Long Journey Home: A Young Girl's Memoir of Surviving the Holocaust

by Lucy Lipiner

  Shortly after the invasion of Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, Stalin declared amnesty for most foreign nationals imprisoned in Siberian work camps. That meant we could leave as soon as we obtained the proper documents. But where could we go? Not back home. Home was where the Nazis were. All through the eastern part of Poland, in Belarus and Ukraine, the German Army was winning on all fronts.

  We also needed to get away from the cold. Another Siberian winter would be devastating. That summer of 1941, food was all the family talked about—how to get some for the coming winter, how to store some for the journey. In the meantime, we ate whatever we found growing in the clearing around the camp and in the woods. Mama arranged mushrooms on strings and dried them outside in the sun, hanging them on nails fastened to the side of our barracks. She stashed away grain and dry fish in a small burlap bag—preparation for moving on.

  We needed to arrange for transportation. Papa seemed to know the map of the Soviet Union by heart. The amnesty order said we were allowed to travel eastward, but Siberia was so huge that you could travel eastward for a long time and still be in Siberia; instead, Papa focused on central Asia. It too was part of the Soviet Union, and because it was warm most of the year, he thought it would be a good choice. It was always easier to find food—and to survive a war—in milder climates.

  By August of that summer, members of the whole clan had packed up their belongings, and we set out on our way. I recall riding in a horse-drawn wagon again. We hoped to reach a railway station, but it was a long way to Krasnoyarsk, and we knew that, once there, we might have to wait days before boarding a train.

  There were very few trains in Siberia, which had one lifeline: the Trans-Siberian Railroad, spanning the entire European Soviet Union all the way east to the Pacific Ocean. With the beginning of the German-Soviet conflict in 1941, a train schedule ceased to exist. Sometimes passengers waited many days at the rail stations along the entire system.

  What’s more, that summer, Russian civilians were in flight from the Germans and the battlefields; they had become refugees like us, so Russians by the tens of thousands were also fleeing east.

  Far from the fighting, our wagon traveled a narrow dirt road through the peaceful forest; the sound of the wheels turning slowly was especially comforting. Our first day on the road was a long one. It was that time of the year when summer days never seemed to end and nights never came. We were tired and needed a place to rest. Suddenly, a log cabin appeared in the distance, and then another. Maybe they would let us in. Mama told us to follow her out of the wagon. She knocked on the door. I felt small before the massive door.

  “Look straight into the eyes of the person who opens the door,” Mama told us. “The people in this region are kind to children. So, for the sake of the children, they will let us in.” I knew Mama was right. I always thought I would be rewarded with kindness when looking into people’s eyes. Perhaps I thought that most adults in Siberia felt a natural affinity with children, especially children in need.

  Slowly, the heavy door creaked open. An old woman stood in the doorway, staring at us. I stared back at her. Her long, braided brown hair mixed with silver seemed to have escaped from under her scarf-covered head. The long, coarse cloth skirt she wore and bare feet seemed odd to me.

  In her broken Russian, Mama pleaded with the woman to let us in. The woman hesitated at first, cast a quick glance back into the hut, and then opened the door wide and motioned us in. Papa followed quietly.

  It was only a one-room hut, but it was big, with several small windows built into the log walls. Tiny rays of light shining through the windows provided a feeling of warmth. The room was sparsely furnished—a couple of cots, a small wooden table covered with a white, crocheted tablecloth, only two or three chairs. A large oven, maybe as tall as I was, was built into the corner of the room. A blanket was draped over the top of the oven. I had seen this type of oven before, although I could not remember where. It looked like it was built of dry clay mixed with straw. I knew it served as a bed for the night when it was no longer lit.

  We stared at the oven, so warm and inviting. The old woman pointed to a bench near the oven and told us to sit and rest. She pulled up a low wooden stool, sat down, and spread her arms wide. A young boy—he could have been my age—with fair skin and hair and gentle features walked over and settled down in her lap. She wrapped her arms around him and whispered in his ear. It was a pretty picture. They looked so content. I envied their closeness. Maybe she was telling him a fairy tale, and I strained to listen.

  But then, something happened. Their contentment disappeared, and both the woman and the boy suddenly seemed distraught. Immediately, I knew this was no fairy tale. I overheard her telling the boy that she, his grandmother, would most probably die very soon. “Babushka budiet skoro umierat,” she said. The boy stared at her, motionless in her embrace. I felt so sad. I turned to my mother.

  “Mama, why does Babushka have to die?”

  “Because she is old,” Mama answered.

  “How old?” I asked.

  “Fifty, maybe fifty-five.”

  “But Mama, I don’t want Babushka to die. What will happen to the little boy? He will be alone.”

  Mama moved closer to me. Gently, she touched my arm.

  “That’s life, my child,” she answered.

  23

  No Train Tickets

  We moved on to Krasnoyarsk and waited many days at the rail station for a train to take us south to central Asia. There were no train tickets available because the system was in total chaos. There would be standing room only—if we were lucky. The trains heading east and south were especially packed, we were told.

  Like everyone else, we would simply try to hitch a ride, just push our way inside a train. The passenger trains had been pressed into service as troop transports, taking Soviet soldiers west to the front, known as the eastern front during World War II. We understood that we would most probably ride in a cattle train again.

  At last, a train—a passenger train, actually—pulled into the Krasnoyarsk station, snaking its way along the entire length of the platform. It was no small task to push our way in. It was packed to capacity with human cargo, and a thick odor of sweat seemed to spread like a steamy cloud above our heads. Who could bathe in those days? That was an unattainable luxury.

  Mama and Papa gripped our wrists and held on to our meager belongings as if with vengeance. Their facial expressions were hard and determined, and their hands felt like steel bands around my wrist. Losing a loved one, being separated even for a moment in those awful, dark days of war was tragic. To this day, I remember the haunting cries of children crying out, “Mama, Mama, Papa!”—hysterical crying that pierced your heart.

  We pushed our way into a railroad car that had standing room only. No one was there to check for travel permits or train tickets. No one cared. Some people traveled on the rooftops of the railroad cars. They appeared like a tight mass of humanity holding on to each other. Some were still standing on the metal stairs that led up to the cars, gripping the railing, as the train pulled out of the station.

  We were all in flight. People from every corner of Belarus, Ukraine, and western Russia were fleeing east and then south, away from the Nazi atrocities back home. In addition to their fear and anguish, many carried another feeling: surprise.

  Before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, many of these people—and especially the Ukrainians—had longed to be “liberated” from the Soviet political system, such was their hatred of the Bolsheviks. In addition, Ukrainians were traditionally not fond of the Jews, so they were sympathetic to Hitler’s goal of getting rid of Jews. They had no idea, however, that Nazis considered the Slavs subhumans, only a notch above the Jews. The Ukrainians continued to look forward to their arrival.

  I recall an incident in the fall of 1939, when we were fleeing from Poland and were in Ukrainian territory. My mother spotted an orchard full of ripe walnuts.

  “Can you spare a few walnuts fo
r my children?” Mama pleaded.

  “No,” the woman in the orchard responded. “These walnuts are for the Germans when they finally arrive.”

  Well, they got there. And nothing had prepared the local population for the brutality the Germans visited on the waiting Ukrainians. People were tortured and hung. Towns and villages were plundered and burned, creating hundreds of thousands of civilian refugees. Those who escaped with their lives headed eastward, packing trains like ours beyond capacity.

  Our extended family followed a strict rule: under difficult circumstances, all the adults were responsible only for their immediate family, and all would hope to be reunited at some point of disembarkation, so we could not know for certain whether or not all our relatives managed to board the same train we had taken from Krasnoyarsk.

  Train travel in those days took forever—not hours but days or weeks. Frequently, the locomotive was disengaged from the rest of the train, and we were held on the sidetracks, thus freeing up the main tracks for trains heading in the opposite direction, transporting troops to fight the Germans in the west.

  Weeks went by. Summer turned to autumn. Inside our compartment was no longer so steamy hot, no longer so packed with refugees. Many had disembarked along the way, and for the first time, we had our own seats, sometimes by the window but not always together. We slept sitting up, sometimes squeezing our feet onto each other’s seats or into each other’s laps. We had little food and water. Sometimes, Mama brought hot water from the train engineer in the steam locomotive. We drank the hot water, which wasn’t clean, pretending that it was teatime.

  I have no idea how Mama and Papa kept up their spirits and their strength yet managed to keep us all safe and together. They spoke little. To speak was too exhausting. Their eyes were always watchful. We clung to each other. It seemed logical to me that if we let go, we would lose one another, and we would lose ourselves.

  At the age of eight, I believed that I could protect my family by making sure that we remained in our tiny space in the railroad car. How could I know at that young age that my need to protect them was in fact my need to be protected myself?

  Our first stop was Novosibirsk, the largest Siberian city. We got off the train. I have few recollections of that particular station. I do remember that we took refuge on the floor, finding a small space to sit inside the enormous station. I also remember a young woman in a white uniform who approached our little “camp.” She addressed herself specifically to my mother.

  Before long, maybe half an hour later, Frydzia and I were marched off with the woman—away from our parents.

  I could not cry, but inside, I was hysterical. My heart was pounding. My stomach and some of its contents were in my mouth. I needed to go to the bathroom. Instead, I wet myself. Everything that could happen to me physically and emotionally was happening right at that moment.

  The woman seemed warm, sincere. “You will see your parents tomorrow,” she said, trying to reassure us. Of course, I did not believe her. She led us up a huge stone staircase into an enormous room filled with empty beds—not a person in sight. To add to our tremendous distress at not knowing what was happening, we were now entering a dormitory room that seemed to me eerie and frightening.

  As always, Frydzia, my big, brave sister, tried to reassure me, whispering and nodding her head, her big brown eyes expressing almost maternal feelings. Her eyes were saying, We are in this together; I will take care of you.

  The lady led us toward a couple of beds. I was surprised at how beautiful those beds were—more beautiful than I had seen in a long time. They were metal, crib-style beds painted white, with railings on each side. They appeared to be beds for young children. She pointed out two beds side by side.

  “These beds will be yours for tonight,” she said, and she smiled. Then something happened that made me feel reassured. I glanced toward the headboard, and what I saw amazed me. There, in full view, was a red ribbon arranged in the shape of a large red rose. It was so beautiful. Suddenly, I felt that I could trust the woman in the white uniform. I believed that she was offering us a restful night—something so unusual in those days of war.

  I had not slept in a bed of my own with clean sheets and blankets in more than two years. I believed that she would indeed return us to our parents—tomorrow. And, of course, that is exactly what happened. The following morning, we were reunited with Mama and Papa.

  It was late September or early October when we arrived in Alma-Ata, present-day Almaty, Kazakhstan. At last, we arrived in central Asia, the “warmer” place my father believed would be the best location to wait out the war.

  But first, we waited in the station. The train remained in the station for many hours. At least by now, my parents knew exactly which cars the other family members were traveling in. A terrible windstorm was blowing sand everywhere—a wind so ferocious that it darkened the sky above us. The family convened and made a quick decision to travel farther south to Uzbekistan, perhaps even farther to Tajikistan.

  And that is what we did. We traveled on and then all disembarked in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. We settled down on the grass in a park in the center of town, where every bit of space was taken up by refugees from everywhere, especially from the western parts of the Soviet Union. Unknown to us, however, both the grass and the people around us were crawling with lice—a constant reality of the war and the perfect vehicle for spreading disease.

  So like thousands of others, we went to sleep—all fifteen of us—on the grass that first night in the park. And like thousands of others, we woke up the next morning seriously infested with lice. In addition to that, Uncle Beno was particularly upset to discover that his pocket watch had been stolen right off him while he was sleeping.

  There was one other thing about this theft that was both sad and funny: Uncle Beno was covered from head to toe in a white powder. Some people thought the white powder was used to induce a sound sleep, and we assumed the thieves had used it to ensure their getaway with Uncle Beno’s watch. Unfortunately, thievery was the norm in those times. Survival of the fittest was the rule.

  24

  Tajikistan

  One good thing happened to us in the park. We bumped into Yohanan, a cousin from back home. He and some members of his family had found their way to Leninabad (present-day Khujand), Tajikistan. A small community of refugees like us had already made their home in Leninabad, and Yohanan encouraged us to join them. We all packed into a truck and headed for Leninabad.

  Khujand (Leninabad) is very close to the Afghanistan border and sits on the Syr Darya River at the mouth of the Fergana Valley. Its climate is mild, although it is hot in summer, but it does not experience the fierce winds of the steppes of Kazakhstan.

  The Tajik people were the largest ethnic group inhabiting that part of the Soviet Union. They were unlike any people we had seen or known before, and they were very wary of us.

  The people of Siberia had never exhibited any prejudice against others. They fought the elements in nature and tried to survive; they had no time for intolerance.

  The Tajik people, on the other hand, were suspicious of strangers—people of different religions, people who looked different from themselves. Sunni Muslims, they viewed us with suspicion as “infidels.” Dark skinned and dark eyed, they were also suspicious of people with light skin, blue eyes, and blond hair, who were rarely seen in that part of the world.

  Immediately, I was struck by the absence of women. This was a man’s world! Later, I learned that women preferred to stay in the background—in their homes, if possible. Men and boys in their quilted and often brightly embroidered caftans and head coverings, called tibitayka, dominated the narrow dirt streets and stucco-walled alleyways.

  Occasionally, one could glimpse a couple of women, never alone, covered head to toe in black pranga, the caftan. These women could only see as much of the outside world as the long black netting attached to the front of their caftans allowed. Young or old, ugly or beautiful, a Tajik woman was seen only
by her very close friends and relatives and only in her own surroundings. Little girls dressed like adult women but without the face cover. Sometimes, one could see them squatting low against a wall in the narrow streets, chatting with friends or taking a rest.

  Their customs seemed strange to us—and vice versa. For the most part, the Tajik people did not like us. As soon as they learned that we were Jewish, they began calling us “Zhid.” Yet they were tolerant of the Bukharian Jews, a small minority who had lived among them for many centuries.

  The Bukharian men and women, their skin darker than ours, were very handsome people. Unlike the Tajiks, the Bukharian men did not wear the caftan. Rather, they dressed in the baggy slacks and shirts typical of the region—not the trim slacks and shirts of Western style.

  However, the Bukharian men always wore head coverings— large skullcaps, colorfully embroidered, or just black skullcaps embroidered in white. Their women did not cover their faces, but modesty was important; they wore vibrant-hued long and loose dresses of handwoven silk. Under the dresses, they wore harem-style slacks, and silk scarves covered their long, braided hair.

  Some women wore beautiful gold jewelry—gold chains around their necks, earrings, bracelets on their wrists, and rings on their fingers. Having so much gold spelled prosperity— being of the upper class.

  Leninabad was also home to the smallest minority, the true Russians who had emigrated there in recent years. Unlike the Tajiks, who were mostly tradespeople, the Russians were better educated; many were professionals.

  When we first arrived, we were dependent on the small Jewish community from back home for food and a place to lay our heads down.

  But like us, they had very little to spare. Soon, our very survival depended on the generosity of Bukharian Jews. Often, they shared their food with us. I still remember the pungent aroma of rice pilaf cooked with bits of lamb, carrots, and spices of the Orient. I can still taste it—in my memory. Their bread, for instance—the round, flat lepioshka with tiny black seeds in the center—remains the best bread of all. For me, it is maybe even a symbol of survival.