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

by Lucy Lipiner

  During our stay in Krakow, which was only fifty miles north of Sucha, Papa contacted a Polish neighbor he knew before the war. The man warned him not to return to Sucha for the purpose of reclaiming our properties. It wasn’t safe. He would be risking his life, he was told.

  There were many incidents of Jewish survivors massacred in Poland shortly after the war, only because they dared to go back to their homes.

  Before the war, there were about twenty-four thousand Jewish inhabitants in Kielce, a city in southeast Poland. Only two hundred survived the Holocaust. They returned to their homes, and some even were successful in reclaiming their properties. But the Polish people did not want the Jewish survivors to return to Kielce or anywhere in Poland.

  In July 1946, one year after the war and only weeks before we returned to Poland, more than forty Jewish Kielce survivors were killed in an old-fashioned pogrom by Polish soldiers, police, and civilians. So we never went back home to Sucha.

  Frydzia and I didn’t quite understand the enormous tragedy that had occurred. I also don’t believe our parents understood. Both walked around in a daze. They didn’t sleep, they didn’t eat; they hardly spoke. Papa had always been able to solve problems, big and small. His determination had helped him conquer most difficult situations—but not this one.

  For the first time, I witnessed my father completely defeated. His moods kept changing—depressed and defeated one moment and then outraged and pouring forth angry words the next.

  That summer, Papa learned that Uncle Mehul, his oldest brother who was like a father to him when he was little, had been shot by a Polish man in front of his synagogue in 1942. Papa vowed to find the man who killed his brother and kill him with his bare hands. Mama was terribly upset and tried to dissuade him. “Leave him to God,” she kept saying. “He will be punished.” This awful state of rage and depression lasted through the rest of the summer.

  There was a brief moment of enjoyment that summer when we were reunited with our extended family that had departed Leninabad prior to our departure. They had settled in a town called Dzierzoniow in the western part of Poland. So we were together, all of us again, and that gave us some comfort. I especially remember the tranquility of Sabbath afternoons together with Tante Esther and Tante Bronia, our uncles, and our cousins.

  The last communication (a postcard) from Papa’s brother Mehul in Nazi-occupied Poland that reached the family in Siberia

  One day, as if he were waking up from a vegetative state, a much-less-angry Papa announced, “We have to leave. We cannot remain in this country. This land is drenched in the blood of our people.”

  So we were off again, on a journey to nowhere, just away. The following months, we covered hundreds of miles, crossing borders illegally. We crossed the Polish border into Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, wading in the shallow waters of a river separating the two countries.

  In our wet clothes, we searched unsuccessfully for some shelter. Papa found someone willing to smuggle us across yet another border, this time into Austria. In the middle of the night, we piled into a truck. To conceal the cargo he was transporting, the driver threw a huge canvas sheet over all four of us. We traveled all night, asleep under the canvas sheet. I don’t recall waking even once.

  We arrived in Vienna early the next morning. I had never been to Vienna before, but my parents had always spoken of it as a beautiful city.

  Well, it was not a beautiful city anymore. It was completely bombed out. Destroyed buildings stood like skeletons, their roofs gone, their windows shattered. Piles of debris littered streets and sidewalks. Vienna appeared devoid of all human presence, as if everyone had departed the once beautiful city. It seemed dead.

  Vienna was divided into four zones: American, British, French, and Soviet. Papa asked the driver to take us to the part of Vienna occupied by the American troops. The driver hesitated; he thought we would all get into trouble if we tried to enter the American zone. We pleaded with him to please take us there. Finally, he agreed.

  This was our first encounter with American people. In spite of the language barrier, I noted the calmness about the American soldiers, so different from other soldiers I had encountered in my early childhood. The American soldiers seemed so relaxed, moving slowly, even speaking slowly, almost stretching each word beyond anything I had heard before.

  Although I couldn’t understand most of what was said, I felt no fear of the American soldiers. It was amazing to me that people of such courage and bravery in winning a war seemed so easygoing, so relaxed, even smiling. Who smiled in those days? Only the Americans did!

  We were offered temporary shelter in a huge building, the Rothschild Hospital, one of the few structures not completely destroyed during the war. The Rothschild Hospital was built in the late nineteenth century by Anselm von Rothschild for patients with neurological illnesses. After the war, it was transformed into a shelter mostly for homeless Jewish survivors like us.

  For the first time in a very long time, we were going to sleep in our own individual canvas cots with our own pillows and the standard US green army blankets; we were also given a food ration, but before receiving it, we were required to undergo fumigation against lice.

  The American army personnel were very polite and seemed understanding of people’s reluctance to be sprayed. Here and there, in fact, some people were so upset that they were crying. The fumigation didn’t frighten me, although all four of us looked very odd; our faces, our hair, and our clothes were all white with the strange powder.

  We remained in the hospital for several days. It was a fine place for a good rest. We liked the American army food rations— canned meat that tasted salty but good. Even my kosher parents enjoyed eating the American canned meat; we all did. Our cots were especially wonderful, real luxury after the crowded and uncomfortable sleeping conditions during the war. But we were being encouraged to move on, perhaps to relocate to displaced persons camps in other parts of Austria or Germany. Ironically, that was our next and last stop—Germany.

  Again, we were given temporary lodging. Everything was temporary in our lives, until such time as we too would have a home of our own.

  This time, the temporary lodging was a displaced persons camp in Traunstein, a small town near Munich, Germany—the first DP camp of many to follow.

  In Traunstein, we were reunited with Tante Bronia and Uncle Beno—it was a happy day for all of us. I was deliriously happy to have my Bronia all to myself. The rest of our extended family had left Poland as well, hoping to reach the shores of Palestine that were eventually to become Israel. Tante Bronia and Uncle Beno also hoped to go to Palestine.

  Although my greatest wish was to live in Palestine—which would later become a Jewish state for the first time in two millennia—my parents felt that, after all those long and bitter years of war, we needed a safe haven. And that was America.

  36

  More Homelessness

  Winter that year of 1946/47 was cold and gloomy. Snow was piled high. I used to stand at the window in the large, communal dormitory, observing people below, watching them trudging slowly in the snow toward the communal kitchen with pots in their hands, coming and going.

  You could tell whether the little utensils were full or empty by the way they were held. Sometimes, the pot was held close to the body, perhaps to keep the person warm. It was a sad scene. When will all this end? I wondered. When will these people—and we too—have a normal life?

  Well, never mind—I didn’t even know what a normal life was anymore. In many ways, this was normal for me. I was just a thirteen-year-old girl. I had not been to school in more than one year. I didn’t have any friends. You can’t have friends when you’re on the go constantly. But maybe one day I will have a friend, I thought. In the meantime, Frydzia was my friend.

  We discussed all kinds of things we couldn’t share with Mama and Papa. Besides, they worried so much about us. I knew they wanted to give us a better life—not this communal life, with living quarters the siz
e of a canvas cot. Sometimes, the cots were surrounded by cloth sheets fastened to the ceiling.

  I knew a little about what went on behind the sheets … but I didn’t like hearing such sounds in the middle of the night.

  37

  Saying Good-Bye Again

  It seemed like winter would never end, and 1946 turned to 1947.

  One day in February, Papa said he had something important to tell my sister and me. Mama just sat there looking unhappy, as if she knew something we didn’t. I saw pain in her eyes and braced myself for something I had always hated—a surprise. I was always afraid of changes in our lives. I wanted everything to remain as it was, as long as we could all be together.

  Papa’s face wore a serious look—not a good sign. For a moment, he just looked at Frydzia and me, not saying anything. Then he spoke.

  “We’ve been living in this hole, and I see no way out,” he began. “This is not a life for two young girls. There has to be a better place.

  “Someone will take you across the border to Belgium. There is a place for orphaned Jewish children who survived the war. You will have enough food. You will go to school. You will live a normal life. And soon, we will be reunited, maybe in a couple of months, maybe half a year at most.”

  I cannot listen to this, I thought. It is too painful. l needed to be home—wherever home happened to be. I needed to be near Mama and Papa. Instead, they were sending us away. I felt as if I were being banished.

  Saying good-bye to Mama and Papa was so painful. We boarded a train. With my face glued to the windowpane, I needed to keep them in my vision for as long as I could, until they became a mere speck in the distance. Then they disappeared. Frydzia and I sat down across from one another, crying.

  Out the window, I saw tiny cottages, the rooftops covered in snow, and white clouds of smoke escaping from the chimneys. It was strange how warm those homes appeared, even under a cover of snow.

  I needed to use the bathroom. It was at the other end of the car. It was cold in there and drafty, and the train shook and rumbled. I couldn’t stay seated on the toilet. I looked down, and there was blood on my bare thighs. What is that—what is happening? I thought in a kind of panic. I stood up and looked down my legs as a flow of blood coursed down to the top edge of my kneesocks.

  I began to realize what had happened, but why now on this train? I needed so badly to be home with Mama.

  To stop the bleeding, I stuffed rough toilet paper into my underwear. It felt like newspaper against my legs. I wiped my legs with more paper and pulled my kneesocks as high as they would go. Then I went back to the compartment.

  Why was Frydzia staring at me like that? Was it the way I walked, or was it that I carried with me a huge supply of toilet paper? I told her what had happened. She didn’t say much and just drew me close to her. “You’ll be fine,” she said.

  We arrived in Cologne, a major city in the western part of Germany, near the Belgian border. I could no longer keep track of all the borders we had crossed illegally. Papa told us Cologne would be our last stop.

  “Someone will be waiting for you,” he had assured us. We got off the train. It was late, and it was dark. We were tired and finished with crying.

  We stood quietly on the platform, not knowing what to do or whom to look for. A man was staring at us. He walked over and greeted us in German. “Guten abend,” he said. Good evening. Then he told us to follow him.

  He took us to an old, beat-up car and told us to sit in the back. We followed his instructions. The man never introduced himself. He drove us to the edge of a forest, dropped us off, and told us to wait for him. He said nothing else. We were like two marionettes. We did as we were told. I was wary and a little scared of the stranger. I didn’t trust him. Frydzia stared at me. I think she was frightened too.

  The man returned, and we followed him into the dark forest. We stopped before a wooden cottage. He motioned us inside. The cottage seemed even darker than the dense woods. The man walked over to a table in the corner of the room and struck a match. He lit the wick under a glass chimney of a kerosene lamp.

  Slowly, I grew accustomed to the dimness of the large room and the woodsy scent around us. Then I saw a large, stone fireplace. I moved a little closer, searching for warmth from a fireplace that was barely lit but nevertheless felt warm.

  The man motioned us to sit opposite the fireplace. He didn’t say much. His appearance struck me as sinister; he was scary looking. We didn’t speak, and we didn’t take our eyes off him. We watched his every move. He poked logs in the fireplace, and the fire seemed to come alive. Tiny flames escaped from the pit underneath and licked the logs. The stranger sat down opposite us, so close I could see every muscle in his face and the tension in his eyes. There was tension in the air too, a sense of utmost gravity. I felt as if something might happen any moment.

  He began to speak, something about crossing a border illegally and the dangers in doing so. I was not afraid of the border crossing; I was used to that illegal activity. I was afraid of the stranger.

  “At the crossing of the border, there will be a ravine separating Germany from Belgium,” he said. He went on and on about the seriousness of the illegal crossing. I wondered if Papa had paid this man to take us across to Belgium. Had Papa met him personally? Did he trust him? Could we trust him?

  “Soon, we will go deeper into the forest,” he said, “but the best time to depart is shortly after midnight. Maybe the patrol guards will be dozing off, but we have to watch out for the dogs.”

  Now, I was really afraid. I pictured huge fangs and saliva drooling out of the dogs’ angry, grinning mouths.

  Before we set out on the most important part of our journey, Frydzia asked our stranger if we could use the bathroom. He opened the door of the cottage and pointed to the rear part of the grounds where the outhouse stood. It was dark and scary in there, so we relieved ourselves in the back of the cottage.

  We crossed a narrow path at the far end of the property.

  There were no stars and no moon in the little bit of sky I could see in the middle of the dense forest. The darkness was eerie but protective. We walked quietly, trying hard not to make a sound. The ground was covered in patches of snow, mixed with layers upon layers of dead leaves and pieces of dead wood. It was hard to find level ground to walk on in that darkness. The sounds were like thunder as we tumbled over fallen logs. With my bare hands, I felt for the rotted tree stumps.

  Every so often, the man stopped to listen or to reorient himself. He communicated in gestures—a hand held up told us to stop; a finger over his mouth was a sign not to speak.

  The forest grew even thicker, and there was lots of mud under our feet. Some tree branches and low-growing shrubs made walking even more difficult. My coat got caught on some branches that trailed all the way down to the ground. I lost my hat somewhere, and my scarf was a nuisance, snagging everything along the way. I used my hands constantly to push the brush away. My hands and my face felt sore.

  I couldn’t see anything, but I felt the space around me. The forest was filled with a life that made its own undisturbed sounds. The life of the forest could make sounds, but we had to remain very quiet.

  I walked into a shrub. It scratched my face. My face felt sore and wet. My hair was wet. My coat, my legs, and my shoes were wet and covered in mud.

  I felt so tired. I would have liked to take a rest, but I knew I couldn’t do that; now was not the time. There was so much walking. It seemed so long, hours, since we had left the cottage.

  Then I saw a light in the distance. Was the dawn breaking— or was it a light from the other side of the border, across the ravine the man had described to us back in the hut? If so, we were close to the border, the guards, and the dogs, and that meant we had to be even more careful.

  Suddenly, I felt someone grab my arm. I thought someone was holding Frydzia. We’ve been caught! This is the end of our journey. Then I glanced to my right to get a better look and saw only our stranger. It w
as he who was holding us. I stopped being afraid of him, recognizing he meant us no harm. He let go of us and pointed toward the light and the ravine.

  “Now is the moment,” he whispered to us. “You must run fast. Run past the ravine. Don’t stop for anything, not the guards, not the dogs. Just keep on running. Past the ravine you will be in Belgium. Once there, find a train station. Get on the train till you get to Brussels. Now, run! Run! God be with you!”

  38

  A Beautiful Lady

  We ran and ran, and no one stopped us—not the guards, not the dogs, no one. We felt exhausted. We had run past the ravine, and we sat down at the side of the road. It was no longer dark. It was daylight, and everything looked different. Everything seemed better.

  We decided to rest before finding a train station and almost instantly drifted off into a sound sleep, only to be awakened by a stranger. He spoke French and then German. He seemed truly concerned about us sleeping on the side of the road. “Are you all right? Where do you live? Do you need anything?” he asked. We felt so tired that all we could do was shake our heads.

  I don’t recall finding the train station or what it looked like. And I only vaguely recall getting on the train. We had not eaten for many hours, but I don’t recall feeling hungry. We had no tickets, yet we were not refused seats on the train. I felt such total exhaustion. We felt completely drained as we stretched out, both of us across several seats. No one seemed to mind; on the contrary, people gave us ample space. I think they were shocked to see the condition we were in. We were disheveled, covered in mud. I remember that some passengers stared at us, and some pretended not to look.

  As tired as I felt, I remember thinking that the other passengers seemed well dressed and looked healthier, almost prosperous, as if they had not suffered any deprivations of war, as if there had been no war. I couldn’t help noticing that Belgium was more normal than other countries we had been to.