Four Perfect Pebbles

by Lila Perl

  “What a terrible thing to do! But patient and kind as always, Uncle Ernst understood the reason for my flight. The surgery was rescheduled, and this time he insisted on being allowed to remain at my side until I was wheeled into the operating room. Mama, too, was there, and the operation was a success. I recovered quickly, and my eyes were soon able to function normally.”

  Ruth finally completed her beautician’s training and received her certification, qualifying her to give facials, manicures, and pedicures. Learning the terminology for the muscles and tissues in Dutch had been difficult for her, but she was determined to succeed. Once she was certified, she bought a bicycle to travel to the homes of her clients.

  Her visits with Marion and Albert, however, were limited to once a week at most. Either she came to Bussum by train or the children traveled to Amsterdam.

  “Even though the Birnbaums were like second parents to us, and Susi became my dear friend, which she has remained to this day,” Marion said, “I was terribly lonely for my mother. I had learned in Bergen-Belsen to suppress my feelings and not to cry out even in physical pain. So I kept these deep anxieties to myself in order not to worry my mother. But often I was close to hysteria, and I could hear my heart pounding in my chest as if it were about to burst.”

  As the time drew closer for the planned voyage from Holland to Palestine, the Blumenthals learned that the immigration was to be a children’s transport only and that the group would have to travel illegally by way of the island of Cyprus, in the eastern Mediterranean. Ruth would not be allowed to accompany Marion and Albert. She would have to make her own arrangements and hope to arrive at a later date.

  “After all we had been through,” Mama said, “I could not possibly risk such a separation. Often the illegal ships were old and leaky, and if the British came upon such a ship, they would force it to return to Europe. How could I put my children’s lives in danger again? So at once I went about seeing what we could do to emigrate as a family to the United States, as Walter and I had originally intended.”

  Again it was necessary to obtain an affidavit from a family member or other sponsor in America, as well as a visa and other papers. This time the affidavit was generously offered by a brother of Tante Rosi’s husband, a warm and caring man whom the Blumenthals had never met. His name was Arnold Wolf. The remaining arrangements took time. But there was one piece of very good news. The Holland-America Line still had it on record that the Blumenthals had paid their passage for four in 1938, when they first planned to sail from Rotterdam to New York on the Nieuw Amsterdam.

  Now, nearly ten years later, the passage money was still on deposit and could be applied to a sailing on the SS Veendam. The cost of the sailing had gone up, but Papa’s share would be passed on to the others, and only a small sum needed to be added.

  “What an exciting time,” Marion said, “when we finally had everything in readiness and our passage date approached. It was April 1948. I was nearly thirteen and a half, had filled out and grown taller. Also, I had very definite ideas about what kind of wardrobe I wanted for the sailing and for my arrival in New York. Clothing and shoes were still rationed in Holland, so Mama and I had constant arguments about what items the valuable coupons should be used for.

  “One thing I needed badly was a pair of new shoes. Mama had to give up her shoe coupon so that I could have them, and of course she felt I should choose a pair of sensible black or brown leather oxfords. By this time we were buying my shoes one size too big because I was growing so rapidly. When I looked at those terrible ‘canalboats’ Mama wanted me to get, I was practically in tears.

  “As usual we argued back and forth. But my will had become stronger than ever, and finally I won. When I boarded the Veendam a week or so later, I was wearing a pair of fashionable navy blue slip-on pumps. I felt completely ready for New York and my new life in America.”

  For Marion and Albert the ten-day voyage was luxurious beyond anything they had ever known. The shipboard food was abundant, varied, delicious, and beautifully served. Marion could not get over the many flavors and colors of ice cream, a dessert that was available at almost any time of day. If this was a foretaste of life in America, she was sure that it was going to suit her perfectly.

  On the evening before the Veendam was to land, the passengers were told to be on deck early next morning if they wished to see the approach into New York Harbor.

  “Mama, Albert, and I,” Marion said, “were part of the huge crowd that started to gather as early as five A.M., all of us craning our necks for a first view of the Statue of Liberty. When the tall figure of that longed-for symbol of freedom appeared, I became too choked to speak. So many emotions seized me at once: joy and gratitude, bitterness for the cruelties we and so many others had suffered, and deep sadness that Papa could not share this moment with us. He would never know that we had reached America at last.

  “The date of our landing was April twenty-third, 1948. By coincidence, it was exactly three years to the day since we had been liberated from the death train by the Russians.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “America, at Last”

  The Veendam docked at Hoboken, New Jersey. There Mama, Marion, and Albert were met by the family of Papa’s sister Clara, who, with her husband and daughter, had emigrated to the United States in 1938. The Blumenthals were taken directly to Tante Clara’s small, immaculate apartment on West 161st Street in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan.

  “From the moment we left the ship,” Marion recalled, “I was in a state of bewilderment and awe. No city in Germany or Holland had ever had so many tall buildings as New York, so much motor traffic, so many people, such noisy, bustling streets. And I had yet to ride in the fast-moving elevator of a skyscraper or to descend into the rattling and screeching subways.

  “Immediately I found a friend in my cousin Helga, who was a few years younger than I. She shared her pastimes and her companions with me. Tante Clara meantime tried to make us as comfortable as possible. She cooked us delicious meals. I had only one fault to find. We had arrived in America just as the Passover holiday, with its many food restrictions, was about to begin.

  “I could make do with eating matzoh, our unleavened bread, instead of raised bread. But many sweets that I’d been looking forward to were not kosher for Passover. Above all, here in the land of chewing gum—slim sugary sticks in many flavors and Chiclets galore—I had to wait eight whole days for the holiday to be over before I could indulge my craving.

  “Bubble gum was a new variation that fascinated me. A few weeks later, when I learned to use the subways, I sat gazing in wonder at the huge bubbles that some of my fellow passengers were able to blow. Almost as dramatic were the sharp, cracking sounds they made as their jaws clamped down on the gum.

  “I soon learned that to chew gum, especially in public, is not a very mannerly thing to do. I suppose it was the abundance of it in the United States as compared to its scarcity in postwar Holland that impressed me so.”

  Like the Blumenthals’ brief stay with the de Levie family in Amsterdam, their time at Tante Clara’s in New York soon came to an end. As kind as their relatives had been in both instances, Ruth knew that she and her children must somehow make their own way.

  On arriving in the United States, the Blumenthals had registered with HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. While HIAS tried to find a Jewish community that could offer the newcomers a place to live and a temporary means of support, the organization moved them into a residence hotel on Manhattan’s 116th Street.

  “The three of us,” Marion said, “lived in one room, with a bathroom in the corridor that we shared with the other families. As there were no proper cooking facilities, our meals became very peculiar. Albert had developed a terrific appetite for canned fruit cocktail. It was nothing for him to finish a sixteen-ounce can at one sitting and go right on to open another.

  “I, on the other hand, had a passion for fatty foods. My favorite was a big jar of mayonnaise in
to which I dipped one potato chip after another, out of the biggest bag I could find. It was no wonder I was putting on weight. At the age of ten and a half, just after our liberation, I had weighted thirty-five pounds. Now, in the spring of 1948, at age thirteen and a half I weighed one hundred and thirty-five. In three years I had gained a hundred pounds!”

  Ruth was quietly indulgent of the eating habits of her two teenagers. She did not take as much pleasure as they did, however, in the American snack foods or in other aspects of American popular culture. She was far too taken up with worry about the problem of starting over. She had no money and no job skills that she could apply without a knowledge of English. She felt completely lost in her new surroundings. “To me,” Ruth confessed, “the future looked bleak.”

  The Blumenthals had been rooming in the Manhattan residence hotel only a few weeks when they were notified that HIAS had found them a more permanent place to live. It was being offered by the Jewish Community Council in Peoria, Illinois.

  “Peoria,” Marion said. “We had never heard of Peoria. I’m not even sure we knew enough about American geography at the time to have heard of Illinois. New York itself was strange and new to us. But at least we had relatives there. In Peoria we wouldn’t know anybody.

  “However, we had no choice, if we did not accept the free housing and the chance for work and schooling in Peoria, we would lose our HIAS sponsorship and would be entirely on our own. Without a proper wage earner in the family, there was no way for us to survive financially. So we packed our few belongings and set off by train for the American Midwest.”

  On arriving in Peoria in June 1948, Ruth, Marion, and Albert discovered that their apartment, in a rundown part of town, was to be shared with two other families. Everyone would have to take turns using the single bathroom and preparing meals in the kitchen, which was equipped with an old-fashioned wooden icebox. But at least here was an opportunity for the newcomers to establish themselves in an American community.

  “That very summer,” Marion said, “each of us got a job. Mama, finding nothing else open to her, started work as a housekeeper for a prosperous family in town, the Hokins. Albert was hired by a local jewelry store. He scrubbed the floors and cleaned and polished the showcases and counters. And I went to work in a laundry, sorting and folding clothes, for twenty cents an hour. I also began to take lessons in English.

  “In September I entered public school in Peoria. I was still so far behind in English, however, that I was placed in fourth grade. There I was, a thirteen-year-old among nine-year-olds. Not only was I four years older than my classmates, but I had also grown plump and was beginning to mature.

  “My teacher tried to be helpful. But she was a rather nervous person, as I recall, and she spoke very rapidly. I could not help feeling out of place and uncomfortable. Although I excelled in mathematics and in European geography, English was my big stumbling block. Along with Dutch and Hebrew, it was my third new language in three years.”

  Albert was also wrestling with English at school. Yet both young people continued at their jobs, putting in as many after-school hours as they could, for every penny counted. Ruth’s work at the Hokins’ brought in some extras, too, for her employer was generous with take-home food and with hand-me-down clothing for Marion that was still in fine condition.

  “In December 1948,” Marion recalled, “we celebrated our first Hanukkah in Peoria. This eight-day Festival of Lights fell close to my fourteenth birthday. So Albert bought me a special gift, one that was typical of the new luxuries that were available to us in America.

  “When I opened the box, however, I was so disappointed that I actually started to cry. I suppose I had expected a box of elegant chocolates or some other confectionary treat. Instead he had bought me a pair of sheer, flesh-colored nylon stockings.

  “Nylons had first made their appearance in America shortly before the war. Then, as the ‘miracle’ fiber was needed for parachutes and other war materials, it had become unavailable. Now, in 1948, everybody was clamoring for nylon hosiery. But to me, getting my first pair of nylons was a sign of having to grow up, of becoming a young woman.

  “This I was not ready to do. I was not ready to say farewell to the childhood I had never had. I wanted sweets and games. I wanted to be as carefree as my nine-year-old classmates, who knew nothing of the deadly concentration camp in which I had spent the ninth and tenth years of my childhood.”

  The following year saw an all-around improvement in the lives of the Blumenthals. Ruth learned that her longtime skills as a seamstress had good earning power, and she went to work for a local tailor. Later she advanced to an even better job doing alterations and custom tailoring for a downtown Peoria department store.

  Albert, who had enrolled in Peoria Central High School, had kept his job in the jewelry store and even gotten a raise. He worked his way up to an assistant clerkship, increasing his earnings from thirty-five to fifty-five cents an hour.

  Marion not only held on to her job in the laundry but began to earn additional money as a baby-sitter. By pooling their earnings and living very frugally, the Blumenthals were now able to move from the community-sponsored quarters in Peoria to a modest apartment of their own. But best of all for Marion was her progress at school.

  “By getting extra help with English after school and by attending summer school, I was skipped that fall to junior high. For the first time I had that wonderful feeling of belonging. Happily I had also gotten some good advice from one of the mothers for whom I baby-sat. She noticed my tendency to eat too-rich foods, as a way of compensating for my years of hunger, and she gently advised me about the importance of maintaining a good appearance.

  “I listened to her, as I might not have to my own mother, and I soon began to slim down. Being accepted by the boys and girls in my class was enough compensation for me.”

  The Blumenthals found that Peoria was turning out to be a comfortable and secure place to live after all. There were varied opportunities for employment, there was a good public school system, and there was a Jewish religious community. By the time Marion was in high school, she was working part-time in one of the city’s department stores.

  “I sold housedresses at Szold’s Department Store,” she recalled, “one for a dollar fifty-nine, two for three dollars. The store was owned by Henrietta Szold’s nephews. Henrietta Szold, who had died in 1945 at the age of eighty-five, was one of the founders of Hadassah, which was organized in 1912 to promote a Jewish homeland in Palestine. She was the first president of Hadassah and also the director of a Youth Aliyah program, similar to the one we’d taken part in in Holland.

  “Albert and I had also started to teach Sunday school classes, which brought in a few extra dollars. Somehow we seemed to find time for work, school, and a bit of social life. I also became more active in the Peoria religious community and began to attend synagogue services.”

  The High Holy Days of 1951 found Marion seated in the women’s balcony of Peoria’s Orthodox synagogue. In this branch of the Jewish faith it was traditional for men and women to be separated at services. But a small section at the rear of the balcony had been reserved for students attending Peoria’s Bradley University.

  “I will always remember what I was wearing on the fast day of Yom Kippur that autumn. It was a knitted navy blue wool jersey dress, with an embroidered motif in red near the right shoulder. The dress was a hand-me-down that I had been lucky to receive, for I could never have afforded something as lovely as that new.

  “A number of Bradley students, mostly young men, were gathered behind us. When I glanced around, I noticed one who was staring at me intently. I tried to put my mind on the services, but it was hard not to take just one more look. When I did, his eyes were still on me.

  “I was sixteen at the time and a sophomore in high school. I had only recently started dating and was enjoying going out with a variety of boys. I never dreamed of getting serious with any one person. I was certain that that would not happen
for years to come.”

  When the service ended, the young man approached Marion and asked her, very politely, if he could walk her home from the synagogue. As they strolled along on that Yom Kippur afternoon, Marion learned that the young man’s home was in the Long Island, New York, community of Woodmere, a place that she had never heard of.

  He had fine manners and spoke lovingly of his family back home, consisting of his parents and his sister, Naomi. He himself was nineteen and had three more years of college.

  “Somehow,” Marion said, “I knew even then that this person was someone special. Already my new admirer seemed to have made up his mind that we were meant for each other. And, as our courtship continued, lengthening into a period of almost two years, I began to realize that he was the man with whom I would spend the rest of my life. His name was Nathaniel Lazan.”

  EPILOGUE

  In June 1953 Marion Blumenthal graduated from Peoria Central High School. She was eighteen and a half and was rated eighth in scholarly achievement in a graduating class of 265 students.

  Nathaniel’s parents visited from New York and joined Mama and Albert in attending the graduation. Nathaniel had just finished his junior year at Bradley and had to complete one more year of college for his degree. Yet he had convinced both his parents and Marion’s family that the young couple should marry that summer.

  On August 2, 1953, Marion Blumenthal and Nathaniel Lazan were married in New York. Their first child, David Walter, was born in 1955, their daughter, Susan, in 1957, and their third child, Michael, in 1960. Today Marion and her husband have eight grandchildren. They have made their home for many years in Hewlett, New York.

  For the past fifteen years Marion has been giving talks and interviews about her Holocaust experience to both children and adults in schools and other settings, and has at last been able to put her story into book form. On completion of this undertaking, one more challenge awaited her: that of revisiting the sites and scenes of her childhood. In April 1995, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of her family’s liberation from the Nazis, Marion Blumenthal Lazan, accompanied by her husband, her daughter Susan, and her son Michael, reunited with other Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen survivors in Holland and Germany. In addition to the former concentration camps, the Lazans visited the grave of Marion’s father in Tröbitz and Marion’s hometown of Hoya.