by Lucy Lipiner
Like animals in the woods, we grew hungrier and skinnier. But unlike the animals in the woods, we could not dig holes and wait out the winter underground.
People died, and there were funerals in Siberia. I remember one funeral; it is fixed firmly in my memory. I had gone to play with a friend in another barracks. It was one of the largest barracks, with dozens of bunk beds lining both sides of the room. I was happy that my friend and I were going to pick flowers and explore the outdoors. Instead of picking flowers, I found my friend alone, sitting on the floor next to a bunk bed where her mother lay very still, seemingly asleep. Yet I knew she was dead. I remembered people “asleep” like that—the day of the bombing.
I’m not sure my friend knew her mother was dead. She didn’t cry, and I didn’t make a sound. Instantly, I thought about my own mother. What if she died? Next morning, a group of men wearing skullcaps escorted the woman to her final resting place deep in the woods. What I witnessed that day intensified my fears of losing someone I loved, someone in my family.
Every morning, summer and winter, armed guards escorted the adults into the deep forest to cut trees. The fallen trees, cleared of all branches, were transported by horse and wagon to the banks of the Yenisey. They stayed there all winter until the spring thaw.
The guards insisted that we attend school. They were very strict about it. Sometimes, during unscheduled “visits,” the guards found us hiding under the bunk beds and ordered us off to school.
It was a four-kilometer walk through the forest in an isolated settlement. We never walked to school alone, not even in pairs; it wasn’t safe. Danger was always present, especially from animals. We trudged through the snows in groups of six or more. Sometimes, we heard wolves howling in the distance. We felt their presence. Often, we saw flickering lights shining through the shrubs. We knew those were the eyes of wolves watching us. Strangely, they never hurt us. They ran around in packs. We did too—a bunch of urchins with rags on our feet.
18
Sad Eyes
I liked school. It was a one-room, log-cabin schoolhouse for children of all ages. We made friends with native-born Russian children, and we learned the Russian alphabet.
Best of all, I liked the open hearth and the sweet scent of burning firewood that made the schoolroom smell wonderful. The warm hearth kept my hands and feet warm and my face tingling. Sometimes, it put me to sleep. The warmth of the fire reached the innermost core of your being. In a life with few comforts, this was probably the closest thing to heaven.
Every day, we got a chunk of bread for lunch. The sticky brown bread was a mysterious thing in itself. You never knew what you might find lodged inside it. It was not unusual to find pebbles, straw, or even sand mixed in with the bread.
There was no Santa Claus or Christmas in Siberia, but when Father Frost visited the school, it was probably the most exciting event of all for all of us children, little or not so little. He always handed out glazed honey cakes shaped like snowmen. What a treat that was!
The other log cabin in the settlement was the post office and health clinic. It had a good supply of zinc ointment—just about the only medicine that existed anywhere around—that was prescribed for ailments ranging from stomachache to earache, even the flu. “Just rub it in,” we were always told.
I liked the bakery best of all. It was just a bread counter in the rear of the cabin. The women in white coats and caps grudgingly dispensed small portions of bread to those who had ration cards. We didn’t have ration cards; we only went to school in the settlement. But Frydzia devised a system that seemed to work most of the time. After school, we would approach the bread counter and just stand there, quietly.
“Don’t say a word,” Frydzia instructed me. “Just look at the women with big, sad eyes, and don’t leave till you get some bread.”
I was unhappy begging for food. Frydzia always stood behind me, close enough for the women to know that we were together and that both of us were hungry. Her closeness gave me courage.
With grim faces that seemed to emphasize the self-importance of their posts behind the counter, the women stared back at us with disdain in their eyes. Still, I believed it was just an act because, most of the time, they were generous, giving us a chunk of bread and sending us on our way.
“Go, go,” they would say and chase us out. Most of the time, we ate the bread right away, but sometimes, we brought it home to Mama and Papa. And most of the time, I didn’t like what was happening in our lives.
Sometimes, I felt confused—the dissembling, the disdain, and the generosity, the very need to find our own bread … I didn’t understand any of it. Less than a year before—just a short while, as it seemed to me—we had been home with plenty to eat. Now, hunger was our daily companion.
Everything had changed. I had no inkling then how profoundly our lives had been upended. But I could sense— although I could not articulate—how completely I had been uprooted from the place and way of life I knew as home.
19
When Messiah Comes …
From the moment we first arrived in Siberia and Papa took my hand—“Come, Sorele [my Hebrew name], we’re going in,” he said—I had balked at the idea, literally refusing to go inside. I didn’t want to live with the rest of the relatives and with all the anger and argument that seemed to permeate our lives.
Cousin Simon was especially angry with my father, blaming him for everything that had happened to us. He blamed my father for “dragging us out of our homes” back in Nazi-occupied Poland and for “all our unhappiness and misfortunes,” as Simon put it. Later, of course, it became clear that in “dragging” the family away, my father was responsible for saving all our lives, but in the miserable and desperate situation at the time, he received blame instead of gratitude.
And conditions were pretty miserable. Twelve of us— thirteen with the baby, Lily—lived in a one-room barracks.
Tante Bronia and Uncle Beno were in another barracks with strangers, only steps away from us. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t live with Tante Bronia. My father’s youngest sister, Bronia, was my favorite aunt. Actually, she was funny looking—partly why I liked her so much. She had short legs and short arms, even a short nose that seemed perfectly centered in her round face.
There was always an aura of contentment about her. But best of all, Tante Bronia was always interested in what I had to say and what I liked to do. She gave me her undivided attention. It was she who had continued to tutor me in Polish when the war broke out and I could no longer go to school.
I liked Uncle Beno also. He was a very devout Talmud scholar. He managed to bring his treasured Talmud books with him all the way to Siberia. He studied the difficult passages whenever he wasn’t cutting trees for the Soviets. Sometimes, he had a distant look in his eyes, as if he were contemplating the wisdom in his Talmud text. We could hear him chanting Hebrew prayers, even when he carried heavy buckets of water from the river or chopped wood for the stove that seemed to smoke more than it burned.
Sometimes, Uncle Beno gathered all of us young children and sat us down on the grass facing a wooded hill. “You see this mountain?” he would ask, pointing to the little hill. “When Messiah comes, he will part this mountain and take us all out of here like Moses. Did you know Moses parted the Red Sea and took the Hebrews out of Egypt? Well, he did. But in the meantime, while we are waiting for the Messiah, we must be good and do mitzvoth—good deeds.” Uncle Beno always told the truth, so we believed without any doubt that Messiah would come very soon.
He was a very kind and gentle man, especially to the old people and young children. He never got involved in the family disputes; he wanted no part of them.
Bronia and Benjamin had no children of their own, but Bronia had seven nieces: from Bella, who was the same age as Bronia, to Lily, the baby. Still, I believed my aunt Bronia liked me the best.
Although it was probably natural for me to want to live in Bronia and Beno’s barracks, in some ways, I liked that
they were next door. It gave me an opportunity to go visit. I would escape from our barracks to hear Tante Bronia recount wonderful stories about life back home before the war, especially about hiking in the Tatra Mountains. Or I would go there for lessons in reading and writing Polish or to hear Uncle Beno chanting phrases from the Hebrew text.
Our barracks had four large bunk beds with straw mats, one in each corner. As the authority figure of the family, my father claimed the best bunk in the room, the one near a window. All the others took the remaining three corners. There were complaints about this, discontent over the fact that some corners were near the door, which were not the best locations. I wasn’t too fond of my relatives complaining so much, especially when it turned to anger that was directed at my father.
Our barracks was also home to millions of bugs. They were everywhere. They flew and crawled in through the door and the tiny window, but worst of all were the bugs that nestled in the grass stuffed between the logs of our barracks walls. They crawled out to torment us in the middle of the night. I felt invaded by the bugs.
Papa assumed the role of the elder person. He was not the oldest of the clan but the most decisive of them all. He instructed everyone to store all the belongings under the bunks, thereby clearing some of the space in the center of the room.
Baby Lily was only six months old. She cried often, keeping us awake at night. Maybe the awful bugs were horrible to her as well.
A cast-iron potbelly stove stood in the center of the barracks room. The stove was both a blessing and a curse. It kept us warm. A warm stove was a wonderful blessing, even in the summer. But it was a curse in that we couldn’t cook much because the top of the stove was only big enough for one small pot. One pot for all thirteen of us! The women quarreled over the stove more than anything else. They arranged a “stove use” code. Mama was not good at it. Sometimes, I saw her crying. She was no match for those women in my father’s family. They were fierce.
Mama was thirty-six at that time. She was very upset because she thought she might be pregnant. I knew this because I overheard Mama and Papa talking late one night and heard Mama saying this was the wrong time and place to have a baby. Then it turned out she was not pregnant after all. She got very skinny, probably because she often gave away her own ration of bread to the rest of us.
20
Papa the Old Man
Papa reached the age of thirty-nine and grew a long beard that turned gray. Although quite fit, he walked with a stick and told the Soviet guards he was old and ill. They called him “dyedushka,”—“granddaddy” in Russian. This gave him a definite advantage. When the guards were not looking, he would escape from the line of workers marching into the woods. There, instead of cutting trees for the Soviets, he searched for food.
Papa grew a beard, Siberian camp
Sometimes, Papa did not return until the following morning. He said he knew some people in the nearest settlement who gave him food for the family. I never learned who those people were.
I understood that my father seemed always to come up with ideas; he was resourceful and knew how to solve even the most difficult problems.
Mama seemed passive most of the time, believing in fate— what needed to happen would happen—so different from Papa. He was not complaisant and did not quite believe in fate. He believed that he could improve our lives, even take certain risks to make things better.
Mama was only content when she could feed her family, especially her two little girls. That is when all was well with the world and she was at peace with herself and everyone around her.
Whenever Papa did not return to the barracks before nightfall, Mama always made excuses.
“Don’t worry,” she would say, “Papa is safe. He’ll be home first thing in the morning. It’s not safe to travel through the woods in the middle of the night.” Her explanation sounded ambiguous. I didn’t understand why she wasn’t even a little upset.
But Papa always did return home to us, sometimes carrying bread. Sometimes, he brought fresh fish. He would say he caught the fish with his bare hands. Then he would laugh that charming, exuberant laughter. His capacity for laughter was unique, especially under difficult circumstances. I remember Jewish people being more modest in expressing something amusing. Not my father! His laughter always made me think of a Tartar or a Kazakh laughing like that.
Even in summer, food was hard to find. Again, one summer morning, Papa left the barracks early and was not back by evening. This time, Mama seemed really upset. Did she know something? Was she worried that maybe this time he wasn’t coming back at all?
We stayed up all night waiting for him, not knowing what might have happened. Mama did not communicate her concerns to my sister and me. Frydzia and I worried that he was stranded in the forest, hurt and alone. We understood that to be lost in those woods at night was like being lost at sea. But Mama was still firm in her belief that Papa was not stranded in the woods.
Next morning, there was a loud knock on the door. There, for everyone to see, stood my father, alive and smiling, holding a fish in his hand. His smile was mainly directed at my mother. He ignored all the others. No one said anything; they just all stared at him. Papa kept smiling at Mama—his shy, apologetic smile that said, Forgive me for being out all night.
The fish in his hand was a whole smoked salmon, maybe one foot long. He told us how he had stumbled upon a small settlement outpost at the edge of the river and discovered a group of men busily smoking fish over a fire in an open pit. They gave him the fish, he said, although he most probably traded something of ours for it.
Clothing for food was a common transaction; my mother had already given up all her silk underwear and nightgowns for food, and the Russian women back in Lwow and Brzuchowice had worn my mother’s nightgowns as dresses.
Papa kept looking at Mama and pointing to the fish as if to say, We will have a feast today!
Well, I think it was the smug look on my father’s face that sent Cousin Simon over the edge. His anger knew no limit; he became apoplectic with rage.
“You mean you’re going to eat the whole fish all by yourselves?” he screamed. “It’s you who took us out of our homes. It’s you who is responsible for all of us being banished here in this godforsaken land!”
Papa just stood there. He said nothing. The fish was still in his hand as he turned around and walked out the door, taking the fish with him. Mama ran after him. Frydzia started crying. I was very upset but tried hard not to cry.
21
A Field of Potatoes
Papa returned to the barracks that same evening but without the fish. He told everyone to sit down because he had something important to tell us all. He said he had gone back to the remote spot at the edge of the river and had again found the men at the smoking pit. He explained that one fish could not feed all fifteen people, so would they please make another trade, this time for some other food. The men agreed it was a reasonable request. After debating among themselves, the men came up with a solution.
“Khorosho,” said the men, the Russian word for “very good” or “okay.”
“We will give you a whole field of potatoes for the fish,” they said. Papa was overjoyed but at the same time disbelieving this sudden good fortune. How could that be, a whole field of potatoes for a small fish? A field of potatoes could feed an army!
Finally, the men dropped the bomb—the other part of the deal.
“You see,” they said, “it’s late in the summer, and all the potatoes are long dug out and hauled away, but if you are willing to dig deep enough and hard enough, you will dig up enough potatoes to feed your family for many days—maybe even weeks.” Papa agreed to the trade.
The family was overjoyed. Everyone thought it was such a brilliant trade!
Next evening, armed with old burlap sacks and old rags, we went out to dig in the potato field. We dug late into the night. We were lucky because the days were long during the summer in Siberia. It didn’t get even vaguely dark unt
il very late at night. The sun seemed only half-hidden beyond the horizon, never really disappearing completely. Its glow made the night seem like day. Next evening, we went out again to dig in the field. Just as we had the night before, we came back with lots of potatoes.
We ate potatoes for breakfast, lunch, and supper. Sometimes, we ate them boiled, but mostly, we ate them baked over an open fire in the clearing. For days, we ate practically nothing but potatoes. Our hunger was gone, but all of us grew bloated and then sick with diarrhea. We were sick for days. What to do?
In Siberia, there were no medicines for any ailments— except for zinc ointment. Well, zinc ointment did not cure our potato sickness. It took several days, but we all got better, even Lily. Best of all, no one was angry at my father anymore, until next time when he was again blamed for “dragging” us from our homes and for being banished in the “godforsaken” land of Siberia.
22
To Central Asia, 1941
Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941. As a child, I only learned about the invasion from a song we sang that went like this—“22 June, exactly 4:00 a.m., they bombed Kiev and declared war.” But I didn’t know about millions of Hitler’s Axis troops that stormed into the Soviet Union along an 1,800mile front extending from Finland down the Baltic states, north to Leningrad, Minsk, Smolensk, and Ukraine and the Caucasus in the south. The Red Army was unprepared for the onslaught of the highly trained, highly experienced Axis forces, and the population was unprepared for the mass carnage systematically carried out—especially against Jews by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen, the SS killing squads—in the wake of initial German military successes. Civilian murders and starvation were staggering, and the human suffering seemed endless.