Pieces of the Past

by Carol Matas

  For some strange reason I can’t cry. Not a tear falls from my eyes.

  And then Max says, “Rozia, she would want you to choose life now. She will want you to survive, no matter what. I know you are the last of your family, and it will be lonely. But you can do it. I know you can do it.”

  I am unsure. I look at Mama and wonder whether I should follow her to that safe and warm place where she and Papa and Abe and Sophie are. This place is so cold and so cruel. But I can’t be a coward. I can’t give up. I don’t know why or if there is a reason, but I need to live.

  And I will try.

  Sunday, April 18, 1948

  I felt strange all day yesterday after I finished writing about Mama. Sad, of course. But almost peaceful, as if something that had to be done, no matter how hard, was finally over. I think Saul did me the biggest favour of all when he gave me this diary. He knew. He knew I needed to do it. I will always thank him for that.

  When I woke up this morning, I felt that I was in a different world, different but the same. I can’t explain it really — not different as in better, either, just different. I suppose that in one way, I don’t feel afraid of my memories anymore. I can think about Mama and Papa and Abe and Sophie. So at least the Nazis didn’t take that away from me too — the memories of my family. As Papa used to say of the dead, “Alav Hashalom” — May peace be upon them.

  In some odd way I feel as if I have saved them from the void, from the blackness that took away everything. They are here, now, written in black and white, remembered, real. And although no one seems to want to hear about it now — for instance, not one person at school has asked me about the war, not even a teacher — maybe one day people will want to know about it, even if it is just my own family, my own children wanting to know about their grandparents. That in itself must be a good reason.

  When I got to the Y, I sought out Oskar and Jakub and I told them what I had done, that I had written it all down now in my diary. Jakub said he wished he had the courage to do it, but he wasn’t brave enough, and Oskar said he could remember everything so vividly he’d never have to write it down.

  “Maybe for your children one day,” I said.

  And he blushed and I suddenly knew he was thinking, Maybe for our children.

  I asked Oskar and Jakub what they thought about being safe. I told them that Eva had told me I was safe in their home. I know she thinks that is true, but is it?

  Jakub shook his head and said, “We can never be safe. You know it and I know it and Oskar knows it.”

  “I could be hit by a bus tomorrow,” Oskar agreed. “What does safe mean anyway?”

  “And safe from bad people?” Jakub added. “When will that happen? What about the girls who are tormenting Susan? Just like the ones who would have found it fun to torment Jews. They seem to need someone to be mean to. And another Hitler could take power, we don’t know. The German people were certainly behind Hitler — think about all those doctors and lawyers and judges and so-called good people who supported him.”

  We talked more and we pretty much all agreed that the idea of being safe was kind of silly.

  Then Oskar said something that took me by surprise.

  “Maybe we can’t be safe,” he said, “but we can be good.”

  I laughed and said, “And how can we be good?”

  But he was serious. “As the Torah says, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ Simple.”

  Jakub said, “Well, that sounds easy!”

  But at that moment I looked at Oskar and I thought, He’s the one for me. He knows the difference between being a mensch, a real human being, and being a bad person. He just knows.

  So diary, no storybook life for me. I know I can never really be safe, and I know that people who think they can be are just kidding themselves.

  But I know I can try to be good. And I will.

  Epilogue

  Max did take Rose to the family camp where her mother had wanted her to hide. There were other children there, and families — and lots of lice. But a resident of the camp had met an elderly peasant who had told him of a cure — a strip of cloth dipped into egg white and mercury. The fighters stole the mercury from village pharmacies. The mixture was dried and worn diagonally across the chest, and then switched to a different diagonal. Soon it killed the lice and the eggs, and it kept people lice free as long as the supply lasted. Eventually, though, the camp ran out of the strips. Soon it was back to the constant battle against the lice, until a nurse arrived one day and made everyone move the entire camp, wash everything and heat it all over fires.

  The camp was cleansed of lice, but then it was struck with a typhoid outbreak. Fortunately Rose was lucky and didn’t get sick. When it was finally safe to leave the camp after the Russian army had advanced, Rose was taken to an orphanage outside of Paris, where she stayed until she applied to come to Canada under the orphan program. Many thousands of other children were sent to displaced persons camps in Europe.

  Rose and Oskar married after they finished university. Just as Rose had vowed, she obtained a degree — in fact, she earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy, a very unusual accomplishment for a woman in those days. She studied the Jewish philosopher Maimonadies and wrote a book called Breaking the World: God After the Holocaust, which dealt with issues of faith, good and evil, and God. It was such an important book of philosophy that it became a staple in university classes all across North America.

  Oskar became a surgeon, following in his father’s footsteps.

  Even with their busy life, they still managed to raise three children: Sophie, Abe and Ania. They also travelled to Israel and visited with Moshe and Zev and their families. When their children grew up they kept in close touch with the Israeli side of the family.

  Susan and Rose remained best friends for their entire lives. They and their husbands would sometimes travel to Phoenix together in the winter, just like Baba and Zaida did.

  Rose never discussed the war with her own children, but she left parts of her diary to the Freeman Family Holocaust Education Centre in Winnipeg to put in their archives, so there would be a record of what happened. She never added a word to the diary, though, after the entry about her mother’s death. It was as if she had to chronicle the deaths of her family, every one, and once that was done, she put it away and tried to start her life anew.

  For those like Oskar who couldn’t face telling their stories, Rose hoped that one day people would understand that there were countless families just like hers, whose lives had meant something. She also hoped they would never become invisible or be forgotten.

  Historical Note

  The Holocaust in Poland

  On September 1, 1939, German forces — including thousands of tanks on the ground and the feared Luftwaffe in the air — invaded Poland. An existing treaty between Poland, Britain and France was triggered once Poland’s border was breached, with Britain and France declaring war on Germany on September 3. The German army kept up a steady advance toward Poland’s capital, Warsaw, encircling it. Pounded by relentless shelling and bombing, Warsaw surrendered on September 27, 1939.

  German chancellor Adolf Hitler’s plan was not only to conquer Poland, but to rid his own country, and the world, of Jews. By the end of the Second World War, some 6 million Jews in Europe had been killed under Germany’s Nazi regime.

  The Holocaust, as it came to be called, arose out of widespread anti-Semitism (prejudice against or hatred of Jews). One of Hitler’s strategies to strengthen his power was to make people fear or distrust those who opposed him, or simply those he took to be enemies. He persuaded Germans that Jews were at the root of much that challenged the country, particularly its troubled economy. Ever harsher policies were passed into law, restricting Jews from professions such as teaching, medicine and law; from owning businesses; from shopping in certain places; and even from attending school.

  In his fanatical plan to “rid the world” of Jews, Hitler devised what was called “the final solution” — ext
ermination. Some million and a half Jews were shot by mobile killing squads called the Einsatzkommandos. Others were rounded up and sent to work camps or death camps. Many in both the ghettos and the work camps died of starvation.

  Prisoners were separated on arrival at the camps. The stronger ones were often worked to death. Those with certain skills were forced to work for the camps or the officers. Others went to their death in gas chambers. This happened not only in Germany itself, but in the lands which Germany had invaded or conquered, such as Poland. Chelmno was the first such death camp — also known as a killing centre — in Poland. The others were Auschwitz, Belzek, Madjanek (also known as Lublin), Sobibor and Treblinka.

  The Warsaw Ghetto and Uprising

  Prior to the Second World War, Jews made up nearly a third of the population of Warsaw — over 350,000 out of a population of 1.3 million, the largest Jewish population in Poland and second in the world, after New York City. Within a week of German forces marching into the city, German authorities created a Jewish Council (Judenrat), and drafted its members, who were tasked with carrying out their orders with respect to Warsaw’s Jews. In November of 1939, all Jews were required to wear a white arm band with a Star of David on it, so that they could be easily identified. Policies such as forced labour for Jewish men, the dissolving of Jewish organizations, the closing of Jewish schools, the confiscation of Jewish property, and laws banning Jews from public places (such as parks and trolley cars) were instituted.

  In October of 1940 the Warsaw Ghetto was established. All Jews were forced out of their homes and into a tiny area of the city, less than 3.4 square kilometres, containing 400,000 people. (This number equalled more than the city’s existing Jewish residents, since Jews from the surrounding countryside and towns were forced into the ghetto as well.) German authorities ordered the Jewish Council to build a 3-metre-high wall, topped by broken glass and barbed wire, around the ghetto.

  Until late in 1941, when the United States entered the war, Jewish organizations in the ghetto received money from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. This help was invaluable, since it was not possible for the residents to earn a living, and the rations provided by the German civilian authorities were too little to keep the men, women and children there alive. The official ration was only 184 calories, about as much as two pieces of bread with butter. By mid-1942, some 83,000 ghetto residents had died, either through disease or starvation. Only smuggling operations to bring in food and medicine kept the death rate from going even higher.

  On July 22, 1942, the first deportations from the ghetto began, taking people to the Treblinka killing centre, about 80 kilometres away. More deportations followed. These lasted until September 12. In just under 7 weeks, 265,000 Jews were deported and 35,000 were killed in the ghetto itself. By January of 1943 there were only 70,000 to 80,000 Jews left in the ghetto. Elite Nazi combat troops known as the SS, along with the Polish police, returned to complete the emptying out of the ghetto, this time planning to send the Jews to forced-labour camps or to death camps. However, this time the Jews were more prepared. They decided they would rather fight than go meekly.

  They did fight, surprising the SS, which, after managing to deport about 5,000 Jews, withdrew from the ghetto to regroup. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as it came to be called, became a symbol of Jewish bravery and resistance. Its commanders were often young men, and some women, many with no military experience. They knew that they were outnumbered and that they were doomed to be defeated, but they chose to die fighting rather than to go to the slaughter with no resistance.

  On April 19, 1943, the SS and the police returned, and again they were met with resistance, this time better organized and better armed. Small groups of fighters led the charge and managed to hold the Germans at bay for four weeks, until May 16. When the fighters were finally defeated and the ghetto was considered — in Nazi terms — “cleansed,” the Germans burned the Great Synagogue to symbolize their victory. Seven thousand Jews died in the fighting, 7,000 more were sent to the Treblinka killing centre, and another 42,000 were captured and sent to forced-labour or concentration camps.

  Some Jews did stay in the ruins of the ghetto, hiding in the rubble left after the battles. Approximately 20,000 escaped the ghetto and hid in other parts of Warsaw.

  Of the 6 million European Jews who died in the Holocaust, nearly 3 million were Polish.

  The Resistance

  After the Germans attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, many Jews managed to escape the ghettos and flee to nearby forests. The precise number of survivors is not known, but estimates are that 25,000 Jews — entire families in some instances — emerged from the forests of eastern Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia as the Soviets liberated Poland. Some of these men, women and children had survived by fighting alongside Soviet partisans — soldiers of the Red Army caught behind enemy lines who controlled the forests and carried out sabotage missions on German trains and police headquarters. Most of these units would turn away unarmed Jewish men. Occasionally, Jews would be murdered. Some Jews joined units of the Home Army; others the Polish People’s Army. And of course there were Resistance groups which were entirely Jewish in their makeup.

  Sometimes refugees hid in Jewish-organized “family camps”. These had some fighters, both for protection and to go on forays for food.

  In general, life was fraught with danger for these Jews. There were periodic German attacks on the forests; and Soviet, Polish and Ukrainian partisans often regarded escaped Jews with disdain. Food was difficult to find and often had to be stolen from locals, who also lived under constant threat from the Nazis and needed the food themselves.

  One of the more successful Jewish family camps was organized by Tuvia Bielski and his brothers, Zus and Asael, in the massive Naliboki Forest, west of Minsk in Belarus. In addition to rescuing more than 1,200 Jews and carrying out sabotage missions, the Bielskis turned their camp into a community that included a supply and repair depot, which made them more useful to the suspicious Soviet partisans.

  Hidden Children and Emigration

  Although some of the Jewish children who escaped the Warsaw Ghetto and other ghettos in Poland went into hiding in the surrounding forests and the family camps, children were also hidden with farm families, in apartments, in the cities, in convents. Some even hid in the sewers. Others hid in plain sight, pretending to be Christians. For many years after the war, hidden children didn’t consider themselves Holocaust victims because they had not been sent to concentration camps, but that perception changed and now their losses, and what they endured, are recognized.

  After the war, adults searched out Jewish children and took them to orphanages or displaced persons camps; sometimes the children had to locate these places themselves. From there they tried to find countries that would take them in, because returning to their homes proved to be fruitless. They would find that their houses had been taken over by neighbours; their relatives would all be dead. In truth, they were people with no country and nowhere to go.

  Many tried to go to Palestine, where they hoped to help establish a Jewish state, but entering Palestine was illegal because it was still a British Mandate and the British were not allowing any legal immigration. An underground network was set up, however, and many young people chose to brave that route. Others hoped to be admitted legally into the country of their choice.

  Some 1,116 war victims — most of them under the age of 18, all of them orphans — were resettled in Canada after the war. This came as a direct result of the Canadian government softening its stand on Jewish immigration.

  During the war, the attitude of Canada’s immigration branch had been to keep Jews out rather than to help them emigrate. Consequently, although many Jewish children had visas to come to Canada during the war, none were accepted because of a tight cap on the number of Jewish immigrants. After the war, however, when the extent of the murder of Jews became apparent, and the concentration camps were exposed, Canada’
s immigration policy slowly began to change. In 1947 Order in Council #1674 was issued, allowing one thousand Jewish orphans to enter Canada. As soon as this became law, the Canadian Jewish Congress and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration worked together to find orphans who were stranded in displaced persons camps and in orphanages in Europe, and help them get to Canada. However, Canada did not open its doors wide to Jewish refugees. From 1945–1948, 65,000 refugees were admitted to the country, but only 8,000 were Jewish.

  Warsaw Ghetto Timeline

  September 1, 1939: German forces invade Poland.

  September 3, 1939: Britain and France declare war on Germany.

  September 3–27, 1939: German forces encircle Warsaw with troops while the Luftwaffe pounds the city from the air.

  September 27, 1939: A ceasefire is signed and most of the fighting halts, though some Polish units continue.

  September 30, 1939: Polish forces are sent to German prisoner-of-war camps.

  First week of October, 1939: Germany authorities create a Jewish Council (Judenrat).

  November 23, 1939: Jews must wear the Star of David.

  October 12, 1940: The Warsaw Ghetto is established. Jews are forced from their homes and into a small area of Warsaw.

  November 1940: The ghetto is sealed off from the rest of the city.

  October 1939–July 1942: Food grows increasingly scarce; diseases mount; starving children are on the streets.

  July 22–September 12, 1942: 265,000 Jews are deported to the Treblinka killing centre.

  January 1943: Nazi combat troops (SS) are sent in to complete the emptying of the ghetto.

  January 18, 1943: A group of Jewish fighters begins to disrupt the emptying of the ghetto and deportation to killing centres or forced-labour camps.