The Girl in the Green Sweater

by Chiger, Krystyna

  It was my mother who came to our rescue. She had a small handbag with her, and it was filled with food. Sardines, ironically, and some bread and biscuits. She did not know how long we would be shut inside our hiding place, so she had come prepared. She too must have sensed that this young man was uncertain of his role. She handed the bag to the German soldier. “Here,” she said. “Take this.” Then she handed him the gold watch from her wrist.

  The German studied the watch as if it were a prize, and after a moment or two he said, “I will give you a choice. One watch, one child.”

  My poor mother, how could she choose? She was horrifi ed. This was the difficult choice she could not be expected to make, the difficult choice she nearly made with the teacher who came for me, the difficult choice Jewish mothers were undoubtedly making all over Poland. She said, “These are both my children. I cannot take one and leave the other to die.”

  My father, too, was outraged at the suggestion. He could not choose between his children. He held out a photograph of me and my brother and shouted, “You see, they are both my children! You cannot make me decide!”

  My father was bloodied from the blow to his head, but he kept begging for mercy, for our release. He believed that he could get what he wanted by the strength of respectful argument, by reason. He urged the German soldier to take him and to leave his wife and children behind. This was a choice my father could make, a choice he could die behind.

  The young soldier seemed to consider this option, and then he quickly rejected it. He waved his hand in a dismissive way and said, “Stay!” Bleiben sie!

  And so we were given a reprieve. My mother was so overjoyed by this sudden show of kindness on the part of the German that she invited him upstairs to our apartment for something to eat. I did not understand this at the time, but I know now that she wanted to repay his kindness. She also wanted him to stay for protection. She could see that he was human after all. Also, she knew that if he left, there would be others coming to look for us. She knew that as long as the young German soldier stayed with us in the apartment, we would be safe.

  Our apartment was on the first floor, directly above the basement, so we went upstairs. My mother was so happy that this latest threat had passed, almost giddy. She asked the German what he wanted to eat, and he answered that he wanted eggs with onions. Ein mit zwiebel. Even today, whenever I catch the smell of scrambled eggs and onions, I think back to that tense night in our kitchen, in that overcrowded apartment. I remember the German soldier who swung at us with his leather crop, who told my mother to choose between my life and Pawel’s, and the way my mother and father managed to turn him from our enemy to our protector, to find the kindness beneath the cruelty.

  My mother went to the kitchen and scrambled some eggs with onions for the soldier, and of course we all followed. She made him a heaping plate—six eggs, as I recall—and we settled in to watch him eat. As he ate, we could look through our kitchen window to the courtyard below and see that it was full of people. Jews, mostly, and they were frantic and frightened. All of our friends and neighbors had been emptied from their homes and onto the streets, where they were lined up in the gutter and waiting to be herded onto the transport. Some of them had already been shot, but most were just waiting or looking hysterically for their loved ones. Up and down the street, I could not see any children. They had already been taken away. All that was left were their grieving parents and grandparents, who were themselves about to be taken away.

  Somehow, my mother managed to spot her cousin in the crowd, from the safety of our kitchen window. She pulled from her belongings another fancy watch and handed it to the German. She said, “Now I will give you a choice. One watch, one member of my family.” Her German was perfect, so she was able to plead a convincing case. She pointed to her cousin and said, “That woman out there, that’s my cousin. Go and bring her back to us. Please.”

  The German, with his full belly and another fine watch for his trouble, went downstairs and called the name of my mother’s cousin, but she was too afraid to respond. She thought the man was just singling her out and that to follow him would be to go to her death. She did not know he was trying to save her. She did not know that her cousin, my mother, had sent him. She did not know that all she had to do was stand in answer and she would be led to safety. And so she sat with all the others and refused to acknowledge the soldier when he called her by name.

  We looked on from the window, unable to help her, unable to signal that it was okay for her to go with this man, that it had been prearranged, and after a while the German simply gave up and left her in the crowd. And of course the Germans did come and take her away, and we never saw her again after that. But our German soldier came back to our apartment. He stayed with us a while longer, protecting us, sharing our food, talking to my father about how he had built this or that hiding place.

  Soon after the transport was gone, a few thousand of our friends and neighbors dead or on their way, we heard some muffled crying from the kitchen window. Always, after an action, there would be a time when those who had been in hiding would get the courage to go outside and see what the Germans had done. And now, after our ghetto had been cleansed of virtually all children, I could hear these particularly sorrowful noises through the walls of the apartment and up on the roof. I looked outside, and everyone seemed stunned, ashen. It was, I realize now, the face of grief. And along with that face came something else. When I stepped away from the window, I heard a loud thud. It sounded like a sack of potatoes hitting the pavement below. Then I heard another loud thud, another sack of potatoes. I raced back to the window to see what might make such a noise, but my mother stopped me. She did not want me to look. She did not want me to see the grieving mothers, their children now taken from them, jumping to their own deaths from the roof of our building.

  Our German soldier stayed with us until early that evening, when the other Germans left and the action subsided. For a few days or weeks, it was calm. For a few days or weeks, we felt secure. But then, every few weeks it was something else.

  Somehow, my father’s actions during Joseph Grzymek’s grand procession had placed him on the mind of the SS Obersturmführer. Since then, they had many encounters, with the ghetto commander trying to get the better of my father and my father trying warily to outsmart his adversary. It was unusual for a German of such authority to pay attention to a Jew of such little consequence, but in my father’s mind they became like rivals. Back and forth they went, as in a chess match. Grzymek had the advantage, of course, because he stood with the strength of the German army, the Gestapo, the SS.

  Certainly, my father would not openly cross Grzymek. He knew what would happen. He had seen it with his own eyes. Once, my father recalled, a group of Jews was made to stand in a row. They were given some mops, some brooms, some shovels, and told to clean the streets. After some time, the SS man in charge told the workers to put down their tools. He told them that they were being taken to the Piaski. Of course, the Jews knew what this meant. They knew they were being taken there to be killed. One of them, a doctor, stepped to the front of the line and screamed, “You cowards! You are afraid of our mops and shovels! You are only strong in front of people who are unarmed!” Then he spat in the face of a high-ranking German officer, and when he did this the SS took out their revolvers and shot him. The rest, they corralled onto a transport and killed in the Piaski.

  Another time, a group of Jews killed an SS man in the ghetto. This happened every now and then, a small uprising among a group of Jews who had been pushed to their limit, and when it happened this time, Grzymek decreed that fifteen hundred Jews would be taken as retribution. Fifteen hundred Jews for one German. This was the price of this one small uprising.

  With my father and Grzymek, it was a more subtle conflict. Grzymek would deliver a difficult assignment for my father, and always my father would manage to complete it. Always there was something, and all of these somethings nearly came to a terrible end when Gr
zymek was preparing new living quarters for himself. He had placed my father in charge of some aspect of the renovation. My father had an impossible deadline to meet, and as it happened he did manage to complete the work in the time allowed. However, the paint on the interior staircase railing was still wet when Grzymek made his inspection. This, to Grzymek, was a punishable offense, so he decided that my father deserved to be hanged.

  Every day, there was a lineup in the ghetto’s main square, and Grzymek would make his pronouncements while the Jews stood in line. On the day of this “failed” inspection, Grzymek pulled my father from his place in line and told him he would be hanged. There was another worker assisting my father on this job, and this man was told the same. Their families, Grzymek said, would be sent to prison. My father knew Grzymek was crazy and that to say anything would be to make the situation worse. He had seen the way he could put down any Jew who made his life difficult. Even so, my father feared for his family, so when he was not being observed, my father passed a note to a friend asking him to tell my mother that she should take me and my brother and flee. This we did. We had been in our first-floor apartment and ran to a third-floor apartment in our building, where a kind tailor with a sewing machine helped us to hide.

  My father and his coworker were taken to a corner of the square where the Germans had erected a gallows. Soon, Grzymek arrived and the ceremony began. Always, with this man, there was a ceremony. My father told us later that he was numb to what was happening. It was like a dream. He was told to empty his pockets, remove his belt, remove his clothes. He stood naked on the platform as they placed a noose on his neck. The other man was also made to strip and to receive the hangman’s noose.

  It was Pawel who noticed the commotion from our neighbor’s upstairs window. He looked outside and said to my mother, “Look, Mama, they are going to hang someone.” He did not recognize that this was my father.

  My mother came to the window, and she knew right away this was my father. I looked, too. We were on the third floor, and this was happening directly below our window. I recognized my father immediately. I wanted to scream, but I knew I could not.

  My mother did not want us to watch. She said, “Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.” She said this over and over, as if she were in a trance.

  But, of course, I watched. Pawel was in my mother’s arms, and she held his face to her chest in such a way that he could not see out the window. I looked over to her and saw that she was watching, too. She did not want to watch, but she could not look away.

  My father wrote later that he was resigned to his fate, that it was as if he were inside his own bad dream. He stood and waited for the hanging to proceed, and then, inexplicably, Grzymek gave a dismissive wave of his hand and said, “Ah, you can stay alive.” As if it were no longer worth the trouble to proceed with the hanging. He offered no explanation, and my father did not want to wait around for him to change his mind.

  My father was stunned. Happily so, but stunned. The other man was also waved free, and he too did not know what to make of it. My father turned and bowed to Grzymek, as if he were thanking him for his freedom, and then he turned and began to step down from the gallows. As he did so, a German voice called him back: “Halt!”

  My father thought, What could this be? Was this Grzymek playing with him again? Another round of cat-and-mouse? A cruel back-and-forth? You will be hanged, you are free, you will be hanged, you are free. This was Grzymek’s nature, my father realized. This was just like him, to set him free and then hold him back. For amusement. But it turned out Grzymek merely wanted my father to take his things. His clothes, his belt, his shoes, his watch. Grzymek said, “Hole dir deine sachen, wirst doch nicth so mit dem macketen schwanz herumlaufen.” Take your things because you cannot leave with your naked penis.

  My father had been walking away without any of his clothes, completely naked. He was so swallowed up by the moment that he had not realized, so he hurriedly collected his clothes, stepped into his pants, and walked quickly from the scene.

  I remember hugging and laughing and crying with my mother and brother as we watched this. Hugging and laughing and crying, all at once. It was so unexpected, to look out the window to see my father about to be hanged, to see him suddenly set free, to see him scurrying away from the gallows without his clothes. There was nothing to do but hug one another and laugh and push away our tears. We had all been so scared, so terrorized, and we were now so weakened by our fear and overcome with relief that we could not help but find this picture a little bit funny, this picture of my father standing naked before the ghetto commander.

  My father did not come home right away. He did not know we were in the tailor’s apartment. Also, he did not want Grzymek’s men to follow him, so he hid for a time in another building, and sure enough Grzymek sent the Gestapo to look for him. When they found my father, they brought him back to Grzymek. Once again, my father thought the game was continuing.

  “Where were you?” Grzymek said. “I was looking for you.”

  “I was hiding,” my father said.

  “You are a coward,” Grzymek said. “You are the biggest coward I ever met.”

  My father thought, I am the coward? In Grzymek’s apartment, he has twenty-four-hour guards. He hides behind his guns and tanks and grenades. And I am the coward? He did not say anything, my father, but this was what he thought.

  This would not be the last time the two would meet. Sometimes they would meet by chance, and sometimes Grzymek sent for my father. For whatever reason, Grzymek appeared fascinated with my father. Maybe he liked that he kept turning up, like a bad penny. Maybe he saw in my father the face of humanity. Certainly, the ghetto commander’s inhumanity toward the Jewish people of Lvov was in full evidence, yet he had spared my father from hanging, and he would spare him several times more.

  Once, Grzymek tried to ask my father about his background, as if to gain understanding. He said, “Who is your father?”

  My father lied and said his father was an Austrian doctor. This seemed to impress the ghetto commander. He said, “Ah, so you have German genes! This explains it!”

  Next he asked about my father’s mother. Again, my father lied. He said his mother was a Russian princess. He was toying with Grzymek, manipulating him.

  “Where were you born?” Grzymek asked.

  “Turkey,” my father said. It was like a friendly interrogation, and my father wanted to give Grzymek something with one hand and take it away with the other. This was how he explained it. He would let Grzymek think my father was of German descent and then infuriate him with the part about Russia and Turkey. He was a very proud man, my father. His back was not always bent. He would not be humiliated by this madman, yet to engage in a battle of wits with a witless German official was very dangerous; but my father believed Grzymek would not lash out at him if he remained intrigued. Also, my father knew that Grzymek needed him. Why? My father had developed a reputation as one of the finest carpenters in Lvov, and there was much work to be done.

  Somehow, for some reason, Grzymek let my father go once again, but he was determined to kill him with his own hands. This was what he said to his soldiers, my father learned later. Indeed, after the final liquidation, Grzymek was seen on Zamarstynowska Street searching frantically for my father. “Where is Ignacy Chiger?” he shouted. With everything else that was going on, he was going crazy that he could not find my father. There were not many survivors of this final liquidation, but one man who survived told my father about it after the war. He said Grzymek seemed obsessed.

  The two would meet one final time, in 1949. Grzymek was on trial for war crimes at a court in Warsaw, and my father went to testify against him. Of course, my father was not the only person to testify, and I do not even think his testimony was central to the case, but he was looking forward to it because now Grzymek could not hide behind his bodyguards and his guns and his uniform. Now they would be equal. All during his trial, Grzymek denied everything. He did not
admit to the actions, to the establishment of the Ju-Lag. He did not even admit to being in Lvov during the liquidation. And then he saw my father and his expression turned. It was, my father said, the strangest thing. The judge asked him if he recognized my father. Grzymek said he did not, but his expression gave him away. Eventually, his interrogator pulled the truth from Grzymek’s lying lips. The questioning came back to the subject of my father, who was still in the courtroom. This time Grzymek said, “I know him well. Chiger. He was the main contractor in the Ju-Lag. He built all the bunkers. He checked all the canals. He was an artist.”

  Then Grzymek told the whole courtroom that he knew my father would survive. Among all the Jews, he knew, Ignacy Chiger was the one who would survive.

  In the end, Grzymek was sentenced to death, and I could not say which my father seemed to relish more—that the SS Oberstürmführer finally received the punishment he deserved or that he at last acknowledged my father in this admiring way.

  One of the last places we lived before being sent to the Ju-Lag barracks was in a small house at Kresova 56, with my grandparents on my father’s side. We lived in the kitchen. There was a large credenza and a big old oven. The floor was made of raw wooden planks. I remember the planks because I spent so much time on my hands and knees scrubbing that floor for my mother. We were living in desperate circumstances, and sleeping on the floor, and still my mother wanted to keep a clean house.

  My grandfather came home one evening and told my father we had to run. Something had happened, and the Germans were looking for his entire family. He said, “Tomorrow, they are coming for us.”

  My father, he did not want to run. He did not want to take his wife and children deeper into the ghetto. My grandfather Jacob, he was insistent. He said to my father, “You have to save your family.” This was always the most important thing to my father, to protect his family. If he had been on his own, he might have fled Lvov some months earlier or entered the resistance movement. He might have joined one of the uprisings. It was not his character to quietly accept such cruelty and hopelessness. But he had his wife and children to think about.