The Testimony

by Halina Wagowska

  I was bewildered by the demands and complexity of freedom: the necessity to make decisions and choices, to plan my time. Managing the money given to me by the Red Cross and the UNRRA, and shopping for basics were a new experience. Every minor problem seemed gigantic. I felt like an idiot and a pest always asking for help and advice. There must have been many others who shared my bewilderment.

  At first, freedom was so demanding that the end of hunger and fear, and the fact of one’s survival, were not celebrated. There was also the onset of survivor’s guilt. The explosions of joy we imagined in camp when we said ‘if we survive’ did not occur.

  It was Judith Winograd, my friend from Litzmannstadt Ghetto, who found me registered in Gdansk and sent a note saying that she and her father wanted me to come and stay with them. By then I was able to walk without a stick, albeit with a limp, and was happy to find someone I knew after months of being fostered by strangers. Judith had returned to Lodz from a labour camp in Germany, and some days later ran into her father returning from another camp—one of the heart-stopping street reunions. They now lived in one room of an apartment, but insisted I stay with them.

  In those days the age of maturity was twenty-one, and below that age one’s signature was not valid. Her father Ludwig Winograd became my legal guardian. In addition to signing documents, he acted in loco parentis at this crucial time.

  There was only one towel between us, and that was how I infected Judith and her father with scabies and ringworm. I did wonder why, in spite of thorough delousing after Stutthof, my skin still itched and was blotchy; but other problems had been more pressing. The dermatologist described my infection as well established, and Ludwig’s and Judith’s as recently acquired and obviously inherited from me. I clearly recall my acute embarrassment. We had to undergo a tar cure: a smelly and messy bath of diluted tar every day for a fortnight. My hosts were very gracious about it.

  Judith and I became inseparable, and to strangers we pretended to be sisters. Ours was one of many surrogate families forming after the war.

  We befriended a group of people of our age, and talked about the present and a possible future but not, as if by some tacit agreement, about the past. Were we still living in the moment, out of our wartime habit, or was it a form of denial? Perhaps it was an instinct to protect one’s sanity until some healing had occurred. Neither of us went to see Baluty, the suburb of Lodz that had been the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, and where we had spent four traumatic years during the German occupation. Later, I heard and read that many survivors initially behaved in this way.

  An additional problem of postwar adjustment was the difficulty in relating to people who had spent the war outside the camps and were sheltered from their horrors. They seemed to be from another planet and had, to me, incomprehensible values and reactions. I felt isolated.

  I kept imagining a variety of ways in which I might find my father, each mingled with my anxiety of having to tell him that Mother had died. I searched and advertised in missing persons lists and columns in newspapers for both Father and Stasia, but to no avail. New lists of survivors registering with the Red Cross and other refugee organisations were posted daily outside a special office. People were finding relatives and friends on these lists or in the crowd outside. There were emotional scenes of reunion.

  Several times I was sure I could see my father in the distance. Once, the man looked so much like him from the back that the illusion persisted until I touched him and he turned.

  I gave up my daily inspection of the lists and my searching in the streets. My name and address were listed and I waited to be ‘found’. My wartime fantasies did not allow for any of this. There was meant to be only joy and a sense of victory over great evil. The reality was bitterly different.

  As time went on, my hope of Father’s survival waned, then rose each time someone turned up many months after the war’s end because of illness or loss of memory. As hopes of his survival faded, I became withdrawn and aimless.

  One day I was given a sharp reprimand: ‘Pull yourself together; there are now millions of orphans like you all over Europe.’ I was hurt, and said that other people’s misery couldn’t cheer me up. But I think this incident helped me to accept reality.

  For many, the search for surviving family members spanned continents. Formerly distant relatives became close, and those who escaped the war in Europe now opened their homes to the survivors. When Judith and her father decided to leave Poland for Sweden, where their relatives lived, I refused to go with them, hoping that my father would turn up any day, like Judith’s had.

  In the end Judith and her father left for Argentina, and their friend, Max Farber, became my new legal guardian. Max and his wife had returned from labour camps and found that their young son, presumed lost as a baby, had survived, hidden in a country village. They now wanted to foster orphans, and offered to look after me and two others. They were exceptionally helpful, enrolling me at the special school described earlier, where I intended to matriculate and then study medicine.

  I was helpless in self-management, and the routine of attending classes each day, followed by homework at night, provided me with much-needed stability. In my new quarters I befriended my neighbours, Dr Stella Wislicka and her husband, and often sought their advice. There were still many living skills I had to learn.

  In my first year at the school, I joined a group of volunteers to help clear fallen bricks that were blocking some roads. These citizens’ working bees took place on Sundays. Later I did a six-month crash course in nursing, which was offered to female students. We attended evening lectures and workshops in bacteriology, basic infection control, sterilisation and basic nursing procedures. Thus qualified, we worked in hospitals on Sundays, or on some evening shifts to relieve the shortage of nurses.

  These extracurricular activities forged in me a sense of citizenship and of participation in building a new nation, and I became quite enthusiastic about helping to build a fairer and better society. However, this enthusiasm was eroded, and finally destroyed, by several anti-Semitic incidents that affected me deeply.

  I applied for a permit to use the only swimming pool in the city—which was in the YWCA sports complex—to repair the wasted muscles in my leg. The managing clerk demanded to know my religious origins. I had not stated my religion and argued that surely this could not matter in a socialist state. He insisted, and when I put ‘Jewish’ he refused me a permit for swimming on the grounds that the YWCA was a Christian organisation, and therefore only for gentiles.

  The doctor who had recommended the exercise thought I should lodge a complaint about this prewar rule, which had no place in socialist Poland; but I was too dismayed by the fact that, after the Holocaust, I still had to fight for acceptance, and gave up.

  By a sheer fluke I came top in an algebra assignment and started tutoring a fellow student, Barbara, who had failed this subject. She was twenty-six years old and had been born in the country. She had fought with the underground army and had done all the things I had fantasised about during the war. She had carried out sabotage, ambushed the enemy, blown up bridges and lived in forest hide-outs—and she had medals and scars to show for her bravery.

  Barbara was a very nice and decent human being, and a popular classmate. We spent a lot of time swotting algebra late at night, and sharing views and ideals, and we became good friends. One night Barbara asked me why matzo, the traditional Jewish bread, was so white when it contained the blood of Christian babies. As we had seen in the biology class, blood turns black when heated. I was completely stunned by the question and just sat there, unable to respond. Barbara sensed my shock, became upset and assured me that I was the last person she would want to offend. She had just asked a technical question—chemistry, really.

  The experience was quite emotional for both of us. After a while I said that I could not understand how grown-up people about to matriculate could believe in such a vicious superstition, and that I wondered what hope there was for me in
such a place. Barbara explained tearfully that, as a child, whenever she was naughty her mother threatened to call a Jew, who would take her away and use her blood for his bread. It was easy to believe that. The Jew was a symbol of evil, because he had crucified Our Lord Jesus Christ.

  We then talked about prejudices and scapegoating generally, while Barbara kept apologising. We remained good friends, but whether this incident changed Barbara’s perception of Jews generally I don’t know. It showed me how deeply ingrained the hatred of Jews was in honest, decent people, and that it would take a long time to disappear.

  During my hospital duties I also experienced anti-Semitism. I worked hard to prevent pressure sores in the often emaciated patients, and the patients were friendly and all seemed to like me. I massaged their hips, elbows, backs and heels with methylated spirits and lard—the only available means then to aid the circulation and nourish the skin. The patients often remarked how helpful it was, and some kissed my hand. Other sisters, they said, would just give a pat or two, not a real massage.

  But when a priest visited, everyone except me made the sign of the cross. It may have been the priest who spoke about it to the matron, who called me to her office. She said that it was important for a patient’s wellbeing to feel secure and to trust their carers, so it was not good for them to know I was Jewish. I was deeply offended. I replied that it was an unjust remark, and also that I did not believe any patients had complained about my nursing or felt threatened by me. Of course, the matron was expressing her own prejudice, and probably believed she was acting in the patients’ best interests. I went to another hospital and worked in the operating theatre, which was off limits for priests. These incidents bitterly disappointed me.

  Meanwhile a larger threat now loomed in the rising temperature of the Cold War. Military training was added to our school curriculum, and there were rumours of compulsory army service for eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds.

  In early 1948 Max Farber, my legal guardian, was preparing to migrate to Israel with his wife and son. He said to me very bluntly, ‘Poland doesn’t want you, and you don’t want another war. Come with us.’ I was due to matriculate in July that year, and it seemed important to me to complete my secondary education. And so, with much trepidation, I rejected that kind offer.

  THE BOY FROM THE PIGPEN

  This nameless boy occupied my mind for many months before I saw him. He was a patient in the Children’s Hospital in Lodz, and in the care of Dr Stella Wislicka. She and I lived in adjoining rooms in an apartment, and shared the kitchen. Almost every evening Stella talked to me about this boy—a kind of progress report. She was a petite, energetic lady in her mid-thirties, and a very bright and dedicated paediatrician. I was sixteen and still studying the condensed curriculum course at the special school.

  The boy, aged between four and five, had been brought to the hospital, where he behaved just like a piglet. His history was later pieced together by a journalist, and that research allows me now to start at the beginning.

  In the winter of 1941 a trainload of Jews from a small town in the south of Poland was travelling to a labour (or concentration) camp. The train got bogged down in the deep snow and, during the night, a woman escaped with her small baby. She walked to the nearest cottage in a nearby village and asked for asylum. The peasants, an elderly couple, refused because of the death penalty for harbouring Jews, and her footprints were clearly visible in the snow.

  In the morning her frozen body was found near their doorstep. The six- or eight-month-old baby was still alive, covered in most of the mother’s clothes. The couple hid the child and reported the woman’s death to the authorities. They were too old to claim the child as theirs, and feared that someone in the village might ‘dob them in’ to the German commandant of the district. So they hid the baby in the pigpen.

  Pigs were a valuable commodity in Poland, and were fed well—even by impoverished rural families. People used to say, only half jokingly, ‘Eat up your food or I’ll put sugar and cream on it and give it to the pigs.’ Thus the boy had access to good food, and was in a fair nutritional state when he arrived at the hospital.

  Just how much of his time had been spent in the pigpen was not clear, but it must have been considerable because, some four years later, he still behaved like a piglet. Apparently he liked being with the pigs best. He walked and ran on all fours, did not speak but made squealing sounds and ate by slurping the food up. Stella was in charge of his rehabilitation or, as she called it, rehumanisation.

  I now wish that I had taken greater notice of all the reports about him and memorised more details. But at the time there were many children, and adults too, emerging from often bizarre hiding places, learning to stand or walk or get used to daylight, to speak rather than whisper. I too, though not so acutely, found life at that time bewildering.

  The details that I do recall are as follows: at first, those in charge tried to socialise him by putting him in a ward with other children. This failed, because the children thought it fun to copy him and run on all fours, put their faces into plates and slurp the food up. He ‘demoralised’ the other children, and so had to be isolated. He was restless and would not go to sleep unless able to snuggle to a warm body, so the nurses set up what they called a piggy roster. Each night they took turns to bare their midriffs and lie with him on the floor, snuggled up, until he was asleep. It had to be the floor because he kept falling out of a bed.

  Many specialists in the hospital became involved in his rehabilitation. The dermatologist treated the very thick calluses on his hands and knees, which had sand and pebbles embedded in them. It had to be a very gradual process, and I think shaving and sandpaper were involved. Blood capillaries had grown into the thick skin and caused bleeding.

  The physiotherapists made a sort of armour from plaster of Paris to straighten his spine, which had been distorted by his posture on all fours, and also to support him in an upright position. This too had to be done gradually because at first he often fainted when standing up. His cardiovascular system had to get used to pumping blood upwards to his brain.

  Then there was voice and speech therapy to deal with his squeals. His hair also presented a problem. It grew downwards over his face, so his eyes had become used to filtered light. When his hair was cut short he squinted or ran into dark corners, obviously unable to tolerate normal light. He had to wear some type of eye shield for a time.

  Yet all these physical problems were minor compared with those of his comprehension. In his speaking lessons he learned many words quite quickly; but they were only those with a visual context, such as bread, chair, door, table. He acquired a vocabulary of words representing items that could be seen or illustrated. Concepts that had no shape or could not be pictured presented quite a problem.

  Stella asked me, ‘Can you think how we can answer his question: “What is mother?” Please try.’ I recall pondering this late at night in front of my unfinished school homework. How to explain what a mother was? If you said it was the person who brought you into the world, he would ask, ‘What is a person? What is world?’ There were many concepts I struggled to define: day, night, child, adult. Time was particularly difficult to define, it seemed to me. I don’t think I was much help as the task was really beyond me.

  But I realised then how much is absorbed by osmosis in normal infancy. ‘Mother’ comes with the territory and doesn’t need to be defined. Many other concepts seep into our minds unillustrated yet comprehended. I suggested that perhaps the meaning of these words could be smuggled into stories that would engage his imagination.

  Fortunately he had the benefit of expertise much greater than mine. There were highly qualified psychologists and child-development specialists working with him, and at least one had based a PhD thesis on this case. There may have been more.

  I do recall, quite clearly, one evening when Stella came home very elated and called out, ‘Halina, Halina, he is human!’ She hugged me and did a little jig around the kitchen. T
hat day he had found some red poppies growing in pots on the hospital’s balcony. He had picked the head of one poppy and brought it in his cupped hands and given it to Stella. It was this that had made her so happy, and she saw it as very significant. I did not see it as very remarkable till Stella said, ‘Don’t you see? He appreciates beauty; that is, he has aesthetic responses, and also has the instinct of giving. That’s human, no longer piglet, behaviour.’

  Stella was very protective of him. It was well over a year after he got to the hospital that I was allowed to see him there. I was asked not to gawp at him but to look at the other children first and for just as long. Stella did not want him to feel that he was different or a freak. By then he could talk, but was still puzzled by some words and expressions.

  I saw a normal-looking six-year-old. There was just a slight waddle in his gait, perhaps due to his former posture. He had enormous, pale-grey eyes that were very still. He focused them on me like two lenses, did not seemed to blink, and I felt deeply examined by him. He had a very appealing face. I could see why everyone there had got so involved with this child.

  I forgot to mention that, when found, he wore a pendant with the initials ‘B’ and (I think) ‘S’. The pendant was handed in with him. One of the nurses who was very fond of him called him Bartek, an affectionate diminutive in Polish, and it stuck. He now responded to this name.

  Soon there was no good reason to keep him in hospital, so he was sent to an orphanage and started going to school. Stella kept visiting him, and received reports about his progress from school and his new home.

  She now allowed a journalist to research and publish the story. I think he went to the village to find details of the boy’s early life. Probably as a result of his article, a couple in Canada who were searching for surviving relatives applied to adopt the boy, convinced he was their sister’s child. Apparently his age, the locality and the initials on the pendant all fitted. The couple came to Lodz from Canada with photographs to find any physical resemblance, and thought this child was most likely their nephew.