The river Bug appeared in the distance. As we approached it, Mrs. Lipińska stopped and showed us the spot where we were to wait for the guide. A quick embrace, a few mumbled words of farewell, and she was gone. It was a cloudy night. We sat down to wait for the whistle. Twelve o’clock came, and no one appeared. We started to worry; maybe it would be like with the Polish truck driver again, left in the lurch. For two hours we waited, and no one came. We were heartbroken. We didn’t know what to do. How could Father get across the river without a rope to help him from the other side? And even if he did, once we were across we didn’t know the way. With heavy hearts we decided we had no choice but to return to Mrs. Lipińska. We knew she would help us once more.
So that was what we did. We got lost on the way back, and for a while we were wandering without knowing where we were, but luckily we encountered no patrols.
It was almost dawn before we got back to the Lipiński yard. We climbed up the ladder, and there we were, back on the haystack. I dreaded the moment when Mrs. Lipińska learned that she had risked so much and been so courageous for nothing. In the morning we heard the familiar voice calling softly, “Panie” (Mister), with a mixture of hope and fear. Hope that there would be no answer, fear that we might have come back, that her ordeal was not yet over. I leaned out over the edge. When she saw me, she just clasped her hands over her head, turned, and left without a word. But this great lady could not stay discouraged for long. In a little while she returned and told us not to despair. Something must have happened that couldn’t be helped. “Let’s wait and see.”
We waited. The intensity of the hunt was slackening, so we weren’t quite as anxious as we had been our first few days there. We just had to be careful not to be seen by the children or by anyone else. Mrs. Lipińska continued to feed us well. I’ve never understood how she managed to keep us there for so long without anyone, not even in her own family, knowing about it. God was with her, and with us.
Then one day, full of joy, she came with another message from Hrubieszów. There had been a misunderstanding—no further explanation. On the night of September 30 we were to return to the same spot. This time the guide would be waiting for us without fail.
Those last few days passed as if in a dream. Minutes dragged like hours. Our long stay on the haystack was taking its toll. We were edgy and irritable. We loved each other, but lying for so long in such close proximity, scarcely able to move, was beginning to fray our nerves. Only Father never expressed any annoyance; he was the most patient, the most forbearing of any of us.
September 30 came. Mrs. Lipińska again insisted on taking us to the crossing, and this time, remembering how lost we had gotten on the way back, we made no protest. It was drizzling lightly. Mrs. Lipińska led the way once again, and we followed. We saw no patrols. We arrived without incident at the river crossing and hugged her good-bye once more. She turned and went back as we sat down to wait.
At midnight we heard a whistle. I whistled back. It was very dark. On the other side of the river a silhouette of a man appeared. We went down to the riverbank. He waded in and pointed to the spot where he wanted us to get into the water. The Bug was not wide there, but the current was very swift. About twenty feet separated us from the man. He threw a rope and I swam out and grabbed the end of it. We started swimming, but it was difficult. Father was not a very good swimmer, and he was weak besides. He managed by holding on to us. In the middle of the river we lost the rope. The current carried us about fifty feet downstream before we got across, but we made it. We climbed up the bank on the Polish side.
The man who met us was a heavyset Polish peasant with shrewd little eyes. He led us to a horse and wagon loaded with hay. He had brought with him farmers’ clothes for Felek and Sam, hats and all. Father and I buried ourselves in the hay at the bottom of the wagon. The Pole, Sam, and Felek climbed onto the wagon, and off we went.
The trip took about an hour and a half. Father’s asthma made it difficult for him to breathe under the hay. But we were filled with hope; so far we had come through. Finally the wagon stopped. The Pole climbed down and told us to get out. We could see Hrubieszów in the distance. The Pole told Father and me to stay and hide among some tomato plants growing in the field around us. He would take Felek and Sam to town, and later someone would come to get us. They left us and, shivering from the cold, we lay down on the ground among the plants, which didn’t provide much of a cover. Time passed, and no one came. We had to be especially careful not to be seen here, not even by other Jews, for everyone knew us in Hrubieszów, and now we were escapees from the Russian side. We were illegal even here.
Back in Hrubieszów
The sun rose slowly. There were some clouds in the sky. We saw from a distance a bunch of Polish boys, teenagers. One of them spotted us. I recognized him; I had gone to public school with him. He had a red face, like the tomatoes around us, with a lot of pimples. I had never liked him. He was a rough kid, one of the town riffraff.
He looked at me for a moment, then said, “You are Orenstein.” We must have looked terrible after weeks of hiding. “Please don’t tell anyone you saw us,” I said. “Stay here, don’t move,” he replied. Then he and his friends went away, heading back toward town.
I didn’t trust the kid; I knew we were in danger. But we couldn’t go into town by ourselves. The house we had lived in wasn’t in the ghetto, and we didn’t know where our family lived now. We decided to wait.
Later I learned that my suspicions had been well founded. The Polish boy had gone straight to Fred’s office and told him he had seen us hiding in the fields. It was obvious that he was asking for money. Fred thought quickly. Felek and Sam were already in a safe place, but there apparently had been a mixup about retrieving Father and me and getting us there too. Fred needed time to send someone to fetch us.
One of the local Gestapo, Hans Wagner, was a patient of Fred’s. Germans, and especially Gestapo, were not supposed to use Jewish doctors, but Wagner had a special problem: he had become temporarily impotent. He had no faith in the Polish doctors, but he knew Fred had had a practice in Warsaw, and he believed that of all the local doctors, Fred was best qualified to treat him.
To gain time, Fred told the boy that he would be glad to give him some money, and to please wait for him in the office while he went out to get it. He then warned the boy to be very careful in his absence, because a member of the Gestapo was coming for a treatment and was due soon. When the boy heard the word “Gestapo” he turned pale, excused himself, and disappeared. Fred never heard from him again.
Meanwhile, Father and I, growing hungry and thirsty, were still waiting in the tomato field. I had always had an aversion to tomatoes; Mother never succeeded in getting me to taste one. They reminded me of blood. Out there in the field I was willing to give them another chance. Father ate a few, and held one out to me. “They’re good. Here, try one, you need to eat something.” I bit into it; it wasn’t bad. I then ate two or three. Then and there I overcame my aversion to tomatoes.
Finally a young man, a Jew, appeared. “Are you the Orensteins?” he asked, and told us to follow him. Soon we were in the poor Jewish section, the Wannes, where the Germans had set up the Hrubieszów ghetto. He led us to a house, and up into the attic. It belonged to the parents of a nurse Fred knew, named Fela, and Fred had made arrangements with her for us to stay there. Sam and Felek were already there, and we all embraced. We had made it. It was October 1, 1942.
Fela soon came up to the attic, introduced herself, and greeted us warmly. Fred, Mother, and Hanka would be coming to see us soon, she told us. We could scarcely contain ourselves in our excitement.
When they came, I was shocked at the sight of Mother. It had been only three years since I had seen her, but she had aged fifteen years; she looked like an old woman. Hanka was almost sixteen. A child when I left, she had grown into a beautiful young girl. We did nothing but weep, kiss, and hug each other for a long, long time. At last the family was together once again.
Then each had to tell the others of his experiences, what he’d gone through since we had separated—all the incredible events.
Mother had brought dinner for us. She was the best cook in the world; we hadn’t tasted food like that since before the war: gefilte fish, chicken soup with kneydlakh, beef and potatoes, and a delicious cake. We enjoyed a feast that almost made it all seem worth it.
Evening came, and with it the curfew. Fred, Mother, and Hanka had to leave, but first I wanted to know what was happening on the Russian front. There had been heavy fighting in Stalingrad, they told us, but the Russians seemed to be holding. I asked them, next time they came, to bring a newspaper and some books. After they left we lay down on the cots they had set up for us. What luxury, after a full month of being hunted like animals! We knew it was only temporary, that an action in Hrubieszów was inevitable, and that we had almost no chance of surviving the war, but for the moment we were all together, we had plenty of food and warm shelter, and we were thankful for the respite.
When Fred came the next day, he brought a German newspaper and a couple of books, one of them a Polish translation of Gone with the Wind. I had never heard of it. It was almost a thousand pages long, but the last twenty pages were missing. I always liked to read anything about America, and hoped it would be interesting, but first, of course, I studied the newspaper. There was indeed heavy fighting in Stalingrad. The Germans had penetrated very deep into the heartland of Russia, but it was nevertheless obvious that the momentum of the war had swung from total German superiority to what looked like their last desperate attempt to win the war. Winter was coming soon, too, and that was what the Germans on the Russian front dreaded most.
The first two weeks of October were like a holiday. We were still in hiding, but the loft was large, the cots were comfortable, Fred, Hanka, or Mother came to see us every day, and Mother cooked all kinds of delicious dishes for us. For fear of informers, of course, they had to be careful not to be seen. For the four of us, the most important thing was knowing that for the moment we were not being hunted. All through September, beginning with our escape from under the machine guns on the first day of the action, we had been in continuous and constant danger. Every footstep, every rustle of the leaves could mean a murderous search party. It felt like heaven to be relatively safe and to have the rest of the family so nearby, to be loved and pampered once again.
Mother and Hanka told us about their life under the Germans: how, when Hanka had to work outdoors in the cold, an hour’s walk from their quarters, Mother would bring her a thermos of hot soup and tea every day, although she had varicose veins and it was hard for her to walk. They recounted their adventures in the Warsaw ghetto and described all their lucky escapes. We in turn told of our adventures under the Soviets and the Germans.
I found Gone with the Wind fascinating, and was able to immerse myself totally in the story of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler. Although my sympathies were with the North and its struggle to abolish slavery, I greatly admired the gallantry and bravery of the South. My brothers all made fun of me. “How can you get so involved in a book at a time like this?” I had no good answer. It could have been pure escapism, or perhaps my insatiable curiosity always to be learning about new things and places. My knowledge of America at that time was largely confined to Zane Grey’s Wild West tales and American history books. Gone with the Wind presented a rich panorama of life during the Civil War and I reveled in it, despite our circumstances.
But it was impossible to ignore for long the awareness that a heavy cloud was hanging over us, spoiling the joy of our reunion; tears of happiness were mingled with tears of fear and frustration. All the signs pointed toward a final extermination action against the Jews of Hrubieszów in the very near future. Eyewitnesses who had managed to escape from death trains or execution pits confirmed that in town after town a total liquidation of Polish Jewry was well under way. There seemed to be no way out.
There were three possible avenues of escape, none offering much chance of success. Some Jews who didn’t look stereotypically Jewish succeeded in blending in with the Poles, but they were very few; perhaps one in a thousand could pull it off. Poles were very quick to recognize Jews, the necessary false identity papers were not easy to obtain, family ties restrained those individuals who might have been able to “pass” on their own, and since only Jews were circumcised, any male could be found out immediately if he was suspected. “Drop your pants” were the words most dreaded by Jewish men who had succeeded in establishing themselves as Poles. Probably no more than ten or fifteen Jews from Hrubieszów survived the war as Poles, and most of them were women.
Or one could try to find a trustworthy Polish family willing to risk their lives to hide Jews. There were some who did it for money, others out of friendship, still others simply from compassion, but their number was very small. I doubt whether more than ten Jews from Hrubieszów survived by hiding out in Polish homes.
The third possibility of escape was by taking refuge in the forest or joining the partisans. But the severity of the Polish winter, the difficulty of getting food, and the hostility of the vast majority of Ukrainians and Poles (including the partisans, who fought the Germans with single-minded intensity but in most cases refused to accept Jews into their ranks)—all these considerations made this route very chancy. Perhaps fifteen or twenty Jews from Hrubieszów survived the war in the forest. As far as my family was concerned, there was almost nothing we could do.
The news from the front, however, was encouraging. The Russians were fighting for every building left standing in Stalingrad, almost brick by brick, and it seemed that the German summer offensive of 1942 had come to a standstill. The Russians had turned the German advance into a retreat in the first winter of the war, and we were full of hope and the expectation of similar good news during the second winter. But time was running out for us.
On October 18, the dreaded news came. The Gestapo ordered the Judenrat to have all the Jews in Hrubieszów assemble in the central square of the town at nine in the morning of October 20. They were to be “resettled” in an unspecified labor camp. Each person was permitted to bring with him a small bundle of belongings and food. Those who did not show up would be shot. Although we had all expected this, the actual summons came like a hammer blow. This time there were to be no exceptions; no Jews were to remain in Hrubieszów. Like all other towns of Poland, it was to be made completely Judenrein.
What few options we had held out little or no hope. The train was a direct trip to the gas chamber. Hiding was very difficult, because even if the search parties didn’t find us, how long could we stay in a skrytka without food and water? Father approached a few of his Polish acquaintances in search of a hiding place for us, but to no avail.
Then, unexpectedly, a woman came with a message from a Polish army colonel whom Fred had met during the war through the president of the Polish Landowners Association in Hrubieszów. A liberal and a good man, he had been a friend of Father’s before the war. During the summer he had fallen ill and consulted Fred, who diagnosed advanced cancer of the lung.
When the colonel heard of the impending action, he sent his housekeeper, who was also his mistress, to offer Fred a hiding place in his house. Fred knew that the colonel would not be willing to hide all seven of us, but perhaps one more might be acceptable, so he took a chance and asked Hanka to join him.
On the evening of October 19, the two of them said farewell to the rest of the family. We were all in tears, knowing that we would probably never see each other again. Then Mother joined Father, Felek, Sam, and me in the skrytka in the attic of the house in which we were hiding out. The countdown for the hunt had begun.
Early on the morning of October 20, our landlord and his entire family joined us. There were ten of them, including a three-month-old granddaughter. We had about a two-week supply of food and water. Through the little opening in the attic wall, we could see groups of Jews carrying bundles going toward the center of town. It was
heartbreaking to watch them. They walked with no visible emotion other than sadness and resignation. Families kept together, mothers and fathers with their bundles on their backs or shoulders holding babies in their arms, or walking hand in hand with the older children.
Most of them knew they were going to be killed, but there was no more fight left in them. They were the descendants of many generations of Jews who had been brought up to obey orders, to do what the “authorities” told them to do, and so they obeyed these authorities now, even when the orders were to go to their own deaths. The Sonderkommando, who had come to town to supervise the action, and the local Gestapo and their henchmen were busy directing the Jews toward the train station, where they were loaded into waiting cattle cars.
That day about three thousand Jews were shipped to the gas chambers of Sobibór. About three thousand others remained in town, hiding in skrytkas as we did, or simply staying in their houses. The rest of the prewar Hrubieszów Jewish population had either escaped to the Russian side in 1939, had been killed in the preliminary partial actions before this main extermination action, or were scattered through the nearby fields and forests.
We spent a restless night, during which the feeling of being a hunted animal came back to me in full force. Early the next morning, October 21, an all-out house-to-house hunt began. I was able to observe through the opening in the wall what was taking place in a small section of the street directly below us.
I could see the SS and the Ukrainians entering a nearby house, from which they soon emerged, accompanied by several of their victims. Many of the Jews were easy to find. They hadn’t followed orders because they didn’t want to die in the gas chambers, but they had nowhere to hide, so they simply stayed at home, without attempting to conceal themselves—at most they went up to the attic or down to the cellar. Now they were roughly pushed and dragged out of their houses, beaten and kicked. Old people and children who couldn’t walk fast enough to suit the Germans were struck with rifle butts; babies were crying. A few Poles were aiding the Germans in this ruthless hunt, leading them to houses they suspected of concealing skrytkas. On the street some Polish children even kicked the Jewish children as they went by, and threw stones at them. It was incredible to me to see Poles, who had suffered so much themselves under the German occupation, helping their oppressors round up and kill their fellow countrymen. I couldn’t bear the sight of it, and buried myself in Gone with the Wind, in which I became so engrossed that for a while I actually forgot where I was, mainly concerned that, with the last twenty pages missing, I’d probably never find out how the saga of Scarlett O’Hara ended.
I Shall Live Page 12