by Evans, Mike
A few minutes later, the train rattled to a stop and shortly after that the door to our car slid open. German soldiers stood outside. “Get out!” they shouted. “Get out of the car! Bring your luggage and get out of the car!”
The floor of our car was three feet above the ground, but there was no ramp or steps. Those standing closest to the opening were hesitant to jump. The soldiers quickly became frustrated with our seeming refusal to move. Impatient and angry, they reached into the car, caught hold of those nearest the door, and pulled them through the opening. “Get out of the car!” they shouted louder and rougher than before.
People near the door tumbled to the ground. Those farther back saw what happened and moved quickly through the opening, jumping on their own rather than waiting to be pulled. I moved forward with Mama, Papa, and David, then we all jumped from the car at once so we could stay together.
As the cars emptied, the soldiers moved us into a line, then began marching us from the freight yard. The ground was rough and uneven and we stumbled along in the dark. Each time someone fell, soldiers rushed to kick and hit them and screamed for them to get up. Mama and I held on to Papa and David in an effort to keep our balance.
“This is Vienna,” Papa announced quietly. “How can you be certain?” Mama asked.
He pointed to the left across the rows and rows of tracks. “That is the Nordbahnhof station.”
Mama shook her head. “It doesn’t look the same. Nothing looks the same.”
“What other city could be this big, and only four hours from Linz?”
They would have continued arguing but as they were talking a soldier pushed his way through the crowd around us and struck Papa in the back with the end of his rifle. “Be quiet!” he ordered. “Shut up and keep walking!” After that, no one said a word.
In a little while we came to a paved street that led through rows and rows of tenement buildings. The Danube River flowed by on the north side, separating us from the remainder of the city. For added security, a fence ran along the riverbank. At least twelve feet high, it had barbed wire along the top like the one David and I had seen in Linz. Every hundred meters or so there was a tower with armed guards and searchlights that cast a stark glare over the buildings.
We continued several blocks until we arrived at a broad intersection. A German Army officer stood in the center of the intersection, hands behind his back, his feet shoulder width apart. Beyond him were rows and rows of German soldiers, standing straight and stiff, hands by their sides, rifles slung over their shoulders.
As we came to a stop, the officer shouted a command and the soldiers moved forward. My heart raced at the sight of them coming toward us. I was certain we were all going to die. Instead, they spread out before us and began to shout at us to get in line. They shoved us with their hands and beat us with the rifles until we formed into two rows that ran as far in either direction as I could see. Everyone was scared and confused but families who had been separated on the train used the chaos to find each other and stood more or less together in the rows.
Then the officer spoke again, this time to us. “Welcome to your new home. I am sure you will find Vienna to your liking. Soon you will be taken to your new quarters. You must keep them neat, clean, and in order. We will not allow anyone to remain here who does not follow the rules. Tomorrow at sunup you will assemble in front of your building for inspection. At that time, you will be given new identity cards and work assignments.”
One by one, soldiers escorted families from the ranks. I watched as they disappeared into the shadows. Every now and then I heard the sound of a gunshot and was afraid to think about what had happened to those who were led away. Sometime past midnight, soldiers came for us. We followed them down the street and around the corner to a brick building six floors tall.
They pushed open the outside door and through it I saw nothing but pitch-darkness. One soldier switched on a torch he held in his hand, and a beam of light fell on a flight of bare wooden stairs. No one said a word as we followed them up the steps. Only the scuffling sound of footsteps broke the silence.
When we reached the fourth floor, they turned and led us down the hall. My legs ached with pain. The building smelled like the train car we’d just come from—a mixture of sweat, urine, and feces—but I didn’t care anymore. I just wanted a place to lie down and sleep.
A little way down the hall, one of the soldiers opened a door and gestured for us to enter. “This is your apartment,” he announced. “You must be on the street and assembled in formation by sunrise.” Then he turned away and started toward the staircase. The soldiers who came with him dutifully fell in line and followed him downstairs. We stepped inside and closed the door behind us.
A single light bulb dangled from the ceiling in the front room. Papa located the cord for it and switched it on. The dim yellow light it produced revealed a dusty, bare apartment. We glanced around a moment. Then Mama shook her head. “We have no furniture,” she lamented.
“We will find some,” Papa replied.
“And how will we pay for it?” Mama grumbled. “We have no money.” “There’s always furniture around for free,” Papa answered.
To the left of the door, a stove and sink occupied a corner with a counter that ran along the wall. Mama checked the tap and water flowed from it. “It works,” she had a look of surprise. “The water works.”
David stepped to the sink and rinsed his hands. “Tomorrow,” he offered, “I will find soap.” He wiped them dry on the legs of his trousers. “Maybe I’ll find a towel, too,” he grinned.
At the end of the counter was a door that led to a bathroom with a shelf for a basin and a toilet in the corner. The apartment’s only bedroom was next to it. A canvas tick filled with straw lay on the floor. Papa wandered into the room and set his suitcase on the floor, then dropped to his knees. I thought something was wrong and rushed to his side. “Are you okay?”
“I am fine,” he said as he felt along the floor with his fingers. I knelt beside him. “What are you doing?”
“Looking.” “For what?”
A smile spread across his face. “This.” He tapped one of the floorboards with his finger.
“What are you talking about?” I was more puzzled than ever. “Watch, and I will show you.” He reached into his jacket, took out a pocketknife, and opened it. Then he slid the blade into the space between the boards. Working it carefully, he pried loose the board he had shown me. With that one out of the way, he removed two more very easily. Then I saw there was a space between our floor and the ceiling of the apartment below us.
Papa opened his suitcase and took out Grandma’s jewelry box. He gently lowered it inside the space and checked the height to make sure it fit. “Perfect,” he reassured us. “This will do just fine.”
I lifted the lid of the box and found several papers lying on the top tray. I pushed them aside and in the corner saw the locket with its necklace. Sadly, I whispered, “I never opened it.”
Papa had sold many things from the house to buy food and heating oil, but the locket was one thing he kept. Seeing it brought to mind memories of my grandmother and put a smile on my face.
“One day,” Papa said, “when this is all over, it will be yours. Perhaps then there will be time to open it and inspect its contents.” He pushed the papers back in place and closed the lid. “But for now we will leave it here, where it will be safe.”
The floorboards were held in place by two nails at each end. Papa removed one nail from each pair, making it easier to take up the boards next time. While he did that, I took out the leather wallet and removed the documents I had obtained in Spain. When I reached to open the jewelry box again, Papa stopped me.
“Those are your papers. You must have them with you, ready to show at a moment’s notice.”
“These are the ones I got with Aunt Haya in Spain. I do not want to use them now. No one will pay any attention to them and they will be lost.”
“Perhaps you ar
e right,” he nodded. “Put them in the box.”
I lifted the lid of the jewelry box and placed them inside, then closed it tightly and said a prayer. Papa slid the floorboards in place over the hole and pressed the nails back in their holes with the end of his knife. Then he stood and gently pressed down with his heel on each board to ensure they fit tightly and did not move, but one of them did.
Papa looked at me and shrugged. “It is the best we can do.” “Will they notice the loose one?”
“Let us hope not.”
Our hands were grimy with dirt from the floor but I felt better knowing the jewelry box was safely out of sight. I dusted my palms together but it did no good, and when I glanced down at my fingernails I saw there was dirt beneath them. The front of my dress was smudged from the train trip and I was sure my hair looked oily and unkempt. No sooner had I noticed it than images of the Averbuch children flashed through my mind. I could see them once again, lying atop their parents, the life slowly oozing from their gunshot wounds. At lease we were alive,
I told myself. That became the key for me—staying alive just one more day.
“Come,” Papa insisted. “We can rinse our hands at the sink.” I followed him into the front room and he turned on the tap. The water felt cool on my hands and after I rinsed them as clean as I could, I splashed some water on my face.
That night we slept together on the mattress tick. It was a tight fit but I lay next to Mama, and David was beside Papa. With no blankets for cover, we snuggled close to each other. It wasn’t very comfortable, but we were together and finally able to relax. No one asked the obvious questions like, Why were we there? Would we ever get home again? Would we have anything to eat? Instead, we just lay there quiet and still. After a few minutes, I was fast asleep.
The next morning we rose before dawn and were outside our building as the sun came over the horizon. Hungry, tired, and filthy dirty, we stood in line with other residents from our unit and waited. About ten o’clock, four black cars turned onto the street and drove toward us. They came to a stop near our building and we could see soldiers seated inside. They got out and set up small desks at each building, then began the process of verifying our identity and the apartment in which we lived. After checking our papers against their lists, they issued us work cards, which we would use to obtain employment and our daily food ration.
Employment was really a misnomer, as we were not allowed to find work on our own but were assigned tasks on what appeared to be a random basis. Most of the work consisted of maintenance inside the ghetto, though occasionally work teams were taken outside the compound, usually to perform menial tasks non-Jews thought too demeaning to do themselves. We received no pay for the work, it being considered an exchange for the food the army made available to us.
Daily food rations consisted of a few slices of moldy bread, several potatoes, and a little jam. Sometimes they gave us a cup of dried beans, and once in a while a few beets or some cabbage leaves. Each month we received an allocation of sugar that amounted to maybe 250 grams, but there was no flour and no dairy products of any kind. Mama did her best to prepare edible meals for us, but we never had enough to eat and were always hungry.
Later that first afternoon, after we were dismissed from formation, I left the apartment and went to find Stephan. As I wandered the streets of the ghetto, I saw squalor worse than our own and the reality of what had happened to us began to sink in. Many of the buildings had no windows, only bare openings in the wall where the glass once had been. Side streets were unpaved and had become a muddy mess. Children played in them, sometimes miring up to their knees in gooey, stinking ooze. Seeing them made me once again remember the Averbuch children. Loneliness swept over me like a dark cloud and tears filled my eyes. I wiped them with the back of my hand and kept moving, desperate now to find Stephan.
At the far side of the compound the sewer pipes were broken, and grown men and women, emaciated and gaunt, waded in the runoff hoping to find bits of something to eat. The sight of our people being forced to live like that only deepened my sadness. The stench of it made me sick and I realized then the reason no one had asked why we were there or when we would be returning home. We were never going home. Most of us would be lucky to get out of there alive.
After a while I found Stephan on the corner not far from our building. He was standing with some friends we’d known in Linz. I was relieved to find him but felt angry when I wondered why he had not come looking for me. As I approached, Stephan stepped away from the group and took me by the hand. They all laughed when he kissed me on the lips. He blushed and led me down the street. “Where have you been?” he asked.
“Where have I been?” I retorted. “Where have you been?”
“Looking for you.”
“On the street corner?”
“I searched for you all morning but couldn’t find you. Where were you?”
“In the apartment.”
“Well, then, how could I find you if I didn’t know where that was?” I knew he was right, and that wasn’t really why I was upset anyway. Tears filled my eyes. He saw them and pulled me close. “What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter?” I bellowed. “You can look at where we are and ask, ‘What’s the matter?’” I wrapped my arms around his neck and rested my head on his shoulder. “I can still see them,” I sobbed.
“The family from your house?”
“Those children did nothing to deserve that.” I pointed down the street to a group playing in the mud. “They don’t deserve to live like this. None of us deserve this.”
“I know.” He placed his hand gently on the back of my head. “I know.”
“These men are animals.”
“They think we are the animals.” “What will we do?”
“I don’t know. But some of us are thinking of resisting.” “Is that what you were talking about on the corner?” “Yes,” he nodded.
I looked up at him, still a little angry. “And that is what you were doing instead of looking for me.”
“No,” he insisted. “Not all the time. I went all the way around the ghetto twice looking for you.” His face brightened. “I found Benjamin Murmelstein. When you see him you can ask him for yourself.”
“Are you serious about resisting?” “Yes.”
“You will be killed.” I wiped my eyes. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Better to die free than to live a slave.” “And what will I do if you are gone?”
“Sarah,” he said in earnest, gesturing to the scene around them. “I cannot live like this.”
“At least we are alive.”
“Look around you,” he pointed for emphasis. “We are living here in the ghetto. Almost no one is allowed beyond the fence. The soldiers tell us where to go. And whatever we eat comes from their hands. We are not living. We are already slaves. The only question is whether we die as slaves.”
“Or whether we live,” I countered.
“I do not think living is an option.” Stephan’s eyes turned dark. “I do not think this will end before we are all dead.”
Several days later, there was a knock on the door. Mama opened it and found Uncle Alois standing in the hall with Rabbi Gavriel. She shouted and laughed and hugged him with both arms. David and I came to see what the commotion was about and when I saw Uncle Alois I hugged him, too.
Just the day before, Papa found a chair in the basement and brought it upstairs. Mama placed it in the front room and we used it as the seat of honor for guests. That day, we placed Rabbi Gavriel on it and continued to fawn over Uncle Alois. We peppered Uncle Alois with questions until he told us where he’d been and why we hadn’t seen him for so long.
“After they refused to let me practice law,” he began, “I stayed at home and read.”
Mama found that amusing and laughed out loud. “You read?”
“Yes,” Uncle Alois nodded. “I had a house full of books, many of which I had never even opened, so I took the
time to read some of them. Eventually I had to sell them in order for us to eat, but by then I had read a good many of them.”
“When you didn’t come around, I was worried.” The expression on Mama’s face turned serious. “I was afraid something had happened.”
“And I was worried about you, too. But with the roving mobs on the streets, travel was out of the question. Then when they moved all the people in from the countryside, I was busy in my neighborhood trying to keep everyone alive.”
“Keep them alive?”
“New people, new disputes. Everyone who’d lived there knew I was an attorney, so they came to me to resolve their disputes.” He grinned. “I became the neighborhood judge.”
We talked awhile longer, then Papa came from the bedroom. Uncle Alois looked over at him with a smile. “Just the man I was wanting to see.” “Alois,” Papa nodded. “Good to see you, and to see you alive and well.”
“And I you also.”
Papa shook hands with Rabbi Gavriel. “I am honored to have you in our home. May I get you a drink of water?”
“No,” Rabbi Gavriel replied. “I am fine. I’ve been enjoying the conversation. But I was wondering if we could find a place to talk.”
Papa folded his arms across his chest. “Whatever you have to say, you can say here.” He acknowledged us with a nod. “We are all family. Everyone is an adult now. Speak what is on your heart.”
“Well,” Rabbi Gavriel cleared his throat. “The Nazis require us to form a council to govern our people here.”
Papa had a disapproving look. “A Community Council?” “Yes,” Rabbi Gavriel nodded. “The Judenrat.”
Papa shrugged his shoulders in a dismissive manner. “What is there for this council to do? Don’t the soldiers control everything?”
“They will permit us to keep order and they would like us to handle food distribution. Perhaps take care of other things as well.”
“Are you asking me if we should do this?”
“No,” Rabbi Gavriel responded. “We want you to serve on the council.”
