by Lucy Lipiner
Our room, on the other hand, was no cause for joy. Sometimes, a gust of wind blew the snowdrifts right through the broken window frames into our room, forming snowdrifts on the inside of the windowsills. The entire window was perpetually encased in frost. We could no longer see out.
Frydzia and I had no toys, no books, no friends to play with. But we had our frosty window. I believed there was something magical about the leaves and flowers that seemed etched into the window glass.
With our fingernails, we drew the outlines of the lovely designs formed by the frost. We treasured the frosty window. It was better than a doll, a game, or any toy because it was alive and dynamic, always changing. I felt as if I could communicate with the window. It always responded by creating new images. Sometimes, we used the frosty window to write numbers and letters of the alphabet. Sometimes, we pressed our hands with fingers extended against the frozen glass, which resulted in interesting hand impressions. Frydzia would joyfully call out, “Oh look. My hand is bigger and better than yours.”
We discovered that the frosty window had many possibilities. Very soon, we learned that blowing air out of our mouths created a circle of clear window glass. I fantasized that, during the night, Mr. Frost, with his magic brush, would transform the clear circle into the most beautiful designs just to amuse us the next morning.
The frosty window was an escape from our dreary living conditions. I wanted to remain in the frosty window fantasyland and not be reminded of our fragile existence.
11
A Rabbi’s Talith
In addition to the daily struggle to find food, my mother and father disagreed on many issues. Their loud “discussions” were about the possibility of returning home. We heard nothing from our family back home on the “other” side, in the Nazi-occupied parts of Poland. Perhaps their mail was being censored and couldn’t get through to us.
Still, Mama insisted we go back, even if it meant going back to the Nazis. She had left behind four sisters and brothers, nieces, nephews, and cousins, and she missed them terribly. I think she didn’t understand that life as we remembered it before September 1 was gone forever. No one did. Even my father didn’t have a clue. But he remained steadfast in his belief that one should never be in the presence of a uniformed Nazi soldier, especially not Jewish people. He understood that such a toxic form of anti-Semitism could kill you in the end. He took it seriously. He repeated his views frequently. And history proved him right.
One day, I overheard another “discussion.” For me, it was scarier than ever. Papa was telling my mother very emphatically that he would not accompany her if she insisted on going back to Nazi-occupied Poland, and under no circumstances would he allow her to take the children. I didn’t care about the cold or hunger. I didn’t care whether we stayed or went back. I just wanted to keep my parents and Frydzia—all four of us—together. This discussion sounded to me like the end of everything. It seemed like the end of our family and was too awful even to contemplate. But days and weeks passed, and I didn’t hear another word about going back. Our room was quiet at last. I was happier.
There was a knock on our door one cold night. In walked the rabbi from our town! Mama and Papa were surprised, to say the least, to see him. He too was so far from home. I listened, even though I was repeatedly told not to eavesdrop on adult conversation; there was nothing else for me to do. The rabbi’s appearance had changed since we saw him last in our town’s old synagogue at Sabbath services. He seemed dispirited and somewhat disheveled. He looked so sad. I didn’t like seeing my rabbi in such bad shape.
Then I overheard him say that he missed his wife and his five children so terribly that he needed to be with them, even if it meant going back to the Nazis. He wanted to know if my parents ever considered going back. Papa said he understood the rabbi’s need to be reunited with his family, but going back was not an option for our family.
“If we can help it,” Papa told the rabbi, “we will not lay eyes on a Nazi uniform.”
Then the rabbi reached into his satchel and pulled out a talith, his prayer shawl, and handed it to my father. “I’m leaving my talith with you for safekeeping,” he said. “I know that you will take good care of it.” And Papa promised he would.
I didn’t understand why the rabbi would leave his talith with my father. After all, Papa already had his own talith. Besides, it was unthinkable for any pious Jew—especially a rabbi—to leave behind a talith! I have long wondered since then if the rabbi had a premonition that he, his family, and the talith would not survive. Indeed, the rabbi and all his family perished in the Holocaust, but the prayer shawl survived intact, as Papa had promised.
To this day, we treasure the talith. Several of Papa’s great-grandchildren celebrated their bar mitzvahs draped in the rabbi’s old talith.
But that was a long way off. And in that desperate winter of 1939/40, no one could have foreseen all that still awaited us.
12
White Stockings
One day, Mama told Frydzia and me to dress nicely. We didn’t have a whole wardrobe to choose from, just the same old coats, hats, and scarves. I did have a pair of white stockings. I wore those.
Mama didn’t tell us where she was taking us, and Papa wasn’t around to voice his objections to Mama’s plans for the day. I began to worry. I understood that anything out of the ordinary could unravel our lives even more. My mother walked quickly. She seemed full of angry determination. Frydzia and I ran, trying to keep up with her. Finally, she said she was taking us to school. She didn’t say anything else.
Only when we got there did I understand that it was no ordinary school. The building itself was enormous, part of a convent, attached to a church with a tall spire and a cross on top.
As we climbed a steep flight of stairs, I couldn’t help thinking how it was strange for someone like my mother—a Jewish Orthodox woman—even to contemplate enrolling us in anything other than a Jewish or public school.
The contrast between the bright, snow-covered streets and the dark interior of the wood-paneled corridor inside the building was almost blinding. Mama instructed us to sit on a bench along the wall. As my eyesight adjusted to the darkness, the place didn’t seem so dark after all. Mama approached a nun who was dressed in black from head to toe. I saw her speaking to the nun but couldn’t make out the words. I needed desperately to know what was being said. Was my mother pleading with the nun to take us in? Would we be going to live there? The thought was terrifying, and the terror—the stress of not knowing what was going on—affected me physically. I felt ill and was afraid of getting sick onto the highly polished floors. As I always did at times like that, I willed myself to remain very still.
Minutes later, I observed a movement of uniforms inching forward in our direction. They were boys and girls my age, walking in pairs, holding hands, and attentively listening to the instructions given by another nun. I was amazed to see so many children not making a sound. It was unsettling. I had never witnessed such perfect behavior before.
From a distance, I saw the nun and my mother terminating their conversation. Mama turned. Without another word, she took us by our hands and rushed us out of the convent. Then she explained that the school would not enroll Jewish children. “But don’t worry,” she said. “Soon, I’ll find another school for you.”
I didn’t worry. In fact, I was overjoyed; I felt as if I had just discovered something wonderful. I was almost flying in the air as we descended the steep flight of stairs. The air felt chilly but so refreshing.
13
A Knock on the Door
Finally, the long winter was over. We grew tired of the constant struggle to fill our stomachs, to stay warm with only a candle for the long, dark nights.
After much debate, Mama and Papa finally decided what direction our lives were to take next. They discussed the possibility of departing from Lwow. They were throwing ideas at each other, frequently arguing. Their various plans ran the entire gamut of survival possibilities
. Mama, as always, nagged about returning home to Nazi-occupied Poland. Papa remained adamant against going back. To this day, I am in awe of his strength and determination to resist Mama’s demands. Had he given in, none of us would have survived.
I tried to stay out of their way, make myself almost invisible, and remain oblivious to everything pertaining to our difficulties. I didn’t want to hear about the war and the struggle to survive. I needed to be left out of life’s harsh realities.
I sensed rather than knew that we were living a hand-tomouth existence that depended on intelligence, common sense, and gumption. Money held no sustained value in the Soviet economy at that time. Tradable goods were the real currency; they were the assets that counted, and I was somehow aware that my parents—like everyone else—often struggled to find a way to survive. Somehow, they managed to keep us all alive.
That spring of 1940 brought with it a sense of awakening. Snows began to melt. Even tiny purple and yellow flowers made their appearance from under the melting snows. The short, dark days of winter gave way to brighter days, and occasional rays of sunshine began to peek through the breaks in the overcast skies.
On our windowpane, the frozen leaves and flowers melted away. We opened the window for the first time in months and let the spring air in. And for the first time in months, Frydzia and I ventured out. It was glorious to breathe the fragrant, moist air and to feel the wet snow on my hands and face. I was so happy. I saw and felt the beauty in nature and needed to be a part of it.
One day, our parents packed up our meager belongings, and we took to the road again. We went back to Brzuchowice, a small town—particularly compared to Lwow—surrounded by deep forests and meadows for cattle grazing. It was only about fifty miles from Lwow and, of course, was where many in our extended family had decided to stay. We had been able to keep in touch with them during the long winter months because Brzuchowice was part of the Soviet-occupied Poland as well.
Mama and Papa agreed that being reunited with family would ease the struggle to survive in harsh conditions—if for no other reason than our need for the emotional connection.
The reunion was warm and happy. My aunts and cousins cried openly, and some of the uncles had to work hard to conceal their emotions. There was tiny Tante Esther with her perpetually scarf-covered head. I guess she had left her sheitel at home when we all ran away. Uncle Benjamin—the older Benjamin—Esther’s husband, grinned from ear to ear. Cousin Bella showed off her brand-new four-month-old baby, Lily. But the happiest moment for me was when I ran into the open arms of Tante Bronia. Seeing us again, Uncle Beno, Bronia’s husband, burst into tears and smiled with happiness. At last we were together, all fourteen of us—fifteen with the baby!—and life was going be good again.
Our family members lived in hunters’ cabins in the woods. They made room for us in one of them. In those days, accommodating friends or family was hardly ever a problem. We slept wherever we could stretch out—on the floor, on wooden benches, wherever. A couple of cots were reserved for the most senior members of the family—namely, Tante Esther and her husband, Uncle Benjamin.
In the center of the cabin stood a wood-burning potbelly stove made of iron. The delightful crackling sound of wood burning in the stove was music to our ears, especially after enduring our cold room during the long winter in Lwow. The stove was also the focal point for socializing. Uncles and cousins stretched out their hands, almost touching the stove in an attempt to keep warm and dry but really keeping warm through heated discussions.
Politics was high on the list of topics. I learned a lot from eavesdropping on those conversations. But hearing that Hitler had invaded Holland, Belgium, and then France was especially frightening to me. From those conversations, I surmised that no one could stop Hitler and that the war was never going to end, and we would never go back home.
Of course, the stove was mainly for cooking an occasional soup or boiling water for tea. Sometimes, we made our own potato chips. We peeled potatoes, cut them into very thin round or oval slices, sprinkled them with salt, and threw them on top of the hot stove. They were probably the best potato chips I had ever eaten.
Frydzia and I and our two little cousins Syma and Frydzia (both Frydzias were named after Frymet, the same grandmother) played with their brand-new baby sister, Lily. For us, she was like a little toy. We also played in the woods, mostly hide-andseek. We helped my mother and our aunts plant potato peels that would soon yield a real crop of potatoes—a promise of keeping hunger at bay the entire summer.
The meadows were fragrant with flowers. I ran around picking more flowers than I could possibly carry in my arms. I believe that, as young as I was, I understood the language of flowers even then. For the first time in many months, life seemed more normal, especially for us children.
But all was not well, especially for the adults in our family.
There were disquieting rumors going around. It was said that some people, especially young, single men, were disappearing, being arrested in the middle of the night by the Soviets and shipped off to distant Siberian camps (gulags), never to be heard from again.
We were a large family with young children—that made us feel secure. After all, the Soviets did not need young children in their camps. Or so we thought until one night when our false sense of security was shattered. Heavy pounding on the door and harsh voices ordering us in Russian to open up awoke all of us. What happened that night changed our lives forever. It also saved us all.
14
Deportation
In June 1940, the war took a new turn. Italy joined Germany to form the Axis powers, and the Soviet Union forcibly annexed the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—deporting thousands of people to camps around the Soviet Union run by the NKVD (also known as the KGB), the dreaded secret police. Among other consequences, this meant that Brzuchowice was now situated just over the easternmost border of the Third Reich.
It was 4:00 a.m. when we heard the pounding. Papa answered the door. Two Soviet soldiers, rifles at their sides, confronted him. Suddenly, everyone in the hut was awake. There were just two soldiers, but their presence was overpowering. They seemed to take up the entire space around us. In the hut next door, I heard familiar voices and the baby crying. There were soldiers with rifles there too.
“Get ready,” the lead soldier ordered us in a loud, menacing voice. “You have half an hour to gather up your things. Not too much!”
“Where are you taking us?” Papa asked.
“Just get ready. No questions!”
“But we need to know what to pack,” Papa persisted.
“Stop speaking!” the soldier screamed.
Papa hung his head and turned to us. “Dress quickly,” he said quietly. “Wear as much as you can—one dress on top of the other. We cannot pack too much. We must get ready to leave.”
My mother’s quiet resignation was all too familiar to me. But what had happened to my father? He seemed to have changed. This forlorn, submissive Papa was something new and different, and it didn’t feel right. I was almost seven, and my father was thirty-eight. He was our family’s strength and seemed to me a giant in so many ways. He was dependable, and he would protect us always. I had never witnessed anyone addressing him in such a threatening manner, and I certainly had never imagined seeing him walk away so defeated. My father was powerless and submissive to these intruders. It was all a new reality, one I was too young to understand. But instinctively, I knew that my world was made less secure because of my father’s new vulnerability.
I grabbed Papa’s arm, tugging at his sleeve, wanting desperately to shake him back to being my old, dependable Papa. But I too felt defeated, and I began wailing like a wounded animal.
“You must stop crying immediately,” Papa said. Papa’s stern voice brought back to mind the old Papa. It felt better, familiar. Later, I would learn that some of the relatives had been frightened by my outburst. They believed that my crying had endangered all our lives. But I couldn
’t help it.
Then I began thinking about Tante Bronia. They lived not too far from us. The awful soldiers were taking us away, and I would never see my favorite aunt again. I would never hear the wonderful stories she told. I could not bear to be separated from Tante Bronia; the very thought felt like a choking sensation, and I cried even harder.
“What about Tante Bronia and Uncle Beno?” I asked. “Are they coming with us?”
“What’s that you said?” the soldier asked. “Who are they? Where do they live?” And I told him.
Then I looked up at Mama and Papa, and what I saw in their eyes was such sadness and disappointment. I did not understand until much later what I had done. I had given away the whereabouts of my aunt and uncle—I had made it easy for the Soviets to round them up for deportation.
At daybreak, with the rest of the family from the hut next door, we were marched to the railway station. We walked quietly. I held Papa’s hand tightly. Mama and Frydzia walked hand in hand. Papa kept looking at the armed soldiers. Maybe he hoped for an explanation, but I knew he didn’t dare to speak up again. The soldiers offered no explanation.
The sun was breaking through the overcast sky as we arrived at the station. Groups of people crowded the length of the platform along the railroad tracks, no train in sight. Yet many more soldiers armed with rifles were patrolling the newly arrived people at the station. I couldn’t understand where all these people came from, just standing at the rails.
Many were families like ours, also with young children. Some were young, single people, standing as if in a trance. As the crowd grew, the scene became chaotic—more and more people, more and more armed guards. Mama, seated on the floor next to our bundles, seemed in a state of shock and exhaustion. Her chin in her hand, she seemed to be crying. I looked around. Many people were crying. No one had real luggage, hardly any suitcases, just things thrown together into sheets or blankets, just as we had done.