As we closed the door to the home where I had spent my entire life, an unsteady feeling stirred deep in my being. I knew that I would never spend another night there. I’m not sure how the rest of my family felt, because not a word was said as we inched away. Our neighbors peered out of their windows from the slits in their curtains as we left, but they didn’t have the decency, or perhaps the courage, to bid us farewell.
Making our way to the street, our bedrolls and other items in a heap on the back of a push wagon, we saw that every avenue was cluttered with families and their giant bundles of belongings. I looked around trying to examine the faces of the other people, attempting to catch a glimpse into what they were feeling. There was little talk on the roads that day; everyone seemed to move along like zombies. We were all walking or moving in horse-drawn carriages and rickshaws, none of us knowing what we would find when we reached our destination. As we walked, non-Jewish Poles passed by us with their shopping baskets in their hands, strolling along with their friends, sharing stories as if nothing unusual was taking place.
Entering the ghetto, I wanted to turn and run backwards. In my mind I was. But, I knew that I had to deal with it and do what was required. Father’s words from my adolescence echoed in my mind, challenging me to be courageous: “Be a man Henryk. Be a man.”
Blima held my hand and her teddy bear tightly, excited to be in a new place. Rivka was asleep in my mother’s arms and Mendel and my father were ahead of us, walking side by side. The walls that encircled the ghetto must have been nearly four meters high and were topped with intimidating looking jagged barbed wire. If life inside the walls was unbearable, there would be no way for us to escape. Realizing this, we began regretting not taking more of our treasures with us.
We were going to be locked away in a slum. Yes, a slum. That is really the most accurate word to describe the ghetto; but we didn’t know that then. Looking closer, I saw signs posted on the outside of the walls warning of infection inside. Presumably, the Germans equated us to disease and vermin.
When we finally reached our pre-assigned apartment, it looked architecturally like a diminutive version of our home. Instead of having three bedrooms, it only had two. Two unadorned, thick-paned windows, grimy from neglect, were our only light to the outside. There were holes in the walls where pictures had been carelessly removed. The drab, beige paint was peeling in places, revealing an older layer of white. The wooden floors were dull and scratched, but they appeared to be repairable with a good polishing. Dirty dishes were stacked in the sink and laundry was overflowing from hampers. The decoration was lacking and the ambiance was filthy, but I was convinced that it could have been worse.
“Where did they all go?” Mendel whispered from one of the two bedrooms.
We found out later that the non-Jewish occupants living in the area that became our ghetto were relocated to other areas, mostly within Poland. With little warning, they were forced out of their homes. They left behind massive quantities of household items, just like we had. I felt guilty for being the cause of another family’s expulsion. I felt sorry for them even though I, having also just been evacuated from my home, was in the same boat as them. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was in a worse position than they were.
The ghetto was in the center of the city; it wasn’t in a secluded location in the middle of nowhere. Directly outside the ghetto walls we could see the surrounding buildings towering higher than the walls. At night when the lights were on in those buildings we could see the people moving around inside them. Sometimes they looked back at us, but mostly they disregarded us.
Mother wasted no time in cleaning up the place and putting away the few valuables that we had brought with us. Later that night we met some of our neighbors and exchanged pleasantries.
Maybe it won’t be so bad here, I told myself. I could not have been more wrong. “So bad” were words that I wished it was, for in fact it turned out to be “absolutely horrific.”
CHAPTER 15
Disease, death, hunger, and poverty are words that come to mind when I think of my twenty-two months in the Warsaw Ghetto. Coupled with overcrowding, the lack of sanitation led to the rapid spreading of disease. The dreadful conditions also choked the vegetation, blocking it from the nutrients it needed to thrive. As a result, the trees and greenery were sparse.
The longer we spent in the ghetto the more compacted our living space became. Our two bedrooms shared amongst the six of us soon became two bedrooms shared amongst eleven people when the Pusniak family (strangers to us) appeared at our door with suitcases in hand. Therefore, we shifted our belongings once again. My entire family moved into one bedroom so that the Pusniaks could have their own room. Sleeping within an arm’s length of an infant, a toddler, a teenager, and my parents, privacy was nonexistent. Privacy was not a word the ghetto knew.
Living so close to my relatives, I often became irritated. I felt like there was no space to even brush my teeth or to change my clothes. We were constantly knocking in to each other. But, to complain would have been useless. Everyone was unhappy.
Life outside of the apartment was no better than life inside it. Legitimate, profitable jobs were hard to come by. Since not many people found work, creative ways of making money were introduced. Bartering and trading were commonplace activities on the streets of the ghetto; they were the only ways most people could compensate for the lack of a steady income. Negotiations were made with the Poles outside of the ghetto; they mingled around the gates waiting for us to appear. We couldn’t cross through the gates, but we could reach our hands out towards them. The guards tended to turn a blind eye to these interactions. The people on the other side of the gates were more than happy to rip us off. They relished cheating us out of our valuable items. Even so, hungry Jews lined the gates, jewelry in hand, ready to barter for food.
Mendel and I found our niche in selling the Star of David armbands mother sewed. It was a competitive market for people our age. Cute, young children easily sold their daily handfuls. We only sold two or three a day unless Blima joined us, which wasn’t often. In any case, the money from those sales helped to put food on the table for our family. Father, still in a haggard stupor, was our main source of revenue. He made and sold shoes until people could no longer afford to buy them. I offered to help him, but he declined.
Soon after, the Germans cleverly devised ways to exploit the inhabitants of the ghetto. Forced labor was introduced, meaning that we were now indentured servants for our enemy—working for little or no pay. This resulted in the roundup of Jews without warning at all hours of the day. Men were pulled from their homes and off the streets in order to fulfill quotas for laborious construction and war effort projects. No one knew when or if he would be chosen to participate.
When I was standing in bread lines or walking along the streets, the roundups occurred only a few meters away from me. Pairs of smartly dressed Nazis riding along in a truck would slam on the brakes, rush out of the vehicle, and grab a man or group of men by the arms and hustle him/them into the truck. It didn’t matter where the men were headed before this encounter; they were now headed to work for the Germans. Those who dodged the guards or who committed crimes were taken away and led to an interior brick wall. The area containing this wall was soundproofed, but I could hear the muffled gunfire as the men raised their arms over their heads and faced the wall, submitting to their execution. Following these executions, signs listing the names of those who had been killed were posted; it was as if we were being warned that our name could very well end up on the list if we failed to comply with the orders of the Germans. After a new list was posted, father would take short, quick drags on his cigarette as he led Mendel and me over to it. He would tap his finger on the names of people he had known and simply shake his head. “Don’t you ever wind up on these lists,” he would caution us.
You didn’t get used to observing terrorizing events like that. At least, I never got used to them. My heart would sprint insid
e my chest and my blood pressure would boil. I knew that there was nothing stopping me from being chosen next. I only hoped that they were looking for older, broader men. By that time I was eighteen but short for my age, with arms lacking any defined muscle tone. My physical appearance surely saved me from each of those haphazard roundups.
Since those situations led to massive panic amongst the population of Jews in the ghetto, the Judenrat negotiated with the Germans to create a more efficient system of management. Over time, men and women alike, even those usually deemed too young to work, were required to formally enroll as possible workers. As a result, limitations on the number of days we were required to work were imposed and we were informed about the dates in advance. Gone was the feeling of uncertainty associated with forced labor.
My father and I were soon drafted. We joined thousands of other Jews from the ghetto who were dispersed in factories on the outskirts of Warsaw. The both of us took up temporary residence in front of sewing machines. Ten to twelve hours a day we worked in inhospitable conditions hunched over these machines—crammed next to the people beside us, our elbows nearly touching—running fabrics through our needles to make German uniforms. Dozens of us were packed together in one small room. There was no movement of air on humid days and no source of heat on frigid days. Upon arrival, the sweat would quickly bead up on my face and stream down my back, drenching it.
How was I able to do the work when I knew nothing about sewing? I don’t know. Sometimes our bodies just automatically know what to do. Father fumbled awkwardly with the materials at first, but he quickly learned the ropes. Those who didn’t had to experience the wrath of our overseers. All day it was like this with only a collective break for mealtime at noon. Lunch, provided by the factory, was the highlight of our day. When we were in the factory we didn’t have to worry about where our next meal would come from like we had to in the ghetto. It was mundane work in a dreadful, stuffy environment for little monetary compensation. We were more fortunate than many others; in some factories the workers didn’t receive any wages.
Mendel carried on selling armbands while I spent most of my days being yanked around like a puppet by the Germans. On my days off I joined my brother on the street corners, continuing our joint effort to provide what we could for our family. Father spent his free time cutting leather and molding together shoes, as was his passion.
Everyone did what they could to survive. Long gone were the days of coming home to the mouthwatering smells of sweet confections. In their place were variations of soup—turnip soup, cabbage soup, soup with potatoes or just potato peels—and if we were lucky, then maybe some subpar bread made with moldy flour and butter. The best dinners were when my mother acquired smuggled meat from a stranger on the street. Smuggling food into the ghetto, although prohibited, was commonplace. Meat, a former food staple, became a luxury oftentimes only obtainable through the black market. When we returned home after a long day of work, the excitement of what was cooking in the kitchen no longer existed. We rapidly learned to lower our standards and to adjust to new and unappetizing tastes; anything to fill our bellies and stave off the nearly ever present gnawing hunger pains.
We tried to keep our spirits up when we were at home, especially during dinner. I can’t say that every day was miserable. We found joy in playing games together, like cards and chess. Mother believed that if we gave in to the negativity imposed on us by the world around us then we would be doing a disservice to ourselves. The Germans wanted us to feel worthless, she told us, but we couldn’t let them know that their tactics were working.
She became a different woman in the ghetto; whereas at home she was scared of everything and focused on the worst in every situation, in the ghetto she advocated positivism. “We should count our blessings,” she’d tell us. “Negativity spawns more negativity. Don’t wallow in your sadness.” And so she devised a rule that every day we each had to tell her one good thing about our life. There were many days when I would tell her “nothing” or “please, mom, not today,” but she always pressured me to think about it and to come up with something. On particularly dismal days, the only thing I felt truly thankful for was that my blood was still pumping. Too many hearts beat for the last time in the ghetto.
During times of adversity my mother reiterated the phrase: “Even though things are bad, even though we’ve had our freedom taken away, we can still choose to live and put forth a positive attitude.”
I’m baffled how mother remained so collected during this time when so many people around her were emotionally and psychologically distraught. Without complaining, she used her creativity to prepare dinners out of the little food we had. She was no less affected by the conditions in the ghetto than the rest of us, but she never let her spirit die. Through it all, she helped keep our family afloat with her positive outlook and innovative coping mechanisms. In fact, I never before realized how eloquent my mother was until our confinement in the ghetto. She effortlessly blended words together into verbal masterpieces, revealing an untapped talent to all of us; even she seemed surprised by her new-found creative expressions. Her poems, which always centered on themes related to endurance, empowered us to persevere. They aided in blocking out the evil around us. Trivial though it may seem, I memorized several of her poems, mentally carrying them with me throughout the war. Later, as the war intensified, I would recite them to myself again and again until I was revitalized.
The first poem she shared with us was the one that I loved the most. I oftentimes heard her singing it to Blima as she was bathing her:
We are but stones in the ocean.
Wall construction begins, the tide rolls in.
Stores close, the sea breeze blows.
Rations diminish, the ocean floor is blemished.
Challenges arise, the waves intensify.
Tempers heighten, the current strengthens.
Conditions turn dire, the swells become higher.
Illnesses shake, the storm clouds break.
Fighting for each day, an undertow tries to pull us away.
Calm seas comfort us, making us feel whole.
Rough seas polish us, smoothing out our soul.
In order to make sure none of us lost our sense of individual worthiness, she insisted that we celebrate birthdays, making sure they were full of lively rejoicing. Birthdays, like other milestones, became much more momentous in the ghetto because they reminded us that we were still living.
Although my mother couldn’t afford to make us separate sugary birthday cakes, she always drew handwritten cards for the person we were celebrating. In the beginning of our entrapment in the ghetto, she somehow managed to obtain a small portion of jelly which she spread onto a piece of bread, making a basic, simple cake. Filling the apartment with upbeat singing, we danced around the table, acting silly and immature. Our displays of silliness might have filled us with just enough hope to go on while others gave up. Those days, life seemed to have meaning; life seemed to be worth living. They motivated us to continue to fight for the ability to live to see another birthday. I still cherish those memories, especially when my mother turned forty and father surprised her with a small piece of chocolate, about a three centimeter by three centimeter square. I had never seen mother’s eyes light up as they did in reaction to that romantic gesture. Chocolate, such a rare delicacy, was like a forbidden treat. Father had risked his life to provide the woman he loved with a present. You must understand that we lived in a distorted world where gifts of jewelry and fur coats, though they could be traded for other items, meant nothing compared to gifts of food. It was the equivalent of father giving mother a priceless, flawless diamond if we had been somewhere far from the ghetto.
We pulled together to make sure the Pusniak family was able to celebrate birthdays, as well. The family—a mother, a father, and their three school-aged children—was worse off than we were. We felt a desire to assist them when they didn’t have enough food to go around, stirring up mixed feelings of jealousy
and guilt. Mother never let her composure reveal the stress this caused her at mealtime. We all sat down together for dinner, the adults at the mahogany table and the children on the floor. We became a single unit fighting for survival.
Mendel demonstrated his newly acquired love of children by gathering Blima and the Pusniak children together each night after dinner. He devoted this time to wiping away the ghetto and the occupation from the children’s minds. He came up with stories to educate as well as to spark imagination, using a portion of these sessions to teach arithmetic and other elementary subjects. Once Mendel established these daily lessons, the children wouldn’t let him skip a day. They were thrilled to have an escape from the outside world and looked forward to having a degree of normalcy inside their home. Even when he was tired from working on the streets all day trying to make a profit, he still found ample zest to exude to the children at night.
Using a small chalkboard, he brought the world of numbers and letters into the lives of four curious souls. He used analogies to teach about new and unfamiliar topics so that the children would understand. He even made up songs for them to sing as an outlet for their cooped up energy. Since the schools were closed in the ghetto, this was the only education most children received aside from underground schooling movements led by former teachers. Sometimes when the children were ripe for answers to their numerous questions, these sessions lasted well into the night. That didn’t bother Mendel in the least; he treasured those nights most of all.
My Mother's Ring: A Holocaust Historical Novel Page 6
