Renia's Diary

by Renia Spiegel

  I hope my sister’s diary teaches you to do that as well.

  NOTES

  1. FEBRUARY 2, 1939

  Renia was only fourteen when she started this diary, and she was pensive, thoughtful, sentimental, and everything else a “good girl” in middle school usually is. She was innocent. I think we all were. You could be at the beginning of 1939, before the Germans and Soviets invaded Poland.

  Back in those days, I wasn’t living in Przemyśl with my grandparents and Renia. I was traveling around Poland with my mom, acting in movies and on the stage. I was in a movie called Gehenna and one called Granica, and I had a steady job at Cyrulik Warszawski, a famous theater in Warsaw, singing, dancing, and reciting the poetry of famous Polish poets like Jan Brzechwa and Julian Tuwim.

  Renia had lived with our grandparents since sometime in 1938. Our dad, Bernard, whom we called Ticio, still lived at our family’s estate in Stawki. Our village was tiny, but it was near a bigger town called Zaleszczyki, which was in a bend in the Dniester about three hundred kilometers southwest of Przemyśl. Being separated from your dad wasn’t strange in those days. Ticio had employees to look after, wheat and sugar beets to grow and harvest, and acres and acres to manage. He provided for us like any good father should, but he didn’t have enough time to devote to us with my mom away. Besides, fathers were more removed then; mothers were the ones who raised the kids.

  My sister and I loved to read poems in public, so when I was five, my mom took us to try out for a radio show based in Lwów (called Lviv today), a large city about two hundred kilometers northeast of Zaleszczyki. The producers thought we had a lot of talent, so we got a spot reciting poetry. Renia soon decided to devote herself entirely to writing, but my mom took me to Warsaw for more auditions. Within two years, I was a tiny star on the stage and screen. My mom became my manager, and I became her shadow.

  Unlike Renia, I was always with her, and when we weren’t on the road, we rented a room on a beautiful street in Warsaw. I thought the city was so big and grand, with ancient cathedrals, synagogues, symphony houses, and museums—almost all of which were destroyed during the war. Because I was on the stage so much, I didn’t go to a regular, Monday-to-Friday school. Instead, I had a tutor named Mrs. Arciszewska, and she taught me how to read poetry. I also studied at a dance school, and every week I saw a lady who taught me how to play the piano. When I think about it now, I was so lucky, like a little celebrity. I was in magazines and on movie posters. People recognized me on the street. My mother had cute dresses made to order for me, and one of them had a row of six buttons down the front that read A-R-I-A-N-A.

  Our mom was tall and elegant, with dark hair and bright blue eyes like mine. She also had these beautiful, straight teeth. People used to stare at her and ask, “Who made your teeth?” and she’d laugh and answer, “They are my teeth!” She had a tremendous presence, and she used to wear fancy shoes that made her long legs look even longer. Even though we’d lived in the country for most of my childhood, I never saw her wearing pants. She was always in dresses, suits, or coats, with a corset underneath that Renia and I loved pulling tight in the back.

  She wasn’t an aristocrat, but her friends called her “the Baroness.” There was a very exclusive store in Warsaw called Telimena that employed a team of tailors, and my mother once had them make her a green wool suit with leather buttons. She wore it with a silk blouse. Even when she went out to run an errand, she’d look like a lady. “Dress for yourself!” she’d always order me. I still say that to my own kids.

  Renia also had my mother’s bright blue eyes, but she looked less like Buluś (the name we called our mom) than I did. Renia sometimes got a little plump, and our mom never did. Renia was smart and thoughtful, but she wasn’t a big personality like my mom and I were. The differences didn’t matter, though. Renia just adored our mom.

  While I wouldn’t call Renia beautiful in the classical sense, she was gorgeous and lovely, inside and out. She had a sweet smile that made everyone comfortable, and people always wanted to be around her. She wore her hair in braids that she clipped up at the back of her head and, in many of the photos I have of her, she has on button-up shoes that go up past her ankles. She sometimes complained that the other girls had nicer clothes than she had, but I did that, too. After all, by the time I got stuck in Przemyśl, our mom wasn’t there to buy pretty dresses and coats for us.

  I’m sure none of the other girls cared or even noticed what Renia was wearing, though. I think they were jealous of her because of her accomplishments. She excelled at everything she put her mind to at school: math, geography, Russian, Latin, French, Polish, and German. She also studied Polish at the house of a professor named Jerschina, and under him, she learned to write beautifully. At home and at school, she read all sorts of famous Polish writers and poets, and I think they inspired her own poems.

  Her high school—called gymnasium—was on the corner across the street from my grandparents’ apartment, and it was a huge place with a big yard surrounded by a high metal fence. In those days, a teenager’s life outside the house revolved around school. Kids today either go out on the weekend—like to the movies or the mall—or stay inside and play on their phones. In 1939, it was more black or white. If you were in for the night, you were writing in your diary, drawing, playing an instrument, reading, or doing something else that was solitary. If you were out, you were at school, where there were always activities and parties. When Renia wanted to connect, she went to school—and it seemed like she was forever going there.

  Renia had lots of friends, and everybody really loved and honored her. I know she writes about having problems, but I think that was just silly, typical teenager stuff. We’ve all had that, right? Her best friend was named Norka, and sometimes Renia would take me to her house. I liked it there, and I liked Norka. Our grandfathers worked in the same business, painting houses and doing construction, so we had a lot of history in common.

  Around 1942, after my sister died, Norka wrote a two-page letter that she sent to my mom. She said that my sister was the most wonderful, deep, exquisite human being she ever knew and that they were devoted to each other. I know Renia sometimes fought with her, but Norka was her best friend, so she saw past that. That letter breaks my heart, and I cried when I read it.

  Then there was Irka Oberhard. Renia complained about her, and I know why. She was a very snippy girl, with a lawyer father who I always thought was a very ugly little guy. Her mother had gone to gymnasium with our mom—I believe at the same school Renia attended—and they were so-so friends. Irka’s mother had a very caustic way of talking, and I thought she was always trying to interfere in Irka’s and her sister Fela’s lives. They came from a nice home, but they didn’t have the talent my sister had. Renia was president of the literary club. She won all the awards. She wrote beautiful poetry, which all her friends and teachers always wanted to read.

  2. FEBRUARY 26, 1939

  Before the German and Soviet occupation, my mother and I visited Renia in Przemyśl when we weren’t in Warsaw or on the road. I don’t remember how much we went there, but I know Renia loved it. I did, too. I’d missed my sister constantly, and being in my mother’s hometown was magical. Przemyśl was a lovely, ancient city built at the place where the Carpathian Mountains and the lowlands met. The San River slowly wound its way through it, and the Przemyśl Cathedral towered above it, the focal point of the city. It wasn’t a big place—before the war, there were about sixty thousand people living there—but it felt busy, with a big market in the center of the Old Town, which was on the eastern bank of the San.

  I wish I’d known how much it broke Renia’s heart that Buluś and I weren’t always with her; if I had, maybe I would remember more. Maybe I would have shown her more how much I loved her. But I wasn’t even ten, and who remembers day-to-day events before they’re eleven or twelve? I recall the big things and the general impressions, like how the room in which we stayed in Warsaw was on a fancy street and how it was full
of Biedermeier furniture. I remember how my mom and her big smile and fur coats seemed right at home there. I remember her dragging me around Warsaw from place to place, appointment to appointment. I had a performance a few times a week, and I had to be there on time! I remember studying poetry at night with Mrs. Arciszewska. She had smooth, porcelain skin and lived in what looked like a castle, with a gorgeous bed and jewel-covered walls inside. She had a butler, a cook, and a cleaning lady. She owned a big dog named Rex and a small dog called Toja, which means “This is I.” These are some of my major memories before the war, and Renia missed all of them.

  I’m not sure what was happening with my dad then. I’m sure he was busy doing what he’d always done—growing and harvesting wheat, tending to his sugar beets, and overseeing the peasants who worked for him, many of whom were Ukrainian and lived in the little town of Tluste (Tovste), which was a few miles from our house. We had horses and cows, and my father—who was tall and handsome, with green eyes and wavy, reddish hair—used to wake up early, put on his riding pants and leather boots, and walk out to check on the animals and workers.

  I know my dad was a bit older than my mom, but I have no idea how they met. I only have one picture of them together, and it’s framed and sitting on my kitchen counter next to my favorite photos of my kids, husband, and grandkids. The picture is from their wedding day, and on the back, someone wrote 1923. This was one year before Renia was born.

  But that’s all the information I have. I don’t know where my dad was born, and I don’t know when. My daughter, Alexandra, has tried all kinds of ways to uncover something about him, but when you don’t have birthplaces and birth dates and almost every piece of paper your family owned was destroyed in the war, finding your family’s history is next to impossible.

  3. MARCH 28, 1939

  We were Jewish, but we weren’t really observant. In Stawki, we’d celebrated the high holidays, and when I got stranded in Przemyśl in 1939, we did the same. I remember my grandparents’ synagogue was down the street from their building, and in the congregation, the ladies sat upstairs and the men sat downstairs. But I wasn’t there much—just the holidays.

  My grandmother had a stationery store on the ground floor of the building that she and my grandpa owned. They lived above it. In that store, she sold books, pencils, notebooks, and cards. She’d collect food for the poor on Fridays, and our maid would cook chicken for Shabbat, when we’d light candles. My grandma also closed the store on Saturday. But as far as being religious, that was about it.

  I didn’t think all that much about being Jewish, in fact, until the Germans came. We never felt different. My father’s workers were Polish and Ukrainian, and so were my grandfather’s. Those men might have been anti-Semitic—at least a little bit—but I never witnessed it. In Przemyśl, my friends weren’t only Jewish. My best friend, Dzidka Leszczyński, was Catholic. And when I was on the stage, no one talked about religion. My name was Ariana and nothing else. No one was interested in the fact that my last name was Spiegel.

  All that changed during the war, of course.

  4. APRIL 2, 1939

  My mother had one sibling—a brother named Maurice, who was a few years younger than she was. Maurice was such a good-looking man—very dashing, with the same blue eyes as my mom, and a big, thick mustache. Sometime in the 1920s, he went away to school in Caen, a city in the northern part of France. He stayed in France, became an architect and an engineer, and married a French society lady. She was Catholic. I don’t know if he even told her he was Jewish—I suppose he must have—but he got married in the church; I believe he converted.

  Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938, and Sudetenland, the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, was taken over by Germany soon after. By March 1939, the rest of the country fell. Although some of this takeover was peaceful—Sudetenland’s annexation was agreed to by the major European countries in the Munich Agreement—everyone knew that Hitler was a threat to all of Europe. The agreement had just been a way to try to get him to settle down for a little bit.

  Uncle Maurice must have been worried about Hitler and the Nazis even before the Munich Agreement, because he came to Stawki around 1938 and tried to convince my mom to move to Paris. I remember he brought her a beautiful watch as a gift. But it was no use. My mom’s life and family were in Poland, and she didn’t want to leave.

  Clearly, Renia did, even just to get away to see the world. She was so curious and interested, and she wanted to study in France, just like my uncle had. She never got to; the war got in the way of all her dreams.

  5. AUGUST 15, 1939

  Officials from Germany and the USSR met together secretly all during the summer of 1939, planning to form a political alliance that laid out each country’s sphere of influence throughout Europe. By August 15, 1939, the beginnings of an agreement were in place, and by August 23, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact—also known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact—had been signed. It promised peace between the two countries and sealed their top-secret arrangement to split up Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland between the two countries. Poland would be divided in half along the Pisa, Narev, Vistula, and San rivers. Germany got everything to the west, and the Soviets got everything to the east. On September 1, Germany invaded Poland, and sixteen days later, Russia marched in and began their occupation.

  Our lives were never the same after that.

  Mommy dropped me off with her parents one day that summer, when the talk of war was just that. She then went back to Warsaw, most likely to promote me. Our separation was never meant to be for more than a few weeks or months; I was her little girl, and I had movies to star in, lessons to take, and poems to recite. I was building a career in Warsaw. But August turned to September, and without warning, German troops marched toward Warsaw, bombs fell from the sky, and Warsaw fell to the Germans. Then the Soviets invaded Poland, and the half of Przemyśl that was on the east bank of the San went to them. The other bank became Nazi territory. The Germans destroyed the road bridge that went from one side to the other, but it didn’t make much difference to us; you couldn’t cross the river without official papers. We didn’t have those, so we were cut off from our mother.

  It took some time for me to understand that I wasn’t going to see my mom anytime soon. I was just a little kid, and the idea of not having the person I loved more than anything in the world around was impossible. But Renia understood—she’d felt that pain of being without our mom for over a year—and she decided to tell me the full truth one day.

  “Now, stop crying,” she said, holding me tight. “I know you miss Mommy, and I do, too. But we have to get used to it. This is the way it is now. Life has changed.”

  I don’t think my grandparents had had the heart to tell me. They were good, kind, hardworking people, and they always wanted to protect us, especially when we weren’t with our mom and dad. My grandmother was named Anna, and my grandfather was Marek. My grandma had been born and raised in Jarosław, a town about thirty-five kilometers north of Przemyśl on the west bank of the San. I’m not sure where she met my grandpa, but at some point early in their marriage, they settled into a home on the second floor of a two-story building near the main street in Przemyśl. That’s where they raised my mom and Uncle Maurice. That same apartment—located at 19 Slowackiego, just down from a major plaza—was where I lived from 1939 to 1942.

  Their apartment wasn’t very big. Renia and I slept in a corner in the living room, near the big wooden desk where my sister did her homework. That desk was also where Renia used to write the proposals for my grandpa’s work, drawing up estimates that he’d then give to potential customers. People didn’t have closets like they do now, so in that same room stood a large cupboard that stored their dishes for Seder. I remember, one day, a cat crawled inside and had kittens. It was crazy! I still don’t know where that cat came from.

  Their building sat on the corner down the street from a synagogue and near Renia’s school. My grandma’s store
occupied half of the ground floor, and in the other half was an apothecary. Her brother’s wife had a cheese and milk store that took up the spot next to that. I never figured out that relationship; her brother and his family lived upstairs in the apartment next to ours, yet they never talked to us.

  My grandma’s other brother—who’d been president of a bank—had passed away before 1939, but his family ran away from Jarosław when the Germans came. His wife, his two lawyer sons, his daughter—who’d headed a school—and their families stayed with us for a little bit until they could find their own place. One of the sons had a small child of about six named Marylka, and she had flaming red, curly hair. We practically slept on top of each other till they left, but it didn’t matter. We were just happy they were safe.

  Granny was taller than my grandpa, and she was in her midsixties, which in those days seemed and looked much older than it does now. Like me, she’d been on the stage when she was young, and I wonder sometimes if she identified with me because of that. Or maybe she just knew I was a motherless kid who needed extra attention. Sometimes on the weekend, she’d get dressed up in one of her nice, fur coats and take me on a walk to Zamek, a castle on a hill just outside the city. She held my hand tightly the whole way, and I still remember how safe I felt with her leather gloves wrapped around my little fingers. I loved my granny very, very much.

  Grandpa was quite short, with big, piercing blue eyes just like mine, Renia’s, and our mom’s. He was bald and had a small, neatly trimmed mustache, and he had a nice fur-lined coat like my grandma. Like most men back then, he wore hats when he left the house. The people who worked under my grandpa loved him, and I know why; he wasn’t well educated, but he was kind. He treated his employees with the same respect he treated his family