The Grayling

by Cheryl Freier

  Joseph shook his head back and forth. He said, “It is a wonder that we are all alive”. Anna with wide eyes said, “The Lord has given us life when so many others are dying at the hands of the Germans. But, Joseph, your cunning has saved us so many times”. The boys all acknowledged. “What are we doing about food?” Questioned Martin, as he cleared his throat. Joseph cleared his throat and said, “Well, at the moment, we are living on what we find, scrounging around the town”. Sometimes, if you are lucky the bakery is open in the early hours of the day. “Well, there are seven of us now and the food will soon be gone”, Sam stated. “Yes, you are right to be thinking of food”, said Joseph, “and I will see if my foreman will bring in some food for us”.

  “But what will we do with ourselves?” cautioned Edith, as she leaned on the right heal of her foot and held her hands on her waistline”. Anna finished the question, “you can clean the house with me or you can read one of the books we have managed to hide”. Edith snorted, but kept quiet, because she did not wish to upset her relationship with her mother. Joseph waited for his turn to talk and then interjected, “the boys can cut wood with me”. He looked at the boys for their approval and saw sour expressions on their faces. Knowing this, he said, we can always play a game of chess and he saw each of the boys smile. He knew that he had to find the chess boards and he did.

  Amidst papers strewn all over the dirt roads, and the cracked and jagged cement walks, and open suitcases left abandoned in the street, and burned out homes, and homes with broken doors, and broken windows, and abandoned children roaming aimlessly throughout the streets, and the dying, and the dead stretched-out with rigor mortis, and the panic seen in the eyes of everyone whom Joseph passed on the road, he went to work every day.

  He would tuck inside his jacket any leftover bread, cheese, or meat. Occasionally, a large sack of potatoes was delivered to the factory and he stuffed his pockets with the brown-colored golden eggs. Everyone grabbed onions immediately. Still it was better than waiting in line for rations. The yellow star burned deep into the fibers of his jacket and into the sinews of his heart. He mumbled to himself day after day, “what to do. What can I do?” He shook his head.

  Another year went by and no end to the war. Rumors heard at work. Rumors heard on the street. A friend or relative would occasionally stop by and talk and say, “it is a little bit too quiet….Mark my words. Something is going to happen. Something big is going to happen!”

  CHAPTER 9

  THE TRAIN

  Joseph looked out the window, shielding himself behind the ochre colored lace curtain. More people were in the streets than ever. More and more people passed the house. Joseph thought to himself, “Where are all of these people going and why?” People hurried. People ran with suitcases. People ran with babies in one arm and a child in the other. Joseph called to Anna. He said to her with a tone in his voice of concern, “take a look outside”. She watched while standing by his side. Joseph said to her, “Go quickly. We must pack too. We must leave too.”

  Joseph got out of bed quicker than usual the next day. He threw his blanket back quickly and with the bottoms of both feet not yet warmed by the lack of circulation flowing as he walked across the large, rectangular bedroom floor which was covered with a most distinguishable handmade, woolen rug, which immediately caught the eye of the viewer by its four matching blue colors. He darted to the window. “I hear a noise in the distance”, he muttered to himself, as he scratched at his brow. He tugged hard, unconsciously, at the clear white lace curtain, as he peered in all directions of the town with the simultaneous roving of both of his eyes. He could see in the far distance what looked like the rounded head of a pin. It was coming—quickly and it was getting bigger and bigger. His hand released the curtain and shook and then he called, “Anna, get the children, the Germans are practically here.

  Anna got dressed as she tugged at the bottom of her dress and grimaced with a determination to survive at whatever had to be done. She muttered to herself, “I cannot let them take the children”, and she ran to the older boys’ large bedroom door and called out, “Sam and Bernard”, get dressed quickly, and she darted off to the large bedroom down the hall and yelled, “Martin, wake up your younger brother, Henry, and come quickly”. “Is it the Germans”, Martin called out with a pointed deep questioning voice,” and she answered quickly in no uncertain terms. “Yes, it is the Germans. They have come for the Jews, and his eyes, the young eyes of an 11 year-old looked into the deep black colored eyes of his mother and he saw that she was afraid.

  He got out of the bed and woke up his 9-year old brother, Henry. He said, “Henry, you must wake up, and he shook him gently until Henry opened his eyes and muttered the few short words, “what is happening”? Martin quickly responded, “come quickly, we must all go downstairs to be with father”. Anna followed the four boys down the stairs and she held onto Edith’s hand tightly and led her down the stairs. Edith wept uncontrollably. Anna hugged her and patted her oldest child’s hair off of the front of her face and said, “We shall survive. We shall overcome this”, and Edith whimpered for a few seconds and then stopped crying and sat mute. They sat in the kitchen and all waited.

  Fears, unfortunately, sometimes they come true. Our biggest fear was that the Germans would come for us again and take us to the train. The train, was the infamous word; we could not even mention the word; the word brought tears; the word brought panic; it brought the infamous reality of the long, long ride to somewhere out in the wilderness, with guards, armed with rifles and barbed wired fences, and crowded rooms, and starvation rations, and work, work all day and practically all night–all hard labor.

  It had been a cold misty night; one of those weeks at the end of spring where the weather kind of wants to spin around and around and decide should it go back to spring, summer, winter, or fall, or nearly, and then somehow rights itself. The riders came this time late in the night. Very few people heard their evil call. Joseph heard them. He knew. He told Anna that he was going to his foreman’s house and that he would be back as soon as he was able. Anna said, “Isn’t it dangerous?” “They are not here yet. I will be back in time”.

  He knew the way and he walked quickly. He reached the house in fifteen minutes, record time for he had to leave the ghetto and go into the town. Most people knew who he was and no one wanted to make him trouble. Most people felt sorry for his plight. His foreman was up early and saw him coming and opened up the door for him immediately, looking with a watchful eye and closed the door quickly. “What can I do for you, Joseph?” the foreman asked.

  Joseph breathed in and out and blurted out, “the Germans are coming and this time they mean to take us all on the train”. “What can I do to help you,” the

  foreman asked?” “Please” and Joseph could hardly stand straight on his feet, and he pleaded, “You must go now to the German Commandant and ask him to release me and my family”. “Yes, I will go right now”.

  Joseph pried open the door, looked in every direction and walked quickly for dear life. His foreman put on his jacket, put his key into his pants pocket and pulled his jacket collar over his ears, put on his leather cap, and left the house. He knew exactly what building to go to.

  Joseph hurried along. A few more people were walking in the streets. This worried Joseph a little, because there was always the worry of a policeman on the street or of an undercover Nazi, but he walked quickly and kept his head down, never looking at anyone, never attracting any attention.

  It was an hour later, but Joseph had made excellent time; and he was inside his home sitting at his kitchen table, drinking some hot coffee. Joseph said to Anna, “This time when the Nazis come, we will all have to go together. Don’t take any clothing. Pack a nap sack of food for each of us to carry on our backs. An hour passed; then two hours passed. Then they heard noises, clattering and banging noises. Then the noises came closer. Then they heard shouting. Then th
ere was a powerful knocking on the front door and shouting.

  Joseph’s mind was on how to escape with his family. He knew that escape was only a chance if his foreman would come through with the papers, but he needed more inner strength to fight an evil that was dedicated to the virtual destruction of his people. He prayed silently to himself the words of the Sma prayer, which had been read and chanted for hundreds and hundreds of years. He said to himself with a sense of conviction, “even the Nazis cannot take away my deep faith in h’shem”. And he repeated over and over again the verse to himself, “the Lord G-d is one, the Lord G-d is one, the Lord is my G-d, and I have faith”.

  They could hear the sounds of the sirens blaring, and the loud beat of boots running, and then there was a harsh sound knocking with a rifle butt on the front of the door. A voice of a German soldier shouted and demanded, “You open up these doors. We are here to take all of the Jews”.

  Joseph opened up the front door and the three soldiers lost their balance and almost fell to the floor. “Come with us”, they shouted, as they looked around at the well-crafted china cabinets in the dining room and the striking emerald color of the large couch which circled most of the living room, just about

  mesmerized them. They took the few lemon drops we had left for themselves from the candy dish and bit into them with their incisors, chewing hard and lapping quickly with their long tongues. They motioned with their hands as they shouted, “make it quick”, and they pointed their rifles toward the front door.

  We had barely time to put on our coats and fasten our knap sacks when they pushed us out of the front door. They left the front door wide open, never thinking about closing it. We walked in front of them, single file, of course, and bowing our heads, of course, as though we were the worst criminals. What did we do? We were Jews? And they were Nazis and Nazis detested Jews. “Go in”, they shouted, as they opened up the back doors to the odd shaped and ugly colored van.

  The tires of their van cringed tight onto the worn dirt pavement, creating dust that blew onto the few openings onto the outside of the cars. A soldier shouted, “Stupid Jews, making us drive to this G-d forsaken place. What will come of us all?” And he slapped his comrade who was sitting next to him on the side of his arm. The soldier sitting next to him, hunched up his shoulders and laughed, “All of the Jews are crazy”, and he laughed and laughed, putting his bottle of vodka down on the floor, and rocking his head from left to right as the bottle rocked sideways and back and then rolled off into a crevice of the van.

  They stood upright—women, older children, old men, old women, younger children, who just a few years ago were running freely around their yards and thinking of who to play with next–fear of dying was written all over their faces. In the darkness of the van, it intensified their own darkness and they forgot about praying. Together, their bodies moved like pieces of wood–whenever the van turned a corner, they all moved together to that corner’s direction. They were totally controlled, even by the force of inertia.

  Pebbles that lay scattered sporadically along the narrow roads, unpaved and pressed into light brown dirt that oozed off into dust the moment the thick shoddy tires of the van rode over the dirt. The pebbles were talking their own language. They were telling the soldiers to let these innocent people live, but the soldiers clutched their guns and wallowed in their false and psychotic sick pride, and ignored the meaning behind the sound of the pleading. Joseph Freier’s fists were tightly clenched, which had the same meaning.

  As a young boy, he had been sent by his father to study in Germany. He sat amongst the other students, and whenever he worked hard and did well on an exam, most of the other students heckled him out of jealousy. He survived and finished his schooling. Now he was running a big lumber business and was the envy of most of the Christians and Jews in the town. He knew what he was doing. He grew to be very successful. He had over 40 employees.

  Anna took care of the chores in the house—cooking the cholent all day in the large metal stove, washing the clothes in a large metal wash basin as she rubbed on the rubbing board. She gave birth to a child before every second year. They had one daughter and four sons. Anna was from a family of eleven children. They all lived nearby, with the exception of her older brother, the firstborn. He fell in love with a beautiful Christian girl and they moved to Hungary. Once every year, they received a post card from him. Anna had mostly sisters but the youngest brother was seventeen and his name was Eleazar, a bright young man, resourceful, and when Joseph realized that the Jewish youth were being collected by the Nazis, he suggested strongly to Anna that she help her Eleazar flee to Israel. Eleazar was given the passage money and some money to spare and he boarded a boat that arrived in a port in Israel.

  Moments from his courtship of Anna came to his mind. She was already twenty-three and he was twenty-seven. She could cook meatballs that melted in your mouth. She could prepare a full meal in one half hour’s time. He asked himself the question, “what would happen to Anna if he was taken away by the Nazis. Sweat from his internal fervor poured from the furrows of his brows. He gripped his fists, closed his eyes, blanked out the scenes of the half-living and the dead in front of him and chanted to himself, “I shall survive”. He said the words, “I shall survive and my family will survive”, over and over again, and he rocked back and forth, almost falling asleep, and forgetting the sounds of moaning and crying and shouting, and pleading and the pound, pounding sound of the knocks of fists banging on the back doors. Thoughts of bedlam and madness coming from the minds of peaceful people—people driven to despair in fear of losing their lives.

  We were Jews. A proud people, and we had a proud heritage.

  We walked and talked softly if we were able. It was only a small distance to the train station, where the van would drop us off, but it seemed like an eternity. As we walked, we joined others in their walk to the station until the whole road was saturated with Jews being rounded up. The Nazis were having a field day. The doors swung open to what seemed like an endless number of cars attached to the caboose of the head train. The Nazis herded us in, lifted us in, pushed us in. People shouted, people cried, people lost their luggage, people lost their children–-nothing mattered–the Nazis herded them into the cars.

  Joseph and his family had been put into one of the end cars, by chance; they stood in the middle of the car, holding each others’ hands and closing their eyes. They were convinced that this was the end for them. In the train were a few remaining members of Joseph’s family; but in this train, there were over 32 members, close members of Anna’s family, sisters, and their families, and her father. They all waited in anticipation for the sound of the wheels to start

  churning. At least the heat from the inside would be better once they got going, they thought. The silence was deafening and the suspense was maddening. All at once they heard the sound of a door closing, then another, then another, then others, then many, and then the sound stopped. There was complete silence. Then out of nowhere a loud puff and the engine roared faster and faster and slowly the engineer released the throttle and the wheels began to turn slowly, ever so slowly; but before the wheels could pick up any momentum, there was a slight jar of the wheels and then a bigger and bigger one until the engine sighed and stopped blowing smoke. People lost their balance and caught onto the clothes of others. Everyone wondered, “What is happening?” No one could see outside the train, except for a little break in the wooded structure of the car or a hole, here and there, and it was difficult to determine what was happening.

  An officer walked off of the front steps of the last train and watched as a man, running, approached the train. Almost out of breath, he waved his papers and gave them to the soldier, and the soldier took them and read them. “Okay”, the soldier said, “Release Joseph Freier, and a soldier went into the car and brought out Joseph Freier. The German officer told Joseph Freier, “You are free to go home”. Joseph looked the
officer in the face and replied, “I will not go without my family”.

  The officer studied Joseph’s face very carefully for a few minutes but then decided that it was best to let Joseph go back into the train for his family. Joseph found Anna and the children and told them to come with him. Anna told him, “No, I want to go with my family”. “Joseph replied, “Come quickly. Your children need you and so do I”. The children came with Joseph and Anna

  followed. They left the train. They began their walk home. The engine of the train started to crank up again, and after all of the smoke left the air, the sound of the clanging of the wheels no longer could be heard. Only the sight of the moving train could be seen in the distance and the object was growing smaller and smaller as it was getting farther and farther away. The family walked on, but very slowly.

  CHAPTER 10

  ESCAPE TO THE NEARBY WOODS

  The door to the house was open. They walked in and Joseph closed the door behind them. Joseph said, “We shall sleep here tonight, but this is a terrible war, and the Nazis will be back with more vengeance, and we may not be as lucky the next time. Luck has a way of running out. Tomorrow we leave. We will live in the woods.” No one said a word. They all knew that Joseph was right. They knew that Joseph had saved their lives thus far.

  With tears in her eyes, Anna cried, “but where will we go?” Joseph said, “We will survive. We will live in the woods”. Joseph held his wife tightly and kissed her on the forehead and then stepped away and said, “Go get the boys and Edith and let us go!” Anna was packing when she heard the sound of the sirens. She heard the sound of the airplanes. She ran to Joseph and he held her and said, “We must leave now”, and he asked her if she understood. She opened her eyes and said with a weak tone of voice, “yes, I understand”. They left the suitcases where they were. They grabbed whatever cheese and crackers they could find and one by one they ran. Soldiers were coming to the houses and knocking and yelling, “come outside, Jews”.