by Leon Leyson
At my new elementary school, an enormous place with hundreds of children from my neighborhood, my fourth-grade teacher singled me out one day. He addressed me as Mosiek, the diminutive for Moshe. At first I was impressed. I thought that this man must know my father, Moshe, and realize that I am his son. If anything, I felt proud that my dad was so well known. Only later did I learn that the teacher didn’t know my father at all and that the name Mosiek, “little Moses,” was an insult reserved for any Jewish boy, regardless of his father’s name. Then I felt foolish for being so gullible.
Still, my life remained absorbed by school and play and chores, running to the bakery to buy a loaf of bread or to the cobbler to pick up shoes that had been mended. But the worrisome reports of what was happening in Germany became harder and harder to avoid.
October 1938 began with disturbing news. Newspapers, radio broadcasts, and conversations everywhere were full of stories about Germany and Adolf Hitler, Germany’s leader, or Führer. Since coming to power in 1933, Hitler and the Nazis wasted no time in consolidating control, silencing their opponents, and beginning the campaign to reestablish Germany as a dominant world power. A central part of Hitler’s plan was to marginalize Jews, to make us “the other.” He blamed Jews for Germany’s problems, past and present, from its defeat in the Great War to its economic depression.
When Germany annexed Austria in March of 1938 and occupied the Sudentenland area of Czechoslovakia six months later, discrimination against Jews increased there as well. New restrictions made life for Jews in these areas more and more precarious.
Before we had a chance to absorb all that news, we were hit by even worse; on Hitler’s orders, thousands of Polish Jews, perhaps as many as 17,000, had been expelled from Germany. The Nazi government had told them they were no longer welcome, that they were unworthy to live on German soil. The Polish government was intent on proving that it was as antisemitic as the Nazis and so refused to grant the refugees permission to reenter their homeland. Reports reached us that these Polish Jews were languishing on the border in a squalid no-man’s-land of temporary camps. Eventually some of them were able to bribe guards, cross the border, and make their way to Kraków and other towns.
In front of me, my parents still downplayed the seriousness of events. “We’ve had pogroms before in the east,” my father said with seeming nonchalance. “Now there’s trouble in the west. But things will settle down. You’ll see.” I don’t know if that was what he really thought or if he was trying to convince himself and my mother as much as me. After all, where could we go? What could we do?
Then came the worst news yet: In Germany and Austria, on the night of November 9–10, 1938, synagogues and Torah scrolls were burned and Jewish property destroyed. Jews were randomly beaten and close to one hundred were murdered. It seemed unbelievable to me that people would stand by while such awful things were happening. Nazi propaganda portrayed the events of that night as a spontaneous demonstration against Jews as retaliation for the killing of a German diplomat in Paris by a young Jew named Herschel Grynszpan. We learned all too soon that had been just the excuse the Nazis needed. They used this event to launch a night of organized violence across the country. Later this night would be referred to as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, because of the thousands of windows that had been shattered in synagogues, in Jewish homes and businesses. In fact, much more than glass was shattered that night.
It had been our fervent hope that somehow the Nazis would come to their senses and the persecution would stop. Even though my father tried to reassure me that we were safe and that the situation would calm down, for the first time, I was really scared.
The possibility of war grew stronger. I heard talk of it in school, on the streets, everywhere I went. The news reported that Polish government officials had gone to Germany to meet with that country’s leadership to try to avert war. No matter how much my parents wanted to shield me, there was no way of protecting me from the growing fear that soon we would be at war with Germany.
One time I went to the main square in Kraków to hear a speech by a famous Polish general, whose name I no longer remember. He stood proudly, extravagantly praising our nation’s army. He touted their bravery and vowed that if war came, Polish soldiers would not give the Germans who dared to invade so much “as a button from their uniforms.” All of us wanted to believe the bravery of our soldiers could somehow defeat the mighty German military with all its planes and tanks. I’m sure my parents and many others had their doubts, but nobody wanted to appear unpatriotic or contribute to the alarm.
During the summer of 1939, all of Kraków began to prepare for war in earnest. We boarded up the windows of our ground-floor apartment, and I helped my parents tape Xs across the windowpanes to prevent the glass from shattering. We tried to stock up on a few extra tins of food. Some families hurried to remodel their cellars into bomb shelters. I began to feel more nervous excitement than fear during all the preparations and the making of emergency plans. Unlike my parents, I had no concept of what war was actually like.
In this tumultuous time I grew ever closer to my brother Tsalig. A self-taught electrician, Tsalig was in high demand to install electricity in our neighbors’ newly reconfigured cellars. I think he knew I needed the comfort of his presence because he sometimes let me go along with him and carry his tools. More and more, I tried to model myself after him, and I was pleased whenever anyone looked at the two of us and commented on how much we looked and even walked alike. When we lined up our shoes at bedtime, I could see from the way they curled up at the toes that we really did walk the same way.
Some Jews prepared for war by leaving Kraków. They reasoned that eastern Poland, closer to the Soviets, would be safer than the west, with its proximity to Germany. One Jewish family in our building took a barge up the Vistula River to Warsaw, more than one hundred fifty miles to the northeast. Before they left, the man of the family entrusted my father with the key to their apartment, never doubting that he and his family would soon return to reclaim it. We never saw them again.
As the days grew increasingly tense, my mother clearly missed more and more her village and the support of her extended family. After all, in order to join her husband, she had left her parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws in Narewka. She had met and made friends with a few other women married to men who worked in the same factory as my father, but having acquaintances was not the same as having her family. I loved city life; but for my mother, the adjustment was very difficult. She just wanted to go home. However, without my father’s consent and blessing, she would never consider leaving. And my father couldn’t imagine abandoning the life in Kraków he had worked so hard to construct for himself and his family.
Then, in the predawn hours of September 1, 1939, an air-raid siren jolted me out of sleep. I ran from the bed to the other room and found my parents already there, listening intently to the radio. In somber tones a newscaster reported the sketchy details that were available. German tanks had crossed the border into Poland; the Luftwaffe, the German air force, had attacked a Polish border town, and the invasion of Poland by the Germans had begun.
As the air-raid sirens blared, my parents, Tsalig, Pesza, David, and I hurried single file down the stairs to the cellar, where we joined our neighbors. Within minutes, we heard planes flying overhead. We expected the sounds of exploding bombs to follow, but strangely, they didn’t. When the all-clear signal began to wail, we went back upstairs to our apartment. I peeked out the window and heaved a sigh of relief when there were no German soldiers in sight. Only an eerie quiet filled the streets. When we learned two days later that France and England had declared war against Germany, I felt hopeful. Surely they would quickly come to our defense, I thought. But in the days that followed, no help came.
The Polish army, no matter its bravery, proved unable to stop the flood of German soldiers who had crossed into Poland and quickly moved east. There was a complete collapse, ending the life we had kno
wn in Kraków.
In the first days after the outbreak of war, many adult males—both Jews and non-Jews—fled east, away from the front. Based on their experiences in the Great War, people assumed women and children would be safe, but able-bodied men would be conscripted into the German army as forced laborers. Since my father and Hershel were the most likely ones to be taken, they decided to join the exodus and head back to Narewka. Because the journey would be perilous as the Germans advanced and because Tsalig, David, and I were still young enough, or looked young enough, to be spared, we were to stay in Kraków with our mother. One morning in a frenzy, Father and Hershel dressed quickly, gathered a little food, and, without extended good-byes, left. There were tears, but only from those of us who remained behind. I remember staring at the door as it closed, wondering when or if I would ever see my father and brother again.
Five days after that first air-raid siren, we heard a rumor that there were guards on the bridges of the Vistula River. My spirits lifted. Surely they must be French or English soldiers coming to our rescue! They would stop the Germans, and my father and Hershel would be able to return. Without asking my mother’s permission, since she surely would not have given it, I sneaked out of our apartment to take a look for myself. I wanted to be the one to bring my family the good news that we were no longer in danger and would soon be reunited.
In the foreboding silence, I followed my usual path to the river. Where was everyone? Why weren’t people out cheering and celebrating the soldiers who had come to our defense? As I neared the Powstancow Bridge and the soldiers came into focus, I slowed my pace. My heart sank. From the symbols on their helmets, I knew the soldiers weren’t French or English. They were German. It was September 6, 1939. Less than a week after crossing the border into Poland, the Germans were in Kraków. Although we didn’t know it then, our years in hell had begun.
A BEDRAGGLED FIGURE SLOWLY MADE his way up the front steps of our building and appeared at our apartment door. I didn’t recognize him until he entered our apartment and collapsed into a chair. That was how much my father had changed in the course of the few weeks he had been gone. My mother, sister, brothers, and I embraced him, but our happiness lasted only a moment. It was followed by fear about what might have happened to Hershel. My father assured us that Hershel was safe, although I suspect he had doubts that he shared secretly with my mother. Father recounted that he and Hershel had joined a crowded trail of refugees heading north and east. Determined to stay ahead of the German tanks and troops, they had walked with the others fleeing the invading soldiers, from dawn to night, sleeping a few hours in fields where they found their only food, ears of corn plucked right off the stalks and eaten raw. Whenever they approached a town, a rumor would sweep through their ranks that the Germans were already there. With alarming speed, the Germans had taken over all of western Poland and were pushing east.
Hershel was young and strong and could travel faster than my father. At the same time, my father was rethinking his impulse to leave his wife and children. So they decided that Hershel would continue alone to Narewka, and my father would return to Kraków and take his chances with the occupying army. The travel was hazardous and slow, but he finally succeeded in reaching home. I was thrilled to have my father back with us.
As the Nazis tightened their grip on Kraków, Jews were barraged with all kinds of insulting caricatures. Demeaning posters appeared in both Polish and German, depicting us as grotesque, filthy creatures, with large, crooked noses. Nothing about these pictures made any sense to me. In my family we didn’t have many clothes, but my mother worked hard to keep them clean and we were never dirty. I found myself studying all our noses. None was particularly big. I couldn’t understand why the Germans would want to make us look like something we were not.
Restrictions rapidly multiplied. It seemed like there was almost nothing Jews were still allowed to do. We were no longer permitted to sit on park benches. Then we were banned from the parks altogether. Ropes went up inside the streetcars, designating seating for gentiles—non-Jewish Poles—in the front of the cars and for Jews in the rear. At first I found the restriction irritating. It ruined my chance to play the game of evading the conductor with my pals. Soon there would be no chance to play my game at all because Jews were prohibited from using any public transportation. Gradually the boys with whom I had shared so many adventures, who had never cared that I was Jewish, started ignoring me; then they began muttering nasty words when I was near; and finally, the cruelest of my onetime friends told me that they would never again be seen playing with a Jew.
My tenth birthday, on September 15, 1939, passed unnoticed amid the confusion and uncertainty of those first weeks of German occupation. Fortunately, Kraków was spared the destructive bombardments that targeted Warsaw and other cities; even without the threat of bombs, there was terror on the streets. The German soldiers acted with impunity. One could never predict what they would do next. They looted Jewish businesses. They evicted Jews from their apartments and moved in, confiscating their belongings. Orthodox Jewish men were special targets. Soldiers would grab them off the street, beat them, and cut off their beards and side curls, known as payot, just for sport, or what they considered sport. There were some gentile Poles who also saw new opportunities. One morning several Poles stormed our building to raid the apartment upstairs, where the Jewish family that fled to Warsaw had lived. They banged on our apartment door. When my father refused to give them the key that had been entrusted to him, they simply raced up the stairs, broke in, and ransacked the place anyway.
Not long after that, Nazi entrepreneurs arrived on the scene in the hope of making their fortune off the misery of Jewish factory owners who were no longer permitted to own a business. The glass factory where my father worked was one of those targets. The Nazi businessman who took over the company immediately fired all the Jewish workers, all except my father. He was spared because he spoke German. The new owner made my father the official liaison, akin to a translator, between himself and the Christian Poles still allowed to work. For the first time in months, I saw my father look a bit more confident. He insisted that the war wouldn’t last long and since he had a job, we would be safe. By next year, maybe by the end of this year, he predicted, it would all be over. Just as the Germans had left at the end of the Great War, so they would leave again. I suspect that there were Jewish parents all across Kraków who delivered similar messages to their children, not only to comfort them but also to reassure themselves. My father was making the same mistake so many others were, believing that the Germans with whom he was now dealing were no different from the ones he had known before. He had no idea, nor could he have had, of the limitless inhumanity and evil of this new enemy.
One evening, without warning, two members of the Gestapo—the German secret police—burst through the front door of our apartment. The Poles who had pillaged our neighbors’ apartment had tipped them off, telling them that we were Jews and that my father had refused to hand over the key. Reporting him was their chance for revenge. In front of us, these thugs, who could not have been more than eighteen years old, taunted my father, shouting at him to tell them where he had hid the key. They smashed dishes and pushed over furniture. They shoved my father up against the wall and demanded to know where we kept our money and jewels. I guess they really didn’t take a close look at our modest apartment. They just followed their racist ideology that all Jews hoarded wealth. Despite their brutality, my father thought he could reason with them, that by using calm logic, he could convince them that we had no money or jewels.
“Look around,” he said to them. “Do we seem rich?”
When he realized that they weren’t interested in his arguments, he did something even worse. He said he would report them to their supervisors, the Nazi officials he knew at the factory. His threats only inflamed them. They beat him with their bare fists, slammed him to the floor, and choked him. I was sickened by their ruthlessness. I wanted to run away so I didn�
�t have to watch, but I felt like my feet were rooted in concrete. I saw the shock and shame in my father’s eyes as he lay helpless in front of his wife and children. The proud, ambitious man who had brought his family to Kraków for a better life was powerless to stop the Nazi brutes who dared break into his home. Suddenly, before I realized what was happening, these bullies dragged my father out of the apartment, down the stairs, and into the night.
Those were the worst moments of my life.
For years after, those scenes of horror replayed in my mind. In a way, that terrible episode became not only the precursor but also the symbol for all the horrible viciousness that would follow. Until that instant when I saw my father beaten and bloody, I had somehow felt I was safe. I know how irrational that must seem, given what I saw happening around me; but until that evening I had thought I had a special immunity, that somehow the violence wouldn’t touch me. Until that instant, when I saw my father brutalized before my eyes, I knew different. The realization convinced me I couldn’t be passive; I couldn’t simply wait for the Germans to be defeated.
I had to act.
I had to find my father.
In the days that followed, my brother David and I searched all over Kraków, trying to find where the Gestapo had taken him. We went to every police station and government building, any place that had the Nazi flag draped outside. Because both my brother and I could speak German and because the full villainy of the Germans was not yet evident, we brazenly questioned every German we thought might know something. Only now do I realize what we did was quite simply crazy. With every German we approached, we put our lives in danger. Despite all our efforts, we came up empty. Nobody admitted to knowing that our father had been arrested, let alone where he was being held. It was the worst possible nightmare. Pesza went with David and me to a lawyer, whom we begged for help. He sent us home with the promise that he would find our father although he really had no idea where to begin.