by Bina Bernard
With new papers that he would arrange for, he thought those who could pass because of their looks could live openly as Gentiles in a town where they were not known. But those who needed to go into hiding would be unable to venture out. It would be too dangerous for them and their benefactors.
For Rabbi Moishe Stein going into hiding was the only possibility. He knew with his long gray beard and classic Jewish features he could not pass for a Gentile. He equated going into hiding with being in prison. He refused to leave.
“I’m too old to live in a cave of my own making. I would be a prisoner,” he said. “I couldn’t go out. It would be too dangerous for anyone to come to see me. What kind of life would I be saving? I will stay here and accept what the Almighty plans for me.”
Sonia and Jakob Landau also refused to leave. But Hershel’s two widowed sisters, Salka, and Rushka, his sister Sara and her husband Samuel, his nephews, Monek, Lunek, and two nieces, Leah and Helena, decided to follow Hershel’s plan. Finally, Malka’s brother Leo and his wife, Ada, agreed to go into hiding.
In July 1941 when rumors reached Krakow that a mob murdered all the Jews in Jedwabne, a town in northeastern Poland under German control, Hershel knew he had to move quickly. And he did.
Hershel remained hopeful that all those he managed to place in hiding, and those who were living openly with false identities as Gentiles, would be safe. If their luck did hold, and they survived the war, he expected the family to be reunited without much difficulty.
CHAPTER
21
SUDDENLY HANNAH EXPLODED!
“Stefan’s lie ruined our family!” she shouted. “His lie caused such heartache. I suffered, Mother, we all suffered! You can’t imagine what not getting you back after the war caused our family! You had Stefan. I lost a father. Harry never got over losing you! And he took it out on me. Father never got over his guilt for leaving Poland without you!”
As Hannah shouted, Lena jumped off the bed and closed the door to the bedroom. She wanted to keep their heated voices from reaching her son’s room.
Lena couldn’t renounce her love for Stefan, but she couldn’t dismiss Hannah’s burst of anger, either.
“I know that if Stefan had not told the nuns I had died, and had given me up after the war, I would have had a different life,” Lena said. “I regret that I never got to know our father. That I grew up without you or a mother. But I don’t regret having married Ryszard.”
Lena picked up the framed photo on her bedside table of Ryszard holding Stefan in a bear hug and stroked her husband’s face. “I wouldn’t have had my son if I had gone to America. I do regret being a widow.” Her voice a mere whisper.
“That was my destiny to raise my son alone,” she said, fighting back tears.
The mention of Ryszard’s death made Hannah focus on her sister’s loss instead of her own.
“What a senseless death! Being shot the way Ryszard was. That was horrific!” Hannah said. “How awful that Ryszard’s accidental death ended up shaping your destiny!”
Hannah realized they’d both suffered major losses. “I’m sorry,” Hannah said, “Being sisters now and tomorrow is what we have to concentrate on. We shouldn’t be fighting over what can’t be changed. What happened in our past is history.”
“You know so much about our family history . . . you remember so much,” Lena said, wistfully.
Hannah shook her head.
“Not so much. Only bits and pieces. I do remember everything from the morning I was sent to Kielce. Vividly. Especially Grandma Sonia.” Just saying her name brought tears to her eyes.
“I don’t remember you,” Hannah admitted. She considered telling Lena about her dream, but didn’t.
Still more comfortable asking than answering questions, Hannah said, “What do you remember?”
Lena sighed. “The train ride to the orphanage . . . holding onto father’s thumb. When I went back to Krakow and saw the house our family used to live in, the wallpaper in one of the bedrooms looked familiar, but that’s about it.”
“You don’t remember me either, do you?”
“No. I’m sorry. I’m the older sister, but I don’t remember you!”
“Our cousin Leah told me we were inseparable,” Hannah relayed.
Lena patted her sister’s hand. She mourned the irretrievable loss of her first four years.
“You’re lucky to have your son,” Hannah said, switching the conversation back to the present.
“I know. What about you and Robert? Do you want children?”
“We’ve been trying,” Hannah answered finally, although it was not a subject she wanted to discuss. “Robert already has a lovely daughter from his first marriage.”
“Maybe you should think about adoption.” Lena offered. “Helga and Stefan couldn’t have a child of their own until they got me.”
“No!” Hannah shot back and shook her head. “I remember how I felt about the people in Kielce. I didn’t want them. I wanted my own parents!”
Lena was sorry she’d brought up the obviously touchy subject of adoption.
An awkward silence fell between them, until Hannah went into reporter mode.
“What was it like for you during the war? Did you know what was happening to Jews? I know you were only a child.”
“Not as much of a child as you!” Lena playfully flicked her finger at her younger sister’s nose. “The war didn’t affect me directly, the same way it did you. I knew bad things were going on as I was growing up.” Lena remembered fleeting conversations that she had overheard between Stefan and Helga. She never fully understood what was being said.
“Before the war many Jews lived in Sandomierz. I heard talk of Jews being sent to Treblinka or Belzec. I didn’t know that being sent to Treblinka meant they were going to a concentration camp. I thought they were moving away. Helga didn’t seem upset by what was happening. Stefan was. After the war when the Communists came, I remember hearing Helga say it was the fault of the Jews.”
Lena felt ashamed. I never thought about what was happening to Jews in Poland. I should have! she scolded herself.
“When I visited Ela in Krakow, she told me a little about what you went through. It made me cry,” Lena’s voice cracked.
“It still makes me cry if I let myself think about it,” Hannah said.
“Still? All these years later?” Lena was surprised.
Taking a respite from the past, Hannah said, “Warsaw looks very different now from what I remember. The trolley cars along Marszałkowska Street are gone. It’s practically a three-lane highway. It’s a bustling business center. And no more horse and carriages, either!”
Lena kept steering the conversation back to the war years. “You were in Warsaw for the worst of it. It must have been horrible seeing the Ghetto burn.”
Hannah bit her tongue. A trick she used during the war to keep from crying. She thought back to that day when Harry forced her to talk about Poland. Their painful reminiscing resulted in a closeness between her and her father Hannah didn’t think was possible. She decided rehashing the war years with Lena might do the same for their relationship. If I cry, maybe the tears will finally flush out the poison polluting my system.
Hannah sat up, pushed herself against the headboard and hugged her legs.
“Yes. It was terrible. When it started in April, the SS had tanks, machine guns and flame throwers. All around Warsaw you could hear the shooting and things exploding. The Jews behind the ten-foot wall that surrounded the Ghetto managed to hold off the Germans for twenty-eight days even without comparable weapons.”
Lena interrupted Hannah’s narrative. “You knew all this—when it was going on? You were a child.”
Hannah laughed and blew her nose into her soggy tissue. “I stopped being a child by the time I turned four. I had to know what was going on. I listened and watched. I knew I was Jewish. Pretending to be Gentile. You know, not everybody in Warsaw cared about what was happening to the Jews. I knew if someone susp
ected the truth . . . ” Hannah’s voice trailed off.
Lena hugged her sister.
“I was lucky. I survived,” Hannah said solemnly, and started to describe the day the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ended.
“They blew up the Great Warsaw Synagogue! The final bang reverberated throughout the city.”
Lena thought about her visit months ago to the Jewish Historical Institute, next door to where the Great Synagogue stood. She’d read about the destruction of the Ghetto, and had seen pictures, but now listening to Hannah made it much more personal. More horrifying.
“All of Warsaw was gray. You could see the buildings glow as they burned, house by house. The smell of smoke lingered for a long time,” Hannah said, her voice an eerie monotone. “It took the Germans longer than they had expected to liquidate the Ghetto, but they got the job done. They sent all those who survived to die in Treblinka. I had to pretend I didn’t care.”
Hannah paused. In the dim light she looked at the bureau opposite the bed. As if in counterpoint to her own story, she saw a photograph of a young Lena looking up adoringly at Stefan. She tried to remember where she herself could have been at that moment in time.
Tears trickled down Hannah’s face. Lena reached over and patted her sister’s moist cheek with a hankie. “You poor thing. You were just a child,” Lena said.
“A very old child!” Hannah cracked a smile, then rested her head on Lena’s shoulder. Comforted by her sister, she continued. “That was not the only uprising I was a witness to. In August of ’44, when the Polish Underground tried to liberate Warsaw I wasn’t just an onlooker. The Underground fighters held out for sixty-three days but the Germans, again with their superior weapons, crushed the Uprising when the Russians didn’t cross the river to help. The Germans turned Warsaw into rubble.”
Hannah pointed out the window. “We were just on the other side of the river. One of the last houses to be taken by the Germans. Toward the end of the fighting, many wounded fighters were huddled in our basement, too. I heard people whispering, ‘If the Germans come and they find these wounded here, they will kill us all.’ That’s what they did in other buildings. Mother, a rosary in her hand, was leading everyone in prayers as we awaited the inevitable arrival of the German soldiers.”
Lena interjected. “Mother was with you?”
Hannah nodded. “You would call it destiny! It just happened that Mother was visiting me and Emma on the day the Uprising started. She never went back to her job. As she led everyone in prayer, they treated her as if she were a direct descendant of the Virgin Mary. No one even suspected she was Jewish.” Hannah chuckled. “Her blue eyes and blonde curls, just like yours, and her convincing chanting of the prayers, made them think she was one of them.”
“You were together from then on,” Lena said. A hint of envy in her voice. “After the Uprising you and Mother were together,” she repeated, and smoothed Hannah’s hair.
“Yes, we were together. But she was always Marta Wilakowa. Aunt Marta, never my mother. That’s how it was.”
An image of her terrified self, standing alone at a Warsaw tram stop, flashed before Hannah’s eyes.
“I remember the time Mother finally came by on her day off, after not visiting for many, many weeks. She brought me a present, a coloring book and crayons, and said the two of us would be going out. It would be a wonderful day, she promised. I was ecstatic. We had lunch at a restaurant where I gorged myself on ice cream. Then we went to the park, walked around, fed the red squirrels, pigeons, and ducks, and enjoyed being together. It was a wonderful day. But I knew her visit was coming to an end when I saw her checking her watch. As we approached the tram stop for the trip back to Emma’s, my stomach started to grumble, and not from too much ice cream. While we were waiting, Mother saw a couple who knew her employer. She smiled and waved at them. Looking straight ahead and without moving her lips, she explained who they were. I could tell she was nervous. I knew being seen with me was a problem. I was standing next to her, but not holding her hand. Then as the tram pulled up, she whispered, ‘Stay here and wait! Someone will come for you.’ And she got on board! I was left alone. Paralyzed. I don’t remember how long I stayed there until my cousin Helena came to take me back to Emma. It seemed like forever.”
Lena squeezed her sister’s hand. She knew there was nothing she could say that would erase that frightening memory.
It was a source of pride for Hannah during the war that she kept her tears in check. Now they flowed unabated and she didn’t care. She continued narrating the documentary unspooling in her head.
“While Mother prayed to God for someone to come and save us from the Germans, I childishly wanted the Germans to come,” Hannah said. She got out of bed, walked to the window, and looked out across the river. “I couldn’t stand the cries of pain from the wounded lying on stretchers. I covered my ears, but that wasn’t enough to drown out their moaning. When all the wounded had somehow been evacuated through the sewers, just before the Germans arrived, I was sure Mother had saved us all with her prayers. They didn’t shoot us. With their drawn bayonets, they herded us into the street, made us walk in the gutter.”
“Forgive me! I force you to talk about such a horrendous time,” Lena said, when Hannah came back to the bed.
“Probably good for me to get it out,” Hannah said. She wiped her cheeks with the sleeve of her borrowed nightgown and kept on. “I remember the oppressive heat from the burning buildings. The flames glowed red and gold on both sides of the street. It was October, but it felt as hot as summer. I wanted to rip off my coat. Mother and Aunt Emma each held my hand so I wouldn’t. We were walking over lifeless bodies that had been there for days in various stages of decomposition. I can’t forget that dreadful smell of decaying flesh. It comes rushing back even now, when I see a dead body lying in the street on the news, or even in a movie. The German soldiers shouted, ‘Mach schnell!’ I accidentally kicked a helmet lying in the road and it rolled. A head was still in it. I almost threw up. Mother and Emma dragged me by my hands to keep me moving. . . .”
As Hannah’s memories poured out, Lena pulled her sister close and stroked her hair. She felt guilty. The war had only touched her obliquely. By comparison her life in Sandomierz with Stefan and Helga during that same time had been relatively blissful.
In spite of the tears, Hannah did not stop her reverie. “I remember a frail, elderly couple in front of us. They were leaning on each other, struggling to walk. I thought of Grandma Sonia and Grandpa Jakob. When I saw one of the officers aim his pistol at them, I had to protect them. I pulled away before Emma and Mother knew what was happening, and ran to the officer. ‘Don’t shoot them, don’t shoot them!’ I yelled. The only thing I could do to stop him was to kick his shiny boots.”
“Weren’t you afraid?”
“I must have been. Afterward, my whole body was shaking. But at that moment I was only thinking about protecting the old couple. It worked. Other people helped the old man and woman move along. Mother and Emma pulled me into the crowd and held my hands tighter than before.”
Pointing to the window again, Hannah said, “The Russian soldiers might have been just around the corner from here. While Mother prayed for them to come from Praga, I wondered why God didn’t make them come to save us.”
That brought a chuckle from Lena. “You wanted the Russians to save you, but in Sandomierz we were afraid of the Russians,” Lena said.
Hannah sighed. “By the time they came, the Germans had burned Warsaw to the ground. We were lucky they didn’t kill us. Instead of packing us off to Treblinka as they had with the Jews who survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, they shoved all the women and children into sealed boxcars, like cattle. Occasionally the train came to a stop. An armed German soldier would slide open the metal door and someone was allowed to get off to get water. At one stop Mother volunteered to go. She came back carrying several jugs. She was very brave.”
Now Hannah proudly recounted what her mother had done. At th
e time, she was terrified that her mother would never return.
“We had no idea what would happen to us or where we were going. Until the heavy metal door of the boxcar slid open in Koslow. Did you know in Sandomierz what had happened in Warsaw?”
“Yes. Of course we knew,” Lena said.
“The people in Koslow welcomed us as Polish heroines because we had been banished from Warsaw by the Germans. No one suspected Zofia Nowakowska and Marta Wilakowa were Jewish.” Hannah still enjoyed the fact that the Gentiles had been fooled.
When she noticed Lena was weeping, Hannah stopped talking. “Enough! I don’t want our reunion to be full of tears,” she said.
“Sometimes crying is a sign that you feel something,” Lena said. “I want to know everything that happened to you. I know it was hard being separated from Mother and Father. But what was it like living with Aunt Emma? I hope she was good to you the way Stefan was to me.”
Not exactly, Hannah thought to herself. To Lena she said, “Emma certainly looked like a kindly grandmother.”
Hannah got off the bed again and walked to the window. With the moon and stars illuminating the night, she could see across the river. She tried to pick out the area where she’d lived with Aunt Emma, although she knew nothing remained of the building where they had lived.
She closed her eyes and pictured five-year-old Zosia back in the apartment on Lipowa Street. Alone. Sitting on the floor next to her bed, playing with the cutout paper doll she’d made to keep herself company.
“Kaja, be a good girl and eat your food. I made it just for you,” Zosia told her paper-playmate. Playing with Kaja only tamped down her fears while it was still light. When Emma had not returned once it was dark outside, Zosia introduced her counting game. “Let’s see how many times I will count to one hundred before Aunt Emma comes home today!” she told her paper doll. At first she paced leisurely around the apartment counting to one hundred: one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . But after many, many hours of counting, in a cold sweat, Zosia shouted out numbers in a voice she did not recognize as her own. She only stopped counting when she heard Emma’s key in the door.