My Mother's Ring: A Holocaust Historical Novel

by Dana Fitzwater Cornell

  As streams of rain began to mix in with mother’s tears, I nodded my head in agreement, continuing to gaze at her wet ring like it was the first time I had seen it. It wasn’t much to look at actually, just a simple, fairly small gauge gold band with a slight sheen to it, but to her it meant the start of a joined life with my father. It was a symbol of her commitment to him and it was the only piece of jewelry she ever wore.

  After that conversation, my mother elaborated on her courtship with my father—how he used to pick her flowers because he couldn’t afford to buy her a bouquet and how he was so nervous around her parents the first time he had dinner with them that his trembling hands caused him to miss his mouth and spill his wine all over his nicest shirt—sharing details of how much she treasured her ring because of the family it represented. I never fully understood why she placed so much value on a small, gilded circle until later in life.

  CHAPTER 3

  My father, on the other hand, was more reserved. Conversing with him about any topic deeper than superficial issues proved to be a delicate task. From what I gather, he was brought up in an impoverished home in the countryside, the only child of uneducated peasants. His days were spent raising and slaughtering goats for both consumption and for profit; this was the family’s sole livelihood. Details of his childhood remain hidden since he refused to discuss his past in any amount of detail. I assume he wasn’t raised in a happy or a supportive household.

  He met my mother before his twenty-first birthday when he was on a trip to the city selling his butchered livestock. As the story goes, he confidently walked up to her, kissed her hand, and told her, “I’m going to make you my wife one day.” And he did. After their romance blossomed, much to the chagrin of his parents, whom I never met, he apprenticed with a shoemaker and then worked furiously to excel at the trade. Less than five months after their first encounter, my mother and father were married. I came into this world eleven months later.

  Although my father was introverted and reticent, spending most of his time at his workshop downtown, I do have several meaningful childhood memories involving him. One entails a much anticipated visit to the zoo. I must have been about twelve years old at the time. Out of the blue, father announced the upcoming outing one evening. He briefly extracted the cigarette from his mouth to call my brother and me to gather around him. Perplexed, we joined him at the table.

  “How would you like to see giant animals up close, right in front of your noses?” he asked as a cloud of smoke swirled around us.

  Mendel and I expressed our strong desire to see them and so father told us a month from then he would take us to see all of the amazing animals at the Warsaw Zoo. He then replaced his cigarette into his mouth letting it dangle from his bottom lip, pleased with our response and with himself for initiating such an unexpected field trip, and walked back to the bathroom to wash up for dinner.

  Over the next month, Mendel and I grew increasingly enthusiastic about our planned outing. Thirty days is a lifetime to a child. Why father made us wait for so long, I don’t know. Perhaps he wanted to bask in our youthful, innocent anticipation. Every day we built up the story about what types of animals we might see so that by the time the appointed day arrived we were convinced that we’d see dinosaurs and dragons.

  Even before sunrise on the morning of the big day, Mendel and I were brimming with so much excitement that we paced the kitchen like wild cats until my father finished with his bath. Circling around the table, we were giddy with enthusiasm. Mother insisted she pack take-along lunches for us, but my father wouldn’t hear of it. It was our superb adventure and he would treat us to lunch at a restaurant, and that was that.

  I wore a new pair of leather shoes that had a strap connected to a knobby button that my father had fashioned for me just for the occasion. Mendel wore a new woolen cap. My father proudly funneled us out the door as my mother smiled, coolly shaking her head at us, telling us to behave and to have fun. We took the local trolley, a rather bulky vehicle with a metal frame and rows of open seats. As we stepped onto the trolley, I felt a sense of pride, as if the vehicle was my own private ride. We rumbled along the streets, pausing at random intervals to collect other passengers, making our way to our destination.

  Approaching the zoo, Mendel and I locked our eyes on the entrance, willing the trolley to halt. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before. It was, after all, my first time visiting a zoo, although I had read about such places before in books. The humongous, delicate giraffes and hefty, robust elephants were like something straight out of my fantasy novels. We walked along looking at all of the cages, turning our heads left and right, afraid to miss anything. Father helped us break through the crowds and boosted us up high so that we could see over the railings; he was uncharacteristically in tune with us and our needs. It was truly a perfect afternoon, including lunch at an outdoor cafe. By the end of the day, both Mendel and I dreamed of growing up to be zookeepers, but the idea buzzed around in our impressionable minds for about as long as it took us to come up with.

  That day I learned for the first time how much my father loved us even though he could never find the words to tell us.

  CHAPTER 4

  Mother stressed the importance of being what she referred to as “culturally well-rounded.” Simply put, she wanted her children to have an appreciation for various types of arts including music, theatre, literature, etc. She made sure we routinely explored the artistic exhibitions housed in museums such as the National Museum and the Ethnographic Museum. Numerous afternoons were spent sitting outside in the park listening to an overly emotional amateur poet recite his latest creative work.

  Although mother wished we could attend the theatre and symphony, we didn’t have the resources to do so. There was one occasion, however, when she scraped together enough money to take Mendel and me to the symphony. We sat in the back of the grand performance hall, dressed in our finest clothing, eager for the music to start. By the time the lights dimmed and the red velvet curtain opened I was already mesmerized. The sparkling of jewels and the floral aroma of perfume tingled my senses as wealthy couples walked past me to find their seats in the front of the room. The diverse sounds of the instruments blended together harmoniously, hypnotizing me.

  I also remember the time when my mother went so far as to convince the local newspaper editor to give our family a tour of the publishing building just so we could see how the printed media was produced. Even though I became queasy because of the strong smell of fresh ink and even though we could barely hear our tour guide because of the squeaky machinery, it was still exciting. When my mother did something bold like that, quite a common occurrence, I was never embarrassed. In this way I learned a tremendous amount about the cultural richness that Warsaw had to offer, provided you had a willingness to seek it out, which my mother most certainly did. I must admit that I enjoyed the visits to the libraries most of all; I went there each week to check out and return my fantasy novels.

  Another segment of my childhood that always comes to mind has to do with happenings during the summer. The interim between the end of and the start of the school year was about more than a break from school; it was a time to vacation with my maternal grandparents. My favorite occasions were the times when my mother would ride the train with us, spend a day with her parents, and then let Mendel and me enjoy a few weeks alone with our grandparents. Grandmother and grandfather were kind souls; they never reprimanded us or made us feel like we were an inconvenience. They always seemed happy to see us and had bowls of hard candies and other sweet treats ready to share with us. I recall them always talking to us like we were small adults, not like naïve children as many adults tend to do. They went out of their way to make sure we felt comfortable. I treasured this time because it meant staying for weeks on end in the countryside splashing around in the lake, listening to stories about what life was like prior to my birth. Grandfather loved to spend hours at a time rocking on the front porch rehashing such stories, a
nd I was an attentive listener, pleased to absorb every word that materialized from his mouth. He never talked down to me, for he was of the belief that doing so would stunt my growing intelligence, and I respected that. If he mentioned a word or a topic I was unfamiliar with he would happily explain it to me until I understood. I cherished our conversations even more so as they turned to adult topics when I entered adolescence.

  The greenery in this area always smelled sweeter than sugar, far removed from the dirt and noise polluted air in the city. There were makeshift ponds with carp to observe and ducks to feed, rope swings to jump on and off from, and savory cabbage and meat dumplings to eat. There were even horses to brush and pastures to ride them in. Trees lined the horizon, making it seem like they were part of the sky. During the evenings, twinkling fireflies zipped around, obliviously entertaining us. Brisk, southwestwardly breezes gave flight to our crudely made kites. We could walk for half the day in any direction and not reach a main road.

  Treasuring the seclusion of my grandparents’ house, I liked to put a book under my arm and walk barefoot through the tall grass, the gentle wind blowing in my hair, to the field of apple trees just past the lake. My toes would sink into the muddy ground as the soft blades of grass and harmless insects tickled my feet. I’d sit under one of the trees and read, munching on apples, until I couldn’t see the words on the pages; that’s when I knew it was time for dinner. Sometimes I’d leave the apple trees while it was still light out so that I could pick berries from the fields—using my shirt as a bowl—for my grandmother to make us a pie.

  Life was perfectly carefree and absolutely enjoyable.

  CHAPTER 5

  Children don’t have the same set of worries as adults do. They aren’t burdened with regrets from the past and fears for the future; they’re infinitely more concerned with the present. They don’t yet understand the fragility of life and what the future may bring.

  As children, the world around us seems so fresh and new; it’s seemingly impossible to hone in on the notion that at any moment our heart can stop beating and we will no longer exist in our human form. Parents are faced with the decision of sheltering their children from this reality or spoiling their innocent view of the world with truths about how none of us are immune to our ultimate fate. They teach their children to be safe and careful: “Don’t run into the street before looking both ways,” and “Don’t talk to strangers,” they warn. But do children, young children, really acknowledge why they are told these things? Or are they just words spoken from their parents’ lips that are so drilled into their brains that they just follow them verbatim?

  I would say that I lived a sheltered life from my infancy through my boyhood years, roughly until I was twelve or thirteen. For me, my biggest fears were doing something so naughty that it would send my father into a whirlwind of fury. On these occasions, he’d narrowly squint his eyes, storm into his bedroom, grab his thick, oxblood leather belt with the enormous square buckle and chase after me. If my brother had been involved in the mischievous deeds I would feel blessed because it meant that my father would only have a fifty percent chance of catching me. Mendel and I would split up; we’d run out the door headed in different directions. My father would scream and make all kinds of noise, terrifying us. We truly thought if he caught us then that would be it. But he never did. Thinking back, I don’t think my father would ever have whipped us. It was more of a scare tactic, one designed to instill terror in us, to make our hearts drum in our bodies, making us so scared that we would never repeat whatever it was that we had done. I know this because the last time my father pulled out his belt I had an injured muscle in my leg and could barely hobble out of his sight, much less run. He walked slowly towards me, the belt hanging limply at his side, and looked directly into my eyes—almost through them and into my soul—and simply said, “Be a man, Henryk. Be a man.”

  It was right around this time that I began to actually feel like a man. Trivial childhood fears and games made way for serious conversations and concerns. My voice changed and a new set of desires and feelings emerged, which I devised embarrassing methods to control.

  Glasses became an extension of my face, much like cigarettes were an extension of my father’s mouth. It must have been sometime near my thirteenth birthday when I noticed that other children at school could read words from the chalkboard with ease, but I could barely make out the blurry shapes of the letters. Before this, I always thought I was seeing what I was supposed to be seeing. I wondered what other things I couldn’t see. For this reason, I suggested that my mother take me to the doctor to have my sight analyzed. She was hesitant at first, telling me that she and father had no vision problems and I probably didn’t either. But, she humored me. After a thorough examination, the doctor diagnosed me with nearsightedness. My mother promptly apologized to me. A week later I received a pair of glasses with thin metal frames that poked the sensitive skin behind my ears. With a few minor tweaks, the glasses fit securely and without pain. Up until that point, they were the best gift I had ever received. To me, they represented a new way of viewing, and therefore of appreciating, the world. Before, when I looked at the trees from afar they just looked like masses of green blobs that swayed with the breeze, but now I could see every separate leaf and branch. Street lights seemed to me like halos shooting out in all directions beforehand, but now I could see that they cast out very specific rays of light. My eyes had been deceiving me. My new spectacles in place, I wondered what it would be like to live in a world without luxuries such as glasses. How did people function before they were invented? I imagined that if my vision had gotten severely worse and glasses didn’t exist, I would probably have to stay cooped up in my house like a recluse, blind to and fearing the unseen dangers around me.

  I felt proud to wear my new glasses and my classmates agreed that they made me look intelligent. Therefore, I was eager to show them off to my parents’ friends, as well. Once a week my parents invited a small group to our house for card playing. Some of the people were Jewish and some were Christian; my parents intermingled with both. These game nights were the highlight of my parents’ week. As the wine flowed, so did the gossip. My enjoyment stemmed from the abundant food that accompanied the guests.

  Even though my parents had a circle of friends they enjoyed spending time with, my mother greatly missed her dear friend, Hanna, who lived in Berlin. They had grown up together in Warsaw but when Hanna’s husband received an impressive job offer in Germany in the 1920s, my mother bid Hanna farewell and they promised each other that they would continue their friendship through letters, which they did.

  This written correspondence would prove to be a valuable source of information for my family, especially in the 1930s. It was during this time that I began to realize the instability of the world around me, both in my personal life and in life in general.

  CHAPTER 6

  After I completed my secondary studies, I was faced with the decision of whether to continue on with my schooling or to apprentice with my father and train to become a shoemaker; any other line of work was out of the question as far as my father was concerned. I had never been one of those types of children who begged to spend the day with their father at work, grinning from ear to ear with fascination as they watched their father labor. My father was never the type of man who much cared to have anyone watch him work, either. And so, without knowing what the day-to-day activities of a shoemaker were, but feeling an obligation to my father, I chose the latter route. Since Poland was facing an economic hardship and there were limited job prospects, I felt reasonably confident in my decision. Moreover, I knew that my parents couldn’t afford to pay for additional education since secondary school had strained their wallets enough, despite my mother’s encouragement to further my studies because she’d “find a way to pay for it somehow.”

  Many of my friends, really more colleagues than friends by this point since I had become fairly introverted, had also decided to learn a craft rather than
to continue with their education, although a few of them moved with their families to places where there were more job opportunities, like France and Italy, so that they could pursue careers.

  I wasn’t a child anymore and I didn’t want to keep living in my fantasy world. Although I would have loved to stay in school, I wanted my father’s acceptance even more. I was ready to act like a man. Plus, I would be gaining experience and doing something with my life. So it was final, I would become a shoemaker. “Good,” he responded. “We’re going to finally have another skilled tradesman in the family, one who’s hopefully even handier than me!” He rubbed my shoulders with approval as he beamed with pride. I nodded, just to please him. In truth, I was less than enthusiastic.

  He proved to be a focused master, preferring to limit our conversations to work-related issues when we were in his shop, which I very much enjoyed since talking about anything else with him seemed awkward to me. I wasn’t too far into my newly established career path, however, when my father’s dreams for me crumbled (as I’ll explain shortly). Stretching leather and hammering soles didn’t turn out to be my forte anyway—my bruised thumbs would agree—despite my aggressive attitude to succeed. The work didn’t come naturally to me the way it seemed to for my father. I only wish that I had learned the trade earlier so that I would have had an easier time becoming competent at it. It would have helped me down the road.