“As I came through the courtyard gate, they were asking if anyone spoke German. I could have pretended not to understand. I don’t know what possessed me, but I said, ‘Ich spreche Deutsch.’ Can you imagine me offering to help them? An officer waved me in and asked me to direct him to the Juden Bureau. I started to give him directions, but he said, ‘Come in the car and show us.’ I had no choice. He told me to sit in the front with the driver, and he sat down in the back seat. So I am inside a car and riding with two Germans. The officer sitting in the back asked me questions about the different places we passed.”
“Could you answer all his questions in German?” I asked.
“Not very well, but he seemed to understand. He made me come into the Bureau in case he needed me to translate. I got some looks from the men as we walked in. I wasn’t sure whether or not they recognized me. Mr. Hirsch welcomed us in as if we were important expected guests and pulled up some chairs for us. Once I heard Mr. Hirsch’s German, I knew that they would not need me, but I sat and listened anyway.”
“What did you find out?”
“First they talked about where they would be staying and about provisions for the soldiers. Then the officer said that they had locked the old men at prayer in the synagogue and would release them for an agreed sum of money. Mr. Hirsch did not seem surprised. God only knows who is in there or how long they might keep them. They were sitting and discussing it as though it were a simple business transaction involving merchandise. Then they talked about dividing the city into districts. They studied a map, and looked at a list of names that Mr. Hirsch gave them, and the German officer put red marks on the map for each of the names. I couldn’t follow the reason for the red marks. Then I jumped up from the chair and said, ‘I must go home to my children.’
“The officer, whose name had been mentioned several times by then—von Heckendorff—jumped up, too, and shook my hand and said, ‘Danke schön, Frau…’ and waited for me to supply my name. ‘Da-vid-o-vitch,’ I said, giving it the Russian pronunciation. Thank God our name isn’t Cohen or something like that, or I would have had to think very fast and lie. As it was, I did not look at Mr. Hirsch or at any of the other men. I left quickly. I ran all the way back to the temple yard, through the market, and ducked into the matzos stall. Mr. Heller could not believe that I had come to pick up the matzos.
“‘It is a dead giveaway,’ he said. ‘If they pick you up with them, they will know; your clothes will not help.’
“All the packages were stacked against the wall waiting to be picked up. They had finished baking and packing the matzos before the Germans got here. I put down my thirty pengö, picked up my matzos, and stepped right back into the marketplace. I waited by a stall for a few minutes, and when I saw that no one was nearby, I ran. Luckily, the Germans are so disorganized and worn out by last night’s carousing that they are not yet aware of the matzos stall. But I saw some of the soldiers walking through the market, helping themselves to whatever caught their fancy, so it won’t be long before they find out about the matzos.”
Later that day, two yeshiva students came to ask for money to make up the ransom for the old men locked in the synagogue. Mother opened her purse.
“What is the ransom?” she asked.
“Twenty thousand pengö,” one of the students replied.
Mother turned her purse upside down over the kitchen table. She smoothed out some bills and gathered up the change. “Twenty thousand pengö! I’m afraid that my seventeen pengö and change won’t make much of a dent in that amount.”
“We are also asking for jewelry and other valuables,” the other student said.
“I have already given those things away,” Mother replied, and the students left, thanking her for her contribution.
Toward evening, Mr. Hirsch came from the Juden Bureau. I let him in and Mother jumped as he came through the kitchen door.
“What are you doing out? It is past curfew.”
“I am on special permission.” Mr. Hirsch pointed to his white armband. “We just aren’t getting close to the twenty thousand pengö demand, so we are going out ourselves, hoping to find people more generous to us than they were to the students.”
“Clever, aren’t they, the Germans, the way they have us following their orders,” Mother commented bitterly. “You giving them names of important townspeople—working one Jew against the other.”
“What choice is there?” Mr. Hirsch protested. “We hope that our appointments will give us some bargaining power—to ease the blow, so to speak. And what were you doing there today, dressed as a peasant woman? We weren’t really sure it was you until you gave your name. What a chance you took! What were you doing out?”
“I have children. They need to eat,” Mother said, walking Mr. Hirsch into the salon. They stayed in there and talked for a while. Mother came back to the kitchen without her pearl earrings. They were part of her features and she looked bare without them.
“You gave him your earrings!” Iboya, like me, had noticed their absence at once.
“That is all I had left to give,” Mother said to us as she walked Mr. Hirsch to the gate.
* * *
The day of Passover Eve, Mother decided to send me over to the Gerbers to find out how they were. I was afraid to go.
“By myself?” I asked.
“It is broad daylight. It is three hours before curfew time and things have quieted down,” Mother said. “You are still a child, they won’t question you, but we will dress you up just in case.” She sat me down and unwound my braids. Instead of the usual side part, she made a part in the middle of my head and rebraided my hair. Then she took the black peasant shawl and tied it covering part of my head and crisscrossed it under my arms with a knot in the small of my back. After surveying me a moment, she said, “Take off your shoes. Go barefoot. It is not cold. Once you start walking, you’ll be all right. Skip to keep warm if you have to.”
She gave a demonstration, skipping across the kitchen. She called Iboya in from where she sat in Lilli’s chair watching Sandor and Joli at play in the sandbox. “What do you think?” Mother asked her after Iboya had come into the kitchen. “I am sending Piri to look in on the Gerbers. They would not dare to wander out of their house.”
“Her feet are too clean. Otherwise, she looks like a peasant girl.”
“Good. I would like to send them some of the matzos for their seder, but I don’t dare send her out with matzos on her.”
“They don’t believe in Passover anyway,” I said. But to make it just a little special, Mother brushed the white sprouts off four shriveled potatoes, poured some sunflower oil into a little flask, and tied it all up into a small bundle.
“They can have some pancakes out of them. I wish I had an egg. Don’t tell them about my going for the matzos. Say we are fine and that as soon as things calm down, we’ll get together. Don’t go by Main Street near the synagogue. Take the long way. And you are to come right back! Rub some dirt on your feet in the yard; I’ll be right out to give you a final looking over.”
Still apprehensive, but curious to see if Beregszász had changed, I let Mother push me through the gate. The sun was warm, and the chestnut trees lining both sides of our street were covered with tight buds ready to burst out into shiny leaves. The cement sidewalk, hard and coarse under my feet, felt strange. I had walked barefoot in Komjaty so many summers, but this sensation was different. I was a peasant child in the city. I wondered if Molcha would feel strange if she were walking here now, if she would stare at the colorful brick and stucco houses and look into the modern shop windows. Two German soldiers appeared with rifles on their shoulders, coming toward me. I knew that I could not look frightened. I kept walking at the same pace, and they passed by me silently.
Approaching Dr. Feher’s house, I heard loud voices and, as I came closer, saw people all over the yard. I wandered into the courtyard and soon heard the reason for the gathering of the crowd. Dr. Feher was dead. German soldiers had broken
into his house last night and violated the women—both his wife and his daughter. He could no longer bear to live, he wrote in a note, and then shot himself with a hunting rifle.
I was too confused to understand anything beyond the fact that Dr. Feher had killed himself. I continued on my way to the Gerbers’. I did wonder, as I walked, where all the people in Dr. Feher’s yard had come from. There were so few people now on these once-busy streets. Then I remembered that tonight was Passover Eve, the first seder night. On this day, in other years, these streets had been filled with people scurrying about in preparation. And here I was carrying four potatoes to the Gerbers for their seder. Their lives, too, must have changed from what Judi had told me about the many elegant parties they used to give in Budapest.
When I knocked on the Gerbers’ door, Judi opened it and stood, with hesitant eyes, holding the door ajar.
“Who is there?” called Mrs. Gerber in a frightened voice from inside the house.
“Come and see for yourself,” Judi answered. “I almost didn’t recognize you,” she said to me. “Your disguise is perfect.”
Mrs. Gerber came to the door and stood looking at me in amazement. “Come into the house, let’s not stand here,” she said, leading the way into the kitchen. Once we were all inside, she turned to stare at me again. “Did your mother dress you up this way?” she asked.
“Yes, she was worried about you and sent you some things to make potato pancakes with.”
“I can’t believe your mother. What an actress she might have been.” Mrs. Gerber took the package from me. “She took such a big chance in sending you. Did you see anything on your way over here?”
“Yes, two German soldiers with rifles on their shoulders walked right past me. I must go home.” I didn’t think I should mention Dr. Feher.
“Can I walk her back part of the way?” pleaded Judi, reaching for her coat with the bright yellow star on the lapel.
“No, it is not safe for you to go out there with German soldiers on the street.”
Judi slipped into her coat anyway. Mrs. Gerber grabbed her. “You are not going any farther than the yard.”
“I want to talk to Piri for a moment,” Judi said quietly.
Mrs. Gerber hesitated, then, putting on her coat, she led us out with Pali following behind her.
“I want to talk in private,” Judi snapped. She pulled me toward the open gate.
“Stay inside and close the gate,” Mrs. Gerber ordered. She turned and took Pali by the hand; together they went back into the house.
Judi waited until her mother had gone before asking, “What is it like out there?”
“There is hardly anyone on the streets. But I walked past Dr. Feher’s house and he is dead. I wonder if we should tell our mothers. He shot himself. What does ‘violated’ mean?”
I was surprised that Judi did not answer me. She looked confused.
“The people in the courtyard said the reason Dr. Feher shot himself is that the German soldiers violated his wife and daughter,” I explained.
“Raped,” she said. “‘Violate’ is a word the grownups use to confuse us. What they mean is ‘raped.’”
I took her answer in slowly. “Did the soldiers come to your street, too?” I asked.
“No. Luckily, we live too far out of the main area. We heard from our neighbor that the hospitals are full of victims.”
“They did not come into our house, but they were on our street. Mother was scared that they might…” I decided not to tell Judi about sleeping in the summer kitchen. “I really must go,” I said.
Mrs. Gerber came running toward me from the house. “Take these to your mother,” she said when she reached us at the gate. “I know that she will go through some of the rituals for the seder in spite of everything falling apart. These will dress up her table. And do be careful.” She gave me a little package.
“Mother said we’ll get together as soon as things quiet down,” I said, walking through the gate.
As I neared the public-school yard, I saw German soldiers spilling out into the street. I did not know what to do. If I crossed to the other side of the street, they might get suspicious. To turn around and run did not seem like a good idea either. Then I remembered Mother skipping across the kitchen. Clutching the package, I began to skip by, hoping that they would pay as little attention to me as the other German soldiers had. Skip, hop. Skip, hop. The whole yard was filled with soldiers. Some of the ones on the street did turn to look at me.
“Hüpfe, hüpfe,” said one of them, clapping his hands in rhythm with my movements. I skipped past Mrs. Silverman’s gate, and when I was certain that the soldiers could no longer see me, I broke into a run.
When I reached home, I had to knock on the gate to be let in. Mother opened it, her eyes dark green with fear, and I decided not to tell her about Dr. Feher.
“Mrs. Gerber sent you these,” I said in a rush, handing her the package.
She took it and bolted the gate. Once inside, she unrolled the brown paper to find the graceful, tapering green and gold candles from Mrs. Gerber’s mantel. “Now her house will be empty,” Mother said to us as she shook her head in appreciation of the gift.
Our seder behind locked doors and drawn shades consisted of vegetable soup, potato pancakes, and a lekvár pudding made from crushed matzos. No prayer books, no traditional seder plate, no wine. Mother had covered the table with a white cloth, and Mrs. Gerber’s green and gold candles stood in our brass candleholders at the center as a festive decoration. Mother lit the candles. The four of us—Iboya and I, Sandor and Joli—sat down around the table, and then Mother sat herself in Father’s chair and handed each of us a matzo.
“You children know that tonight is the first night of seder,” she said. “A lot has happened since last Passover, but we must be grateful that the five of us are here together tonight. It is traditional in the Passover recital to say, ‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ but instead, I will say that next year I want us all to be together with the rest of the family in Komjaty like we used to be.”
Iboya said, “Amen.” The rest of us repeated it after her. Mother got up to serve the soup.
18
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Mr. Hirsch knocked at our door. Mother went out into the yard to talk with him. Iboya and I, watching from the porch, saw Mother cup her face in the palms of her hands, and for a while her body shook with sobs. Then Mr. Hirsch touched her gently on the arm and left.
“I cannot believe it,” Mother said slowly. “Dr. Feher shot himself. They have just gotten permission from the Germans to bury him. No funeral—we cannot get into the synagogue and they won’t let the rabbi out. But we have to bury him, and I have to be at the cemetery in an hour.”
Mother came out of the bedroom dressed in a good dress I had not seen her wear for years, a black silk with a matching jacket, and she held in her hands the hat she used to wear with it. I followed her to the salon. A pale but steady Mother stood in front of the gilded mirror adjusting the hat. “I lost my last good friend who could have helped me,” she told the looking glass. I noticed the yellow Star of David pinned to the lapel of her jacket.
“You are going dressed like that?” I asked in surprise. “Isn’t it dangerous? I thought you were going to dress in one of your disguises.”
“Mr. Hirsch said that it will be all right. The Germans are busy now with reorganizing the government, and the soldiers had their chance the other night.” She stopped, sighed, and went on. “And they have the old men locked in the synagogue to amuse them for now. So it should be all right—at least for a while—for us to be out on the street as long as we don’t go over the curfew time.”
Then she left, and I watched her as she opened the gate and walked up the street in her silk dress and good shoes. For some reason that I didn’t understand, tears welled in my eyes.
Mother returned two hours later with the Gerbers. They seemed changed. Even Judi was subdued.
Mrs. Gerber and Mother sat down at the kit
chen table and Mrs. Gerber began to tell Mother the contents of a letter she had received from a friend in Budapest. “Hitler’s deputy Adolf Eichmann himself came with his SS officers to enforce the new anti-Jewish laws. He gathered up the Jewish community leaders to confer with them and help him carry out the new orders. They are also forcing the Jews entirely out of all professions. The same thing is happening here. That, too, might have had something to do with your Dr. Feher’s decision to kill himself.”
“No,” I interrupted, “I heard someone say that he shot himself because his wife and daughter were…”
“Raped,” offered Judi boldly.
Mrs. Gerber bowed her head in helplessness. “What will happen to those poor old men in the synagogue? If we don’t reach twenty thousand pengö by seven o’clock tonight, they will execute them. We are still short eight thousand and the Germans said they won’t extend the time.”
“I heard that many Gentiles gave,” Mother said.
“I am sure your Mr. Kovacs wasn’t one of them. Does he know that you are without money?”
“I am not going back there any more,” Mother said, pausing a moment before she continued. “Mr. Hirsch said that they were allowed to take food in to the old men. Some were sick from fright and fatigue. We could have used Dr. Feher in there. In a way, he had no right to take his life. He could have helped while we are still here.”
“Did Mr. Hirsch have any idea of what is going to happen to us?”
“He said he’ll have more information by next week.” Mother looked over to Judi and me. “Why don’t the two of you get some plates and set the table on the porch?” Mother said.
“Come on,” said Judi, “they want to get rid of us.”
Later that afternoon, past curfew time, Mr. Hirsch returned, deeply disturbed. He told Mother that the Germans were getting ready to line up the men in the synagogue and shoot them. “They think we are holding out,” he said. “They won’t accept the fact that we have no money.”
Upon the Head of the Goat Page 12