by Elisa New
As a relatively valued ghetto inmate, Solomon and his family enjoyed nicer accommodations, the authorities even winking at the “usefulness” of young mothers such as Fanja for the sake of her husband, Solomon. One can understand how hopes might have risen in Shavli, since the first years in the ghetto were bearable, even for the least “essential” inmates. For instance, until 1943 the Nazis winked and happily exploited Jewish women whose “essential” skills maintained luxury workshops for embroidery, furs, and lace. Nazi wives had tablecloths and even stoles of fox and ermine made by the widows of murdered Jews. Later, of course, their faith in assignments of this kind was used against these women. Those who volunteered, eager to prove themselves skilled at needlework, were the first shot. Wiser ones were allowed to board barges for Stuffhoff, where they hauled sandbags in grit and frozen rain.
One of the women who filled Shavli’s definition of usefulness—by working in embroidery—was a Levy bride. Born in Ekaterinburg, Russia, she, like Solomon’s lovely Fanja, had married in Russia and then come west after World War I, enjoying a period of independence and prosperity with her westernized husband. That husband gone, shot I presume in one of the earlier Aktionen, she and her eldest child took themselves to work in the morning, leaving the little ones to get through the day on their own. There were no children in the ghetto, one commentator mourned, “only little Jews.”
At least through 1942 an effort was made to preserve a semblance of childhood. “Children’s corners” were a proud feature of the Shavli Jewish council’s organization. There younger teenagers were kept busy (the better to keep their thoughts from possibly joining the partisans). The three little Levy girls whose mother did embroidery were, I infer from Leibe’s ghetto census, among those released at lunch (such as it was) to spend the afternoons alone. Before he was shot, their father had kept his father’s store, the Brolai Levy, going, and so I imagine that Rocha, Sora, and Aliza would have played store, using a stick to spoon out “rice” and “cocoa” and “coffee.” Naturally, none of the children could be prevented from playing war, though it made their parents anxious. All children played games based around food, for the precious onions, potatoes, and field greens hanging in sacks over the mother’s bed were all there was to eat. There was no milk for babies. Their mothers told them to be glad they had teeth.
It is against Jewish custom to name a child after a living person; the practice is considered bad luck and for some tantamount to a curse. I think of this when I look, as I do now, at pictures of my Aunt Myrtle’s son Jack, whom she named (out of excess of sentiment, solicitude, desire to salve the feelings of the man who’d lost his own sons?) after her living father, Jacob.
The picture I am looking at was taken, as best I can tell, in the summer of 1942 before Jack enlisted in the U.S. Army. Given to me by Fred, his brother, the image shows Aunt Myrtle peeping between the shoulders of two tall boys, both lanky, grinning, one shirtless, one with a girl—a girlfriend—at his shoulder. Myrtle is in her early forties here but looks younger. Her hair looks damp in the summer heat, but I can tell it is still black. Her sons lean toward her in a familiar way. Years before, when I’d looked at this photo in the album, I called Aunt Myrtle over and she pointed the sons out to me, though I already knew that the one on the right was Fred and the shirtless one on the left was Jack, her Jack, who “died in the war.” And then Aunt Myrtle smiled, holding my shoulders, and asked me if I could guess who was the young child whose little black bob frizzed in the heat. Aunt Myrtle squeezes my shoulders and rolls her eyes at me, for the little girl in the picture has been given, like the boy, the liberty of going without a shirt. It is, of course, my mother who pokes out her narrow nippled chest above the narrow shoulders of the laughing boys. It is from her age in the picture, six or seven, that I date the photo to 1942, the summer before Jack’s letters began.
War begins a game.
Jack, age nineteen, writes to his mother, Myrtle,Today was the first day I really started to enjoy this man’s army. I have all of my clothes and some field equipment. I receive the rest of the latter after I’m shipped. The helmets are quite novel, being in three pieces: a wool cap, a plastic helmet for protection against the heat and finally the familiar metal piece which encloses the latter two quite snug. The long underwear is swell, but those g . . . d . . . shirts still itch me so I wear the top of the underwear almost continually. . . . please excuse the bad handwriting but I got my injections yesterday and my left arm is pretty stiff and sore. Those are the only bad effects. All the veterans (two days!) called us needlebait when we first arrived. . . . believe it or not, every bit of my clothes fits me perfectly.
She would want his clothes to fit perfectly. He knows this. To his mother Jack writes the letter of a boy dressing up. His first letter to his brother Fred, eight days into his basic training, is overlong with the excitement of playing real soldier.
Our training is very strenuous, as you can presume from my letters. Particularly brutal is the bayonet drill and close combat training. Brutal in the moral sense, as I am getting accustomed to all other phases of our routine. They teach us to use no mercy and all idea of fair play is forgotten. When a man is down, you butt him in the head with your rifle to bash out his brains. When he attacks you, you first jab him in the throat with a long thrust of your bayonet, You follow up with a short thrust into the midsection, and if he still lives, jab upward with your bayonet being carried and forced with your entire body through his lower jaw into his skull.
When you are both disarmed and he tries to grasp you, push his head back by applying your hand and forcing it against his chin. Surprisingly effective. Raise your foot as high as possible and, with the edge of your heel, bring it down sharply on his kneecap. This rips it off, and, when carried through, will tear most of the skin off his shin. Continue the downward action and smash all of your weight on the top of his arch, twisting at the same time. This will break every bone in his foot.
Another is to bring your knee sharply up into his groin and to inactivate his family jewels. When his head is close to you, and is held by you, put your fingers into his eyes and pull down sharply. This will blind him, and also rip his face off.
Swing from your opposite shoulder putting all your might behind the stroke. Choice spots are the Adams apple, guts, heart, back of ear. The striking force is terrific.
All of the latter is what your kid brother has been learning these past weeks.”
With war still far away in 1942 and the situation stateside not comparable in any way to what Eddie, Paul, and Theo had seen in London the prior year, Aunt Fanny’s diary entries are, like Jack’s letters, not too discomposed. Detailed accounts of table settings, birthday gifts, and small purchases fill Fanny’s pages along with a record of days logged at the plant—business picking up with wartime orders—and the routine visits the aunts made to my grandfather, Emil, in the Inst-ee-tution. No change, the doctors shook their heads. No change expected.
The big news comes from London. The Carreras factory makes it through the Blitz without a “speck” of damage. Bertha busies herself at the London canteen, and when they are lucky enough to get to the country, she and Eddie write from the humble quarters of Fulmer Cottage. Eddie does not need to tell his sisters that his star has never shown so brilliantly, with Carreras profits going through the roof, and he and Bertha swept completely up in His Majesty’s Great Effort. He says as much to stockholders at annual meetings (clippings enclosed), and Bertha now is sure to send her own clippings, these full of the latest on the Fulmer Chase Lying-in Hospital. The reason they write from the “cottage” is that the large main house, Fulmer Chase, has been converted into a hospital. Bertha and her committee of concerned ladies, Clementine Churchill among them, can’t do enough for these wives of the brave officers of the RAF and Royal Navy.
From the pictures and clippings thoughtfully enclosed one can see just how splendidly Bertha brings off the day on which Clemmie herself shows up to salute the Barons: She adopts the
Officers Hospital at Fulmer Chase as her own particular project. A clipping relates:Mrs. Winston Churchill visited the hospital recently and was delighted with all she saw. Fresh fruits and vegetables are being sent from adjoining country houses, and with the increase in the number of patients, further gifts of this kind and of such things as a freshly caught salmon would be appreciated. Grateful letters are constantly arriving from mothers who have been at Fulmer Chase. They all speak of the great kindness shown to them and of the happy atmosphere of the house.
In the Guardian a breathless reporter catches the spirit of the day:In the afternoon, Mrs. Churchill, Miss Brooks and Lady Portal took us to see a maternity hospital which they have organized for junior officers wives in a house lent to them by Lady Baron. They can take 22 patients at a time and I must say that the whole atmosphere was pleasant and happy. The babies were the loveliest I have ever seen—healthy, placid, and beautifully cared for. Those young mothers live through anxious times, with their husbands missing or off in some distant part of the world, and most of them going through their own ordeal for the first time. Yet everyone could show her baby with pride.
That same spring of 1942, in the Shavli ghetto, official tolerance of so many unproductive mouths to feed—the elderly and children—wore thin. The plan for thinning the ghetto to essential personnel began with babies.
In the spring of 1942, a notice, skelbimai, went up: “Births are permitted in the ghetto only up to August 15th 1942.” The edict continues:After this date, it is forbidden to give birth to Jewish children either in the hospitals or in the homes of the pregnant women. It is pointed out, at the same time, that it is permitted to interrupt pregnancies by means of abortions. If they do not comply with this order, there is a danger that they will be executed along with their families.
On March 24 the Shavli Jewish council, the Judenrat, agonized through the night. Despite the edict, there were at least twenty pregnant women in the ghetto, some in the early months and some willing to undergo abortions. But a few women in their second trimester resisted abortion, including one who would be in her eighth month by August. Delivery of this child risked implicating doctors in a live birth or killing a live child, “which would be murder.”
As August 15 approached, the SS posted warning signs throughout the ghetto:The time is over. It is the last minute. The 15th of August is not far. Remember Jewish women, after the 15th births will be forbidden even in private homes. A strict examination of private dwellings will be conducted. Physicians, midwives and nurses will be forbidden to assist Jewish women.
In case any mistook their meaning, the notices made clear that live births meant death: “All will be punished with the utmost severity. Do not forget the danger you might bring upon yourself or your children.”
Leibe Lifshitz remembered the relative calm between the fall of 1942 and 1943. Working in the Frankel factory and returning home to the ghetto, Leibe had found a former shopkeeper, a gentile still working in the factory, who sometimes slipped him food. Leibe had no younger siblings, but those who did managed to keep most of them alive. For more than a year, from August 1942 through November 1943, young children survived in the ghetto.
But the morning of November 3, 1943, as Leibe told me and then wrote in his correct, slow hand, had brought the infamous Kinderaktion . Their parents at work, the smaller children of the Shavli ghetto were at home alone when the Nazis pulled trucks playing gay music into the ghetto. Those under twelve could not resist the roundup.
Bulletins sent to the nearby Jews of Kovno inspired terror, fear that the terrible crime against children perpetrated in Shavli augured a similar action in Kovno. Especially terrifying were the reports of the calm with which the Aktion was carried out. No one bothered with the time-consuming sadism. The children were relatively easy—small, underfed as they were—to get into trucks. By fall of 1943, thinking that the war was going their way and having already killed so many Jews, the German professionals scoffed at wasting excess effort on an easy task. More than five hundred children were taken away that day. Solomon and Fanja’s young son Isaac, named after his grandfather Isaac the Tanner, was taken, as well as all three Levy children in the other ghetto, Sora, Rocha, and Aliza.
I will remember all my life the look in Yael’s eyes as she watched Leibe, on our first trip, write the names of those children twelve and under taken on November 3. As she watched his face under its shock of white hair, he lifted his head to explain. What with the wounds some children, especially the older ones, received in the “scuffle,” and allowing for the cold and hunger of the trip to Auschwitz, the parents never knew which of the children arrived there “safely.”
Historians of the ghetto admit that after the Kinderaktion the parents of Shavli went a little crazy. Hitherto they had prided themselves that tight organization and the Frankel factory permitted a hopeful outlook. But as order began to break down, many parents gathered for séances, seeking to communicate with their little ones. The generation gap widened, and what influence parents had over their teenagers dissipated. With half of the adults already gone, and now all the little children, the teenagers believed the adults were incapable of saving anyone.
Now began the period of the secret underground meetings where the young pledged to find their way out of the ghetto. “Vengeance” was the name of their cell. They had organized in 1941, but their organization had the character of a youth group. Now they told each other the story of Masada, of the brave Judean resisters who held off the Roman army on a mountaintop fortress in 70 ce. Now they received and carried messages, slipping through fences, and planned and replanned escapes. Now they communicated with bands roving in the forests. While their grieving mothers tapped at tables, while their elders communed with the dead, the teenagers poured gas into lightbulbs, recited directions through the forest to each other, practiced German phrases. The teenagers did not trust their parents, who had lost faith in themselves.
If the Levys were at all representative, the teenagers were right in thinking that their parents would be able to do nothing. For aside from Moshe’s brother Solomon, preserved all the way to Dachau because his metalworking skill made him useful, the only survivor of the family shown in the photos of 1928 was a young girl. Her name was Riva. And I actually found a letter from her in my Aunt Jean’s files. She wrote,If you have heard something from Max Levy and his family, who lived once before the second world war in Lithuania, then you must know that he had a daughter Sonitscha, and five sons, Grisha, Salamon, Adolf, Nathan and Saul. Nathan is my father! He, my brother Elinka and my mother Sheina were killed in the terrible war. I was in ghetto, then a partisan in the forest.
I read and reread this letter, looking from it to the 1928 family portrait showing Max seated beside Jacob, the cane under his curved knuckles. I find Nathan, and then the girl who must be Riva. Standing in front of her father and mother, she is only a youngster, five or six years old. She stands in a ruffled dress with her hand on the hand of her mother. Her younger brother, the one in a little boy’s sailor suit, still has his baby fat.
The letter, written by Riva, a woman born in the 1920s, had neither envelope nor return address. I have wracked my brains in vain for ten years, thinking how to find this Riva.
I know that I never will.
I sometimes like to think, though I know it couldn’t be true, that Jack, 21, somehow saved Riva, also 21, and that his death in the snows of Alsace hastened to its end the “terrible war” that consumed every person but two in the family photos of 1928. It is fantasy, I know, but spinning tales counteracts the sense that nothing fits, that the ends are all unknown, that history’s bitter strands unravel. In my mind I let Jack ride slowly to the east to find and rescue Riva; he, as Jacob’s American namesake, would try to keep one person in his grandfather’s European family alive.
Jack writes from Camp Breckenridge, Kentucky, in April 1944, two months before D Day,The invasion is more gigantic than most people realize. Latest reports state that there are t
wenty divisions in the battle area and that is plenty of men. Just to see this one division ship from Camp Polk up here and then magnify that by twenty times would stagger the imagination. I was on a detail loading the vehicles and thought I would never see the end of the long line of jeeps, half tracks, tracks of all sizes, anti tank guns, field pieces and other stuff too numerous to go over. It sure must have been a sight to see all of that equipment moving down towards the Dover Coast.
He does not mean to be callous, does not mean to hurt his mother, yet it is clear from his tone that the impressions made by the war, the sheer scale of the enterprise of which he is a part, dissolve his nearer vision. He declines—though she begs—to assure her that he will apply for further training to keep him safe at camp. He neglects to thank her and her sister Fanny for the packages they scrimp to send. Mothers at a loss for what else to do assemble packages of food for their boys at camp; my Aunt Fanny’s diary shows weekly excursions with Myrtle to buy “pineapple juice, Shaeffers’ candy, cookies with raisins, giant Hershey bars, potato sticks, figs and prunes, sugar coated peanuts, liverwurst, plantation dainties.”
And also, though I can well imagine what the effort must have cost them, pictures of pinup girls.
Still, Jack cautions her, “don’t let our initial success stir you into believing we have won the struggle. Hitler is playing a shrewd game and will put up a strong fight before Victory is even in sight.”