Clara's War

by Clara Kramer

  In the middle of the night, I felt a hand shaking my shoulder. I knew it was Mania’s. I opened my eyes and I knew she was staring at me, eyes bright and wide awake, even though I couldn’t see her in the utter darkness of the bunker at night. I could feel the soft breath of her words on my face. Everyone else was asleep. She talked about the fight for a few minutes, but there was something else on her mind. There was always something on my sister’s mind. That night it was: ‘I’m so happy the children are here.’ I was too, I said.

  And then the question and conversation that still haunts me. She whispered, ‘Do you think God answered our prayers?’ I wish I had a better answer, but all I could say was: ‘He must have. The children are here. Why?’

  Mania was not a child given to introspection or philosophy, so I knew she must have been thinking about this since Zygush and Zosia climbed down into the bunker. This was what she said: ‘I don’t want God to think I’m being greedy.’ Dear, dear Mania. My poor sister, so grateful for the children that she was wondering if she even had the right to pray for her life, for our life, for food, for safety, for a new dress and clean clothes.

  Ninety-nine remarks out of a hundred you can and do reply to without even thinking. But how could I even begin to respond to this that came from the depth of my sister’s heart? All I had to offer was what I thought my father might say: ‘If you’re not being selfish, I don’t think God minds at all. I think He likes it when you pray for the good of the people you love.’

  Mania agreed. ‘Papa says that the best prayers are good deeds.’ She snuggled closer to me, putting her head on my shoulder and letting it rest there a moment. We could hear the quiet breathing of Zygush and Zosia, between us. Mania’s voice was now in my ear. ‘We were never so close before the war.’

  My sister, who without a care sped through life on a bicycle with a skipping rope wrapped round her neck, was now cutting my heart open with every word. All the famous and learned rabbis in the history of our town could not stand up to the razor’s edge of such words. Truth demands truth, but how could I possibly agree to the idea that we had ever not been close? I knew my sister. From Mania it was simply a statement of fact. I didn’t say anything. Although she wasn’t saying there was anything lacking in me, I knew what was lacking in my bookish, shy self. When did my wild little sister become so wise? She then told me, ‘You don’t like to talk about your feelings.’

  Again, I could not find a single word. In every statement, in every way, especially this last one, she was telling me how much she loved me. We were hiding for our lives, in danger of imminent death from so many different sources you couldn’t even think about it without going crazy or wanting to end your own life, and here she was confiding her secrets.

  After a prolonged silence she said, ‘I’m glad we didn’t go to the nuns.’

  I finally had something to say. ‘Me too,’ I said. Her love simply filled me up. Her last words that night were: ‘I’ll be quiet now. Good night.’ She closed her eyes and in a moment I could hear her steady breathing. I was happy too. Such happiness as perhaps I have ever felt. What is this creature that God has made, that even as our families were slaughtered and each moment might be our last, we could still feel such love? Perhaps this was the greatest miracle of all.

  Chapter 8

  18 APRIL

  18 April to May 1943

  The day I will remember until I die. Early in the morning, when we were still lying in our pallets with the little ‘window’ open, I smelled something. Before I could think what it was, Mrs Beck knocked at the trap door and yelled that there was a fire on the street.

  I don’t know what woke me up. I don’t know if it was the wind blowing so hard outside, wailing through our little air vent. I can’t tell you if it was the smell of smoke or everybody getting up at once, panicking as Julia banged on the hatch, shouting, ‘FIRE, FIRE!’

  Patrontasch climbed over us all and threw open the hatch. Every one of us panicked and rushed to throw on clothes as Julia kept screaming over and over and over for us to come upstairs. But we were panicked and paralyzed. Something stronger than iron bars kept us in the bunker and from running into the street and to save our lives. We knew what was outside. The SS. The Gestapo. The police. The Blue Coats. Poles and Ukrainians who would gladly turn us in for a few zloty and five litres of vodka. Beck yelled for the men to help him. Papa, Melman and Patrontasch ran upstairs to help as he dashed in and out of the room with buckets of water, throwing them on the walls. We could hear the pounding of their feet above us as they ran back and forth from the bathroom and kitchen with their full buckets and then the heavy splash of water against the wall. I heard my father screaming that the entire block on our side of the street, one, two, three, four, a dozen, 20 houses, were on fire, flames pouring out of windows, roofs ripping with fire and falling in on themselves. A ferocious wind drove the flames first in one direction and then another and then up into the sky in whirlpools of spark and fire. I heard Melman screaming that the factory was on fire and could only imagine the look on his face as he watched his life go up in flames. Beck yelled that Mr Patrontasch’s house was on fire too. Over the roar of fire and wind and Beck screaming, ‘More water, more water!’ I heard Mania’s hysterical cries of, ‘What do we do? WHAT DO WE DO?’ I was watching and holding Zosia to soothe her and I realized for the first time that Mania had climbed up through the hatch and was now upstairs.

  I couldn’t hear what my father said to her, if he said anything at all. I knew he had to be thinking what I was thinking and so there was no answer to her pleas. The house he was desperate to save was our life. If the house burned down, we were dead. Smoke was now seeping through the floor above and into the bunker and we heard Beck screaming that the woodpile next to the house had exploded into flames that had ignited the outside walls. Beck and Ala threw open the door and ran outside with buckets, jumping over the flames to toss water on to the walls. Julia, in the kitchen, kept refilling pots and pans from the big zinc water barrel. She handed them to Papa and Melman, who threw them on the flames inside. But even as the house might be burning down above us, we didn’t dare step up through the hatch. We huddled together with the children in the bunker, helpless. I listened for Mania, but all I heard was Beck screaming, ‘Water, water!’ over and over. The men and Ala couldn’t get it to him fast enough. The church bells were ringing, calling everyone in Zolkiew to fight the fire. A small army was running up the street, heeding the call…

  Every second another fire department wagon pulled up and along with them cars and trucks filled with SS troops, German army regulars and the dreaded blue-shirted Ukrainian police. Dozens, then hundreds of our enemies. Every building to the left and right of us was bursting into flames. Every other person was in uniform. Any second, I expected the entire house to go up. Beck was now screaming that the police were in the yard in the back of the house. They were on the other side of the bunker wall I was looking at, just a few feet away. If there had been any hope of running out and disappearing through the backyard, it was gone. There was so much water on the floors that it started dripping into the bunker, making the smoke almost liquid in our throats and eyes. Papa and Melman crawled back down into the smoky bunker. The grown-ups were all talking at once, over and at each other, voices rising to be heard. Melman: ‘We can’t go outside! We’ll be shot!’ Then Patrontasch: ‘All of us? Are you crazy?’ The argument ran in an endless circle with no resolution in sight. The panic was building as the bunker filled with more smoke.

  A dozen half-starved, half-naked Jews running from the house with the hope of not getting shot? Or worse? Insanity. Finally, Melman screamed over the others, ‘The bunker under the living room. It’s our only hope.’ He was talking about the bunker we had built under the far crawl space beneath the living room in case the house was being searched. It was no more than a tomb with a trapdoor roof. But death by fire and suffocation was preferable to being caught by the Nazis. All the children, however, except for Zygush, were
hysterical. Mama told me she would go first and that I should put Zygush and Zosia in front of me. Mama was afraid that the children would get crushed as everyone would rush to the bunker to save themselves. Zosia was still in my arms and I put her down in front of me and followed Mama. We crawled on hands and knees as fast as we could, scraping knees and elbows. The smoke was thicker now, acrid, harsh, and black. It burned our eyes and throats. We couldn’t see anything, if at all just a glimpse of the body ahead of us. Even the Steckels took their place in line. Lola, Artek, Patrontasch and his wife crawled with Klarunia between them. She was wailing with fear, but no one was telling her to be quiet. Even if we burned to death, the howling of the wind outside would have swept away our screams. I assumed Mania was somewhere behind me in this caravan of bodies.

  In this crawl space, my father, Artek, Melman and Patrontasch yanked up the dirt-filled trapdoor that hid our secret bunker. There were water, candles and matches for emergencies. We crowded in, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, Zosia on my lap, all cramped together on the dirt floor. Even though we were sitting, we still had to hunch down as much as we could because the roof was so low. The children who weren’t on laps sat crushed against their parents’ legs. Our feet were pressed against the far side of this tomb that was now teeming with smoke as the men struggled to pull the heavy dirt-filled lid over our heads. The last thing I saw in the dim light was Mrs Steckel fingering the vial of cyanide around her neck.

  You can’t imagine such darkness. My father had matches and a candle ready. So did the other men. In the darkness, I concentrated on my father’s unsteady hand as he tried to light his candle. His match flickered and went out. He lit another match, then another, then another with increasing urgency. Without light this was a tomb. Scratch after scratch of the sulphur match-head against the striker. All the men were working to give us light. But there was just one flicker of flame and then darkness after another. The street was an inferno. The house might be burning down around us and we couldn’t light one damn match! There simply wasn’t enough air in the bunker to light a candle.

  Defeated, my father said, ‘It’s no use.’ Then my mother screamed for him to light a match. He was furious, frustrated. ‘Useless!’ He tried to calm his voice. ‘If we can’t even light a match, we shouldn’t waste the oxygen. We shouldn’t even talk.’ She screamed over his explanation: ‘I don’t see Mania. Mania, Mania?’ My mother’s anguish was met with silence and the horror of Mania’s absence. The men were striking their matches, which gave off light for desperate fractions of seconds, illuminating a nose, an eye, a cheek, a chin, an eyebrow. None of them belonging to my sister. I wanted to scream her name as well, but I knew I would just be adding to the panic. I tried to remember if I had seen her come back down the hatch. I hadn’t. I tried to remember when I’d last seen her. I ran through the chaos again and again and each time came up with the same result. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw my sister.

  I knew she wasn’t with us, and the lighting of matches was nothing more than a waste of our precious oxygen and a postponement of a grief that would never heal. If we could all just keep striking matches for ever, we would not have to accept the truth that we were never going to see her again. My heart stopped when I realized my father was no longer screaming her name, like the shock of noticing the loudness of a clock’s ticking when it stops. He knew where she was and couldn’t bring himself to tell my mother. My mother was silent now. She knew. My father lit one more match. Only his eyes and mouth were visible in the dim flickering light. He said simply, as simple and final as death itself, ‘Salka, she ran out. She told me she was afraid of the fire. She told me she wanted to live. I tried to hold on to her with all my might. But she pulled away. She’s such a strong girl. She said she was going to the bunker in the factory.’ This was the factory that had just exploded into flames. His match went out. We were in utter darkness. My mother didn’t ask him to light another match. There was no need. She said, ‘I don’t have a daughter.’ Then nothing.

  My mother was somewhere in the darkness on the other side of this grave. We were wedged so tightly together there was no way I could go to her or kiss her hand. I couldn’t even tell her of my own grief because we could not afford the oxygen. I was so alone that even if it had been light I wouldn’t have noticed if the others were sharing in our grief or if they were simply relieved that it wasn’t their own child who was lost. What a horrid world we lived in when another’s grief reminded you of your own dumb luck. There but for the grace of God go…

  Papa should have stopped her from going, but this day was the fortieth anniversary of his mother’s death…She had died in a fire as well and Mania was named after her. I didn’t know how or why, but I hoped this child’s cry was heard by the Almighty.

  I have such a strong memory of everything that happened in the bunker for the 18 months we were there. I can still see every detail if I close my eyes. But I have little memory of the rest of that day. I don’t know how we survived for so long without air. I know we prayed. We must have prayed. If there was conversation, I have no memory of it. If there were tears I didn’t hear them. If the children cried, I couldn’t tell you now. Some time later that day, we heard banging coming from somewhere outside the house and Beck’s voice telling us we could come out. To this day my heart is filled with love and grief in equal parts for my sister Mania.

  It was night-time when Beck came down to help us out of the ‘tomb’ and back into our regular bunker. I looked out of our little window. The night was bright, lit by a full moon, and the wind was still howling. I couldn’t see how many exactly, but Beck told us that about 20 houses to the left and right of us had burned down. The wind blew hundreds and hundreds of burned books, pieces of furniture, children’s toys, clothing, curtains, parts of roofs, prams and clouds of ash past us in an endless stream of charred lives.

  My mother and I sat together, numb. Everybody in the room, except for the Steckels, loved Mania. More. We were all in love with her. There are some people who are simply gifts to everyone they meet. My sister was one of them. Beck poured himself a drink and then a drink for everyone else.

  In his usual blunt manner, he said of his drink, ‘My courage. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’ Beck’s voice was hard because that’s the only way he could utter the words.

  My father said, ‘We understand.’

  Then Beck told us that he’d heard Mania had been shot. He didn’t know anything more about it. This was our death sentence and we couldn’t even express a word of our grief for Mania. We would soon be dead just like her unless we found another place to hide. Mania’s death had taken away our own will to live. We were numb, defeated. How could we argue with Beck? Or even beg? There was nothing more this man and his family could do for us that wouldn’t be their death sentence too.

  Only tiny, cranky Mrs Melman asked Beck if she might have a word with him upstairs. She couldn’t look at him as she made her request. She stared down at her shoes, which were covered with mud and ash. He nodded and helped her up through the hatch.

  Beck didn’t say when we would have to go, but as soon as he left we started gathering our things. I tried to hold Mama, but she shrugged me away. She wouldn’t look at my father. However angry my mother got, she never once mentioned that my father didn’t stop Mania from running out of the house. The children looked at us, silent, not daring to speak. Zygush’s young eyes had grown old. How he had loved my sister, his co-conspirator in all things mischievous, the girl in our family who would defend him from the bullies and ride him on the handlebars of Aunt Giza’s bike as Uchka chased them down the street, begging them to be careful.

  Then Beck was screaming. ‘Get into that damn hole and close the hatch over you and stay there until I tell you! Until hell freezes over if need be!’

  Mrs Melman stumbled into the bunker and my mother asked her what she had said to Beck. Mrs Melman said she couldn’t remember but she had begged. That was all. We were in such
a state of shock that the men couldn’t even begin to think about where we would go and the women didn’t ask them. The only one of us who would have pushed was Mania and she was dead.

  All I could think was where should we go, straight to the Germans? To top it all off, it was still a terrible night outside. The winds were like a hurricane. Blowing 80 kilometres an hour. You wouldn’t send a dog out in this weather and we had two small children. Who would blame the Becks? After all, it’s we who were their death sentence…

  A few minutes passed and Beck jumped into the bunker again. He looked out of the window, the wind howling outside, and said, ‘Go to sleep, whatever will be will be.’

  ‘God, please help us,’ I prayed, ‘that we survive and repay these people for what they do for us.’

  The next days were one nightmare after another. Mama’s grief was unbearable. She couldn’t or wouldn’t speak to my father. And it wasn’t out of anger, even though in her silence she condemned him. It was because to look at him was to see Mania’s eyes in his, her face in his. They couldn’t even grieve together. Or out loud. I, however, clung to a whisper of a hope that she had got away, that Beck was wrong. And so I continued to say the prayers my father had taught me. I wanted to talk to my father about the conversation Mania and I had had the night before the fire. My darling sister had wondered if she had the right to ask God for more favours since He brought the children to us, but to ask Papa might open an even deeper wound. The one person I wanted to talk to about it, or about anything at all, was Mania. We had lost so many, yet somehow the four of us had seemed inviolate. Fate had seemed on our side in keeping us alive and together. My burst appendix had kept me from being shipped off to Kazahkstan with Aunt Rosa. Mania and I didn’t go to the nuns. The Russians arrested the wrong Meir Schwarz and shipped him to Siberia instead of my father. The Becks came to us. Too many close calls to mention. And now?