In late 1944, there was very bloody and difficult fighting on the Russian front pushing into Germany. Everyone who had served with the partisans—even those like myself who hadn’t officially registered—were being hunted out and sent to the front. So I began to understand that my days as a first aid administrator might be coming to an end if I didn’t come up with a plan.
Again, I saw my opportunity by chance one day. A Russian army medical officer came to inspect the Mir medical center, He was now running the same kind of center in Baranowicze. I told Rochelle that we should try to make friends with the man because he could be very helpful to us. So we invited him to our home, entertained him with vodka, did everything we could to please him.
Things were going well, so toward the end of the evening I mentioned to the doctor that I was feeling kind of sick—I was having trouble breathing normally. I had been pretending through all of his inspection that I had a hacking cough. Now as the evening went on I was coughing even more. Finally the doctor suggested that I come to see him in Baranowicze for a medical exam.
What I was trying to do was convince him that I had tuberculosis, which would definitely keep me out of the military. I had one advantage here—at the time the Russians came to liberate us from the woods, I was still weak and skinny as a toothpick—my ribs stuck out. I had not gained much weight since. So I looked like a potential tuberculosis case. I could also sense that the medical officer was a foxy character—he suspected what I was up to, that I wanted to stay out of the army.
ROCHELLE
He was on the take. That’s why he invited Jack to Baranowicze. Jack and I made the trip to Baranowicze together. We brought along not only vodka but also some Russian gold coins we had managed to dig up in Kruglice. Now vodka was one thing, but these Russian gold coins were very dangerous to possess—completely illegal. They were old, from czarist times, and all of them were to have been turned back to the Soviet government years before, after the Revolution. But they were a staple of black-market trading nearly thirty years later.
Aside from the risk of the gold coins, we were also afraid that the army doctor might try to take our bribe and then turn us in for attempted bribery. Who would take our word over his?
Very early on the day scheduled for Jack’s examination—so early that the medical office was not yet open—I went to the home of the Russian army doctor. Jack wasn’t with me. I had decided that, if I was going to be arrested for bribery, at least Jack wouldn’t be there. He could say that he hadn’t known what I was doing.
I knocked on the doctor’s door. He had no idea that I was coming—he was still getting ready to go to work. I handed him some gold coins, which I explained were a present to him for writing down in his report that my husband had tuberculosis and couldn’t serve in the army. I was very nervous. I figured that either he would slap my face and throw me out, or that everything would go well. He took the coins. He also mentioned that he wanted new curtains and a bedspread for his wife, and I told him I would find those for him that same day—and I did. Then he closed the door on me—no more conversation.
JACK
I showed up for my appointment at his office that day and he went through the motions of giving me a physical. Then he gave me a piece of paper and told me to take it to the army recruiting center in Mir. I did that, and they issued me a certificate saying that I was unfit for the Soviet army.
So that worry was over. I kept busy for a while longer organizing the first aid groups, while my friend Zenowey handled the dentistry.
ROCHELLE
While Jack was doing his dentistry work, I was keeping busy cooking and washing clothes. The Jews in the house lived together on a cooperative basis. We all used the same outhouse in the backyard. I remember one morning—it was a little chilly, so I put on a coat and started to walk to the outhouse. All of a sudden, something hit me in my behind. I weighed maybe ninety pounds then, and so I flew ten feet forward! It was a goat that had wandered into our backyard to graze—somehow I had offended the goat. I’m telling you, it hurt for a month! From then on, I kept a pot under the bed.
But the Russians decided that they had plans for me. Most of the young couples in Mir had already been separated—the men to the western front, the women serving in some kind of forced labor. So one day, late in the winter of 1944, an official came to my door and suggested that, since I was in good health and without children, I should prove my patriotism to mother Russia by volunteering to work for two years in a coal mine in Donbass, in southern Russia. It was a “friendly suggestion.” But if you said no, you were considered unpatriotic and they took you to Donbass anyway.
Once the Soviets made that “friendly suggestion,” we decided that it would be a good idea for us to move on.
JACK
That incident made us realize that our lives were never going to be our own as long as we lived under Soviet rule. Even though my organizing work was going well, we decided that there could be no future for us in Mir.
In the spring of 1945, the fall of Berlin was not far away. We decided that our best hope, strange as it seemed, would be to head in the direction of western Poland and Germany, where the Soviets had not yet established complete control. We hoped that eventually we could make it to a sector controlled by one of the Western Allies. Our plan after that was to try to emigrate to Palestine. At that time, isolated as we were, we had no idea of how difficult that was. We weren’t aware of the exclusionary policies against Jewish immigration that had been established by the British mandate there.
ROCHELLE
There wasn’t a state of Israel in existence then. We had no idea of the realities of life there. But it was a dream for us—to get away from the bad memories and to live among Jews.
JACK
“Go west, young man!” is the American saying. Well, we decided to go west. But it wasn’t as easy as just packing up and going. As the Soviet rule in Poland became established, travel restrictions became more and more intensive. Train travel was no longer available to the civilian population. You had to have a work permit—proof that you were specifically being sent somewhere by Soviet edict—in order to board a train. That was all part of a desire on the part of the Soviets to keep the population in place—the beginnings of what would be called the Iron Curtain.
If we were going to move west, we would have to do it secretly. So we started to keep our eyes open for opportunities. Meanwhile, we began accumulating a supply of clothing and kitchen utensils and other basics that we kept packed and ready on short notice.
It was around that time I learned of a job opening in Baranowicze. The Soviets needed help with organizing first aid groups there. I had developed a good reputation and so I applied for the position. They invited me to come for an interview and it went well—I was hired. It was a big job—Baranowicze was the largest city in the area, and all the major Soviet agencies had offices there. They would not only give me a salary but a house to live in as well. I asked them to write me up a letter confirming that I had been hired, so that I could show it to my employers and family in Mir. They did that for me. I already had plans to use the letter for my own purposes.
When I got back to Mir, I was allowed to take a week off and prepare for the move. I showed Zenowey my letter from the Baranowicze authorities. He would be taking over my first aid organizing duties in Mir. I explained to him that I couldn’t turn down such an opportunity and that we would probably see each other again. But Zenowey was a smart man—I never could fool him! He suspected that I was planning an escape to the West, and that the whole Baranowicze business was a smoke screen. He said to me, “I don’t think I’ll ever see you again, and I’ll miss you. Good-bye and good luck.”
Thanks to my letter, Julius, Rochelle, and I could move out of Mir without suspicion. We hired a farmer with a horse and buggy, loaded up our possessions and rode to a little town called Horodej where there was a railroad station. From there we went by train to Baranowicze. When we arrived, I reported to my ne
w office and asked for some time to find a place for us to live. They agreed. That gave me time to investigate transportation options for heading west, as Baranowicze was a railroad hub.
ROCHELLE
I remember that, just after we arrived in Baranowicze, we were walking down the street and there were radios in the shops blaring out the news that Roosevelt had just died. That was on 12 April 1945.
By that time I was pregnant. We were extremely happy. For years, hiding in the woods, we had hardly dared dream of surviving. And now we were going to have a family—our own family out of the ashes.
JACK
The fact that Rochelle was pregnant made me more determined than ever to get us out of the Soviet Union. After making lots of inquiries, I managed through some bribes to railroad workers to arrange for us to board a freight train heading for Lodz in western Poland, outside the Soviet sphere. There were maybe a dozen other people travelling in the same freight car with us. We were afraid that Russian soldiers might search the cars and discover us—it could have meant arrest and a terrible sentence, maybe even Siberia. But we decided to take the chance.
Our freight car smelled as if it had been used for livestock. They locked us in to reduce the chance that the car would be searched. And they told us to be very quiet when we reached the border between the Russian-held Poland and the western Polish region that was still independent—although it too would soon be taken over by Russia. At the border, the story they told the Russian guards was that the car was filled with building materials. Thank God things were still somewhat disorganized on the border—the Russians didn’t search our car.
The train also stopped in Warsaw and Chenstochowa on the way to Lodz. One of the train workers whom we had bribed warned us not to even try to get off at Chenstochowa … because there were Poles there who watched the trains and would kill on sight any Jews who came out of the boxcars. There were many rumors circulating about boxcars being searched—not by the Soviets but by the local Poles—and Jews being pulled out and shot.
By chance, we happened to know one of the other Jewish couples on the freight car with us. Their names were Abram and Leah. They had also been in Zorin’s atrad, although we hadn’t spoken to them much.
We weren’t carrying too much baggage, but one of our items was a wooden headboard. It had been given to us by our friends the Talish family in Mir. They had been kind enough to fix it up specially for us—they drilled a hole in it in which we could place some of the gold coins we had left. They left a wooden cap to place over the hole to make it look smooth.
Perhaps we talked about the headboard in a suspicious manner during the trip—telling Abram and Leah what sentimental value it had to us to explain why we would be taking a headboard along. Or perhaps we simply kept our eyes on it too much. But once we arrived in Lodz, we agreed to share a rented room with that couple—just to find a place to start out and minimize expenses. The five of us—my father, Rochelle, and I and the couple—shared floor space. After a few days in the room, we unscrewed the cap to get one of the coins to sell on the black market for food—and there were none left! We were stunned. But then we realized that it must have been that couple.
I confronted Abram and he admitted straight off that he had stolen the coins. He said he had a right to them.
ROCHELLE
It was like the man who stole Jack’s mother’s necklace when we were with the partisans. Abram claimed that he had an uncle, Ishke, who had worked for my father Lazar in one of my father’s factories. And Ishke had always complained that he worked so hard and wasn’t paid enough. So the gold coins that Abram had now stolen were supposed to make up for what had been done to Ishke. Who knew if the story was true or not?
As far as going to the police to complain, that was out of the question—because it was illegal to have Russian gold coins in the first place. And even though the Polish police in Lodz were supposed to be independent, we knew that word would reach the Soviets. There was nothing we could do.
JACK
I was full of rage. I wanted to strangle Abram. But Rochelle warned me that any kind of revenge would mean the risk of great trouble for us. I could go to jail if I harmed him. And if we even threatened too much, Abram could go to the police and turn us in as black-marketeers.
It was difficult to accept, but we decided to let the matter go. It was more important to keep ourselves alive and safe—because by the time we arrived in Lodz Rochelle was nearly seven months pregnant. The one step we did take was to immediately find a different room in which to live. We never saw them again.
ROCHELLE
We wound up staying in Lodz for roughly two months. There had been an office established by a Jewish relief committee that enabled survivors to obtain Polish citizen identification cards. The cards helped us walk down the street without worrying about being stopped by the police.
But it was still our goal to move further west. By now, Germany was a defeated nation that was being carved up into four territories controlled by the four major Allies—America, England, France, and the Soviet Union. Ideally, we wanted to make it to Berlin and, specifically, to the American sector of that city. We heard that in Berlin there were committees established to help refugee Jewish survivors. And we felt that things would be safest for us in the American sector.
But for the time being, given the stage of pregnancy I was in, we made up our minds to pass some time in Lodz. Julius put up a little sign outside on our building, “Dentist.” Somehow he managed to get some basic equipment. A few customers would come in now and then. That was a way to get some money for food. And we still had a small stash of the gold coins left—fortunately we hadn’t stored them all in the headboard. But now Jack kept them on his person at all times—sewn into his coat.
I was going into my eighth month of pregnancy, and one day we heard that in a Polish town to the south of Lodz—a town called Katowice—there was a big pogrom. All the surviving Jews in that town were killed by the local Poles. That was after the war was supposed to be over! And still the Jews were being killed—not just in Katowice, but in other towns in Poland as well—as if the Poles in those towns were trying to make up for what the Germans had missed. Nowhere else in Europe did they kill Jews who had survived the Nazis and were trying to come home. Only in Poland did that happen.
When I heard the news, I was filled with panic. We still weren’t safe! Katowice was no great distance away. We thought for sure that Lodz would be next. We were afraid to stay and at the same time we could not possibly leave—not without a travel permit, and not in my condition.
I remember that one night—it was in July—the rumor had reached us that the pogrom was going to happen. We barricaded the windows of our room. We pushed our bed against the door. We were shaking. That rumor proved to be false. But it did its damage. Because I went into premature labor that night.
At the time, I had no idea what was happening. All I knew was that I was in terrible pain. I didn’t even know that those were contractions I was experiencing. I had never been pregnant before, and I had no mother, no nurse, to tell me what contractions felt like.
I didn’t want to worry Jack, so I told him nothing about it. But as soon as it was dawn, I went to the office of the gynecologist I had seen on a couple of occasions since we arrived in Lodz. His office was maybe four, five blocks away, and it wasn’t really an office, just a room in his house. He had a couple of beds and a handful of instruments and medications and that was it.
I startled him by coming so early. He gave me a quick exam and said, “You’re dilated completely! You’re going to have the baby within an hour!” He put me down on one of the beds and the baby came within an hour, just as he said.
By that time, Jack had woken up and noticed that I was gone. He figured out that I must have gone to the gynecologist. So Jack arrived at my bedside, but by that time I had already given birth. A baby boy. He was about seven and one-half months old. The doctor told me that the baby was basically healthy, but th
at he needed oxygen because he was premature. Without oxygen the baby would die. And the doctor had no oxygen.
The doctor then said to me, “The easiest way to do it is to put the baby near a window. It’s cold near the window so he’ll die faster.” I wanted to see the baby. The doctor told me, “It’s better if you don’t see him. You won’t remember him this way.” He took the baby and put him near the window.
He was living and breathing a whole day, from morning to evening. At about five o’clock in the afternoon the doctor came to my bed and said, “He’s turning blue, so he won’t last long.” Maybe a couple of hours later, the doctor came and told me that the baby had died.
Jack was as devastated as I was. He called someone from the local Chevre Kaddishe—the Jewish burial committee, like the one my father had served on in Mir. A Jewish man arrived, Jack gave him some money, and that man took our baby, covered him up with a little blanket, and promised that he would be buried in a Jewish cemetery. I remember I watched out the window as he carried the baby off, a little bundle under his arm.
I was thinking, “Wherever I go, I leave a grave behind.” In Stolpce all of my closest family members were in graves. And then in Lodz, after only a couple of months, another grave. As soon as I could get up off that bed and walk, I told Jack, “We have to get out of here. We have to start heading west again.”
But there was more medical treatment to go through first. My breasts had filled with milk. The doctor had no proper medications, so he took some very heavy cotton sheets and wrapped them like a bandage over my breasts. He wrapped them so tightly that I looked like a boy. He told me that it would take a few weeks for my milk to burn up, so to speak. I was to keep the bandage on and never remove it.
Finally, when after some weeks I took it off, I saw that the tissue in my breasts had broken down. I was scared: they didn’t look like my breasts any longer.
Jack and Rochelle Page 18