by Andrea Simon
“Sheyne, no,” she said, “leave the child alone.”
My mother dropped on the floor. She didn’t move. I thought she had frozen in that position.
“Mama?” Rivke asked.
“Let her be,” Perl said.
We all busied ourselves, with what I don’t know since we had no space to do anything in private. We folded our clothes, pushed them aside, rearranged our belongings, small that they were. Rivke picked up a book and started to read aloud. Perl shook her head. She made it clear that no sound should be uttered.
Sometimes we all need quiet even if we couldn’t have peace.
We moved to the other end of the room with our backs to my mother. I didn’t have to look at her to know she was crying.
A few weeks later, Drora didn’t come home the usual time. That day, she had a different work assigment than my mother and Perl. She had been sent on a road-building detail. When it was an hour after we expected her, my mother began to pace the square room. We had one window and crowded around it, leaping when we thought we noticed Drora, only to see another girl who looked like her from afar.
We needed a diversion. The Christmas holiday had just passed. Under the Russians, all religious observations had stopped. Our one change for the better since the German invasion was that we could reclaim our traditions. Rivke sang “Stille Nacht” with the original lyrics in German. She had a lovely, light soprano voice and had been in a choral group years before.
My mother sank to her knees. I thought she was going to pray. Instead, she folded her arms on the floor and bent her head into them. She began to rock, I thought to the rhythm of Rivke’s soft emotional interpretation. As quickly as she had gone on her knees, my mother jumped and stood. Her face was drawn and ashen. Her eyes were sunken and when she looked at Rivke, her eyeballs appeared to pop out. Her once golden hair was bland and matted. If I had seen her in my Olden Days, I would have thought her a crazy woman living on the streets.
She came up to Rivke and said something so low that we couldn’t understand her. Rivke continued singing.
Louder, my mother said, “Didn’t you hear me? I said stop, stop that singing.”
Rivke stared at my mother with closed lips. “What? What?” she asked with excited trepidation. “Did you see Drora coming?” Rivke had been so captivated by her own singing, with her eyes closed in an angelic pose, that she hadn’t seen my mother on the floor rocking.
“No, Rivke!” My mother was screaming now. “I haven’t seen your sister. I can’t believe you can be so insensitive.”
“What did she do?” I asked, afraid that Rivke, who ironically was the most sensitive of us all, would start crying.
“What did she do?” my mother repeated. “She only sang a song about Christ. As if we don’t have enough problems caused by Christians. Do we have to go about singing their songs?”
I didn’t recognize my mother anymore. She didn’t have an ounce of joy in her. It was as if all her waning energy was absorbed in fear and anger. Not that we were going around singing and dancing. We were still children, at least chronologically; we were desperate to find something to keep our minds off Drora.
“Is a Chanukah song okay?” I asked.
My mother didn’t answer.
Immediately, we sang in Hebrew, “Ma’oz tsur Yeshu’ati / lekha na’eh leshabe’ah,” the first lines of the Chanukah song, “Ma’oz Tzur” or “Rock of Ages.”
“Stop,” my mother yelled, her nostrils flared.
Without hesitation, we obeyed. I was again bewildered. I understood about the Christmas song, but not about the Chanukah one. Years later, it became clear. My father had sung that song; it had been one of his favorites.
The next day, my mother and Perl left for work. Drora was due back at the artel. They claimed that Drora was sick, but the commandant said he expected Drora the following day or else.
Late that night, Drora slipped in the door. Those of us who had been dozing were startled. Faint light came in from the window but we knew it was Drora. She lay down on our “bedding” as if she had never left.
“Where were you?” my mother whispered with relief and reproach in her voice.
“You don’t need to know,” she said, sounding exhausted and defeated.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, don’t worry. Just go to sleep . . . everyone.”
“Go to sleep,” my mother repeated. “Go to sleep. As if I could get any sleep waiting for you coming back from who knows where.”
“I’m sorry, Mother. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
I waited for my mother to repeat, “didn’t mean to worry you,” but she was quiet.
Sleep must have overtaken me because what seemed like a minute later, my mother was rushing Drora to wake up and get ready for work. It was still fairly dark so I couldn’t see much. By daylight, I saw a little package on the floor between my shoes. I opened it and there were three potatoes and a hunk of cheese.
When they returned to our room after work, I was alarmed by my sister’s appearance. She had a deep cut on the side of her eye and scratches on her cheeks and arms. I didn’t see her legs, but she had a slight limp. I knew better than to ask her anything.
Word got around in the ghetto. Inside, we had little else to do but to talk. Drora had been with the partisans. How she had escaped to join them and why she came back, I didn’t know. I could live with that uncertainty, but what really got to me was the sense that she could disappear again at any time and not come back.
We still couldn’t locate Gittel and her family. We heard that the Nazis removed certain young people from the ghetto and placed them in special barbed-wire camps to prevent rebellion. They transported others to faraway slave labor camps. Rumors also circulated that they took some Jews to the forest and shot them. I couldn’t bear to dwell on the possibilities.
Finally, we saw Gittel’s family, the Auerbachs, her parents and her brother, on a list of murdered victims. Gittel’s name was not there. I only prayed that Gittel, my oldest friend, had been among those sent elsewhere to work or escaped, though she would have wanted to die with her family.
Thirty-Three
IN SECRET, AND in ever-changing apartments, a handful of adults, most former teachers—so many of them had fled eastward, joined the partisans, or had been killed—and educated older Jews provided educational or religious instruction. Most parents were afraid to let their children out of their sight. In the ghetto, it was always preferable not to bring attention to yourself.
There were children dressed in rags, carrying sheet-wrapped packages containing books for exchanges. When I saw this more than once, I became ashamed to avoid the secret lessons. One morning, I followed the children into an alleyway and through a back door into the basement of an apartment building. There in the area where the furnace was—now silent and covered with grime—I heard a sound like soft singing. Still behind the children, I ducked under dripping, rusty pipes; and, in a darkened corner, there was a group of soot-faced, raggedy young children, not very different looking from the bunch I had followed.
Rats scampered between my legs. Why this revolted me after all I saw, I can’t say. But I screamed and danced around them, though they were too numerous to avoid stepping on. A thin, young man—a boy really—snuck up on me and covered my mouth with his clammy hand. His nails were long and encircled by dirt. Lice crawled in his hair. I yanked my face away, about to protest when he said, “Shh, if you want to stay here, you have to be very quiet.” I apologized. The chidren moved to make room for me and I sat in a smear of wetness. The odor of ammonia and something I can only explain as burning flesh and rotting meat willfully sucked into my nostrils, jerking back my head from the shock of it.
Out of some sense of respect, I sat with the children for an hour or so while the young man led them in softly intoned Hebrew poems and songs. Unconsciously, my lips moved with the words, though I couldn’t discern much melody as the voices were mostly monotone. When the man began a lesson
on geography, I excused myself and, by now, lightheaded and nauseous, I literally crawled out of the basement. This was one of the rare times I had gone anywhere without Rivke and would never do it again, at least voluntarily. I never told my sister about it. I don’t know if it’s because I was embarrassed to have gone or to have left.
Drora frequented underground meetings. The attendees had their pretend purpose if they were apprehended: they were conducting Yiddish artistic and cultural pursuits or teaching useful trades, which seemed acceptable at first by the Germans. Their real aim was to exchange information and organize resistance. There were rumors of secret radios and arms collecting. We were all afraid to ask—afraid for the person involved and afraid for ourselves if we absorbed incriminating information.
I understand now how much these “agitators” risked their lives. Many of us “nonagitators” were complicit in our noninvolvement. We ignored a lot; we kept our mouths shut too often.
In the midst of the hell around me, I clung to my two books even though my mother had ordered me to burn them. She wasn’t that vigilant as she must have realized that reading was my only real sustenance. At that point, she must have also realized that we were all doomed so why deny me a happy minute or two.
One book was a compilation of Yiddish writers. The other had been a gift from Ida on my ninth birthday, over two years before. It was a novel in verse called Eugene Onegin by Aleksandr Pushkin, the famous Russian poet. It wasn’t until I got to the ghetto that I studied the passages, which were difficult to understand. Then, I discovered a verse, written in 1831, toward the end that Ida had underlined and written in the margin: For you, Esfir. I memorized it and still remember it to this day. It said:
Reader, I wish that, as we parted—
whoever you may be, a friend,
a foe—our mood should be warm-hearted.
Good-bye, for now we make an end.
whatever in this rough confection
you sought—tumultuous recollection—
a rest from toil and all its aches,
or just grammatical mistakes,
a vivid brush, a witty rattle—
God grant that from this little book
for heart’s delight, or fun, you took,
for dreams, or journalistic battle,
God grant you took at least a grain.
On this we’ll part; good-bye again!
DURING PESACH, A wall was erected around Ghetto B. Now we were trapped, though some thought that this was a good sign, that we would stay put for a while. Yet it was now even harder to get food. We were starving. Everyone had dysentery. Our pails overflowed with bloody, mucousy stools. Even when the pails were taken outside and dumped, the stench was on our hands, between our fingers, in our hair, and in the lining of our nostrils.
I often wondered what kept my mother going. She may have been holding onto some hope, not necessarily for her, but for her children. Drora and Rivke had been almost delirious with fever and weakness. Believe it or not, I, the youngest, seemed to be the strongest. So when my mother noticed that my belly was flabby and swollen, that I, too, had succumbed, something inside her cracked.
She rushed around the apartment in circles, mumbling curses, having conversations with my father, with my grandfather. She promised that we would join them soon and hoped God would ensure our swift endings.
Yet again, Perl put her arms around her sister, trying to contain her. It was no use; my mother broke free like a caged tiger, baring her teeth and making growling sounds.
Perl said, “Sheyne, get a hold on yourself. For the children.”
For a moment, my mother calmed and appeared sane again. Only for a moment. Although my mother hadn’t been shot or wounded, she was dead. If her insanity had protected her from more pain, then I am happy for her.
With our mother so distraught, it was up to us. We rummaged in garbage cans for anything edible. We made soup with potato peels floating in water. We stepped on dead bodies in the street.
Evil was all around. There were Aktions—roundups—of all types. One demanded three hundred crazy people. I feared for my mother. Thankfully, she appeared no more deranged than most others in the ghetto. Another thing I heard from a girl, who swore her brother saw this: The Nazis set a large vat of boiling water in the center of the ghetto and threw in babies and young children, accompanied by German music to cover up the screaming. At the time, I doubted the story; this particular girl often exaggerated for attention. Now I know it must have been true.
JUNE 2, 1942. I normally didn’t take note of what day it was, but I remember this was a Tuesday. It was very hot. There were rumors of a big Aktion. Both ghettos were surrounded.
A voice on the loudspeaker ordered us to assemble—each ghetto had a different location. Many ran away and hid. People were shot and left squirming in their blood. I heard one girl scream, “I’m too young, I want to live.” A moment later she was killed.
We from Ghetto B and a group from Ghetto A gathered at our appointed place, Svobody Square (Liberty Square). From a balcony, the Judenrat leader, Angelovich, tried to calm us down. In a business-like tone, he said, “Nothing bad will happen to you.”
“Liar,” Drora yelled. There was a huge hush.
My mother grasped Drora by the arm and said, “Please, Drora, quiet.”
Angelovich continued, “You are just being transferred to a new place of work. Take all necessary belongings.”
Could we be moving again? But where? I looked around and everyone also seemed stunned and confused. Drora slunk away from us and I could see her in a small clearing. I was about to follow her and wrench her away when she pointed to Angelovich and yelled, “Traitor!” The crowd pushed against me and I couldn’t see her well. I was clutching Rivke’s hand, dragging her toward Drora. That morning Rivke and I had renewed our pact. Whatever happened, we would go together, holding hands, even if it meant certain death.
This will haunt me until the day I die. Drora was yanked by her hair and thrown. She landed on top of others and they all fell. Two SS men grabbed Drora and dragged her down the sidewalk, where Jews weren’t allowed to walk, and out of our view. There was a momentary silence. Drora’s screams could be heard, I was sure, a mile away. She chanted, “L’shana ha’ba’ah b’Yerushalayim.” There followed a round of machine-gun fire. My mother wailed, “No, no!” It’s impossible to imagine how, with all the crying and screaming and shouting, we could have heard Drora, but we did.
My memory of the time period between the announcement and our leaving is very hazy. At some point, I had made the agonizing decision to leave Miriam behind, for her own sake.
The next memory I have is to be suddenly surrounded by SS men with their ugly forthing, vicious dogs and being pushed toward the railway station. Women screaming and children crying. A few squeezed between body parts, trying to escape through any gaps but were shot like targets in a moving bullseye. Hope surged when we heard that our final destination was Bronnaya Gora, also known as Brona Gora, a forest area not far from Bereza Kartuska. Surely, this would be another camp or a work area for cutting trees. But one look at the very old and the very young among us obliterated that dream.
The sadistic seesaw of hope and terror left me teetering on the brink of madness. What could be worse? Death? No, death would be a relief, an end.
Thirty-Four
THE TRAIN HAD eighteen cattle cars. With all the tumult and panic, I don’t know why I had counted them while we lined up and waited to board. It took my mind into another realm. Armed soldiers rammed us into the next-to-last cars. We piled on top of each other, close to a hundred and fifty terrified souls.
There was a small horizontal, thickly bared window high on the opposite end of the wagon. It was clogged with tangled barbed wire. Had it been fashioned for cows to breathe only enough to make it to market?
This trip couldn’t take too long. By my calculations, Brona Gora was about forty miles northeast of Kobrin, but I didn’t take into account that the t
rain would stop in Pinsk, which was about seventy-five miles east of Kobrin. And Pinsk wasn’t the only stop. I lost count on how many. Every time the train slowed down, I felt both terror of the unknown and relief at the promise of finality.
Inside this roaring coffin, I heard sounds like stampedes and muffled screaming, automatic shooting and single shots, swishing of steam and clanging of bells and whistles, the jingling of chains and the sliding and slamming of doors. I felt rumbling and jostling, jabbing by elbows and hard heads. We rode for what seemed like days, but it couldn’t have been much more than eight-to-ten hours. Rivke and I clung together, taking turns at crying into each other’s chests. My mother and Perl squeezed as one. We were bonded by sisterly blood.
At that point, I didn’t care if the train went farther. I would have rather died there smothered with my own, than to endure whatever awaited me.
The smell was unbearable. People peed, defecated, vomited. There were two buckets, one for a toilet and the other with water. I never got to either one. I was desperate for air and felt faint. At one point, I was able to crouch and press my nose smack on a crack in the floorboard. I inhaled as long as I could until someone shoved me away.
Suddenly I felt a lot of scrambling. I heard that a boy was standing on the shoulders of others, trying to glimpse out the window. After a while, he apparently spotted a town sign, and yelled excitedly. It was repeated by others so that everyone heard. “Bronnaya Gora” was the last echo.
The train shuttered to a stop, seemed to be changing tracks, and chugged forward again for a short time. Near the window, people pleaded for water. There were several quick stops and I heard clanging, shouting, barking, then a crescendo of choral screaming. When our wagon finally opened, there was a prolonged swoosh. The sudden light was blinding, and I blinked several times in a kind of shocked swoon.
Shouting in Russian, collaborating soldiers burst in and ordered us to undress, muttering something about us going to showers and having to leave our clothes in a pile. I was overhwelmed by shoving bodies, arms tugging at fabric, women howling. At first, not everyone understood. When the soldiers grabbed an old man and ripped off his tattered shirt, there was no getting away from our fate. Multiple screams of “no, no” erupted, mixed with cries of “Shema Yisrael.”