I thought I would burst. Not figuratively; this is not a way of speaking: I thought my bladder was going to rupture inside of me.
And then Zosia came to me. Zosia—an angel—the first of two that visited me that day.
Zosia Smuzik was a beautiful woman. Tall and strong, with pure white hair and high cheekbones. She didn’t look Jewish; she looked Aryan, almost—and she spoke German flawlessly. I had known her a little from the kitchen, and we slept in the same barracks. I remember thinking how elegant she was, and confident, even in the extremity of our circumstances. Sometimes—where did she find the courage for this?—she would stand up to the Germans. Once, I heard her say to a German officer, “You want the Jews to work? Then you must feed them! They cannot work if they are weak from starvation!” Why was she not killed for these small acts of defiance? Perhaps the Germans thought she was a Jewish sympathizer rather than a Jew. Perhaps that was why she wound up in the same jail as the rest of us; I don’t know. Surely she hadn’t been involved in the Rassenschande affair; she was a grown woman already, perhaps fifty or more. Were the Germans simply amused by her? By the absurdity of her belief that her insistence could make a difference?
I don’t know. Perhaps it doesn’t matter what she was to the Germans; I know what she was to us, to me.
Zosia saw that I was suffering, struggling to accomplish what physically was impossible—to keep myself from urinating. She came to me, removed the sweater she was wearing under her striped uniform, rolled it up in a tight ball, and held it out to me. She whispered, “Take off whatever you’re wearing underneath and use this.” It took me a moment to understand what she was suggesting, what she was offering. It was not as if she had sweaters to spare, as if she could throw this one away to be soiled by my urine and then easily slip into another to keep warm. Who knew how long we would be held in this jail? Who knew how long to shiver in the dark? She didn’t know; it seems she didn’t care. She saw my struggle; she wanted to give me ease; she wanted to give me her sweater.
I took it. I removed my underwear. I urinated into the warm ball of wool.
Then she drew us near, all of us. “Come,” she said. “Come, my children; come to me. I want to tell you a story.” Like a mother gathering her young, preparing her children for bed, Zosia called us to her. I couldn’t be called a child—I was sixteen at the time, already a married woman—and everyone else in that jail was older than I. But Zosia had asked us to come; she had invited us into the embrace of her wisdom, and we drew ourselves to her as to the warmth and light of a household hearth.
“My children,” she said, “we are going to die here. This is true. But when we are shot in this horrible place, we will go straight up to Heaven. And you will see when you come up, you will see that the angels will be there, waiting for us.”
She was speaking to grown people, to men and women who hadn’t heard bedtime stories in decades, to men and women not given to fantasies of Heaven and angels. And yet. And yet. We listened, hungry, starving for her words.
“You will see, my children, that there will be long tables with white tablecloths. And all the tables will be piled high with foods of every sort you can imagine—oranges and pineapples and meats and cheese and bread still warm from the fire. And the angels will be happy for us, happy to see us there with them, and they will dance around us and cheer our arrival into their midst.”
This was bliss; this was sublime—to lose ourselves for some moments, some minutes, in the midst of that awful place. We listened to her speak, and for those minutes, I was no longer in that jail, no longer clutched by fear. What a gift she gave us! What a godsend. I didn’t care if what she said was foolishness; in those moments, it was real to me, and I was willing for her words to be more real, more true, than the crushing truth I saw around me. Her vision offered me light and hope and freedom, and I was more than ready to make her vision mine. I never forgot the feeling of those few moments of relief. It was a foretaste of Heaven, whatever Heaven might be.
Zosia and me in the 1960s
Zosia survived her time in the SD jail, one of the very few who did. She survived the war, as well. We found each other, years later. She was living in Israel, in a small town called Pardes Hannah. She had aged, of course, since the last time I had seen her, but she still had that self-possessed elegance I so admired. Jack and I would visit her whenever we traveled to Israel, and we would always bring small packages of food with us, filling them with canned tuna and coffee and jams—anything we thought might have been hard to find in Israel in those days. I always wanted to be giving Zosia something—even little things. She had given me so much.
Once during a visit, I asked what possessed her that day in the jail, what had brought to mind the idea of telling us this story about Heaven and angels and a feast we couldn’t possibly enjoy. She told me then about a movie she had seen, a Polish movie, I think, in which a man was jailed for some terrible crime and was awaiting execution. The man was suffering from fear, awaiting his end. His jailer, noticing his agony, took pity on him and looked around for someone to visit him, to talk with him, to ease his sense of doom. But search as he might, the jailer was unable to find anyone who would agree to visit this criminal, until he found a prostitute, a woman already shamed, already beaten down by the world, and unable to hold herself in higher regard than a convict. This woman came to the jail and sat with the man for some time. She told him a story, of Heaven and angels and tables overflowing with food. And he sat and listened to her, rapt in her imaginings, and for that time, his heart was eased, his fears diminished. Zosia had thought of this movie when we were huddled together in that jail. Though we were not criminals, though she was not a prostitute, we were all there, rejected by the world, with no one to offer us comfort in what we were sure would be—and what for many of us was—our final hours. So Zosia thought to comfort us with the story line of a movie she had seen, and her little plan worked. For me, I can say, it worked.
But, then, truly, for how long could it work? Like waking from a dream, like opening my eyes again from the silken warmth of a midnight sleep into the air of a frigid room in winter, we roused ourselves from Zosia’s reverie and returned again to the desolation of our jail. Still we were there below the SD head-quarters. There was still the endless wait for a soldier to come and call our names, still the screams, still the desperation.
And still Greenspan, tormenting me. “What am I doing here? What have you done to me? It is because of you. I am here because of you.”
It was unbearable. I thought I could take no more.
Then I heard someone calling to me in the dim light. “Mania, I know who you are. I know you are not Greenspan.”
A small man—his name was Katz. I didn’t know who he was, but he apparently knew me. He was an informer, I later found out, and he had been arrested and brought to the jail because the Germans didn’t trust their informers: The Germans used them, gave them protection for a time, and then executed them, along with everyone else.
Katz said to me, “I want to make you a promise. If they will take me first, I will tell them who you are. I will tell them that you are not Greenspan, and that you never worked in the kuznia. I will tell them that you are here only because of a name association. If they will take me first, I promise I will let them know.”
Why this gift? Why this kindness out of nowhere? I had no explanation, no more than I had for Zosia’s grace or Greenspan’s crazed accusation or Kunah’s adamant insistence that he take me away. Perhaps before he died, Katz wanted to expiate his own sins. Had he informed on Jews? On his friends? Had he sent people to death? I don’t know what prompted him to offer me this gift, without any hope of possible recompense. And I was never able to ask him, because soon the soldiers came and called his name. They took him out. We heard the screams. I never saw him again.
They came for me maybe fifteen minutes later. I didn’t imagine that Katz’s efforts could have done any good. What was now ahead of me? A beating? A shot to the hea
d? Would the prisoners now huddle together listening to my screams as I was interrogated by the SD? What could I possibly tell them? I had nothing to say. I didn’t know anything. I was so terribly afraid of being beaten.
I was led by two soldiers, each one gripping me tightly by the arm. I cannot express what I felt walking up those stairs, walking down the passageway to the interrogation room. I couldn’t see clearly where I was going. I was numb; I could barely breathe. I didn’t have a trace of hope.
The soldiers took me into a small room. It smelled dusty, but sharp, too, as if metal had recently been polished. There was a table and a chair and two German officers, one by the table, the other by the door. I stood still, trying to keep upright, trying not to let on how close I was to collapse. The man by the table stared at me for a moment, then walked calmly to me; he opened his gloved hand and without a word struck me hard across the face. Smack. Then again and again, the hard, smooth leather raising welts on my cheeks.
I had never been hit before. The pain was sharp, like the smell of the room, bright almost—the sting concentrating in my face but somehow also radiating through my body. I was shocked by it. I can’t say caught off guard, because I knew the blow was coming, but I was shocked by the pain itself, the first flash and then the searing throbs, a pulsing in my body in rhythm with my racing heart.
I tried hard not to cry. I stood there, trying to steady my breath, trying simply to look ahead, to stare at nothing.
The officer brought his face close to mine. I could feel his breath against my cheek. “You must tell no one about this place. You were never here and you never saw anything and you never heard anything. Do you understand this? Do you understand?”
Still looking ahead, away from him, I nodded, yes, yes, I understand.
“You can go back to the kitchen,” he said, “but you will say nothing. We will know if you do. We have people who will know, and they will tell. If we hear that you have spoken about this place, we will bring you back here and you will never get out.”
And then he nodded to the man at the door, and two soldiers came in to take me out. They walked me through the hall and out the front door and to the gate of the compound, where I was met by two of the Jewish police.
With that, simply, inexplicably, I was returned from the dead.
Of the twenty or so people in that basement jail, only three or four made it out alive. I did, and Zosia, too, and a couple of others I heard about later. The rest were killed. Katz was killed, having saved my life. The girl Greenspan, who was said to be pregnant at the time, was beaten so badly that all her teeth were knocked out, before she, too, was killed.
When I got back to the compound, I saw scores of people waiting behind the barbed-wire fence, looking out, watching for my return. They must have heard that someone was going to be released from the place from which no one ever returned. A miracle was to happen, and people wanted to see. So there they were, dozens and dozens of them, people I knew and people I didn’t know, standing at the gates, watching me.
I didn’t want to see anyone. I knew I was not allowed to speak to anyone. I walked into the compound and went silently to my barracks. Mima was there and greeted me calmly and with affection. She asked, but I wouldn’t say anything about what had happened—not then, and not for years after. The Germans had frightened me so, telling me not to tell. That order embedded itself so deeply in me that I didn’t—really, I couldn’t—tell. Eventually, only long after the war was over, I told Jack, but only a very little, only the outlines.
This was the second time my life had been saved by a stranger. Unprompted, unrequited, first Zwirek and now Katz had offered up on my behalf acts of real goodness, of human, selfless good-heartedness. But I cannot say that the two were the same for me. I was alive, but, truly, so what? I was alive, but Heniek, I had to assume, was dead. I was alive, but to what end? To build what future? With whom?
Yes, I was relieved to have been saved. I do not wish to diminish the weight of this. But I was broken, too.
7
SOMEHOW DUVID NOREMBURSKY HAD MANAGED TO GET Polish papers—papers that identified him and his family as Polish rather than Jewish. He kept them as a kind of insurance policy, a backup plan in the event that his status as a member of the Jewish police might one day no longer protect him. When, soon after he arrived in the Konzentrationslager, Miller’s two policemen came from the kuznia looking for him, Norembursky realized that this day had come. Miller, it turned out, was still in power; the girls whom he had abused in the kuznia had been punished—most had been killed—but Miller had managed to avert punishment for himself. Now, it seemed, he was out for revenge; he was looking to get back at the one who had reported him for committing Rassenschande. Norembursky had planned to protect himself by getting into the factory compound. Suddenly, he saw that everything was burning under his feet; the place wasn’t safe for him at all.
The papers he had stashed away were for himself, his wife, his paternal aunt and uncle and their little girl, his cousin, who was perhaps eight or nine years old. He had hoped to save others besides himself. I need to remember this, because it helps me remember that there was once some humanity to the man. He didn’t start out heartless.
I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.
When he heard that the police from the kuznia had come looking for him, Norembursky knew he had to find a way out of the KL. To save himself, he was willing to abandon everything—his family, his humanity, too. For every one who escapes, twenty will be killed: Norembursky knew this; we all did.
He took his wife and ran.
The other three whom he had papers for, who were supposed to go with him—the aunt, uncle, and their child—they ran, too, but only after Norembursky and his wife had already left, and by then it was too late.
Norembursky and his wife escaped. I don’t know the details: how they managed to escape the KL, where they hid—if they did—or whether they were easily able to pass as Poles. I know that eventually they made it to America, and I know they raised a family under changed names. I do not know about any perils they may have encountered on their journey. I do not know if they were ever afraid. I do not know if they ever suffered from nightmares for what they did. I just know that they escaped. I know what happened afterward.
They escaped. Damn them! They escaped.
The police found Norembursky’s aunt, uncle, and little cousin, and they were brought back to the KL the next day.
Then the killing began.
We were made to come out to the yard—I was working my shift in the kitchen at the time. We were brought out into the fresh air, pressing together against the inevitability of what we knew was about to happen. We were made to watch.
The soldiers had with them the three who had been caught, and lined them up against a wall. The little girl was holding her mother’s hand. The Germans raised their guns; someone yelled an order; they fired. Three bodies fell to the ground—a man, a woman, a child.
But the Germans needed more. Someone must have told them about Norembursky’s wife’s family; they were in the KL, too. So Norembursky’s mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and nephew, a young boy who, I remember, was on crutches for some reason—they were found and brought to the yard. The Germans then added seventeen more, people they grabbed out of the barracks for no reason we could figure, people, as far as we knew, wholly unconnected to Norembursky or his wife. Just people, just Jews. But now there were twenty; beyond the three killed for trying to escape, there were now twenty gathered in the yard to be executed because of Norembursky and his wife.
I have tried, all these years, to understand the choices Norembursky and his wife made. They knew that others would be killed if they managed to get away. (And truly, there should have been forty, not twenty, according to the Germans’ threat.) Did this not matter to them? When Norembursky feared for his own life, when he learned that Miller was after him and that his position as a policeman would offer him no protection, in the immediacy
of that moment did he think at all? Did he reason like a man, weighing what his escape would mean? Or did he act then only in accordance with some older, baser nature?
If you act as a beast in a moment when it matters, is it possible ever to become a man again? But then, I do not think that even beasts do this—betray a parent to save their own skin.
I heard a story once, a terrible story from Warsaw. A Jewish policeman was ordered to round up some number of fellow Jews. He did his job, but for some reason, when he was finished with the roundup, he was one man short. He needed to make up the number; otherwise, he himself would be killed. So the man went to his father and asked if he would go. Would he, the father, allow his son to take him to the Germans so that his own life—the son’s life—might be saved?
I try to imagine this. I try to envision the scene:
“Father, I have come to ask you for something.”
“Yes, my son. What do you need?”
“Father, I need one more man to give to the Germans. If I do not bring them one more man, they will kill me. You are old, Father, and I am young. I am asking you, Father, will you go for me?”
How does the mouth form this question? Does the man look in his father’s eyes when he asks this? Or does he turn his head away, torn between damnable desire and ferocious shame? And what is in the father’s heart when he responds? What is in this father’s heart when he says yes, when he agrees to go, when he submits to death so his son might live?
How is it possible for one to ask this of another human being? How does one ask this of a father?
Norembursky, of course, didn’t even ask. He ran with his wife, knowing others would pay for their freedom.
How could they ever be free after that?
Those who died because of Norembursky did not perform an act of silent martyrdom. No one here went willingly to their death.
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