It Rained Warm Bread
Page 5
For all of us.
Even though the wolves bully them
with their hard eyes and their sharp smiles,
these women see us
and they will not be moved.
And then they are
moved,
are moving,
rushing along,
bundled up against the cold.
Even though they can’t see us,
they know.
THEY KNOW.
And these women
in this town
do not turn away.
They turn toward a bakery.
One runs inside.
Others follow.
They come out with arms full.
Something flies into the cattle car.
It is a storm.
At first we are afraid,
Unsure of what is going on.
Our hands reach up
grabbing, pulling.
There is a sweet scent.
And then we know.
It is life.
It is bread,
still warm from the oven.
It is raining warm bread.
We have no table manners.
This is the first time we have eaten in a week.
We devour every loaf,
try to make them disappear before wolves
step in and take them away.
But we don’t have to worry.
The wolves do nothing.
THE SCENT OF COURAGE
The train is moving
faster now.
The women from Czechoslovakia are stained into our memory.
Their smell hanging in the air.
It is the scent of courage.
They fed our bodies,
but their willingness to risk
fed our souls.
They did not see wolves that could do them harm.
They saw what the wolves thought they had concealed.
There was something about their eyes that reminded
me of my mother.
I saw love.
Not because we were their sons or husbands or fathers
but just because we were.
We mattered.
REMEMBERING
The bread is gone.
Even its scent
has left the boxcar.
I hold my last piece in my mouth.
I try to make it last forever
or at least until my memory can make the journey
to our lives before the wolves.
My mother is baking bread,
and Bella, who is supposed to be helping,
twirls in her apron like she is a princess.
My brother, Saul, is just a boy,
not a boy wanting to be a man.
He tells me a joke and then
plays checkers with me and lets me win.
I am home.
We have nothing and it is everything,
I can hear my father saying
prayers and it is like music.
Like the bread in my mouth,
the memory is sweet.
It tastes so good and before I can stop myself,
I swallow.
The bread and the memory sink to my stomach
like an anchor.
TRY, TRY, AGAIN (SECOND DEATH MARCH)
They take us off the trains and
start marching us.
There is a natural selection
as the dead fall away.
We are exhausted.
Starving.
Cold.
Some who walk with us
give up,
fall to the ground.
I start to wonder,
Would death be so terrible?
I am willing to find out.
The Czech women not only gave me bread
but they gave me courage.
And hope has returned to partake of the crumbs.
I find strength to try again.
I fall to the ground one more time.
When they kick me
I am still.
Even when the bayonet cuts into my side.
Shhh.
Not a sound.
Not a breath.
Not a motion.
They leave me for dead.
A second time.
HAYSTACK
I crawl
into a haystack.
Sleep.
Hunger wakes me.
As soon as the sun turns off her light,
I sneak into the nearest barn,
steal eggs and potatoes.
Fill my stomach.
During the day
I hide.
Silent.
While farmers work their fields.
I trust no one.
This is how I survive.
The next night it is the same.
More eggs.
More potatoes.
Day three,
an itch makes me careless.
An itch I can’t ignore.
I move to scratch my nose.
I make a sound.
I feel my heart beating
loudly
in my chest.
But it is not my heart—
it is footsteps.
They are coming in my direction.
I try to make myself invisible.
An arm reaches in
and grabs me.
I have been found out.
A farmer yanks me from my hiding place.
“See what I’ve found?” he yells to his mates.
“We will take this Jew to the police.”
I am tired of having misfortune for a companion.
A SOLDIER IS COMING
Before I can replay my life,
live and die again,
the silence is broken by explosions.
There is gunfire.
There are trucks.
And there are many voices.
My captor flees.
I am left alone in the field.
A soldier is coming.
I am not ready to die.
I scramble back into the haystack.
The soldier’s steps and my heartbeat are in sync.
Shhh.
Not a sound.
Not a breath.
Not a motion.
Fear holds my hand.
SAFE
The soldier speaks.
Not in German. Not in Polish. Not in Czech.
My soldier speaks Yiddish,
the language of my people.
“Shrek zikh nisht.
Ikh bin an Amerikaner!”
“Don’t be afraid. I am an American.”
I fall to the ground in tears.
I do not play dead.
I am alive.
ALIVE.
Gloria Moskowitz-Sweet, Hope Anita Smith, and Michael “Moishe” Moskowitz, 2017
Author’s Note
By Gloria Moskowitz-Sweet
On January 29, 2019, my father died in his home at the age of ninety-two. He needed to tell his story, and like many survivors, struggled to do so for years. Later in life, his stories came, and came, and came. He shared them with his children, his grandchildren, and his friends. He spoke to middle school students, many of whom had never heard about the Holocaust. His is a story of survival, hope, and inspiration. It needs to be told.
My father was born in Kielce, Poland, on August 17, 1926, between the two great wars. Kielce was known for the depth of its hatred of Jews throughout generations. Jews were concentrated in small towns around the city. Despite extreme anti-Semitism, my father always spoke of the safety and love he felt in his home with his mother, Golda; father, Gimple; brother, Saul; and sister, Bella.
In the fall of 1939, when my father was thirteen, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Poland. By the spring of 1941, about twenty-eight thousand Jews were locked in the Kielce Ghetto. When the ghetto was liquidated in the summer of 1942, his mother and sister were sent to Treblinka, an exterm
ination camp. His father joined an underground Polish resistance and died fighting the Nazis. He and his brother were left to clear the ruins of the ghetto. They were later sent to a forced-labor camp and subsequently separated. My father believed his brother died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the end of the Holocaust. He never saw any of his family again, but the hope that he would find them sustained him and kept his spirit alive. He endured the forced-labor camps of Skarzysko-Kamienna and Pionki, and the concentration camps of Auschwitz I, Auschwitz III (also known as Monowitz or Buna), and Buchenwald, as well as two death marches in the winter of 1945.
It was during the first death march, on a cold winter morning in 1945, that my father met the brave women of Czechoslovakia.
As a child, I remember my father asking customers as they came into his dry cleaner’s: “Are you from Czechoslovakia?” When I asked why he did this, he would remark that he never met a “Schindler” while he was in the concentration camps, but he will never forget the bravery and kindness of the Czech women who risked their lives. Despite the armed Nazi guards, the women threw loaves of fresh, hot bread to concentration camp prisoners locked inside cattle cars. This story—the image of it raining warm bread—became my fable of hope during my childhood. “Where there is life, there is hope; where there is hope, there is life,” my father always said. What he experienced in Czechoslovakia helped restore his belief in the goodness of human beings.
On July 4, 1946, he barely escaped the worst post-war pogrom. He had been staying with about 180 Jewish survivors in a former parish hall in Kielce, Poland. While my father was away searching for family, a mob of Polish residents attacked the parish hall, killing forty-two and injuring up to forty Jewish survivors. My father knew then he had no home in Poland. Later, while in a refugee camp, he asked a stranger leaving for America to post his name in a Jewish newspaper. His uncle Jacob Moskowitz, his father’s youngest brother, who had escaped to America before the war, was living in Los Angeles. Uncle Jacob saw my father’s name among the survivors and sponsored him to come to America. The only time my father cried when telling his story was when he described seeing his uncle for the first time at the train station, looking back at him with his father’s eyes.
Michael “Moishe” Moskowitz and Leticia Reyes Moskowitz, 1953
My father’s second life began in Los Angeles, California. He met my mother, Leticia Reyes, a beautiful Salvadorian woman, in ESL class. Despite speaking different languages and having different religions, they fell in love, married in 1950, and raised four children.
Tragedy and trauma visited my father once again in 1991. His youngest children, Richie, thirty-two, and Brenda, thirty, died six weeks apart. Once again, my father recovered. He lovingly cared for my mother during her long decline with dementia. He fought back bravely from several medical setbacks, including his last heart attack at the age of ninety-one.
My father retired from Baronet Cleaners at the age of ninety-one, where he worked side by side with his son Gary.
Gary Moskowitz, Michael “Moishe” Moskowitz, and Gloria Moskowitz-Sweet, 2017
He found new joy in retirement, the “miracle” of FaceTiming his grandchildren, and in sharing his life story with young people. He inspired all who knew him with the sparkle in his eye, his empathy, his indomitable spirit, and most of all his enduring hope.
Michael “Moishe” Moskowitz with his grandsons (from left: Gabriel, Brandon, and Jesse Sweet; Ian and Luc Moskowitz), 2011
About the Authors and Illustrator
Gloria Moskowitz-Sweet is the cofounder of My Digital TAT2, a nonprofit that works directly with students to encourage a kinder digital culture. The daughter of late Holocaust survivor Michael “Moishe” Moskowitz, she lives in San Carlos, California. You can sign up for email updates here.
Hope Anita Smith received a Coretta Scott King Honor for Keeping the Night Watch and the John Steptoe Award for New Talent for The Way a Door Closes, among many other honors. She is also the author and illustrator of Mother Poems and the picture book My Daddy Rules the World, which won the Arnold Adoff Poetry Honor Award. She lives in Los Angeles, California. Visit hopeanitasmith.com for more information, or sign up for email updates here.
Lea Lyon is the illustrator of several award-winning picture books, including Lailah’s Lunchbox, which was a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People and an ALA Notable Selection. She lives in Richmond, California. Visit lealyon.com for more information, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
CHAPTER 1 IT MATTERS 1936
IT MATTERS
SMALL WORLD
NOT SO BAD
IN PREPARATION
LESSONS LEARNED
A SWEET TREAT
IN THE MIDDLE
CHAPTER 2 THEY’RE COMING 1939
THEY’RE COMING
JANEK
LETTING GO
HIDING
LESSONS LEARNED
GOING TO THE MOVIES
TOO SOON
UNINVITED GUESTS
BULLIES TO BEASTS
MAIL
COUNSELOR
CHAPTER 3 WOLVES AT THE DOOR
WOLVES AT THE DOOR
NOT ENOUGH STARS
CORNERED
ONE FROM EVERY FAMILY
TRADING PLACES
MY MOTHER’S BOY
LOCKED ARMS
BEFORE AND AFTER
PRAYERS
CHAPTER 4 THE KIELCE GHETTO 1941
THE GHETTO
WE STILL REMEMBER HOW TO PLAY
HENRY, A FRIEND INDEED
UNDER THE WALL
MIDNIGHT MARKET
MATHEMATICS
DEATH
CHAPTER 5 THE LIQUIDATION AUGUST 1942
WEIGHING IN
DON’T LOOK
TODAY THE SKY HAS NO COLOR
LAYER BY LAYER
THE CHOSEN
NO CHILDREN HERE
HOPE
A BRIGHT LIGHT
TOMORROW NEVER CAME
CHAPTER 6 FROM CAMP TO CAMP 1942–1945
FROM CAMP TO CAMP
I HAVE A PLAN, LITTLE BROTHER
NOW
AND THEN THERE WAS ONE
DIE ARBEIT MACHT DICH FREI
IT MATTERS—REPRISE
THE SOUP PLATE
A GOOD MAN
WEIGHTLESS
DREAM TRAIN
CHAPTER 7 WINTER 1945
HIDING THE EVIDENCE
WALKING WITH WOLVES
THE FIRST DEATH MARCH
CATTLE CARS
THROUGH THE BOARDS
IT RAINED WARM BREAD
THE SCENT OF COURAGE
REMEMBERING
TRY, TRY, AGAIN (SECOND DEATH MARCH)
HAYSTACK
A SOLDIER IS COMING
SAFE
Author’s Note
About the Authors and Illustrator
Copyright
Henry Holt and Company, Publishers since 1866
Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271 • mackids.com
Text copyright © 2019 by Gloria Moskowitz-Sweet and Hope Anita Smith
Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Lea Lyon
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Moskowitz-Sweet, Gloria, author. | Smith, Hope Anita, author. | Lyon, Lea, 1945– illustrator.
Title: It rained warm bread / story by Gloria Moskowitz-Sweet; poems by Hope Anita Smith; illustrations by Lea Lyon.
Description: First edition. | New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019. | “Christy Ottaviano Books.” | Summary: A fictionalized account of the experiences of a Polish Jew, Moishe, who with his parents, brother, and sister, struggles to survive the Nazi invasion and Holocaust.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018039243 | ISBN 9781250165725 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Poland—Juvenile fiction. | Jews—Poland—Juvenile fiction. | World War, 1939–1945—Poland—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Novels in verse. | Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Poland—Fiction. | Jews—Poland—Fiction. | World War, 1939–1945—Poland—Fiction. | Poland—History—Occupation, 1939–1945—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.5.M67 It 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018039243
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First edition, 2019 / Designed by Rebecca Syracuse
eISBN: 9781250165732