Esfir Is Alive

by Andrea Simon

  The younger Midler girls had Christian classmates and regularly associated with non-Jewish villagers. Lately, though, their father expressed wariness. Ida had told me that Iser warned them to stay away from the churches on Sunday because the Russian orthodox and Catholics from the outskirts came to the village to worship. The Catholics often got drunk and started fights. When they would meet Jews, they’d give them a hard time, often provoking fights. Mrs. Midler, on the other hand, had stuck up for her Christian neighbors and countryside peasants. She had only the best relations with them.

  Ida was uncharacteristically quiet. She normally tried to make everyone feel at ease. Later, when we were alone in our room, she confessed to me that she had been preoccupied by something her parents had said at lunch, how there were more and more restrictions on when her father could conduct his business and with whom. Volchiners were losing their incomes and couldn’t afford to fix a broken bicycle even if they needed it to travel for a job. It was similar for sewing machines, another necessary luxury or, more correct, another luxurious necessity. Mr. Midler was generous and often fixed broken parts for nothing, but he couldn’t afford to donate a new one.

  When Ida had asked him about going to America, her father said he was having trouble getting visas for the whole family, but he would think of something. Ida’s mother had said that he was always worrying about the future, that she was sure things would get better. Then the real reason for Mrs. Midler’s reluctance came out: She could never leave her parents who lived in a village called Bocki. They had a small farm that they loved; they had worked hard for their land and wouldn’t give it up without a fight. And they were getting old and frail and couldn’t make the long, hard trip to America.

  Ida couldn’t contain herself and had blurted, “If we have to stay here, I can give up school. Now that Sala is fourteen, she should be going to the Tarbut, too. It’s not fair.”

  Mr. Midler said, “Idaleh, you’re right. It isn’t fair. But it took a lot of trouble and money from our relatives in America to get you into the Tarbut. You will be finished in a year and a half. We have to help one child at a time and you Ida are the oldest.”

  Ida had pleaded with unrealistic scenarios: that she could drop out of school for a year while Sala went to a secondary school, maybe the Yiddish school in Visoke, like Sala’s friend Hanna did. She had never said anything to them about her worst fear: that maybe they wouldn’t be going to America.

  “This is what we have decided as a family, Ida.” Mr. Midler’s tone had been firm; Ida had known this was the end of the subject.

  “What are you thinking, Ida?” Sala asked. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who had noticed Ida’s silence.

  “Oh, nothing much. You know me, my mind is always somewhere else. But listen, while we are lucky to have all of you girls here, let’s do something special.”

  “Like what?” I said excitedly, grateful to Ida for breaking the spell of silence.

  “We’ll play Geography,” she said, making it up as she went along. “I will take out my map of the world, unfold it, and lay it on the floor. The selected person will stand in the center of the map, blindfolded with a scarf, and turn round and round until one person says, ‘Stop.’ Wherever she lands will be her unknown place. The others will yell out the name. Then the blindfolded girl has to spell the name, say where it is, and what she knows about it. Everyone will have a turn.”

  “That sounds like fun,” I said.

  “But it isn’t fair,” Sala said. “You and I will know more than the younger ones.” It’s strange that in a short time, both older Midler girls had been declaring that something “wasn’t fair.”

  I couldn’t decide if Sala was truly thinking of us or if she wanted to spoil her sister’s plan. By virtue of her age, Ida always got to be the leader.

  “Okay, Sala, you’re right. The younger girls will get an extra two points, for free.”

  “Well, I still don’t think it’s fair,” Sala said, without much conviction. She had little ammunition to fight her big sister, especially when she saw the younger girls eager to begin.

  We played Geography for an hour. When it was my turn, I got Chile and Japan. I was able to spell both countries and knew that Chile was in South America and that the Japanese were Oriental and some of the women wore long and colorful dresses. I got five points and two free ones. Ester also got seven. Ania got eight. Sala and Ida tied at ten. It was so much fun that Ania and I vowed to play it often.

  After the Midlers left, I felt better about the girls as if spanning the globe together brought us closer. In the end, we were all girls worrying about our families and our places in a new and frightening world.

  PART II

  German and Russian Occupations

  1939-1941

  Merciful God

  Merciful God,

  Choose another people,

  Elect another.

  We are tired of death and dying,

  We have no more prayers.

  Choose another people,

  Elect another.

  We have no more blood

  To be a sacrifice.

  Our house has become a desert.

  The earth is insufficient for our graves,

  No more laments for us,

  No more dirges

  In the old, holy books.

  Merciful God,

  Sanctify another country,

  Another mountain.

  We have strewn all the fields and every stone

  With ash, with holy ash.

  With the aged,

  With the youthful,

  And with babies, we have paid

  For every letter of your Ten Commandments.

  Merciful God,

  Rise your fiery brow,

  And see the peoples of the world—

  Give them the prophecies and the Days of Awe.

  Your word is babbled in every language—

  Teach them the deeds,

  The ways of temptation.

  Merciful God,

  Give us simple garments

  Of shepherds with their sheep,

  Blacksmiths at their hammers,

  Laundry-washers, skin-flayers,

  And even the more base.

  And do us one more favor:

  Merciful God,

  Deprive us of the Divine Presence of genius.

  —Kadya Molodowsky

  Twenty-Four

  ON THE LAST night in August, on a Thursday, I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. I was always sad when the summer was ending. Lately, though, I was almost looking forward to it because it meant returning to Brest and seeing Ida, Aunt Perl, Ania, and the boarding girls. I loved my sisters, and my mother could do no wrong—most of the time—and I so enjoyed my adventures with Gittel (except for the fair). As the summer faded, Gittel and my sisters would be off to their schools, and my mother would be canning fruit for the winter and trying to rejuvenate my father’s business. There was no role for me in Kobrin then. My place was in Brest; my bed was near Ida’s in Aunt Perl’s house.

  I must have fallen asleep because I awoke very early the next morning to the most horrendous, ear-splitting noise. I thought I was having a nightmare. When it got louder and my eyes opened, I assumed there was a lightning storm. September, I said to myself, was coming in strong.

  If I had been having a nightmare, then that dream was also happening to my mother and sisters. Everyone was screaming at once, bumping into each other near the bottom of the staircase.

  “What was that?” Rivke asked, already crying. It didn’t take much to open the faucet on her waterworks. She may have been almost twelve, two years older than me, but in many ways she was the baby.

  “Oh my God,” I said, realizing this was something outside my head.

  Curiously, my mother didn’t say a word. We raced toward the parlor, intending to look out the windows facing the street. The noises were increasing in intensity, if that were possible; we could feel the house shaking.


  Finally, my mother spoke. “Get away. Get away from the windows. Quick. Drora, bring me the black material in the pile near the sewing machine and some pins. We need to block out the light. Then I want all of you to get dressed immediately. Take anything you have that is valuable and pack it in your schoolbag. And hurry. There is no time to waste.”

  “Why, Mama, what is it?” I asked.

  “Hurry, I said. Don’t ask questions, just get moving.”

  I was too scared to disobey and rushed upstairs to follow her orders. We were all downstairs within fifteen minutes, as punctual and efficient as a troop of petrified recruits.

  The noises were deafening and felt like they were piercing my eardrums. The upstairs flashed light from uncovered windows. It was as if the house was ablaze but there was no fire.

  None of us could resist, no matter my mother’s warnings; we lined up by the sides of the blacked-out windows and peeked outside. Then we looked upward. Airplanes were flying so low we could almost see the pilot. We were being bombed.

  There were new noises—whizzing, swooshing, roaring—getting louder, coming straight toward us. Away from the window, we crouched with our arms grasping each other’s shoulders. This was it. I couldn’t imagine the force of the bomb. It was unbelievable. Who would be doing this? We were all going to die. Let it come quickly, quickly, quickly.

  The blast was enormous. It thrust us apart; shards of glass rained from the chandelier. The framed photograph of my grandparents that had been hanging on the wall fell and missed my head by an inch. From a cabinet, books tumbled to the wood floor like flapping miniature planes. Shutters banged open and windows rattled. I waited for our house to explode, our bodies to whirl in the air as if in a tornado.

  There was a lull. We were still alive. My mother inched to the window, insisting that we remain close to the floor.

  “Oh my God,” she said, not even screaming, more in disbelief.

  “What?” we gasped in unison.

  “The Blooms.”

  “What about them?” Drora asked of our next-door neighbors.

  “Their house. Their house and the house next to them, they’re in ruins, leveled.”

  We heard people screaming and crying. My mother, still ordering us to stay put, opened the front door to take a better look at the damage and to see if she could help someone. There, in rags, his hair grayed with ash, little five-year-old Baruch Bloom was wandering in a daze, circling and crying for his mother. My mother zipped outside and took him by the hand. I followed close behind. We searched the rubble and, when my mother unearthed an arm with missing fingers poking out of a collapsed mess of wood and furniture parts, she yanked Baruch away and brought him into our house. Rivke and I took him to the kitchen and tried to clean him up and give him water. Then I went to the attic and found a shirt and pair of shorts from Velvel’s bureau drawers and we gently dressed Baruch. All he did was shake and yell, “Mama, Mama.”

  I didn’t know what to do, what to say. Clearly he would die without his mother so I said over and over that she would be here soon. But I couldn’t stop the terror mounting up my throat.

  By now the boy was sobbing and couldn’t catch his breath. Rivke, to my surprise, put her arms around him and crooned, “Baruch, Baruch. Everything is going to be fine.” Why people always said that when it wasn’t true, I didn’t know. But I adored Rivke for her compassion.

  It was truly a miracle because maybe a half hour later my mother, who had gone out again, walked in the door with Mrs. Bloom, barely recognizable, caked in mud and dust, her clothes stuck to her in jagged slivers. Baruch ran to her, crying, “Mama, Mama.”

  We watched them with profound relief. Then my mother pointed toward their house and shook her head. I knew then that Mr. Bloom, their eight-year-old son, Leib, and their newborn girl, still unnamed, were dead.

  Mrs. Bloom and her son left to find Mrs. Bloom’s parents. My mother again instructed us to stay in the house, no matter what. She would return as fast as possible. Community adults would be gathering around the marketplace.

  As soon as she left, Rivke began to sob, shaking uncontrollably. I wanted to cry too, but Rivke was so agitated that I put my arms around her ample torso and drew her close. She was stiff and unyielding. Drora was also in a daze. Realizing that at fourteen and a half and now the oldest, she had to act, she commanded Rivke to make tea and cut up the challah in the bread bin. When Rivke didn’t move, Drora raised her voice, but gently, “Now, Rivela, Esfir also needs to eat something. You’re older and it’s your job to take care of her.”

  Mechanically, Rivke rose, took my hand, and led me to the kitchen where we sliced the challah and heated water for tea. After our tea and bread, which tasted like shredded hay, we brought a slice to Drora who munched absentmindedly. Drora hadn’t moved from the window, unpinning the black material partly so she could position her body sideways and still have a view.

  There was a creaking noise as if someone was opening our gate, and a rustling of leaves as if that person had brushed past the branches of our linden tree on the way to the front door. My heart stopped and Drora put her finger to her lips to indicate quiet, which she didn’t need to do. Rivke and I were too terrified to utter a word. The front door opened and it took us a moment to recognize my mother, and we pounced on her like she was the Messiah. She kissed each of us on the forehead. She had muddy streaks on her cheeks in the shape of lightning.

  “Girls, everything is alright,” she said unconvincingly. “The marketplace was crowded and the town leaders said that we were hit by our planes by mistake.”

  We then relied on word, which came from someone who knew someone who knew someone—and we were glued to the radio, which had a lot of static and some music, I think Polish polkas. At some point, we took naps.

  Late in the afternoon, we returned to sit by the radio. Drora pushed back the metal bridge of her eyeglasses. She had been wearing them more often. I wondered if she was having problems with her eyes. It wasn’t the time to ask.

  “It’s because of that pact,” she said.

  “What pact?” Rivke asked.

  “The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It is a nonaggression treaty.”

  “Well, pardon me,” Rivke said, “you sound like you’ve memorized the names for an exam.”

  “Just because I know something you don’t doesn’t make me a snob.”

  “Girls, please!” my mother begged.

  “So what is it anyway?” Rivke asked, holding back the sarcasm.

  “It’s an agreement named after the foreign ministers of each country that says both countries won’t go to war with each other. They also pledged they would take no sides if another country attacked one of them.”

  “So what’s wrong with that?” I asked, always the peacemaker like Fanny was in her family.

  “Well, there are rumors of something more.”

  “Like what, Miss Brilliant Brain?” Rivke asked with annoyance.

  “Rivke!” my mother said.

  “I just heard from some people I know that Germany and the Soviets also secretly agreed to divide certain countries, particularly Poland. Eastern Poland, including us, would go to the Soviets.”

  “I haven’t read about this in the newspapers,” my mother said.

  “That’s because it’s a secret.”

  “Then how do you know?” My mother had worried about Drora’s constant night meetings and this new circle of friends whom she never invited home.

  “I told you it’s just a suspicion,” Drora said. “I don’t think anyone here really knows what went on behind the scenes.”

  “And how would Hitler accomplish this?”

  “By having these issues agreed to in advance, Hitler could now have what he wanted without interference—to invade Poland.”

  Bombing. Mistakes, Secret deals. Invasions. Drora was mysterious and forthcoming. Did she really know something or was she just repeating what the big shot leftists
were saying? Suddenly I wished Mendel was here to explain it to me.

  “I can’t believe that Poland would be divided again like a pie,” my mother said.

  “Well, it’s unbelievable that the Soviets would make such a deal with the Nazis. I mean, how could they?” Drora said.

  “Yes, your precious Soviets,” Rivke said. She often made fun of her sister’s love of anything Russian, including communism.

  Perl had once explained to me, in one of her lessons, that in March 1917, there were demonstrations in St. Petersburg causing the end of the tsar’s rule. There was a lot of confusion and a rise in the Bolshevik Party, led by a man named Lenin. He believed in rule by the working class, and state ownership of property. These beliefs also spread to our people, which is why so many Jews were Socialists. Now I suspected my own sister had become the kind of person who almost got me kicked out of school, a Communist.

  “You don’t know anything, Rivke,” Drora said. “If you must know, Hitler has been making all kinds of deals to get more territory. This is just another attempt. And the Russians have been trying to negotiate a treaty for peace.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “My friends and I aren’t the only ones looking toward Russia. The Belorussians also identify with them.”

  “Maybe that’s why the Poles are angry,” Rivke said.

  “They could benefit from Russia also.”

  “Stalin is as bad as Hitler,” my mother said.

  “We don’t know that yet,” Drora said, defending the Soviet leader.

  “I still don’t get it,” I said. “Mama said the bombing was a mistake, so your rumors were wrong.”

  IT WAS SHABBES morning. On the radio, the patriotic music suddenly stopped. President Moscicki addressed the nation, announcing that Germany had attacked Poland. “We will fight for every Polish threshold and for every roadside crossing,” he said.