The Grayling

by Cheryl Freier

  This time we were lucky. We did not lose this game of ultimate death with the Germans. After a few days, my father took Sam and they wandered in the dark by themselves, knocking on doors to see who amongst us had survived. We had all lived near one another. After the atrocities, no one knew who lived next to whom.

  Others had managed to elude the Germans, too. We renewed our ties with friends and neighbors and family members with tears of joy and seemingly endless stories of survival. Our thirst for revenge was sizzling in all of us, but there was the sense of hopelessness of not knowing how to fight. We were not trained. The few of us who had been drafted into the Russian army had never held prominent positions. We as Jews were always limited by the Russian Cossacks and the Tsar. But from all the years of persecution, and revolts against us, we had developed an untenable will of resistance to survive.

  The trees all were clothed with leaves and we saw the buds of new vegetation still busting through the earth. We sang praises to the Lord by reciting verses of one of the verses of King David’s psalms. After hours of steady walking, our mouths were parched from thirst and our bellies ached from hunger. We had not yet learned to deal with the extreme deprivation on our bodies in times of stress and in times of warfare and took a dangerous chance of walking out of the woods and going back to our home.

  The first thing we saw was people walking in the streets. This was our biggest surprise. Houses had open windows. All doors were closed. A small light could be seen shining from inside some of the homes. The neighborhood at first looked untouched by war, in that most of the homes were intact. But the silence in some of the homes was eerie and foreboding. There were telltale signs of unpacked suitcases, coats that had fallen off of beds, sweaters that were piled high on kitchen chair; and rotting food in the back yards of homes; and trash and broken glass in the front of some others. We knew that these people must have had contacts and money. We prayed for those poor people who didn’t.

  All these sights indicated to the observer that shattering events were taking place. Yet, the items lay so still as though just recently uncovered by gentle hands, sifting from the sands of time in another time by a dedicated archeologist. I wanted to go back to the days when I walked with my brothers to school. Sam would always invite friends over and they would eat cake left outside on a counter for them; gulping the huge morsels in their mouths; not even washing off the bits and crumbs left on their lips and just barely flapping off the crumbs from their shirts; energized, they ran to the backyard to play soccer; they played one game after another; it was nighttime before they stopped and went home. Sam was bright but never a good student. The game and winning the game was the reason why.

  When we reached the steps to our home, we could have collapsed right there and then. We practically pummeled down the door. But after looking at the walls in the house and the furniture, we realized that everything that we owned had a special story. We had earned and had never taken anything. We realized when inside that we were free. We were inside. We were behind locked doors, but we felt free. In the woods with all of the land around us, we did not feel that we owned anything.

  Our strength, our physical strength and our endurance to put up with the unknown and the disposal of the Nazis returned, but anger against the Nazis surfaced. You could see our bitterness on the expressions on our faces. Silently, I asked the questions, “Why had the Germans learned to hate us so and was the reason for their hate so strong that they had a right to take us as their prisoners? Would any of the other people in the van survive? We all cried and we grimaced, showing our feelings. We talked. My father said, “Only fear God and not the Germans”. I asked, ‘But they want to kill us”. My father answered, “But you must find the strength to escape from their grasp. We must survive. “Do you hear what I say?” He raised his voice? “Do you hear what I say?” I shuddered, but I was the first one to answer the question, “Yes”.

  He said to all of us, “Well, then, we have had quite a time of it, and I think that tomorrow will bring a new day for us and then there is the Sabbath. We all went upstairs to our bedrooms to sleep. There were no suitcases to unpack. We had left the suitcases and had fled. My father told us in the morning “that he was going to make a plan so that we all do not get captured at the same time”. He said, “If one or two of us escapes, then we can help the others”. It made sense.

  CHAPTER 8

  VIGILANCE AND CLEVERNESS

  One day Henry alerted us that one man was coming. He was coming solo, alone, and he was walking. The man, dressed in a dusty, tattered pair of brown pants that looked like it had many owners, and a sweater which had shed badly and had some patches of wool on the arms parts, walked in from what looked like the burning of the sun, a Hell which not one of us should want to go through. His shoes were burrowing in the ground as though his feet were too tired to go another step, but some spirit from within him was propelling him, as if from the ages; he must have walked about one-hundred miles or more.

  He came to tell us that the Germans had come to his town, had rounded up as many of the Jews as they were able to fit in their trains, and then they were off with their unlucky prey to their extermination camps. My father and other men offered him wine and pieces of cake. The man sat on the ground with his feet outstretched making the soles on the bottom of his soles an object of everyone’s sense of observation and pity for the man.

  He sloped and slurped up the food as though there was no tomorrow, stopping occasionally to drink some wine in-between. Men from the crowd called out, “Take it slower”, but the man was ravenous. He asked someone in the crowd as he pulled on his arm, asking, “Could you give him a piece of bread?” He was given several pieces of bread. The bread he quickly stashed in his jacket pocket, and then he wiped the drippings from his nose in a ragged piece of cloth, and the running tears from his eyes, and crying, he called out, “They took my wife and my three daughters”. “I”, he muttered, became separated from them. I was to wait with others for another train.

  When I saw no Germans nearby, I ran behind a tree and hid, praying in my hands as I waited each moment, each stepping sound, for the walking crowd to go away. Darkness came. Others did the same. We ran in all directions. Then I ran as fast as I could for miles in the woods and when I could no longer catch my breath, I hid under some brush and I must have slept for days”. I awoke with a sharp ‘startle’ as a rabbit made a jump over me”.

  My father asked him, “What can I do to save my family and other people?” The man winced from nervous exhaustion, as he answered, “It is told”, he said in words which rambled on and on, and then finally, “that if you can find a priest who will give you Christian papers, you will not be considered as a Jew”. The man was then too tired to continue talking and was taken to someone’s home.

  People who had gathered to listen to the man in the town square went home to their families. My father came home and said to Anna and asked, “We will need $200.00 to pay a priest in the Catholic Church for Christian papers”. Anna went upstairs. She did not hesitate. She put the cash in the palm of Joseph’s hand, and he put the money quickly in the inside of his jacket pocket.

  He called loudly: while breathing in several puffs of breath, “Sam, Martin, I need you both to come with me to the Catholic Church in town”. Facing the church was a new experience for us, but we had always gotten along with Catholic people. My father walked in first. Sam followed, but at a distance, but he never let his eyes wander from his father. Martin followed Sam. Martin’s mind wandered to the usual Christmas scene that was always displayed in the town. It was always festive and people were always shopping for gifts, and the children were always following their parents and laughing and playing with toys and their friends or siblings.

  It was already the middle of winter and soon, Martin was thinking, the carolers will go from house to house to sing. Those of us in the ghetto would always listen to hear them, the carolers, sing
ing in the distance. The big church in town would open its doors and the light from the brightness inside would glow brightly and extend into the distance. Even though the church was alien to us, we nevertheless felt its warmth from time to time.

  It was late at night, about 10 o’clock when we came to the front door. Sam pulled at the handle of the metal, horse-shoe-shaped knocker. A voice from the depths of the halls answered, “I am coming”. We waited so impatiently for the door to open, counting the seconds as though they were giant minutes. A tall, stout man, dressed in the garb of a black top, and black pants stood at the inside of the door.

  For a moment, we stared at the Priest and he stared back at us. It was almost as though he had the same fears that we had. Joseph moved forward, relaxed a bit and, smiled a little, feeling relaxed after seeing the Priest. Martin was thinking to himself, “Will this Priest help us or call the Gestapo”, but he did not flinch or indicate his thoughts. Sam positioned himself so that if he had to run, he would. Sam stood directly behind Joseph.

  The Priest looked all around us. Then he quickly motioned, “Come. Come in”. We walked quickly through the large open archway in the indoor hallway. The Priest closed the door behind us while he searched again for any movement outside. He bolted the door and then clapped his hands, “Gentlemen, he said, “I know why you are here”. Joseph nodded his head in agreement, “Then you know that we have come to buy passports”. “Yes”, and I will explain, he said as the walls resounded with the echoes of the voices of the men. “Let me help you by telling you that we have assigned a scribe to print passport papers for you all”. And he hesitated and asked in a soft voice, “Do you have the $200.00? My father nodded his head. “Okay then, I will take the money”, and Joseph undid the buttons of his jacket and reached for his inner pocket and pulled out the money. Joseph cleared his throat and handed over the money to the priest.

  The silence of voices and sounds was both shattering and chilling. It was as though there was a stopping of time. After that moment of silence, within me was the whirlwind of time, of the centuries of history gone by, and the centuries of history to be. I wanted to enter the funnel in my mind, and spirit, and spirit, and body; and leave this time zone. My hands started to shake.

  My father had a look of uncertainty on his face. Sam was the instant soldier; he looked ready to fight. The silence of the centuries was interrupted by the voice of the Priest. He explained, “There is a wooden house in the back of the church. Remember to knock three times and then wait for a man to call out, “What number you be?” And say the number one and then say the word, sanctuary”. The Priest paused and looked into our eyes, and said, “I feel for you people”. And he hesitated and asked the question, “What number you be?” There were tears in Joseph eyes, but he did not reach into his pocket for a handkerchief. Joseph answered softly, “one”.

  The Priest went to the front door and the three of us walked out and walked down the path which was on the side of the church. The pebbles got into our feet. Ivy draped the corners of the wall. Holly bushes dotted the long exterior of the building with bright red berries dotting the strong, deep verdant colored leaves. We descended down the slope to the back of the church and then walked up a steep hill to a large brown, wooden house with a large brown wooden door.

  My father knocked gently and a voice from the distance called out, “Coming, coming”. Our knees seemed shattered and the ground was unusually soft where we stood, almost too soft, ready to swallow us up. A voice called out, “What number you be?” My father cleared his throat and answered, “number one”. No sound. Martin prompted Joseph, “Say the word, sanctuary”, and Joseph muttered the word loud enough for the priest to hear.

  The door swung open, as a short, stout man with a priest’s attire said, “Come in. I was expecting you”. With our eyes wide open and our breathing noticeably loud, we stared at the man in sameness as though we were triplets. “Well, come in, come in”, he said to us as he fanned the fingers of his hands towards himself and stood up in a squatting motion. The door slammed quickly behind us and shut out half of the natural light, but we were not in darkness. We could not speak. The man stared at us with his large pitch black eyes and then smiled and said, “What are your names, all seven of you?” The man who was a monk artistically crafted our names on the documents and when he was finished, my father shook his hand and thanked him.

  We boys, Sam and I, Martin, at an aged sense of maturity, understood the full meaning of what the Priest and the Monk had done for us. They had given us a chance to survive the terrible onslaught of hate that had befallen my people. They had allowed us to join their congregation. It was good of them. If the situation was reverse, I think we Jews would have done the same good deed for them.

  It is true that the papers meant conversion to Catholicism, but our main purpose was to survive. We were assured that God in his infinite wisdom had a specific and enriching purpose for us after this war was over. As we exited the front door of the monk’s study, the monk said softly, “Better to walk a mile in the back and then you will see a road. The road leads you right into town. I asked, “How long will it take us?” The monk replied, “One-half an hour to one hour. Now come on now. Hurry along so that I can look to my preserves”.

  We smiled. The road back home was difficult—ravines covered most of the pathway and we found ourselves crawling under the thick underbrush at times. Other times, we found ourselves fighting the thorns on the wild raspberries dried stalks, stalks which caught us and clung to us while we were trying to walk over the stalks. But my father knew about being in the woods so we never panicked.

  With torn pants and ruffled jackets and blood oozing all over our fingers, we left the sanctity of the woods and walked into the muck and mire of the panic, the square of the town; our fears for survival heightened as we knew that the storm of the Nazis was a maelstrom in which so many had already disappeared. We hoped that the conversion would last for a while so that we could make final plans to escape from Czechoslovakia.

  Anna was excited to see us when we got home. We passed out the passports and sat down at the dinner table and feasted on buckwheat pancakes and onions. Then we talked about acting as Christians. “You must follow everything that the others do”, my father said. Edith said, “But I want to be a Jew”. My father answered, “You are being a Jew by surviving the Nazis. We all went to sleep early that night. We were grateful we had money coming in from our wood business. We were grateful to have food for another day. In the morning, my father and I would walk to the house where the Rabbi was living and we would speak about helping others by giving money and food.

  We came to church occasionally. We would go to one of the morning masses. I was surprised at how easily I learned the hymns and the Latin words. We were, however, always Jews. Our hearts and souls and thinking were always about our history and our holidays and our prayer services. The war had taken a lot away from us. We missed the peacefulness of the Sabbath and remembered the preparation for the Sabbath—the rolling of the dough for the Sabbath bread was always fun. We missed the aroma of chicken soup throughout the whole house. I could taste the soup in my mouth, but I knew that it was not real. What a nice festive celebration we had every Friday night and Saturday. It was peaceful; it was the very opposite of this war; this war had robbed us of our peace, of our traditions, and now it was robbing us of our religion. We fought back the tears of remembrance. We tried to remember our prayers. We prayed silently to ourselves many times during the day. This gave us a little respite from this awful situation that we knew was lethal.

  We appreciated all that the Priest had done for us. He had shown us that even in a treacherous war that some people are true to their vows and can be good to all people. But on my mind all the time was the question, “How can we go to a church and enjoy its services while Jews are being killed in the extermination camps?” How can we enjoy all the splendor of vibrant colors, mosaics, and p
ainted ceilings in a building that is safe from harm while others are dying such a horrible death?” We felt guilty that other Jews were not as lucky and large numbers of the Jews were dying every day”. I, Martin, could not answer this question. I coughed after getting too wrapped up in this thought. I said to myself, “I had better stop thinking”. And I paused and bit my tongue as I said to myself, “deny it is all happening. As my mother told me, “Maybe that way it will get better”.

  In late 1943, it was harder than ever for Jews in Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia to survive. Before the war, our community was looked upon by many communities with awe. Our people had become successful businessman. Jews in Czechoslovakia owned homes, vast acres of woods, and had become doctors, lawyers, teachers, successful businessmen in all businesses. Now, many of us had become Catholics or Christians in order to evade the grasp of the conquering armies of the Nazis. But now, this failed. According to the Germans, all Jews were to be eradicated from the world. A museum was to be set up in their honor.

  Over these few years, we had lost our community of people. It had taken us centuries to build. Now we were forced to hide for our lives. Events proved to get a lot worse in the war. The Slovakian partisans wanted to fight to the death to retake their country in late August of 1944. They planned a rebellion and their army was made up of many Slovak army officers who had gone over to the Russian army or who had escaped to the British Isles and were pilots for the British. Joining them were groups from the Communist party and many thousands of Jewish partisans who were ready to die for the cause of liberating their country from the Nazis. This was a rebellion against the tight-fisted and anti-Jewish regime of Jozef Tiso, the Catholic Priest, who was the Nazi puppet. Participating in the fighting were Jewish fighters from the Jewish labor camps at Novaky, Sered, and Vyhne. It was the hope that by vanquishing the Nazis and the Nazi sympathizers that the remaining 20,000 Jews that remained in Slovakia would be spared from the death and throes of the war.