The Girl in the Green Sweater

by Chiger, Krystyna

  I was very unhappy. We stayed in this room for only about a week, but that is a long time when you are six years old. My mother, too, was unhappy. She was used to having her own things, running her own kitchen, arranging her family’s schedule, but here we could only follow the motions of everyone else. Here we could eat only when my father was able to bring home some food.

  Here we could bathe only when it was our turn, and only with cold water. And here my mother would have to go back to work. This was probably the biggest change for me and my brother. We had gotten used to having our mother near, and now she would have to go to work each day like my father, and we would have to wait nervously for her return as well.

  We could not stay in Zamarstynowska 34 very long. Soon my father moved us to another apartment. This second apartment was also on Zamarstynowska Street, Zamarstynowska 120, and it was a little bit better. This time, we were on the “ghetto” side of the bridge. We had to cross through a gate to reach the ghetto. At the checkpoint, we had to present papers and say where we were going. Some families were detained if they did not have the proper paperwork or if the German soldiers working the checkpoint decided for some reason they could not pass, but we were lucky. One of the soldiers hit my father on the back with a leather whip, but my father said it was not so bad. He said a lot of people suffered much worse.

  Once we crossed into the ghetto, things did not seem any different to me. In fact, this next apartment turned out to be bigger, less crowded. The man who rented us our new room was also a carpenter. Perhaps this was how my father came to know him. He had a woodworking shop in the basement. I can still smell the fresh wood shavings. The smell filled the whole building, and it made me feel clean, brand new, like a fresh start. Even today, when I smell fresh wood shavings, I am taken back to that woodworking shop in the ghetto. It is a happy sense memory, even though it was not a happy time.

  We stayed at Zamarstynowska 120 from February 1942 until August 1942. The conditions there were a little bit better than at Zamarstynowska 34. At first we lived with my aunt and two cousins, all in one room, until one day my uncle came and took his wife and children to Warsaw. I liked this second apartment on Zamarstynowska Street because there was a courtyard in the back of our building, and my mother would sometimes let me go outside to play. This was a great treat. There were fresh mushrooms growing just beyond our courtyard, in a field behind our building. I had never seen fresh mushrooms. At first, I thought they were big white stones. I had to ask my grandmother about the stones when she came to visit, and she explained that they were mushrooms and that we could eat them. This was so surprising to me. We collected some of the mushrooms and brought them home to eat. I could not believe it, eating those big white stones. They had no taste, but I convinced myself they were delicious.

  I had begun to pay a lot of attention to food. Before the Soviet occupation of 1939, I did not care about food. As I have written, sometimes I would not even eat, just to torment my poor nanny. But now food was scarce and precious, so of course I ate. I did not like being hungry, which was why my discovery of the mushrooms was so special and why I remember it. I also remember how I used to peel potatoes for my mother, to prepare for our dinner. I used a knife, because we did not have a potato peeler, and my father taught me how to shave the skin so slight, so thin, so I did not waste a bit of potato. In the beginning, I would peel and my father would watch, until he thought I had mastered it and could be trusted with the task. I peeled those potatoes so carefully, it was almost as if I were whittling. I did not waste a bit. It was a habit I could not break, even long after the war, when potatoes were once again plentiful. To this day, someone seeing me in the kitchen peeling potatoes will wonder how I learned to do such a thin, fine job of it.

  Now that I was allowed outside to play, I could see the reality of our situation up close and firsthand. One afternoon, through an opening in the fence behind our building, I saw a group of Ukrainian teenagers beating up an elderly Jewish man. They were hitting him with sticks. The man was not resisting. He was screaming in pain, calling for help, begging for the teenagers to stop. After a while, the Ukrainians grew tired of the beating and walked away, but the man continued to moan. I ran upstairs to tell my mother what I had seen. I thought maybe she could help this poor man. I did not know how to help him myself. My mother, what could she say? What could she do? She was very upset about it, but at the same time she told me not to pay attention to such things, to mind my own business, because getting involved in something like this could only lead to trouble. This was not the kind of person my mother was, not the kind of person she wanted me to be, but this was how the war had changed us, how the Germans had changed us. The Ukrainians, too. If we tried to help this man, the Ukrainian boys might take offense and start beating us with their sticks.

  We did not have running water at Zamarstynowska 120. For bathing, yes; for drinking, no. We had to go outside to a pump, and I would sometimes go with my grandmother. This was our special time together. My grandmother would carry the bucket when it was empty, and I would carry it back when it was full. I liked that I was big enough to help in this way, and on this one day, returning to our apartment with a full bucket of water, I noticed two young Ukrainian women approaching us on the street. They did not look as though they meant us any harm, but they were Ukrainians. In my head, I decided to blame the women for the way those Ukrainian boys beat up on the old Jewish man in the courtyard. It had just rained, so there were puddles in the street. I stopped by one of the biggest puddles and waited for the two women to approach. Then, just as they came close, I jumped in the puddle and splashed them with water.

  My grandmother, she was furious with me. And the Ukrainian women, they shook their fists and chased after me. They shouted, “You Jewish bastard!” They did not catch me, though—I was very fast—and they did not chase after my grandmother. Perhaps they did not know we were together. I felt so good, splashing them like that, so powerful. It was nothing, just a little bit of water, a little bit of mischief, but it made me feel that I was not so helpless after all. Of course, I got in a lot of trouble when we got back to our apartment, but I did not mind. It made me feel we could stand up to the Ukrainians, to the Germans, to whatever might happen next.

  It was good to be a fast runner, especially during one of the actions, when the Germans would come in force and sweep the streets of Jews. At all other times, it was unsafe to move about the city without proper papers, but at these times it did not matter even if you had proper papers. During an action, the Germans would mobilize their entire police force: soldiers, Gestapo, SS. They would go into the apartments where the Ukrainians had told them the Jews were living and drag us out into the street. Sometimes they would throw grenades into buildings if they suspected there were Jews hiding inside. They would capture the Jews and load them onto lorries for transport to the Janowska labor camp, on the hill overlooking town, or to the Belzec extermination camp. Sometimes they would just shoot the Jews right there in the street or take a large group to the Piaski sand pits and shoot them there. It was a concentrated effort, to kill or capture as many Jews as possible, in as short a time as possible, to tighten the grip of terror over the Jews who managed to survive. Following each action, the surviving Jews were made to move deeper into the ghetto. It was like a funnel. They pushed all the Jews into smaller spaces, until finally there was no place left for us to go.

  I can still recall the very first action. At least, it was the first action I remember. We were still living at Zamarstynowska 120, and my mother was home with us at the time. We heard noise on the street outside our window. We heard the footsteps of the Germans bounding up our stairs. We heard them banging on the doors of the apartments below. We heard the cries of the other families as they were pulled from their apartments. My brother and me, we hugged my mother close. She tried to comfort us. She kept saying, “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid.” But, of course, we were afraid.

  And then she did the strangest t
hing. She started pinching our cheeks. Over and over, she pinched our cheeks. We complained because the pinching started to hurt, but still she kept pinching. She said, “Cicho, cicho, cicho,” to keep us calm, to let us know everything was going to be all right. Ssshhh, ssshhh, ssshhh. And still she kept pinching. She explained to us quickly, quietly, that she wanted our cheeks to look healthy, she wanted us to look well fed and well dressed and well mannered. She made sure there was a nice picture of me and Pawel displayed on the table by the apartment door. And all the time she was pinching, pinching, pinching.

  Finally, some Germans came into the apartment. They did not knock. They just burst through the door. The man who appeared to be in charge looked around. He did not look like a terrible person. He did not seem much more than a boy. He studied me and my brother. He could see we looked clean and healthy. Our cheeks were so red, from all the pinching! We were wearing nice clean shirts. On top of my shirt, I had my special green sweater. We stood perfectly silent and still, not because we were so well mannered, but because we were too scared to say anything or to move.

  The German, he looked us up and down. Then he noticed the picture by the front door and he compared our faces with the faces in the picture. Then he said to my mother, “Doctor?” They were Wehrmacht, these soldiers—not Gestapo, not SS, just regular German army. Always, they were a little bit easier to talk to, a little bit more human. This was what my parents always said.

  My mother shook her head.

  “Professor?” the German asked.

  Again, she shook her head. “Nein,” she said. “En airbrecht.” No, I am just a worker.

  Once again, the soldier studied us. “Das en dein kinder?” he asked. These are your children?

  My mother nodded proudly.

  He looked at us once more. For the longest time, he looked at us. Then he said, “Bleiben sie.” You can stay.

  This is how we survived our first action, by another small miracle, by pinching.

  The next day, another German soldier came. My mother went at us again with her pinching, and again we were allowed to stay. Where she learned this trick, I never knew. Later that second day, a Ukrainian soldier came through the door, and he ordered us to leave with him. This time my mother’s pinching was not so effective. The soldier told my mother that one of our neighbors had reported that there were Jews living in this apartment, and this was why he came. My mother tried to talk to him, but he would not listen, and as they talked my father returned home. It was a lucky coincidence. Right away, my father began to bargain with the Ukrainian. The Ukrainian decreed that my father could stay with us children but my mother would have to leave with him since she did not have the proper paperwork. My father asked the soldier to name a price. The Ukrainian asked for 500 zlotys—about $100—which my father happily paid, and we were free for another day.

  During the next action I remember, I was with my cousin Inka, who was two years older than me. We were living together at Zamarstynowksa 120 at the time. We had learned to be extremely careful when we were outside playing. Normally, we did not go outside, but in this one courtyard it was felt we would be protected. Still, we were constantly looking, left and right, up and down, fearful of the Germans, fearful of the Ukrainians, constantly listening. Action or no action, it was much the same. Every day, they were killing Jews, taking Jews, punishing Jews. But when it was a big effort, they gave it a name. They called it an action. In the meantime, they did it anyway.

  We were like animals, attuned to our environment. Any sudden movement, any unexpected noise, and we would run. And that is just what happened. Suddenly, I heard some German voices, and I looked up and could see some German soldiers. I could hear noise and activity as the people spilled out onto the streets. I told Inka to run, and she did, only I ran a little bit faster. I managed to duck into an alley to hide, but Inka was not so lucky. One of the soldiers caught her and took her away.

  I ran upstairs to tell my mother what happened, and we were so upset. Everyone was upset. It was the way of the ghetto, we were all learning. One moment you were with someone and everything was fine, and the next moment that someone was gone and everything was no longer fine, and underneath our sadness was a kind of knowing that something like this was going to happen.

  After Inka was taken, I thought I would never see her again, but later that day I saw her. I heard some commotion in the street and I looked out our window. There, on the lorry, pressed together with dozens of other Jews, I could see Inka. She was with my grandmother—my father’s mother, the one who knitted me my cherished sweater. I did not know until just then that the Germans had caught my grandmother in the same action.

  At some point, my grandmother looked back toward our window. Probably she knew I would be looking. She knew I would be frightened for them. I do not know that she saw me, but she imagined I was there, so she waved. Just a little twist of her wrist, just for me, just in case I was looking. Probably she did not think any of the soldiers guarding the lorry would notice, but one of them did. Probably he did not like that this woman was waving to someone. That she was smiling. That she was being brave. So he hit her. With the butt of his rifle, he hit my grandmother, and Inka reached to comfort her, and that was the last time I saw either one of them.

  After that, I did not go outside.

  Already, I was learning that there was no room in our lives for tears. Later, when we were hiding in the sewer, so close to the street where children were playing, I could not cry because my tears would give us away, but here, watching my cousin and grandmother being taken to their certain deaths, I was all through with tears. My parents were trying to be so brave, so strong. They were so focused on keeping the four of us alive that to mourn too deeply for those we were losing might take away from that focus. They did not have to speak these things to me. We were all sad, to think what had happened to Inka and my grandmother, what might be happening still, but there was only so much time for sadness, so we put it out of our minds. Not because we did not love them or cherish their memories. Not because of any kind of disrespect or detachment. No, it was because there was no longer any room for crying. Also, you could not openly demonstrate your sadness. Not in the ghetto, not any longer. Why? Because all around everyone else was experiencing their own sadness. We were all watching our friends and our family members being taken to slaughter. At any other time, we would have been collapsed in grief, but at this time we could only hope that we would not be next.

  My mother was not in control of her emotions. She had a small breakdown after the first actions, after losing her mother-in-law and her niece. (Her sister-in-law, Inka’s mother, was also killed in this same action, we later learned.) She was normally a very strong person, but this was too much. She stopped going to work, for a time, and stayed in hiding. My father did not even tell me and my brother she was hiding. He was afraid that if the Gestapo came to search our apartment, we might accidentally give her away. She was hiding in the sofa bed. My father folded her up inside and covered the opening with a blanket. Every morning, I thought my mother had gone to work for her regular shift, but she moved instead to this sofa bed. All day long, I thought I was at home alone with my brother. I became suspicious only when I heard my father talking to an empty room. He was standing in the doorway, talking, talking, talking, and no one was there.

  I said to my father, “Who are you talking to?”

  He said, “No one, Krzysha. I am just trying to gather my thoughts.”

  Later, I could hear him still talking. It was almost comical. This time he was asking the room for advice: what to do about the children, what to prepare for dinner, what clothes to put out for us. This sounded so strange to me, to hear my father talking about such details to an empty room, until finally I heard my mother’s voice in answer. It was coming from the sofa bed, and she was telling him what there was to eat.

  This went on for a few days, until my father could convince my mother that this latest action was over and that she would be safe
, but even I could see my mother was changed by what was happening. She became very superstitious. One day, Pawel announced that in his dreams he saw the Germans coming back to our apartment, and so she retreated once again to our sofa bed. Sure enough, another German soldier came to our apartment the very next day—and once again, we were spared.

  Little Pawel’s premonitions came into play another time as well. Like a lot of Jewish women in the ghetto, my mother had begun carrying vials of cyanide, which she meant for us to swallow in the event we were captured. This was to be our last resort. The Germans would not take us alive, she vowed. She carried three vials: one for herself, one for me, one for Pawel. Presumably, my father carried his own. My mother had taken to carrying these vials pressed beneath her watchband on her wrist, and one of them happened to break one evening as she was preparing something for Pawel to eat. My mother did not know at first that the vial had broken, but somehow Pawel knew not to eat. How he made this connection, I will never know. My mother tried to force him to take a bite of whatever it was she had made, but he would not open his mouth. Over and over, she tried to force him, but he would not eat. He started to cry. Usually, he was very good, and he seldom cried, but here he was, crying. We could not understand it.