by Clara Kramer
Only a few days after Bolek we had another Polish visitor, while Papa was out again. We were surprised to see Basia, one of Uchka’s Polish friends, at the door. It was dangerous to be outside on the silent streets by oneself. Nobody went out now unless they had to. Uchka was so happy to see a friend that she insisted on making her tea…Of course the conversation quickly turned to matters of life and death. The house was so small that we could hear every word. Basia seemed to be mourning the death of so many Jewish friends. She said that she would be inconsolable if anything should happen to Uchka or the children. ‘If something were to happen, I would be so grateful to have something to remember you by. The bedroom set maybe…’
I could hear Uchka exhale. It seemed as though she couldn’t speak. Basia went on: ‘The Nazis would just take it.’
Mama and I saw Uchka drag Basia by her neck to the door and throw her down the steps.
Mama cried out, shaking her sister by the shoulders: ‘What have you done! Why did you do that?’
Uchka said in Yiddish, ‘I have to take it from the Nazis, but I don’t have to take it from that piece of shit!’
I had never seen my mother this frightened. Nobody dared talk about what had just happened. Mama went back to the kitchen to continue making her soup in silence.
When Papa rushed in the door later that afternoon, he was talking way too fast for us to understand. He stopped to catch his breath and slowed down to tell us that Julia Beck and her husband had agreed to hide us, the Melmans and the Patrontasches. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing. The Becks of all people. We hadn’t even considered approaching them because Mr Beck had such a bad reputation. My parents discussed the implications of going under their protection. I had never met Beck. Everything I knew about him I had picked up from whispered conversations. He was a drunk. A philanderer. Couldn’t hold on to a job. Owed money to everyone and never paid back a zloty. He was also reputed to be an anti-Semite. Could we risk putting our lives in the hands of a man who was known for a vicious tongue, his anti-Semitism, for his affection for drink and his failed businesses?
The decision was made to accept their offer. We knew that hiding only meant a reprieve. But we didn’t have any other alternative, and we trusted Julia Beck. She had been our housekeeper, and her mother had been my grandmother’s before that. Once to twice a month she would come to our home and stay for as long as three days, or however long it took to get the laundry washed and the rugs beat. She was a tiny woman but a tireless worker. Together with Mama, she would boil the kilos of sheets and laundry in huge pots and then crank them through the wringer by hand. It was hard work, and it had taken its toll on Julia, whose hands had been worn raw and were now also tortured by arthritis. Mama didn’t see Julia as a maid; she was a helping hand whom we could gratefully afford for many years. She and Mama would chat for hours as they worked, but I was spared, and would usually sneak off to read a book by myself. I had probably never said more than five words to her in my entire life, but now, as we embraced, I wished Julia were with us so I could embrace her too. We hadn’t seen her since we had to let her go after the Russians came. And now this Polish woman and her Volksdeutscher husband were saving our lives. It might be an hour, a day or a month. But in that hour, day or month, something else might happen. The war might end. Papa might find papers. Something. Some miracle I couldn’t even imagine.
But our good fortune would be ours alone. The invitation hadn’t been extended to Uchka and the kids. Up until that moment our good fortune was their good fortune. If we would be saved, they would be saved. Dear God, how we could make such decisions…I looked at my little cousins and my heart broke with love for them. They didn’t understand. How could they? In all our hearts, we knew there was no other choice. It wasn’t our decision to make. Very young children couldn’t be counted on to be quiet and would put the Becks and the others in danger. There was no argument or discussion. Uchka and the children would have to go to the ghetto. There was nothing we could do.
We were quiet now while Papa explained the details of what had been decided. We would expand the partially built bunker under the Melmans’ house. Since Beck was ethnic German he could choose any house he wanted. Beck had gone to the German housing authority and said he wanted the Melmans’ house. Without a word of discussion, he was given the house. It was that simple.
Papa was suddenly confident again. Papa suggested that the Becks start a rumour that we went to the Janowska camp in Lvov because we heard there was work there. We hoped the authorities would not get suspicious because it would be easy for them to check if this rumour was the truth or a ruse.
Not having to go to the ghetto filled us all with more energy than we had had in the last 18 months. My father, Mr Melman and Mr Patrontasch were very smart men and watching them applying their intellects to our survival allowed me to feel like a girl and a daughter again. I could once more look into the dark eyes of my father and feel the warmth of his protection. Feeling that our survival was back in our own hands restored a sense of dignity to us all.
It was only a few days before everyone had to report to the ghetto. Uchka’s tiny lane was busy with families, moving what was left of their belongings on pushcarts past us in a slow migration. Their lives had been reduced to what could be carried in their suitcases. Their faces were blank. They dared not look at the uniformed soldiers with the death’s head on their collars who seemed to be everywhere.
Throughout Zolkiew, almost as if by edict, old people went to the ghetto and allowed the young to hide. Parents said what they knew might be their final goodbyes to their children and grandchildren as they entered the ghetto and their children entered whatever hiding places they might find. Parents’ final gift and their legacy to their children was to take away the burden of their care and the threat to their survival. Honoured, beloved parents would not allow themselves to enter the promised land of the bunkers or to eat a precious crust of bread that might mean life or death for their children. If their children had to run, they wouldn’t be slowed down by parents who might be too weak even to walk. Poor Dzadzio was dead, but Babcia was alive in Kazahkstan and our family was spared the awful decision the Patrontasches were forced to make. While the Nazis and the SS revelled in their courage behind their machine guns, which they pointed at the unarmed and the defenceless, they had no idea of the real courage all around them as family after family said their silent farewells. As we had to live with the shadow of Uchka and her children, the Patrontasches had to live with the shadows of their parents, and Mr Melman with those of his half-brothers Hermann and Gedalo.
Eleven of us would be living under the floor: the four of us; the Melmans and their son Igo; the Patrontasches and their daughter Klarunia, and Mr Patrontasch’s widowed sister Klara. Klara and Julia were best friends and Mama thought that it had been she who had convinced Beck to take us in.
I was happy and grateful that Klara was coming. Klara was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, but her beauty was tinged with sadness since she had lost both her husband and daughter. Her husband had died a year after Luncia was born. Luncia had been the only child in the house and there was nothing that money or love could buy in Zolkiew and even Lvov that wasn’t bestowed on her. She was the good, sweet child that every parent wanted. We had been best friends until she died in the diphtheria epidemic of 1938 that swept through Eastern Europe. Klara had had to watch her child slowly suffocate to death.
Mama had felt the burial of one of my best friends would be too distressing for me and so she left me in bed that day. But the procession passed in front of our house and woke me up. Mama reluctantly said I could go as far as the synagogue. Klara walked next to her daughter’s coffin. Because of the epidemic and the fact that so much time had passed between her death and the funeral, Mr Patrontasch had had to put Luncia in a wooden coffin, which was then placed inside another coffin made of zinc. Klara was afraid that Luncia’s soul would not ascend to Heaven. She was surrounded by her family,
Mama and Julia Beck, who were there to catch her should she collapse. I held Mama’s hand; I could barely see where I was walking through all my tears. I had known people who had died, but Luncia’s death brought me grief, mourning, heartbreak and loss for the first time. Everybody said a part of Klara died when her husband died and now the rest of her was gone too.
Klara was also one of Mama’s best friends and after Luncia died Mama wouldn’t walk down the block, go to a store or visit a friend without running across the street to take Klara with her. For a long time after Luncia’s death, when I saw Klara across the street, Mama told me to hide, to keep out of sight, because Mama didn’t want her to be reminded of Luncia.
There was much to do for us to make the bunker inhabitable for eleven people. The men sent Mania, me, Igo and little Klarunia back underground, where we started digging now with even more fury to open up the crawl space between the trapdoor hatch and the original bunker. The air was cold and damp and my fingers were numb but after only minutes we would be sweating again.
Mr Patrontasch was concerned that the floor above would collapse and bury us alive. Papa and the other men cut down a tree in the Melmans’ backyard, which they fashioned into columns to support the ceiling. He told us how to dig shelves into the walls. Mr Melman cut planks to fit the shelf space. Every family had identical shelf space. We brought down old enamel, tin plates, two pots and a frying pan. Nobody wanted to bring anything of value to a hole in the ground, except Mrs Melman who brought with her a lovely earthenware pitcher and a few other reminders of her life upstairs. Through a small hole drilled into the floor behind the Becks’ bed, Papa drew a wire into the basement. We would have light and a spiral clay hotplate. When there was a search, he would be able to pull the plug down through the hole. He also calculated the exact amount of electricity the Melmans’ house would use in all seasons. He knew how to rig the meter so the authorities wouldn’t be aware this house was burning more electricity than normal. Mania, I and the other children stuffed straw into mattresses. Mr Patrontasch took precise measurements of the bunker and worked out where we would all sleep.
We were frightened of lice and typhus and knew that our survival depended on keeping as clean as we could, despite the dirt we would be living in. Mama said Mania and I had to cut our hair to avoid catching lice. We both had hair that went almost to our waists, which each morning was put into a long braid and each night was brushed till our arms hurt. We all wept as Mama took a pair of scissors and cut the braids off. There was no need for beautiful hair; it was a threat to our survival. My mother placed our braids in shoeboxes lined with tissue paper, corpses in tiny coffins, like a child might bury a pet kitten or a bird.
Over several nights, we would wait an hour after every house on the street had gone dark, and would move our belongings to the Melmans’ house. Beck was waiting for us at the door, his eye up and down the street. We didn’t speak at all as he led us to the bedroom where we slipped down into the bunker and arranged our things. Then, again without a word, we would slip out the door and retrace our way through the quiet and deserted lanes back to Uchka’s.
I had hardly seen this Valentin Beck before, and yet we were trusting our lives to him, and we were grateful to do so. As gaunt as Julia, with light, wolf blue, bloodshot eyes, and cheeks and nose road-mapped with tiny broken purple capillaries, he looked much older than his 40-odd years. He had grey hair and a thin goatee; I thought he looked like the woodcut on my copy of Don Quixote.
We had been so busy that the moment we were to leave Uchka and the children came upon me before I realized it. It had been dark for hours, but we wanted to wait until all the lamps had been turned off in every house in the neighbourhood. We sat in silence, weeping. Mania and I had taken care of Zygush and Zosia every day since Uchka had started her business selling clothes. I felt like their mother. Zosia clung to me. I could not look into her eyes without weeping and yet I could not look away. Such was our grief that we were without shame. This was the only life Zosia and Zygush had ever known. I had memories to cling to. But what could Zygush and Zosia cling to? What did they know of this life except hunger and fear?
Nobody said it would take a miracle if we ever saw each other again. As we kissed Uchka and the children, nobody said this might be the last embrace, the last goodbye, the last time I would feel Uchka’s soft hands on my cheeks. My father moved the curtain one more time and looked out. All he did was nod and get up. It was time. We disengaged like mourners after a funeral. As we walked out of the door that my father held open, I looked back and there was Uchka. Uchka, who in better times couldn’t stop smiling, was smiling once more. From the bottom of her heart it told us she was thanking God that we had this chance.
Papa again led us through the tiny back alleys. The neighbourhood was deeply silent. Not a person spoke or a radio played. I used to love being out at night once the houses had gone dark and the sky swallowed everything up in its vastness. Starlit nights were magical, with a carpet of lights that staggered the imagination of a young girl. But tonight I didn’t look up. I didn’t know if the night was dark or moonlit or starry. All I took in was the beat of my own heart and the sound of my shoes on the cold earth. It seemed to take an eternity to reach the Melmans’ house. I felt like I had left the better part of my life with Uchka and the children. I could not believe I was walking away from them.
Beck was waiting at the back door of the house and had it opened for us as we slipped inside. He smiled and shook my father’s hand. His daughter Ala was with him. I had seen her but never met her before. She was 18 and pretty, and if harbouring Jews under the floor was a problem she looked absolutely unconcerned by it. She had brown hair, styled like a city girl, and welcomed us, also with a smile. Julia was behind them as well. This was a house I had been in hundreds of times. It was filled with beautiful dark furniture and Mrs Melman always made sure the parquet floors were polished until they shone like mirrors. Her china, hand painted, was in the breakfront, which also contained the tiny china dolls; ballerinas and Dalmatians, shepherd girls with their sheep; almost an entire world that she had collected over the years. But it wasn’t the Melmans’ house any more and I felt alien in it. The Becks had been there only a matter of days, but their presence filled it now. Without much conversation, we walked through the kitchen and into the hall. There was one lamp on, otherwise it was dark. In the bedroom the big mahogany bed had been moved back and the trapdoor that Mr Patrontasch had made was open. The others were already there, only Klara was missing. She had gone to the ghetto with her parents to make sure that they were properly settled before joining us.
I had gone down into the bunker many times. I had built it. But going down that night was different. I didn’t care about the dirt. I didn’t care about how close it would be with the other families. I didn’t care about the lack of a proper bathroom. I didn’t care that I wouldn’t go to school or see the sun or run in the streets. That life was gone. All I wanted was for that trapdoor to be shut, the carpet to be rolled back and that big heavy wooden bed to be put in place. I wanted to be locked in. I wanted to have back the feeling that tomorrow I would wake and not worry that someone was trying to kill me.
As we crawled down into the bunker, the little light was on and the other families were there, sitting on their pallets, not saying a word. They were getting used to the silence, to not speaking unless it was necessary. Besides, what kind of small talk could we have?
Now that we were in the bunker, the three men had to decide whether or not to bring the Torah down with us. As soon as the Russians invaded Zolkiew, my father had hidden the Torah in the attic of Mr Melman’s house where there was a reservoir, encased in wood, for the water pumped up from the well in the backyard. The men had wrapped the Torah in a tarpaulin to keep it dry and placed it in the reservoir on a shelf above the water, where it had stayed for the last three years.
We would be underground but we would still pray, and for the men, for all of us, to have the Torah near u
s would be a balm. The decision was taken to leave the precious book safe in its hiding place, but its close presence would console us. Only someone like my father who was an Orthodox Jew and lived his religion with every breath could understand what having this Torah near us would mean.
Sitting in the dim light of a single bulb in which we were all mere shadows, it was impossible to consider anything other than a feeling of safety, or the illusion of a feeling of safety. How long would we be here? Would we survive? Would someone find out? Would the Becks be betrayed? Would we be discovered? I tried to put all those thoughts aside and be grateful to this family who were risking their lives to save ours. Did Beck and Julia have a conversation about the danger to Ala? Did they ask her about it?
There was nothing left to say. Mr Patrontasch turned the light out. I was lying next to Mania. We were afraid even to whisper to each other that first night. In the darkness, I could only think of Uchka and the children in the ghetto. I prayed for them, the first of many prayers I would offer up on their behalf. But what good would prayers do when we were here in safety and they were not. I knew all the reasons, the brutal logic why they couldn’t be with us. But knowledge is never enough. It didn’t cease the ache in a heart or stay the incessant haunting sound of our own voice, ricocheting from one part of the mind to another, asking, demanding: why us and not them?
Chapter 4
A GIFT FROM MR BECK
December 1942
The days pass in monotony, one day the same like the other. Downstairs, we make breakfast and supper. Everybody washes once a week in the kitchen upstairs because it’s cold downstairs…Christmas Eve, they closed all the windows and doors and they invited us all for dinner. It was wonderful. We sang Christmas carols, we almost forgot all our troubles, but most of all we ate a lot. We had to run down and hide again because somebody knocked on the door.