by Dasia Black
The two front rooms were used by our landlords, Herr and Frau Gerold. We were given two rooms at the end of the hall. My uncle and aunt’s room was large, with a big wardrobe at one end and a window which looked out over the orchard. The other was used as our living and dining room and I also slept there. There was a red shiny sofa in the corner which at night became my bed. If we had visitors when I was meant to be asleep, the adults talked very softly as they drank tea. But I could still hear what they were saying and listened to their conversation until I fell asleep. Sometimes they talked far into the night about some terrible experience of the War, their own or what they had heard from others. They also talked about plans and ways and means to get out of bloodsoaked Europe to the United States (most desirable) or even Canada. They complained that they had arrived too late to get the visas for the United States that had been offered in 1945. But, they whispered, you could get around this official ruling by pretending to have arrived in Germany then. After all, where would we all be now if everything in our lives had been strictly legal? There was also secret talk among the women about how they used their new identity documents to lower their ages. At the beginning of 1948, when it seemed likely that a state of Israel (Erez Israel) would be established, going there became the main topic of conversation.
On Sundays in our quiet street all you could hear was the sound of church bells. Sometimes when my uncle and aunt had visitors during the day, I was allowed to lie and read in their bedroom. As I gazed out the window on a spring day with the scent of blossom from the fruit trees wafting in on a light breeze which cooled my face and body, my whole being felt excited and happy.
If I was surrounded by adult talk and thought about serious things just like the grown-ups did, I still sometimes ran and jumped like a child. On summer days, my girlfriend Ilonka and I would take a bucket to the orchard and pick as many cherries as we could. We would sit down on the grass and eat them by the handful.
Across the street from the villa, a set of steps led down to a park with a bandstand in the middle. From it the lawn sloped down to a theatre and the main street of town. On Sundays bands played in the park and men in lederhosen yodelled as people strolled up and down. We often watched. On winter mornings when it had snowed, I loved being the first to make tracks in the fresh white surface, hopping and skipping and then looking back at the imprint of my boots. The only sound was the crunch of the snow.
In spring the lilac trees came into bloom all along the street. I was intoxicated with their heady scent and they became my favourite flower. I loved picking them and tearing off the petals: He loves me. He loves me not. My uncle could not have chosen a better place for us.
Sometimes there was tension between Frau Gerold, a minister’s daughter, and Aunt Gita. Frau Gerold took a certain amount of pride in her husband’s membership of the Nazi Party. She was a mild-mannered lady who did not really understand how much she was offending my aunt, who fiercely referred to Nazi Schweine, Nazi pigs. But in spite of these occasional arguments, the two women got along fairly well. It was a special treat for everyone when the two of them collected rose petals from the garden to make delicious rose jam. Sometimes a live chicken was bought, beheaded, plucked and made into good flavoured chicken soup.
It was hard for me to connect the gentlemanly Herr Gerold, who became very fond of me, with the people who had murdered my mother and father and so many of my people. When we left Stuttgart after five years he presented me with a book of Schiller poems with the inscription: To dearest Ester, in remembrance of her young years spent in Stuttgart, with best wishes for her further life journey from the Gerold family.
We children were barely aware of the German people around us. We saw them when we went shopping or took a bus, and occasionally went to their cinemas, theatres and opera house. But mostly ours was a life apart.
At Bet Bialik School I was the youngest in my class of twelve students, since many of the other boys and girls had never been to school because of the War. In Class 5, I was nine years old but most of my classmates were fourteen, fifteen or even older. To get to school in the mornings I needed to walk along Gebelsbergstrasse, turn left into another long street, part of which went through a tunnel, and then catch a tram. I was proud to be allowed to go alone or sometimes with a friend, and felt very grown-up. But then I found out that my Wujek had for weeks walked at a distance behind me so I would not see him, to make sure that I arrived safely.
Because there were only seventy children in the school, some classes were very small. Mine was the largest, with twelve students. Many professional people chose to teach there, though most were not trained as teachers. During our first years in Stuttgart, my uncle taught History and Geography. When he took my class I behaved as well as I could so as not to embarrass him. The other children thought of him as a teacher who was calm and did not get angry. Dr Chaim Shmeruk, who taught us Yiddish, was later appointed the first Professor of Yiddish at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
At Bet Bialik, being an orphan did not make me different. Most of my classmates had one or both parents and whole families murdered in the War. We were all, as my uncle put it, stateless survivors in a state of transition. Our families had been slaughtered in concentration camps, labour camps, ghettos and forests. At the school we were all Jewish so I was just like everyone else. I could proudly call myself by my real name, Ester.
My classmates liked me and wrote lovely poems and messages in my little Remembrance Book, but they thought of me as a child. I wore my long plaits pinned across my head and I was plump because I was always being fattened up to make me healthy, so I still looked like a child. I would hear the others whispering among themselves about getting parcels from the Red Cross. They refused to tell me what they meant. Finally I found out that this was their way of referring to menstruation. I felt I was excluded from their club. In Tarnopol during the War being different from Aryan people had been frightening. Now difference just made me feel awkward. But I still didn’t like it.
I made friends with Rivka and Rachel and Irena, who were just a little older than I. There was also a boy I liked called Ari. Ilonka was my special friend. She lived close to us and her mother and father were friendly with my uncle and aunt. She was a year older than me and had a baby brother, and I was devoted to her and a little jealous. I would have loved to have had a sister or brother. Ilonka told me what grown-ups did to have a baby, but I did not believe her. It was just too disgusting.
Sometimes Ilonka said bad things about me behind my back. When I found out it hurt, and I cried bitterly. I just could not understand how anyone could be so mean. If you loved somebody you were supposed to be kind to them and never ever make them cry. My uncle and aunt told me that I trusted too much, that I must learn not to be so honest and open with my friends. Then I would not feel the hurt so badly. I found this hard.
I learned to read and write Hebrew well and liked to rehearse all the tenses. I did well in most subjects, but badly in Yiddish. Some of my classmates spoke Yiddish at home so were fluent. We spoke Polish at home and my uncle and aunt only spoke Yiddish when they did not want me to understand. I could read the language better than I could speak it, and enjoyed lessons when we read funny, sad stories by Sholom Aleichem and Mendele Mocher Sfurim. My teacher said that Mendele Mocher Sfurim had a heart overflowing with love and pity for his people.
On all my reports, the teachers commented that I talked too much in class – and out of it. It was true. I became very enthusiastic and liked to share my thoughts and feelings with my friends. After all, at home, I was only ever surrounded by adults talking about serious issues and gossiping about other adults.
Bet Bialik’s main aim was to prepare us for Aliya (resettlement in Israel) and Erez Israel, migration to the land of Israel. All teaching and learning was supposed to be in Hebrew, but we only used it to learn the history of the Jewish people and some mathematics. At a performance one day at school I recited Bialik’s poem Al Hazippor (To the Bird) – in
Hebrew, of course. It was full of the love of Zion and was so inspiring. I imagined myself as the bird that was able to fly all the way to Israel. We also learned Israeli dancing and Hebrew songs and came to know the map of Palestine better than any other country.
Now I loved being Jewish. I knew I belonged to this great tribe of people. In my Remembrance Book, my friend Klara expressed in Polish exactly what I felt. In translation it reads:
You are Jewish
Honour Judaism
Work for it
Live for it!
The main problem at the school was that we had no text-books. In some subjects we had to use German texts, though we had not learned German. For other subjects the school managed to get Polish books. Sometimes we spoke in class in one language and used books in another.
In the garden at the back of the building our class was given a bed to plant. We were taught to till the black soil with a large heavy spade and to plant straight rows of vegetable seeds such as carrots and radishes, potatoes and lettuce. We tended our garden with buckets of water filled from the one and only tap. We wanted our class garden to be the best. We were very proud of it. Growing our own vegetables and fruit was preparing us for when we settled in our beloved Erez Israel.
The day the State of Israel declared its independence, on 14 May 1948, I thought I would burst with happiness. The Jews of Stuttgart including all the students of Bet Bialik gathered in Reinsburgerstrasse and laughed and cried and embraced one another. We sang Hatikvah (Song of Hope). To add to the excitement, Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the American President during the War, visited the camp and came to our school. We welcomed her by waving the blue-and-white flags of our new country. That night no one could sleep but instead talked about the future late into the night.
Over the following weeks we gathered again to farewell students from our school who had volunteered to go to Israel to fight the War of Independence. They wanted to fight against the Arab countries which were determined to destroy our new country before it had established itself. We knew our boys and girls would not allow this to happen. Some of them were only sixteen and seventeen years old but put their ages up to qualify. A couple were from my class. Most had no parents so there was nobody who could stop them going. And they wanted to go. They were not afraid.
Buses would arrive, and as they boarded, holding themselves straight and upright, we sang the Hatikvah again. Shalom. Would they be safe? We worried. Some of them did die in Israel’s War of Independence
A few months later we got a Morah, a teacher from Israel to teach us to speak Hebrew as a living language and to read its books. She was young and pretty and brought with her new readers in what we began to grasp was a real language spoken by people like us in our own land, not just a school subject.
The day of 27th November 1947 was a great one for me. The Einlegers formally adopted me as their daughter. I was to call them Mummy and Daddy. At first I did not want to do that. They were not my parents. But they insisted and were prepared to pay me each time I used the words. So I gave in and after a while they came naturally. I also had to get used to my new full name of Ester Hadasa Einleger. One thing my former aunt and uncle made clear to me was that I was not to let anybody know that I was not their daughter. After all, people might talk.
Of course I never forgot my real parents. A relative in Israel sent me a photograph of my natural parents, Szulem and Chana. I kept it safe and often looked at it secretly. They were both so beautiful, I thought.
But I was also pleased to have parents every day just like other children, to be part of a normal family and not to have to explain all the time what the Nazis had done to my real mother and father and keep on being sad about it. I no longer needed to be such a serious girl.
My new parents were anxious about my future and required that I get good marks at school. I knew they would be disappointed if I didn’t and I believed they would love me less. Even losing one mark and getting a 9/10 instead of 10/10 was an occasion for detailed analysis of how and why I had lost that mark. I learned that coming first in class was the best way of obtaining approval and recognition. It made my new parents proud of me. It made me worth loving.
I wished they would not be so strict. It was like a loose rope around me that stopped me from doing things that were fun or even silly.
My American relatives, those to whom my father Szulem’s letter had been sent, contacted the Einlegers to find out if I was safe. They were assured that I was in good hands. Otherwise, I guess, they would have taken me into their own family and looked after me. But since I had settled down with my ‘new’ parents, I decided I would rather not change my life again.
Our relatives organised regular parcels of food and clothes for us through JOINT, the American Joint Distribution Committee. We always looked forward to opening the big cardboard boxes to discover a jar of Nestlé instant coffee, a pouch of powdered milk or a can of Carnation milk, powdered eggs, pressed tinned meat, packaged cheese and water crackers. I loved the dark, fragrant blocks of Cadbury chocolate. With the help of these parcels we ate quite well, but there was little money for meat, poultry or fish. One of the parcels also contained a lovely red coat with a matching pussy-catstyle hat that I wore with pride. The coat fitted me perfectly and it was so nice and warm.
My mother kept insisting that I eat a lot to build me up. I was expected to finish a full plate of mashed potatoes and hard-boiled eggs for supper, even if I was not hungry. I also had to swallow a tablespoon of cod-liver oil each evening before going to bed. It tasted terrible and one night I spilled some on my nightdress and suffered all night from that disgusting smell. I tried to tell my mother about this but she said I was imagining it. I became a chubby child, full of energy.
For my tenth birthday, my new mother and father had a special dress made for me. How did they manage to get such lovely navy blue wool crepe material? Probably by bartering, since the fabric shops had nothing in their windows, the German mark being worth little until it was re-issued in 1950. I had a number of fittings because it was quite a complicated style. It was long-sleeved and had a semi-circular yoke with deep pleats falling from the centre. My parents must really love me, I thought, because they arranged for the edge of the yoke to be delicately embroidered with the most beautiful yellow and orange flowers with green buds. The dress had a white Peter Pan collar and a heart-shaped flower-embroidered pocket on each side.
It was the most beautiful dress I had ever seen. I couldn’t believe it was mine. I was very grateful that my Mother and Father wanted me to have this special dress. They must have paid a lot of money for it. We had a professional photograph taken, with me in the centre and Father and Mother on each side. As in most photographs of the day, I had my arm around my mother, since somehow she did not find it natural or comfortable to put her arm around me. I had my hair done in the most flattering way: two plaits of hair laid across the top of my head, one on top of the other, and two plaits hanging down my back. Each plait was secured with a navy ribbon. In addition to the new dress, like most of my friends I also got a navy skirt and a shirt with a sailor collar. This was how ‘proper’ European girls were dressed.
Then one day disaster struck. I was walking home with Ilonka after a party when we came across a puddle in the road. While she walked daintily around it, I decided to jump across. But it was too wide and I fell in. My dress, my beautiful dress with its embroidered flowers, was spattered with mud. How can I ever show my parents? I agonised. After discussing it with Ilonka, we decided to go home and try and clean it up. Fortunately my parents were out, so we locked ourselves in the bathroom, filled the tub with water and washed and washed and scrubbed and scrubbed. But the yellow and orange flowers just got duller.
My mother returned to find us still hard at work in the bathroom. We were made to open the door. She was scandalised. You naughty ungrateful child! she scolded. Why can’t you look where you’re going? All that scrubbing had just made things worse. The dress was somehow clean
ed up, but it was never as beautiful again.
I was chastened. I knew I had to be much more careful in future, and do less jumping.
My mother claimed that I was a funny mixture of personalities. Usually I was a good girl but I was sometimes wild, which she did not like at all. I knew I had to be obedient, trust people and do what was expected of me. I followed what my father and teachers and friends asked of me without much thought. But then suddenly I did dangerous, impulsive things, according to my mother. I swung on the gates to the schoolyard and partially crushed my right hand. Why couldn’t you look at what you were doing? I had to have my hand bandaged and could not write for a while, but it finally healed. Then one day as we were playing ball on the roof of the garage at the same level as the school garden, the ball fell down into the courtyard several metres below. One of the boys called out: Jump down, Ester, and get it! And that is what I did, impulsively, fearlessly. As I landed, my right leg hit the corner of a loose brick, which tore a slice of flesh off my shin. I was rushed to a nearby doctor, who took a pair of scissors, sterilised them in a flame and cut the slice off, leaving a hole in my leg. I finished up in the big Stuttgart hospital where my leg was bandaged, I was given an anti-tetanus injection and told firmly that if I had any more accidents I could not be given another. I was prescribed a month’s rest for my leg. This was very dull and a lesson for me. Later I tried to become more sensible and less adventurous and reckless.
There were always books. I loved reading. I read in Polish the trilogy by the celebrated author Henryk Sienkiewicz, Ogniem i Mieczem (By Fire and Sword). This was about the brave struggle of a Polish knight, Jan Skrzetuski, against the Cossack Chmielnicki’s brutal uprising. Skrzetuski was in love with the beautiful, loyal and courageous Helena. He swam the river at Zbaraz, the one I knew, to rescue her from the Cossacks. I identified strongly with Helena, in spite of our different looks. She had long black hair, pale skin and blue eyes, while my hair was a fair brown and my cheeks rosy. I did like my green eyes, however.