Clara's War

by Clara Kramer

  In the past, walking these same streets to the ghetto, I might see Uchka, Zygush, Zosia, Rela, Dudio, Josek or a hundred other friends or relatives. We would stop off at one of the stores in the colonnaded plaza for a sweet, or buy some chestnuts roasting on a coal fire that would fill my nose with the smell of wonderful smoke mixed with fresh winter air. There was no smell of roasting chestnuts that morning. On a normal day we would be holding hands, the three of us, or walking arm in arm, and laughing and gossiping. Women would come up to Mama asking where she got the material or design for our latest dresses. There were socials and fundraisers to be planned; food kitchens for the poor to be organized; clothing drives, the sewing school. All the things that required Salka the Cossack’s attention were organized on our walks to town. A walk was not a walk, but a social event. But that morning we walked as prisoners, not allowed the luxury of conversation or the simple gift of holding a mother’s hand. Luckily the Nazis out on the streets, with their fresh faces, were laughing and not paying any attention to us. They looked like conquerors without a care in the world. We were invisible in our shabby clothes and stooped demeanour. I was thankful for that.

  Josek led us past the 12-metre-high fortified stone walls of the cathedral and monastery. The border to the ghetto was at the next corner, where the wall made a left turn and continued up Turiniecka Street. Up ahead were the barbed-wire gates of the ghetto. I looked up only for a second and saw the guards before I looked back down at the dirty snow under my feet. Josek smiled and nodded at the guards as he walked us inside. We were nothing. Beasts of burden driven from one place to another.

  The ghetto encompassed most of the Jewish section of town. It was like a nightmare. Walking corpses swollen from hunger intermingled with the fatted calves, sitting in the cafés in their best clothes, eating and drinking with money made from the black market or worse. There was laughter. I could see it through the windows, but it was grotesque, as grotesque as their faces. I wasn’t judging; I didn’t get that far in my reaction. It was fear, plain and simple, and everything around me was at the periphery of that fear. How I wanted to get back to the bunker, where, as frightened as I was, I felt safer, less exposed, away from the eyes of blue-coated policemen and fresh-faced German boys and my former Polish friends, not knowing who would sell us out for a few litres of vodka.

  Two days after arriving at Uchka’s, we got word that it had been a false alarm. We could return to the bunker. Mama decided to stay behind for a while to sell some more of our things. Little did we know that all the silk underwear Mama used to buy over afternoon cups of tea and slip into the chest of drawers before Papa came home would one day save our lives. I don’t know how many kilograms of potatoes we got for one silk slip, but it was substantial.

  Josek led us back out of the ghetto. We now had the additional fear that someone might see us go into the house. The houses in the neighbourhood were close together. In the spring and summer, they were hidden from each other by the large shady trees that lined the street. But now, in the dead of winter, the houses were exposed as every branch on every tree. I felt there were as many eyes as windows on the street and they were all looking out at us. I looked for any movement of any curtain, but couldn’t see anything. Beck, who was waiting for us, opened the door and we were safe and inside. The others were already there. Mania and I collapsed from exhaustion.

  I woke up early the next morning. It might sound crazy, but sometimes early in the morning was the only time I had to myself. Eleven people in a bunker, even when they were not saying a word to each other, could be very distracting. It was easier to write while the others were asleep, without their curious looks. No one asked what I was writing, though I’m sure everyone wondered whether I was being too ‘personal’, or recording, for some unknown reader, the pettiness that sometimes overwhelmed our desire to get along.

  Mania was up next and she looked over to me, crawled over and gave me a kiss, and then there was a kiss for Papa. We were hoping that Mama would come back from the ghetto today.

  We heard a knock on the trapdoor and Mr Patrontasch crawled over the bodies to open it. As always it went up on its hinges with the satisfied sigh of a door on a Rolls Royce. Mr Beck looked down at us from above, his face framed by the hatch, like an austere and foreboding portrait. Klara looked up, thinking he might be calling for her. Mr Beck had got into the habit of asking beautiful Klara to join him upstairs when he was alone. But I knew he wouldn’t this morning because I could hear Julia and Ala’s feet moving across the floor upstairs.

  We waited for the news of the day. If he was in a good mood, he’d join us with a bottle of vodka which he had ‘liberated’ from the German alcohol depot along with cigarettes and an armful of newspapers. But he didn’t come down. His hands were empty. He said simply, ‘Mr Schwarz, a word please.’

  My father moved to the opening. I had never heard this tone from Beck before. Never before had he selected just one person to talk to. There could only be one reason why he would ask to speak with my father alone. Something must have happened to Mama. Mr Beck said, ‘Please, Mr Schwarz, please feel free to stand.’ The bunker ceiling was barely four feet tall and no one could stand up, not even Mrs Melman, not unless they had their legs in the hole Mr Patrontasch had dug. My father stretched his long frame up through the opening of the hatch. His pants were much too big for him now and were held up only by the suspenders.

  Mania grabbed my hand. She was as frightened as I was. How many thoughts raced through my mind in the few seconds my father and Mr Beck spoke. Mama was dead, captured, deported, shot, in jail, dying. As with the many moments of panic we had, this one, knowing it involved the fate of Mama, set my heart racing. Other mothers were killed. Other fathers, brothers, sisters, but they weren’t mine and so this selfish guilty gratitude that my family was intact while others were destroyed was, I felt, coming to an end.

  I strained to hear what Mr Beck had to say, but there was so much coughing and shuffling that I couldn’t hear myself think, much less what Beck was saying to my father. How much noise a bunch of people can make without saying a word! The inhalation and exhalation of air sounded like the roar of wind. It might have been my own breathing.

  My father bent down back into the bunker and Mr Beck closed the hatch. Papa crawled over towards us. For a moment he forgot where he was and stood up, smashing his head against the wooden beams and floor above. His head began to bleed but he didn’t notice.

  In that matter-of-fact tone he would get when compelled to tell us the worst of news, Papa told us that Uchka had contracted typhus, and that Mama had decided to stay there to take care of her and the children.

  Everyone stopped whatever they were doing. Not a potato was being peeled, not a glass of water drunk. The first cigarettes of the day remained unlit in mouths, and even Mrs Melman put down her precious jug.

  Mania broke the silence. ‘Typhus! Typhus! When will she be back? Papa, you can’t leave her there. Mama will die!’

  My father simply said, ‘Mr Beck is afraid of what would happen if typhus got into the house.’ The typhus-bearing louse was the Nazi’s ally. They had marched hand in hand into Zolkiew. We had all become experts on typhus. There wasn’t a louse alive that wasn’t our enemy. We examined each other constantly, checking our hair, our bedding and even the lining of our clothing, where they liked to lay their eggs.

  These words were a death sentence for Mama. Mania refused to accept them. ‘Just like that, Papa? Just like that? NO!’

  Perhaps I was just selfish and stupid to want Mama back so desperately. I begged my father: ‘We have to get her back. Papa. Papa!’ I was afraid to stop talking because as long as Mania and I argued and begged and pleaded there was at least some shred of hope. We knew that there would be an end, an acceptance, a resignation, once we ran out of words.

  My father was already resigned as he told us: ‘I begged. I offered Mr Beck money. I offered him our business, everything we had, but he had to say no.’

 
Mama’s death sentence meant life for everyone else in the bunker and I saw the relief on their faces, especially Mrs Melman’s. A part of me hated her; a part of me understood her. Panic and fear for her life and that of little Igo. As much as they loved Mama, who would be willing, knowing the consequences, to bring a woman infected with typhus into this 10-by 14-metre, dank, unsanitary place? The rules for mutual survival set us at one another’s throats, if not physically, at least in our hearts. And yet we were condemned to live with each other for who knows how long. If, God forbid, anything should happen to Mama, Mrs Melman would have to look at me every day we shared this dirt bunker.

  I heard my voice telling my father that I could get her back. I heard my father asking me how, and then I was telling my father that I would talk to Beck. Surely this was not me speaking? I had never really argued with my father about anything. Never contradicted him. Never raised my voice to him. Honour thy father and thy mother, and I did. Yet, how could I face a life without Mama? I knew in my bones that a part of me would die if she died; that if I had any will or courage at all I would need it now. And if I didn’t, my life was nothing. I could see the questioning in his eyes and hear the hollowness in my voice. I didn’t know what I could ever say to Mr Beck to change his mind and allow typhus in this house.

  A day or so later, Mr Beck had gone out and I sat at the kitchen table with Julia. She didn’t say anything because we both knew she had no voice in the matter at all. It was Beck and Beck alone I needed to talk to. I guzzled a glass of water and Julia was ready with a pitcher to give me a refill. It was a ritual. If for any reason I had to come upstairs, Julia was there with fresh water and rolls. I can’t tell you how delicious that water was and how guilty I felt for drinking it.

  My mind was racing and Julia was walking across the kitchen and back again with a roll. I tore the roll apart with my fingers and was putting part of it in a napkin to bring down to Igo and Klarunia. Not even Mama’s impending death could stop me getting scraps for the children. The Nazis could be breaking through the door and I would be still gathering crumbs for the little ones. It was a simple reflex. Julia had seen me and brought over what I thought at first were more rolls, but turned out to be some potato and kasha knishes. Her dark brown eyes were full of compassion. ‘It’s typhus, Clarutchka. Mr Beck is afraid and it’s all on his shoulders. But as far as he knows, Salka doesn’t have it yet.’ I looked at her. I wanted her to tell me that she would talk to Mr Beck and make it okay for Mama to come home to us, but she didn’t. She kissed me on the head and walked out of the room. I was watching the clock, knowing that I had to get to the ghetto before it got too late. Ala’s head appeared in the doorway. With a finger to her lips, she gestured for me to come into her room. I wrapped up the knishes and followed her.

  Ala whispered, ‘I’ll take you.’

  I couldn’t believe what she was saying. I could barely manage a response. ‘Your father won’t let her back into the house.’

  Ala’s voice was as light as if she were inviting me to see a film at the Eagle. ‘You know he can’t say no to me. And if we bring her back then he’ll let her in and nobody downstairs can say a word to him.’

  I can’t imagine the expression on my face as Ala kept on talking. ‘We’ll be two girls out for a good time.’ In Zolkiew? In Nazi-infested Zolkiew? Was she crazy? And she was laughing. ‘What could possibly be dangerous about that?’

  I lived in fear of Mr Beck’s approval and disapproval. We all did in the bunker. We would never argue with him, or even disagree.

  Ala was the only one of us who had no fear of Mr Beck. Ever since she had been old enough to walk, her father had taken her with him whenever he went to Lvov or Warsaw or Krakow. He taught her how to haggle in the markets and how to play cards. They spent evenings together laughing and dancing to music on the radio. They never walked anywhere without her arm through his, and if anyone could defy Beck, it was Ala.

  I don’t know how I convinced my father. I was expecting an argument, but it was a measure of both his desperation and his sense of defeat that he simply nodded his head. My father, who had laid tefilli all his life and could argue with the rabbi for hours about the most obscure applications of the Talmud, had nothing to say. Perhaps he believed in miracles still. He was sending his daughter out of her safe hiding place into a world where her discovery might mean not only her death, but death to everyone in the bunker. I was surprised as well that there were no objections from the other families. Had we all become crazy? My capture would bring perhaps even more danger than Mama’s return. I didn’t look for the logic in their silence. I was simply thankful. I was going into a world with signs plastered on every wall and every building that harbouring Jews was verboten and punishable by death; that being in the streets past curfew was punishable by death; that going into the ghetto was punishable by death; that aiding and abetting Jews in any way was punishable by death. On our last trip to the ghetto with Josek just a few days ago, I had seen all these signs composed in that brutal Gothic typeface that was as hateful to me as the swastika on the Nazi flag. There was no time for my father to reason out his decision.

  It was eight at night when we left. Ala said we had nothing to worry about. She repeated that we were just two girls out for a good time in Zolkiew. I had taken off the armband. It was a cold clear night. My heart was beating so loudly I was afraid it would wake the dead in the cemetery. There was a fresh layer of crunchy snow that went off like fire crackers under our feet. Despite my warm coat, I was freezing. Anything exposed, nose, cheeks, the tips of my ears, were hard as porcelain and felt as if they would break if someone touched them. My feet were frozen even in soft thick felt and two pairs of woollen stockings. But we were thankful for the bitter wind and polar temperature. No one was in the streets.

  My face was hidden under my hat and my features were masked by my scarf. I tried not to think about the SS and the Gestapo, whose headquarters were in the old governor’s villa just across the park from where we used to ice-skate. Or the brutal, Jew-hating Ukrainian policemen. They were even more gun-happy than the SS and the Gestapo combined.

  Ala and I hadn’t thought about this or much about anything else in the way of a plan.

  When I saw my house across the street, I was filled with longing to go through that big brown wooden door into the living room where my bed was placed close to the stove so that even in the coldest winters Mania and I were warm as toast. I would go to sleep and when I woke up it would all be the way it was before. Ala caught me looking at the house. She pulled me up the street and we walked past the pink walls of the convent.

  There had to be patrols around, although we hadn’t seen any. It would be hard to hear anything at all over the crunch of our boots on the snow.

  My teeth were chattering, more from fear than the cold. And Ala kept whispering, ‘Talk, Clara, talk, it will stop your teeth from chattering.’ Ala hadn’t stopped talking since we left the bunker, about anything and everything, telling me about all the men who had crushes on her, so many I couldn’t remember their names; so many lonely boys with guns looking for kindness, warmth and even love from the people they conquered. Ala talked about the films she had seen and what the actresses had worn and how she had styled her hair after this actress or how she wanted the same dress as that. Who could suspect that this beautiful girl with her light talk was risking her life by leading a Jewish girl through the streets to rescue her mother in the ghetto? Even I hardly believed it.

  The ghetto was just up ahead. The synagogue loomed above us, the white-washed walls gleaming in moonlight. The silhouette of the citadel looked like a ghost ship in the night.

  When we reached the barbed-wire fence, I told Ala that she could leave me now. Uchka’s place wasn’t far and I didn’t know how long I was going to be upstairs. It might be hours and I didn’t want Ala waiting in the freezing cold, alone, past curfew. She had done enough, but she insisted on staying with me.

  Once we were stopped and facing the ghet
to we were no longer two girls out for a good time on a cold night in Zolkiew. If we were stopped now, there would be no talking our way out of it. Not even all of Ala’s charm would help us, or the music of her laughter or the irresistible light in her eyes.

  Uchka’s flat was only three doors down from the Judenrat. There was always something going on at the Judenrat at night. And that meant the SS and Gestapo wouldn’t be far.

  Again I told Ala to go home. She whispered she would. I slipped between the barbed wire and walked as fast as I could. But soon I heard footsteps behind me. I was afraid to turn around, but I had to. It was Ala. Her eyes and her mouth were set and I knew I couldn’t argue with her.

  As I entered the building, Ala hid in a doorway across the street. I was scared to death to knock on the door. I could barely lift one leg after another. I didn’t know what was on the other side of that door.

  I knocked. There was a long, long silence. I heard Mama’s cautious voice. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me. It’s Clarutchka.’ Mama opened the door. I couldn’t tell if she was infected. The pustules don’t affect face, palms or soles of the feet. All she said was, ‘GO HOME!’ Her expression was full of fury and disbelief that her smart daughter could have been so stupid.

  She tried to shut the door in my face, but I held it with my foot and edged into the room, closing the door behind me. Mama didn’t let me come more than a few inches inside the door and blocked my way.

  The room was full of people in pain. I could see Uchka and her husband’s cousin. But I couldn’t see anything else because the room was dark, to protect the sensitive eyes of the typhus victims. Any light causes them excruciating headaches. The stench was so thick I could almost taste it and I had to fight to keep the rolls I had had at the Becks’ in my stomach. Mama’s face was red and she was sweating. ‘Mama, Mama, you have to come home,’ I was crying. I was looking at her face and trying to look at her arms and hands but couldn’t see anything. I was too petrified to ask. Mama repeated the same words over and over: ‘Go home, go home, go home…’