Clara's War

by Clara Kramer

  On the afternoon of Christmas Eve the bunker was filled with the wonderful smells of Julia’s cooking and, for the first time in months, we had something to look forward to. Ala brought Igo and Klarunia upstairs and gave them a piece of candy, which was a gift in itself. We decided to give Beck one of Papa’s sweaters. Mama’s leather handbag would be for Julia and Mania’s tortoiseshell comb would be for Ala. Even though they were hand-me-downs, they were the closest thing to real presents we could find.

  That evening when we went upstairs I don’t know why we were taking such a big chance on leaving the bunker, but perhaps Mr Beck thought the SS and the Gestapo would leave us alone on Christmas Eve. None of us was prepared for what was waiting for us as we climbed up from underground. The curtains were closed tight and the rooms were filled with the soft light of candles. There was even a Christmas tree, which Ala and Beck had chopped down in the forest on the other side of the train station. The tree was decorated with candles and the Beck family ornaments, glass balls, angels and wise men made from shaved wood and paper.

  Julia and Ala had set the table for 14 with Mrs Melman’s finest china and linen. Julia had cooked all the traditional Polish Christmas dishes. I had no idea where they could get such things during the war, but all Julia said was, ‘Beck has his ways.’ She loved him very much and was proud of him and called him her magician. There was a huge challah on the table. There were the traditional dishes of borscht and pirogies with mushrooms and sauerkraut as well as the many carp dishes. Julia pointed out the dishes one by one, naming them. One of them was actually called ryba zwdowski, ‘Jewish fish’, which was gefilte fish. Of course I had seen Julia helping Mama make gefilte fish on dozens of occasions, but I had no idea it was eaten on Christmas or eaten by Poles at all. I kept all the wonder to myself, but I’m sure it was there in my eyes as I followed Julia’s fingers around the table. I don’t know why this surprised me so much, considering carp was such a staple of our diets.

  Even though I went to a Polish school and had Polish friends, this was the first Christmas dinner I had ever been invited to. The table was filled with many things I didn’t understand. I counted all the place settings and noticed then that there were not 14 settings but 15. I wondered who the extra guest might be, since no one knew we were ‘guests’ of the Becks. Julia saw me staring at it and told us it was for the ‘unexpected guest’. All over Poland, their Christmas dinner tables were dressed with empty plates, waiting for a knock on the door that might bring a hungry stranger. It was an old Polish tradition. ‘When there’s a guest in the house, then God is in the house,’ Julia told us.

  I had lived in Poland my whole life and I never knew of such a tradition. It was hard to believe there was so much we didn’t know about each other.

  My father was very moved. He raised his glass. ‘Then I know your house is filled with God tonight.’

  The room was lit only by the candles, and for these few moments the war seemed to recede into the darkness beyond the glow of the candlelight. We all knew the war was still there. We had been in the bunker for three weeks and, as bad as our situation seemed, we had no idea of the horror ahead of us. The ghetto was only three weeks old. We had heard of the camps and the deportations; we had witnessed the murder of our Jewish leaders and head rabbis in Zolkiew; we knew we had ransomed every day of our lives with the wealth of our community, but there was nothing in our collective imagination to prepare us for what would come and what we would learn. So the feelings of goodwill, gratitude and fellowship pushed our fear to the furthest recesses of that lovely room and our minds. I wasn’t thinking of the war at all, just what I saw in front of my eyes as they moved across the table.

  Julia then reached into the centre of the table and took a satin-embroidered covering off a plate, revealing a huge loaf of bread. ‘Before we get to the dinner,’ she said as she picked up the platter and put it in front of my father, ‘we each eat a piece of this bread.’ Another tradition I had never seen, but which echoed our tradition of starting our meals with a blessing over the bread.

  Mr Beck explained the custom. ‘When we eat the bread, we forgive the sins made against us over the last year and wish for happiness for all in the upcoming year.’ Papa then explained to the Becks our Jewish traditions of the extra wine cup for Elijah at Passover and our yearly expiation of sins at Yom Kippur. We had always seemed so different from the Poles, and as much as I knew about their religion–the stories of the saints, the mass in Latin, the cloistered abbeys, the nuns that lived behind bars, the rituals of holy communion and confession, the idea of resurrection, the piety of the Polish peasants–it was both familiar and alien; comforting and frightening. It was strange and wonderful and disconcerting all at the same time to have their customs reflect some of our own.

  Mama said, ‘I’m sorry to say that in all the years we’ve known each other, this is the first holiday we’ve spent together.’ In these words were an apology for all the times she treated Julia like a servant and not a friend.

  Julia only smiled, but she understood the deeper meaning in Mama’s words. All of us who owed our lives to these people understood. But our gratitude, even unspoken, made the Becks uncomfortable. Mr Beck stood up and said in a loud voice, raising his glass, ‘May there be many more.’ I started to love the Becks like a mother and father. Because now, even more than my own mother and father, Mr and Mrs Beck were responsible for my life, and for all our lives. They were risking their lives for us, and risking their daughter’s life as well.

  There were laughter and jokes and toasts. Vodka was one thing Jews and Poles had in common–the men at least. The streets outside were filled now with carol-singers and their voices just added to the wonder of the evening. The Poles were deeply religious and the carols were usually sung with not only spirit but deep devotion and love. After the kutja, which is a traditional Polish dish made from barley, nuts and honey, and one of my favourite dishes since a spoon first entered my mouth, Julia and Ala cleared the table and now it was time for our own singing of Christmas carols. The curtains were closed and our voices raised with the Becks wouldn’t have attracted any attention. For the first time in years, I felt I had a reason to sing, and was safe enough to do so.

  Ala, Mr Beck and Julia started singing: ‘Jesus, Heaven’s Infant’ (Jezus Malusienki), ‘To the Town of Bethlehem’ (Przybiezeli do Betlejem), ‘Let Us All Go’ (Pójdzmy Wszyscy), ‘Rejoice Bethlehem’ (Dzisiaj w Betlejem), ‘God is Born’ (Gdy sie Chrystus rodzi), ‘Midst Quiet Night’ (Wsrod Nocnej Ciszy), ‘Hush-A-Bye Little Jesus’ (Lulajze Jezuniu). They were all songs Mania and I had known for years. We went to Polish schools, which were taught by nuns, and we had sung these carols since we were five years old. Mania and I had never bothered to share this part of our education with our mother and father, so you can imagine their surprise when we joined in. Mania’s voice was so beautiful as she harmonized in, above, below, within and without the rest of us.

  For three weeks, we had been sitting as quietly as we could, with every word’s consequence weighed and judged before it was spoken. There had been so little of the normal way of speaking, with words added here and there to convey love or affection, amusement, anger or frustration. And now here we were, singing, if not as loud as we could, with as much emotion and joy as Mania and I had ever sung anything. Looking at my parents’ faces, and the Melmans’ and Patrontasches’ as well, gave us the feeling that we had played a wonderful joke on all of them…as if we two little Jewish girls had conspired for years to play this joke. For the few hours we were upstairs with the Becks, there was no war, no ghetto, no hunger and no fear. After the end of a song, Beck leapt up from his chair, a man on fire, and ran to the closet, extracting gifts wrapped in simple tissue paper or newspaper. We were stunned. It was their holiday. We had our second-hand gifts for the Becks, but Catholics giving gifts to Jews was something I had never experienced or even heard of in my life.

  Beck had made a dancing bear for little Igo and Ala gave Klarunia one of
her stuffed dolls. Beck had packs of cigarettes for the men and in no time at all the packs were ripped open, matches lit and the room full of smoke, the men puffing and sucking like there was no tomorrow, content, full, drunk and happy. Ala had given Mania one of her combs, which she immediately put in her hair. She ran to the mirror to see how it looked. Beck gave me a package wrapped in newspaper. It was flat and at first I hoped it might be a book. I was crazy for a new book. I opened it. Inside was a composition book with a black cover and filled with lined paper, just like all the many composition books I had used in all my years in school and never given a thought to.

  ‘For our little writer,’ he said. ‘I know you’ll be a famous writer some day, Clarutchka, I just beg that you only say nice things about me.’ Mr Beck knew that I was keeping a diary and had no book to write in. He also gave me a blue pencil, which he had sharpened to a fine point with his penknife.

  Mr Beck could see how pleased I was. I was still so shy in his presence that I am sure my thanks didn’t correspond with how deeply I was feeling. All my life, I had honoured my father above all men. I grew, I felt safe and happy, in both the shadow and light of his life. He and Mama and the rest of my family were enough. I thought Beck had barely noticed me, if at all, and somehow he had found for me what would become my salvation. No longer would our lives be written in the margins of discarded books. Whatever happened to us would be properly recorded on lined paper with a sharp blue pencil in a book with hard cardboard covers. Whatever his past and whatever his shortcomings, Beck was emerging from the circumscription and diminution of gossip and prejudice and becoming someone in my life who knew me. None of us was thinking beyond the war or beyond living just another day, but Beck knew that what was happening to us was important. Our lives–our stories, and his–had meaning. Even if all we had to fight with were a composition book and a blue pencil.

  There were more gifts. He had dried lilies for Klara Patrontasch, which he presented to her with a smile that was embarrassed and off kilter, as if he was trying not to smile or didn’t know if he was giving too much away with it. This was Poland in 1942 and a married man didn’t give flowers to an unmarried woman, widowed or not, unless she was on her deathbed or already in a coffin.

  Then came a knock on the door that silenced the conversation, brought the terror of the outside inside and sent us all through the bedroom and down through the hatch, one after the other. We listened to who it might be. It wasn’t the SS, the Gestapo or the Blue Coats (the Ukrainian police, who were vicious in their persecution of Jews). It was carol-singers, friends of the Becks who knocked on the door wanting to sing for them and wanting the Becks to join them in a song. Of course the Becks joined the carol-singers, and we listened to their voices in darkness. I sang along in my head until I fell asleep.

  Christmas Day was spent downstairs as the Becks entertained Beck’s brother and sister-in-law, and his nephew Wladek. There was nothing threatening to us upstairs, so I wasn’t listening to the conversation. There was laughter, loud talking, lots of toasts, many more than at our party last night. I was writing in my diary. And then words that caught all our attention. Whatever we were doing we stopped. Potatoes dropped from hands. Books were put down. Knives were placed gently on our makeshift wooden counter. The men, however, kept puffing on their cigarettes and the smoke swirled around the bunker with every turn of the head and floated up towards the ceiling to meet the words coming from Beck’s voice, a voice that was at once quiet and conspiratorial, proud and defiant, a voice slurred, which meant that Beck was extremely drunk. We all knew that voice and now it was calling for more vodka. We heard Julia’s steps across the floor and the clink of the bottle on the glasses and then Beck started…

  ‘Have I got a Christmas story for you!’

  His brother was laughing. ‘I hope it’s not a long one.’

  Beck’s voice dropped to an almost whisper that we could still just about hear. I could imagine him leaning in to talk to his brother whom I had never met. I could imagine the looks on the faces of Ala and Julia, looks that I knew would be as terrified as ours. But of course, they wouldn’t interrupt Beck or change the subject. They would sit there as we were sitting, dumbstruck by Beck’s folly.

  ‘You know the Schwarzes, the Melmans, the Patrontasches?’

  ‘Of course I know them. Where the hell have I been taking my grain to be pressed? We’re in Melmans’ house, for Christ’s sake. They’re nice people. All of them. For Jews. What? Are you drunker than usual?’

  Then there was a long silence. I was hoping Beck had changed his mind and wouldn’t continue. That he would get another drink or go off on a tangent and tell another story about us.

  Then his brother was speaking again, his voice loud, his tone incredulous, ‘Downstairs? Are you crazy? Are you out of your blasted mind?

  I knew that Beck must have smiled and gestured with his head to the bunker underneath the floor.

  ‘You worry too much. You’re going to kill yourself with worry. What was I supposed to do? Give them to the damn Krauts?’

  ‘But we’re Volksdeutsche!’

  ‘Are we? You know how the Nazis treat us. They wouldn’t piss on us if we were on fire. We’re just a step above the Slavs–not even–a half step. You think I’m going to let them come in and tell me what to do, to kill the Jews? Merry Christmas, fellow Nazis, and for your present we’re hiring Ukrainian dogs to kill you if you take one step out of line!’

  ‘You put all of us in danger for them? Your wife? Your daughter?’

  ‘Whose idea do you think it was? My wife! Julia! She’s got more courage than the both of us!’

  ‘You don’t owe them a damn thing.’

  Now Beck’s voice was rising, rising loud enough to travel through our walls to the neighbours’. Thank God it was freezing and the windows were closed.

  ‘I don’t? I don’t?’

  Finally, finally, Julia said, ‘Please, Valentin, not so loud.’

  His voice dropped, but not the intensity. ‘In ’39 when the god-damned Soviets shipped us out to the colony in Bazalia, and Bandera sent in his thugs and started burning us out, we were lucky to escape with our lives. Then the damn Soviets were going to ship us to Siberia for abandoning the colony, and you know who buys me out?’

  Now his voice was starting to rise again.

  ‘You, my beloved brother? You, my fellow Volksdeutscher? NO! IT WAS THE JEW MELMAN DOWNSTAIRS WHO BRIBED THE FUCKING COMMUNISTS! I ABANDON THEM, I ABANDON MY HONOUR! I HATED JEWS MY WHOLE LIFE. I STILL DO. WHY? HOW THE HELL SHOULD I KNOW? But it was a Jew saved my worthless-piece-of-shit life, my sacred wife and my beloved daughter…Come over here, Ala, sit by your father. I want my Ala to look at her father and see a man, not a coward. They can kill me ten times over…’

  Then there was silence and some words we couldn’t hear and then his brother and his wife were gone.

  My father whispered, ‘Oh my God…we’re dead…’

  My poor mother tried to counter what everyone was feeling. Optimistically she said, ‘He wouldn’t betray his own brother.’

  Then Mrs Melman was whispering: ‘His wife’s another story. She thinks she’s descended from Polish aristocracy.’ Mrs Melman was the pessimist to Mama’s optimist and Mama was not intimidated.

  ‘She just says that to make herself feel better…A hunchback always feels better when he sees that the next fellow’s hump is bigger.’

  Well, what can we do if Mr Beck trusts them? We have to trust them too. We have no choice in the matter.

  Chapter 5

  I GO TO THE GHETTO

  12 January to February 1943

  In the meantime, the news from the ghetto is bad. Mr Melman’s brothers and also Mr Patrontasch’s brothers sneak out at night and come to us. There is a terrible epidemic of typhoid fever. People are dying 10 to 15 a day. Mostly the young and the strong are victims. That is how we lived until 12 January. That day, Mr Melman’s brother, Hermann, came and said somebody by the name of Lewicki fou
nd out about us. We decided to go back to the ghetto.

  Panic spread through the bunker. We would have to leave. If Lewicki knew, it would be only a matter of time before the Nazis or their cohorts the Ukrainians would be at the door. It would probably be the latter, since Lewicki was Ukrainian himself. We knew that they would kill us and the Becks. We couldn’t put their lives at risk.

  There was no time to be upset that we had been betrayed by a neighbour whose children had been my classmates. At great risk, Hermann had been able to sneak out and warn us. Uncle Josek, in his role as a policeman, would escort Mama, Mania and me to the ghetto, while Papa and Mr Melman would hide in the factory bunker and plan another hiding place for us. The others would go to the ghetto with the Patrontasches later.

  We left early in the morning before the light of day. Uncle Josek told us that if we were to be stopped we should say we were a work detail. I hadn’t been outside or smelled fresh air for 43 days. It was 20 degrees below zero. Mama, Mania and I marched in terrified silence behind my uncle Josek, our eyes downcast. We had all thought that when we came out of the bunker we would emerge to freedom and our old lives. But now, on this freezing cold morning, there were only Nazis and Ukrainian policemen on patrol. The streets in my neighbourhood were bereft of even one Jewish soul.