former Jewish community there. Ann Elkington, your feeling for my mother and her story found artful expression in the maps you created for inclusion in this book.
Thanks to our agents at the Deborah Harris Agency, George Eltman and Rena Rossner, who believed in this book, knew where it belonged, and knew how to get it there; to Susan Dobinick, who started us on our way by acquiring this book for Farrar Straus Giroux; and to Wesley Adams and Megan Abbate, our editors at FSG, who got the value, the point, and the voice and who seamlessly brought this book to full maturity, ready to launch.
And finally, thanks to Carl Frank, brilliant writer and talented literary critic. Your lovingly ruthless standards for excellence give extra weight to your belief and delight in this book. But most of all, thank you for giving my mother peace at the end, knowing I have you. Her most deeply held value, instilled in me through lesson and by example, was to care for good character above all else, in myself and in the people I choose for companions. I remember as a young child wondering how I would find my mate when I grew up and imagining that my mother would guide me. She chose you.
PHOTO CREDITS
Unless otherwise indicated, images are from the collection of Barbara Reichmann, courtesy of Helen Reichmann West. Grateful acknowledgment is extended to Helen and to the following:
Frontispiece: University of Kraków.
Photo insert: Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw
Yad Vashem
Piotrków Trybunalski government archives
The New York Public Library, Yiddish Book Center Yizkor Book Collection
Piotrków Trybunalski government archives
Shai Lau-Lavie
Piotrków Trybunalski government archives
Piotrków Trybunalski government archives
Photo12/UIG via Getty Images
Chris Webb
holocaustresearchproject.org
holocaustresearchproject.org
wikipedia.org
Moshe and Aliza Brem
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ben Jachimowicz James
© The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, photograph by Tim (Nahum) Gidal (1909–96)
Shai Lau-Lavie
CLAIMING MY PLACE
Photo Album
Piotrków Trybunalski street scenes, c. 1915 (above) and undated
Gucia’s family home, 21 Piłsudskiego Street, Piotrków Trybunalski
The family of Leon Reichmann, Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland, 1920; Leon is second from left. No portrait of Gucia’s family survived the war.
Gucia Gomolinska and Heniek Wajshof with their Hashomer Hatsair group, 1933
Heniek Wajshof, 1937
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau and Rebbitzin Chaya Lau
Gucia’s childhood friends Rozia Nissenson, 1932, (left) and Sala Grinzspan, 1936
Gucia’s brother Josek, c. 1938
German tanks and troops approach a village during the invasion of Poland, September 1939
German police and soldiers in Piotrków Trybunalski, 1939
Two German police beside Piotrków Trybunalski ghetto sign, c. 1939
Sign in the Piotrków Trybunalski ghetto: “Jews are not allowed to walk on this pavement”
Piotrków Trybunalski ghetto announcement from early 1940: “The Board of the Jewish Community in Piotrków informs that total declaration of Jewish property is subject to notification by 10 March 1940.”
Leon Reichmann’s first wife, Sala Jacobowitz Reichmann, c. 1941
Abek Brem, killed by the Nazis in a massacre of Jews on the outskirts of Piotrków Trybunalski, 1943
Two men with their Star of David armbands in September 1942, near the Piotrków Trybunalski military barracks, where two days later Jews were assembled for deportation
New identity: Gucia’s photograph for her forged Kennkarte, in which she adopted the name Danuta Barbara Tanska, nicknamed “Basia”
Sabina Markowitz in Ulm, 1944
Barbara (right) and her surviving sister, Hela, at the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp, 1945
Barbara (center) and Sabina with other survivors at the Jewish Relief Center at the Deutsches Museum, Munich, fall 1945
Lau brothers Lulek (Yisrael) and Tulek (Naphtali) arriving in Haifa, Israel, 1945. Lulek holds the flag; Tulek is behind flag at far left. The flag says “Buchenwald” in Hebrew.
Barbara, Munich, 1946
Leon, Munich, 1946
Two of Barbara’s brothers survived the Holocaust: Idek (left) and Josek (pictured with Barbara), Germany, 1946
Hela, Marek, and Jacob Brem, in Haifa, Israel, 1947
Barbara and Leon Reichmann, Munich, 1946
Henry Marton, Leon Reichmann’s cousin and companion in the labor camps, survived and settled in Asbury Park, New Jersey
Barbara and Helen, Munich, November 1947
Barbara, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, 1948
Leon (top center) with other survivors at the dedication of a monument commemorating victims of Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, 1948
Helen (age 2), Munich, 1949
Helen (age 10) and Henry (age 1), Baltimore, Maryland, 1957
Barbara and Leon, Nevele Hotel, Kiamesha Lake, New York, 1964
Barbara (age 52), Washington, DC, 1969
From Buchenwald to the Vatican: Israeli Ambassador Naphtali Lau-Lavie (left) and Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yisrael Meir Lau, with Pope John Paul II, 1995
Barbara and Helen, Washington, DC, 1985
Barbara, 90th birthday celebration, Washington, DC, May 2006
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
After graduating from Berkeley and earning a Master’s Degree in Eng
lish Literature from UCLA, Planaria Price began her career teaching English to adult immigrants in Los Angeles. She has written several textbooks and lectured at numerous conferences. In addition to this, Planaria has worked with her husband to save and restore over 30 Victorian and Craftsman homes in her historic Los Angeles neighborhood. Claiming My Place is her first book for young adults. You can sign up for email updates here.
Dr. Helen Reichmann West was born in Munich, Germany, the child of stateless Jewish Holocaust survivors. She immigrated to the U.S. as a child and grew up to earn her PhD in psychology. Helen’s published work has included research articles in professional journals, essays, memoir pieces, book reviews, and poetry. She also collaborated with author Planaria Price on Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust, the biography of her mother, Barbara Reichmann. She lives with her husband in Washington, DC and Key West, Florida. You can sign up for email updates here.
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