The Night of the Burning

by Linda Press Wulf

  He was so proud, so glad. For the first time, I stepped forward and gave him a hug. He hugged me back and kissed my forehead. Then he hurried off to his darkroom. “To tidy up a little,” he said.

  Walking carefully, as though rough movements might break a dream, I entered my little room. I shut the door quietly and wedged my chair under the doorknob so no one could come in to interrupt me. Then I stood at the window and shut my eyes. There was no black sky with shining stars to talk to; I would have to imagine.

  “Mama, Papa, wake up, I need to tell you something important. It’s this: the stories won’t be forgotten. Remember, Papa, when I promised at the cemetery? I promised I wouldn’t let the stories be forgotten. It’s been so hard, Papa, just as you warned me, and so lonely. But now there is help. There is to be a book, a book that will tell it all. The good times and the bad, Mr. Kagan said. And can you believe it: my picture will be in the book, too. They say I am a new start. Mama, I am to be a new start.”

  Then I cried.

  It was my photo that was to be used in the book, but stories had to be collected from several of the children who had begun their lives in Poland. Daddy Ochberg was very involved in the project and he drove me to the orphanage several times, where he gently but lengthily questioned the other children and me about details of our childhood. After one such session, as he drove me home, he asked me how it felt to be a Kagan now. The question touched a sore spot, a hurt I rubbed often to keep it from healing.

  “I’m not a Kagan. They didn’t care enough to change my name to Kagan. I’m Devorah K. Lehrman,” I said sulkily.

  Mr. Ochberg looked keenly at my face. “Legally speaking, that is true,” he said. “The adoption papers say that you must retain your own name, in case there is ever an attempt by someone from your old life to trace you. So the Kagans were able to give you only a new middle name.”

  I frowned. “But Nechama became Naomi Stein.”

  “We cannot enforce what she is called every day,” Mr. Ochberg said, shrugging. “But legally her last name is still Lehrman, just like yours. Now here we are at your home; I will see you next week.”

  As I stepped out of the car, tiny gears shifted inside my head. Naomi and I still had the same name. And the Kagans were only following the law.

  During the two years that passed after Naomi and I were adopted, I went several times a year to see her at the Steins’ house. But there always seemed to be a reason why Naomi couldn’t manage to come over to the Kagans’ flat: a ballet recital, or a piano lesson, or a sudden cold. Finally, a date was set for Naomi to visit me.

  When my sister first walked into the flat, I stared. Naomi looked like a Stein. Her clothes were expensive and much too smart for a casual visit. Her pretty light curls were tied with an enormous bow, and there was a mysterious pink shine to her lips, although she had only recently turned twelve. She was an exotic flower amid the dark furnishings of Caledon Street.

  “Hello, Mrs. Kagan. Hello, Mr. Kagan,” Naomi said formally. She was taking acting and elocution lessons, and her Yiddish accent had almost disappeared.

  Mr. Kagan only smiled shyly, but Mrs. Kagan was determined to be warm. “Hello, Naomi. And how is your mother? Fine woman, and always so busy. See her hurrying all the time. So many committees, I know. Does such good work for charity. Well, isn’t that a pretty—sit down here, Naomi?—pretty frock, can see that one wasn’t made at home. Perhaps, Devorah, dearie, you might prefer—”

  “Yes, we’ll go into my room, if that’s all right,” I interjected, seeing Naomi’s look of bewilderment, and we escaped from the living room together.

  I took my sister into my bedroom and showed her a couple of books I was reading. The room felt cozy when Monica came over, but now it seemed too small for Naomi’s full skirts.

  “Where’s that photograph you were always looking at?” Naomi asked, looking around.

  I glanced at her for a moment, surprised that she remembered. Naomi evidently expected to see it displayed prominently, no doubt framed in silver like the ones of “family” members in her pink room. I opened a bottom drawer and pulled out the old photograph. It was dog-eared and a little faded. I hadn’t noticed that. Actually, I realized, I hadn’t taken it out for a while.

  “Devorah, taking Mr. Kagan to his visit at the doctor. Prob’ly wait there till doctor’s done with him,” Mrs. Kagan said, putting her head in the doorway. “Elizabeth’s put out sponge cake and juice for you two young ladies in the living room. So nice to have you at our home, Naomi. You quite ready, Mr. Kagan?” And she was gone.

  With the bang of the front door, Naomi seemed bolder. “Let’s go to the living room,” she said brightly. “There’s no space here.”

  I put the photograph back in the drawer and followed her. Elizabeth came in to check if we needed anything, and I felt proud to show off my sister’s finery. But Elizabeth didn’t show any sign of being impressed. I did notice that Naomi didn’t bother to thank Elizabeth for pouring juice, as Mrs. Kagan had taught me to do.

  We began playing a board game Monica had lent me, but Naomi was more interested in talking. “Daddy’s going to buy a bioscope,” she announced. “He said as soon as he’s the owner, I can go to the moving pictures whenever I want. I’ll ask him to give you a ticket.”

  My emotions warred. A free ticket to the pictures. But the way Naomi said “daddy” so easily made my eyelid twitch.

  Then Naomi jumped to another thought, as was her way. “Has anyone else from the orphanage been adopted?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I replied. “Faygele told me once that she doesn’t want to be adopted, that she doesn’t need new parents and she likes being there.”

  “Well, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Naomi said smugly. “We’re the lucky ones.”

  That took me aback. Naomi was including me among the lucky ones. And Mr. Bobrow had called me lucky when Daddy Ochberg asked to interview me in Pinsk. Madame Engel, too, had said something about the lucky few. Yet I had never thought of myself that way.

  Right then, Naomi looked at her pretty silver wristwatch for the third time. “I think we should go and get my things from your room,” she said. “Then I’ll be ready when I have to go.”

  While Naomi sat on the bed folding her white cardigan and checking her little coin purse, I heard the front door bang shut. I wondered why Elizabeth hadn’t come to say goodbye before she left. It was her weekend off and I wouldn’t be seeing her again until Monday morning. Quickly I moved toward my open door to shout out goodbye. But at the exact same moment, Naomi stood up and stepped forward. We were so close that we bumped hard into each other. With a little cry, Naomi fell back onto the bed.

  “Oh, sorry!” I exclaimed, although it wasn’t my fault.

  “This room is too small,” Naomi snapped, smoothing down her skirt. “I don’t know how you can sleep here and do your homework and everything. Why, the cupboard for my mother’s clothes is bigger than this.”

  I glared at her. How could she be so rude? But I didn’t want our visit to end badly.

  “Let’s go back to the living room, then,” I said shortly.

  “No, I don’t want to wait there, either,” Naomi shot back. “All those photographs staring down at us are creepy.”

  “Mr. Kagan’s a very good photographer,” I began, my loyalty to kind Mr. Kagan aroused.

  But Naomi wasn’t to be stopped. “And the furniture’s so uncomfortable and old-fashioned,” she said, her voice rising shrilly. “And what are those silly lace doilies doing on the arms and backs of the chairs? They’re meant to go on a cake plate underneath a cake. I know because I’ve seen our cook use them.”

  “Your cook!” I retorted, also becoming louder. “Why do you think she knows better than Mrs. Kagan does?”

  “Mother says Mrs. Kagan doesn’t have any taste. And that she never stops talking—and that’s true.”

  For a moment I couldn’t breathe. My heart pounded loudly, once, twice, like a
drum echoing in my chest. “You shut your mouth, Nechama Lehrman,” I exploded. “Have you forgotten where you come from? You’ve got cheek to criticize the Kagans. They’re good people. They’re good to me. They’ve got rich hearts.”

  Naomi shrank back against the bed, looking frightened. But I wasn’t finished. “You hold your nose so high in the air that you can’t see what’s in front of you. This flat may not look like a lot to you, but it’s my home and I’m safe and I feel good here. I have a family now, too.”

  Naomi was speechless. I listened to my own words ringing in the air. When had my feelings changed, without my even noticing? A sudden lightness filled me like helium. I was at home.

  I took a long, slow look around. My precious books. The desk where I spent so many hours. The roses I had air-dried carefully after Mr. Kagan brought them home for me one Shabbes. The calendar of a girl and a kitten, which Mrs. Kagan had given me with a hug soon after our drive to Grootboom Plaas. And there, looking miserable as she pressed against the bed with her fancy dress crumpled beneath her, was my little sister.

  Impulsively, I said, “It’s all right, Naomi. I know you didn’t mean to be rude. I don’t expect you to understand. But it’s finally turned out that you’re happy and I’m happy. That would make Mama and Papa happy.”

  Naomi’s lip quivered as if she was going to cry. But I had learned enough not to make the same mistake again, not to assume the old role of the comforting big sister. Instead I held out my hand, simply. And, simply, Naomi took it and squeezed.

  At that moment, there was the rude baarp baarp of a car honking outside. “That’s Daddy’s driver from work,” Naomi exclaimed with unhidden relief. She dropped the little coin purse into her black patent handbag, and I went outside with her. Before Naomi climbed into the back of the large car, we turned to each other awkwardly, and then we hugged tightly.

  The car pulled away and there was only stillness. The sun was blindingly hot, the air white. I walked slowly back into the flat and stopped just inside the front door. The cool dimness welcomed me. I inhaled the faint scents of furniture polish and photo-developing chemicals and sponge cake. I like the smells here, I realized.

  Smiling, I turned toward my room, and then I heard something—muffled, faint sobs. They were coming from the Kagans’ closed bedroom.

  In the space of a heartbeat, I understood what had happened. The door that banged before was Mrs. Kagan arriving home early. She must have heard Naomi’s loud, cruel words. Her carefully arranged framed photographs, the living room furniture polished to a high shine, the space under the stairs turned into a bedroom for me with energy and care—all ridiculed and insulted by a little rich girl who didn’t know that love came in plain as well as fancy packages.

  I ran down the hallway, pulled open the bedroom door, and flung my arms around the woman sobbing on the bed. “I’m so sorry!” I cried. “Please don’t be sad. She doesn’t know anything about our family. I’m so sorry.”

  In an instant Mrs. Kagan had turned and encircled me with her own strong arms. We hugged and cried together. Then Mrs. Kagan walked over to get a handkerchief and blew her nose thoroughly. Sitting down on the bed again, she took my hand in hers. “Those were happy tears, dearie,” she said. She spoke in careful, full sentences as if every word was vital. “This is one of the happiest days of my life.”

  “It is?” I asked, bewildered. “Didn’t she hurt your feelings?”

  “Yes, she did,” replied Mrs. Kagan slowly. She reached out a trembling hand to smooth one of the offending lace doilies on the glass side table. “I didn’t grow up with money, and when I can afford it, I buy things I think are beautiful. I didn’t know some people think my taste is low class. But that’s not important.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Mrs. Kagan said, giving my hand a squeeze as she looked directly into my eyes. “What is important is that today I heard my daughter saying that she is happy in her life, saying that she is comfortable in her home, even saying that she feels good here. Family, you called us. When I heard that, my heart filled with joy. Nothing else matters.”

  I looked back at her, and for a moment I heard Madame Engel saying, “Hold on to the strength … let go of the sadness.” Tears were rolling down my cheeks and I didn’t mind at all anymore that Mrs. Kagan saw them. It was the right time to say something. I hadn’t told Mama and Papa yet, but I would explain it to them at the window after my evening prayers.

  “I—Is it all right if—?” I started. “I would like—”

  Mrs. Kagan’s face was quite old, rather wrinkled, and very kind. “What is it, dearie?”

  “I would like—” I stopped and smiled. “I’d like to call you Mummy.”

  AFTERWORD

  In her early twenties, Devorah Lehrman married Chaim Wulf, and they soon had a son and a daughter. Sixteen years later, they had a third child (now the author’s husband), who grew up and went to medical school at the University of Cape Town. When, three years in a row, he won an academic award funded by the Ochberg Foundation, he tried to thank the foundation staff for their thoroughness in continuing to assist the descendants of the original orphans. But he found that they had no role in selecting the award winners. Isaac Ochberg had touched two generations of the same family by coincidence.

  Other coincidences lit the long path in the evolution of this book. Devorah’s first son married the daughter of Ochberg orphan Rosha, and Devorah’s second grandson married the granddaughter of Ochberg orphan Laya, although there were only 200 Ochberg children in the large South African community of over 100,000 Jews. The author’s maternal great-aunt, Rebecca Levinson, was the matron, or house mother, of the Cape Jewish Orphanage in Cape Town only a few years before the children arrived from Europe. The author’s paternal aunt, Rhoda Stella Getz, was a volunteer librarian at the orphanage after the Ochberg children grew up.

  When they were in their sixties, first Naomi and then Devorah died of breast cancer. Although they saw each other fairly regularly throughout their lives, the sisters’ relationship had been forever changed by their separation and different fortunes.

  Isaac Ochberg served as president of the orphanage for several more years, but in 1930 he gave up his work with the children, partly for health reasons and partly to work for the development of what was then Palestine (Israel). He died of stomach cancer at age fifty-nine, a year before World War II began. For many years, on the anniversary of his death, the Ochberg children recited the Mourners’ Kaddish, a prayer said only by close relatives of the deceased, as if Isaac Ochberg had been their father. Alexander Bobrow married, moved to England, and lived into his nineties. Lively little Faygele Shrier became Mrs. Fanny Lockitch and had three sons, but stayed involved with the orphanage, serving as chairwoman for five years. She was of invaluable assistance in the writing of this book. In 1991, the few children still living in the Cape Jewish Orphanage (usually known as Oranjia) were moved to small group homes, and the building was sold and demolished.

  Author’s Note

  From the end of the eighteenth century, the Polish people in Eastern Europe were dominated by the Russian empire, under the Czar. While Russia was engaged in the Great War (now called World War I) with the Germans from 1916 to 1918, revolution broke out inside Russia and the Czar was overthrown. The revolutionaries also fought among themselves, the “Reds” (Communists) battling the “Whites” (anti-Communists). The Poles entered the chaos in a fight for their longed-for independence.

  Domachevo [Doh-ma-CHAIR-wah], the village where this story is partly set, lay close to the fluctuating border between Poland and Russia, roughly equidistant from the main city of Warsaw and the town of Pinsk. Bands of soldiers from several armies—Polish, Red Russian, White Russian, and German—passed through Domachevo. About thirty miles north was situated the town of Brest Litovsk, where the famous treaty that ended the war between Russia and Germany was signed in 1918.

  During the time covered by the story, over two million J
ews lived in Polish areas, about 10 percent of the population. Because they were forbidden to be farmers, professionals (such as doctors and lawyers), or craftspeople in almost any field, many Jews became shopkeepers and moneylenders, two of the few professions allowed them. This led to tensions when poor non-Jews borrowed money and could not pay it back. Rumors of hidden Jewish wealth were widespread, and hatred of Jews was fanned by many priests who claimed that the Jews had killed Jesus and were the root of all evil. Periodically, usually under the influence of liquor and sometimes led by Russian soldiers on horseback called Cossacks, local townspeople would erupt into sudden attacks, or “pogroms,” in the Jewish part of town, burning, beating, and killing Jews.

  One such attack inspired this work of historical fiction, based on what is known of the childhood of my late mother-in-law and her sister, and of the momentous rescue of the “Ochberg orphans.” Isaac Ochberg, Alexander Bobrow, Regina Engel, Judge Joseph Herbstein, the Steins, the Kagans, Mr. Mark Cohen, Miss Rosa van Gelderen, and little Faygele (Fanny Shrier Lockitch) were real people who played important roles in the lives of Devorah [Duh-VOR-ah] and Nechama [nuh-KHA-mah] Lehrman, but I have fictionalized most of their actions and words. To the orphans in the book I have given the first names of children who were part of the actual group, in tribute, although no resemblance is intended.

  —L.P.W.

  GLOSSARY OF HEBREW AND YIDDISH WORDS

  Cholent (CHOH-luhnt)—A slow-cooking stew of beans, potatoes, and sometimes meat, traditionally prepared before the Sabbath and kept warm to be eaten at lunch on Saturday.

  Kreplach (KREP-lekh)—Small dumplings filled with meat, cheese, or potato.

  Mamaleh (MAH-muh-luh)—Literally, “sweet little mother,” but often used to mean “sweet little girl.”

  Shabbes (SHAH-biss)—The day of Sabbath, which stretches from dusk on Friday to after nightfall on Saturday.