by Lucy Lipiner
There was no sign of Mama anywhere. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach and began sobbing. Holding my father’s hand, I shut my eyes for a moment. I refused to look at the injured and dead people for fear of seeing my mother among them. Papa kept calling, shouting her name over and over again.
Mama was missing, and all around us, the fires kept burning. This had to be our darkest moment of all.
It seemed like hours but was probably only minutes later that we heard Mama’s voice, so faint that I could not make it out, calling to us from somewhere distant. Still holding our hands, Papa again pushed against the crowds, inching his way toward the sound of her voice, all the time calling to her, “Raisil, Raisil, we are here. Just stay where you are. Don’t go away.”
Surrounded by a multitude of people, there she stood like a statue. She looked strange—a ghost. Everything about her was gray. Her face was gray, her disheveled hair was gray, and her dress was covered in gray dust. She didn’t speak; none of us did. We stared at her, and she stared back at us. Papa wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
For the first time in my life, I saw my father cry. He reached out to her and quietly folded his arms around her. She barely responded. Her arms just hung there as if she could not even lift a finger to touch him. She didn’t seem like my mother—she was so quiet, so indifferent. I resisted touching her; I hated to touch the dust. But Frydzia grabbed Mama’s hand, holding it with one hand as she wiped away her tears with the other hand. I just stood there bewildered.
Then Papa gently drew Mama down to the ground. She began to cry. That’s how I knew Mama was back.
I don’t recall how the other members of our family survived the bombing. They probably ran away from the road as well. We were fortunate; we all survived another day.
6
Strange Encounter
After the terrible day of bombing, I was no longer the sixyear-old I had been before—no longer a child who could believe that prayers had the power to make everything better. I understood that the people on the ground in heaps of destruction would not get up again and walk away. I understood that death was the last act of life. I became more fearful of losing my family. From that day on, I began looking over my shoulder to see if Mama, Papa, and Frydzia were still there. Sometimes, I reached out of the wagon just to hold their hands. On one occasion, I demanded to hold Papa’s hat. I believed that if I held his hat, he would not ever go away and that he would be with us always.
Papa’s fedora hat was my security blanket. It had always been part of him. Before the war, my father had always dressed in the most stylish and elegant clothes, completing his ensemble with a pocket watch and a chain attached to the vest of his suit and a silver-handled cane that gave a final, debonair flourish to his handsome appearance. But he always wore a hat as observant Jewish men were required to do. When I was little, he let me hold his hat, even wear it sometimes, as long as I promised to be careful. If the hat was there, it meant Papa was there. In the state of anxiety that afflicted me after the bombing, it became all-important to me.
Days passed. The weather was changing; it was getting colder, and it rained often. Everything was wet. This was a penetrating wetness glistening on trees and leaves, a wetness that never seemed to dry. Everyone was complaining, especially Cousin Bella. Everyone hoped she would not give birth on the road. If she did, all our efforts to escape the Nazis would have been in vain.
Polish troops were disorganized, moving in all directions. We were often stopped by Polish soldiers threatening to requisition our horse and wagon—even our coachman. Except for authorized vehicles, most cars were abandoned for lack of gasoline, so a horse and wagon seemed a useful means of transportation.
The soldiers could be menacing too. Sometimes we were ordered to show our identification papers. “Jews,” they asked, “why don’t you fight the Germans?” I was terrified that my father would be taken away from us. That was why I held his hat so tightly against my chest. But the fighting was over, and most people were running away. Still, these anti-Semitic sentiments openly expressed by the Polish troops intensified the uncertainty and anxiety in our lives and made my mother cry. I hated to see her cry. She did not complain much. Instead, she seemed even more vulnerable, the sadness in her eyes betraying her unhappiness. At times like that, I preferred to stay close to her. Given permission to step out of the wagon, I walked quietly by her side. I think that made us both feel better.
My father understood better than anyone the virulence of anti-Semitism. He understood that it could be deadly. He had experienced it firsthand as a young man; in fact, he had barely been a teenager. It happened one pleasant summer afternoon, on a lonely country road, when he was returning home from a nearby village. He was confronted by three young Polish men who appeared out of nowhere yelling, “Kill the Zhid, kill the Zhid!” With their fists, they beat him mercilessly. A set of large keys suspended from an enormous iron ring saved his life. Without anyone noticing anything, he reached into his pocket, withdrew the key ring, and hit one of the attackers over the head. The man screamed with pain and fell to the ground. In the brief moment that the other assailants stood bewildered and appeared disoriented, my father seized an opportunity to flee from the attackers.
Papa was the person who gave me a sense of security, if such a thing was possible under those most difficult conditions. He was sympathetic to Mama’s unhappiness, but he was more interested in our physical survival than in our emotional health. My father inspired trust from the very beginning. He was the one who convinced three generations of his family to leave behind their homes and businesses to save themselves from the Nazis. Of course, he was right. His foresight saved all our lives.
My father had a wonderful sense of humor and was capable of a hearty laugh when things were funny. And despite the fragility of our existence, there were sometimes funny situations. I recall the time a decision had been made for a “bathroom” stop. While all of us little children relieved ourselves under the wagon, the adult men at once began running into the bushes, unbuckling their belts and trousers. The sight of the men running off that way struck my father as funny, and he just stood there laughing. He could see humor in the most unlikely places and situations. It was, I think, his best trait—the source of the optimism that kept him going and that perhaps helped him see the lighter side of life. Yet, even for my father, the moments of laughter were rare.
Our survival depended on reaching the Soviet-occupied eastern part of Poland. My family believed that the Soviets did not harbor the Nazis’ hatred of the Jews and would not bomb innocent civilians. So a decision was made to keep pushing east, day and night, in all kinds of weather. The roads were less congested at night, so we were able to cover greater distances. But traveling at night was dangerous. We heard there were gangs of bandits roaming the backcountry roads, robbing the refugees. Also, traveling at night proved to be difficult without the sun to guide us in the right direction.
Most people in our group, but especially the ones walking beside the wagon, were always extremely tired. Often, bad weather made our situation worse. The rains turned the dirt roads into mud, and the wheels of our heavy wagon sank deep into the mud. At times like that, my parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, their feet in the mud, their fingers sticking out of torn gloves, got behind the wagon and pushed to help the tired horse. The cold, the wet, the fatigue, the hard work— and the anxiety—were bad for our health. It wasn’t only the Germans we feared; we were getting sick. I heard coughing all the time.
One night in October, Frydzia and I were fast asleep in the chilly, open-air wagon. Cousin Bella and her two little daughters, Frydzia (the same name as my sister) and Syma, were also asleep. The others were walking slowly. We were awakened by a strange voice coming from nowhere. The night was dark—no moonlight. It was damp; it felt like being swallowed up in a thick fog. The air was calm. Everything seemed still, except for the voice. Soon, the words got louder, but we couldn’t make out their meaning.
All at once, we glimpsed a figure emerging from the darkness. He continued advancing toward us, all the time shouting and waving his hands. Even in the darkness, as he drew closer, he seemed different from the men in my family. In the stillness of the night, his voice was resonant with deep, echoing sounds. He approached the wagon, and we noticed he had no luggage. He was running with nothing in his hands—so strange in those days of war and refugees. He appeared larger and taller than the men in our family. Even stranger were the clothes he wore. They were all white. Looking out of the wagon and staring at the vision, I thought to myself, Surely, this has to be what God looks like.
He drew still nearer, and now he appeared to be Jewish, with a beard like my uncles. Then we heard his voice, clearly, in Yiddish. “Jews, Jews, where are you going? Go back!” he called out to us. “You are heading straight to the Germans.”
The stranger kept running. Soon, he disappeared from view. On the narrow, muddy road, it was extremely difficult to turn the wagon around. Even for the men in my family, it was a real struggle.
We never saw the stranger again. He came from nowhere and disappeared into nowhere, yet he wasn’t a dream. That we all knew for sure. We spoke of him often. Members of my family believed that the white clothing he wore was a white talith, the Jewish prayer shawl. We remembered him in good times and in bad times, especially when we needed another miracle.
7
Warm Welcome
We had been on the road nearly two months. The weather was changing. The nights were cold. The leaves were turning color and clinging to the branches with their last breath of life. We were getting very skinny for lack of food. My aunts, who were rather plump before the outbreak of war, were now becoming slim. But Mama, who was slim before the war, was getting really skinny. Everyone talked nonstop about the Soviets. “How close are we? Will the Nazis catch up with us before we reach the Soviets?”
One day, as our poor horse pushed on ever so slowly, we heard extraordinary sounds coming from what seemed a great distance. Then, just around the corner, we stumbled upon the entire Soviet armed forces. That’s how it seemed to me, at any rate. They were everywhere—artillery, armored vehicles, and soldiers on foot. We couldn’t see anything past the mighty force. For us, this was the greatest miracle of all. We were exhausted, but we were rejoicing. My pious relatives, in their bedraggled, old prayer shawls, intoned special prayers. They believed we had been delivered from evil. Uncle Benjamin, my youngest uncle—I called him Uncle Beno—believed that it was God who had guided us all the way. Most likely, we managed to evade the Germans by traveling through tiny hamlets and villages. We looked for small, out-of-the-way dirt roads accessible to horse and wagon. In the two months on the road, we barely covered two hundred miles, whereas the Germans, seizing the major roads, overran virtually all of Poland in two to three weeks.
I remember the Soviet soldiers in faded green uniforms, red five-pointed stars attached to the fronts of the peaked caps. They wore high-collared shirts, with wide leather belts fastened tightly around the waist. Below the cinched belts, the shirts flared out as they did on Cossacks ready to perform a native dance. I liked those uniforms, and I liked the soldiers. They were good to us; they gave us bread. Bread was what we liked and had missed most of all.
The soldiers greeted us in Russian. I understood some of the words; I thought the language very similar to Polish. Some of the soldiers, recognizing—thanks to my bearded uncles—that we were Jewish, spoke to us in Yiddish. Unlike the unpleasant Polish soldiers, the Russians were a godsend.
Almost immediately, the family decided to stay put. We all felt safe with the Soviets. The coachman unloaded our bundles. I felt especially sad saying good-bye to our dear, old horse. It was the horse, our best friend, that had really delivered us from evil. The coachman prepared for the long journey back home, packing up the many gold coins our family had given him—Polish money was worthless—for having gotten us far from the dreaded Nazis.
We reached a small town called Brzuchowice. Before the outbreak of war, Brzuchowice was part of Poland. After September 17, 1939, Poland no longer existed as an independent and free country. It was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Our extended family settled in Brzuchowice in what had become, in an instant, the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic. My parents, my sister, and I said good-bye to the rest of the family and pushed farther east. I’ve no idea why Papa decided to move on. Maybe he felt we had not put enough distance between us and the Nazis. Maybe the family needed some separation. The last two months had put a tremendous strain on the familial relationship.
8
Summer Villa
I have no recollection of finally arriving in Lwow (present-day Lviv), the largest city in that part of Ukraine, that had also become the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic. It was November or early December. The shooting and bombing were over, but the consequences of war remained visible, and the human suffering continued. People were homeless; they appeared sad and discouraged, roaming the streets aimlessly, looking for shelter and food.
The streets were covered in snow; it was cold. We were homeless in the dead of winter. As always, I believed that Mama and Papa would make everything right. I believed in my parents, and in spite of all that had happened, I still believed in God. All my life, I heard the phrase “God will provide.” I felt safe that, between my parents and God, everything would turn out right in time.
During the day, Mama and Papa ran around the city looking for lodging. Frydzia and I tried to stay warm in the large railway station among hundreds of refugees. Many nights, we slept on the floor of the station.
One afternoon, our parents returned to the station with wonderful news. They had found a room with a bed. They looked so happy, so radiant. Papa literally scooped Frydzia and me off the floor. “We’re leaving the station,” he said. “We’re going to our new home.” Mama and Papa grabbed us and the bundles, and we were off.
Our new home was a room in the rear of a vacation house on the outskirts of Lwow. It was a beautiful villa with large windows. There were gardens in the front and rear with benches and birdbaths, now all covered in snow. But the summer villa had no heating other than the big, wood-burning stone fireplace in the front parlor.
We shared the villa with a man in his fifties and his son, perhaps in his twenties or thirties. They had the use of the front parlor, the kitchen, and the bathroom. We were allowed to use the bathroom most of the time and the kitchen only occasionally. Both father and son did not like us very much. I recall overhearing anti-Semitic remarks about us coming from the front room. They cooked pork. The unfamiliar smells from the kitchen drifted into our room. We had very little food, but eating pork seemed strange to me. I couldn’t imagine eating it. Later in the war, I would have been happy to eat pork or any food, even food I disliked before the war.
Our room was cold, but the down quilt we had brought from home was a godsend. Frydzia and I tried to keep warm under the quilt while Mama and Papa were out looking for food. For them, finding food was a daily, ongoing preoccupation.
9
Warm Oven
The Jewish community in Lwow was another godsend for us. They welcomed us with open arms, as if we were family. They were generous in spirit. Often, we sat with total strangers at their dinner tables. They didn’t have a lot of food—no one did in those difficult times—but they did offer us their favorite seats near a warm oven and a glass of hot tea (a glass of hot tea was a hot oven for the hands).
I recall one particularly warm home with a hot oven. Mama found some flour and a little sugar somewhere. The family offered to let her use their oven to bake her delicious little round buns with sugar sprinkled on top. I will never forget those buns—warm and light like a feather and oh so sweet. Before the war, Mama baked the most wonderful cakes, cookies, and the traditional twisted challahs for the Sabbath. Yet the simple little buns she baked in someone else’s home were the best I ever tasted. Baking sweet buns in other peoples’
homes … that spelled love to me, for Mama was never one for many words. It was the daily sacrifices; it’s what she did that mattered. It came from her heart. But always, I saw her love in her eyes.
I have good memories of the Jewish people of Lwow. We didn’t stay long in Lwow, only three or four months. It was lucky for us that we were like nomads, always on the move, because that saved our lives. Unfortunately, no one could foresee the tragic end to the Jewish people of Lwow.
Germany declared war on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The whole Jewish community of Lwow was wiped out shortly thereafter by the Nazis—aided by the Ukrainians.
10
Frosty Window
The winter of 1939/40 was not a good winter at all. Life under the Soviet occupation was difficult in so many ways. Firewood, coal, or fuel of any kind was hard to come by. People stole sections of wooden fences to stay warm, even if just for a few days. For my family, finding food was the main preoccupation and a constant struggle. The extreme cold made our lives even more difficult. We kept hearing that this was the coldest winter on record. We were losing weight for lack of food and extremely cold temperatures.
Our single room in the summer villa was unheated, and it was as cold inside as outside. Even indoors, we wore everything we owned—coats, scarves, and hats. Outside, everything was covered in a blanket of snow, and sidewalks were sheets of ice.
Still, I loved the beautiful winter scene, and I loved to play in the snow. I was able to forget our precarious living conditions when experiencing the beautiful winter wonderland. It brought joy to my heart.