“‘Take Hannah and go,’ he said. ‘I can’t leave today and I don’t know about tomorrow. Even if Hilda wasn’t sick, these are my people. They depend on me. They depend on your mother. Should we abandon them, Ben? Just turn our backs and run away? Nothing stands between them and the Nazi miscreants but the Judenrat.’
“I was furious. ‘The Judenrat is a collection of meek appeasers,’ I screamed. ‘You’re not protecting your people, you’re helping to exterminate them!’
“My father looked at me sternly, slapped my face and walked away. I didn’t know where to turn next. I was torn between my urge to escape and my loyalty to the family. Maybe Hannah would have the answers. I found her at the clinic.
“We sat outside on the curb, just the two of us. My emotions flopped between rage and despair. I couldn’t accept what was happening – Beka’s death, Otto’s betrayal, my father’s inaction, the deterioration of our lives. ‘What are we to do, Hannah? Give me the answers,’ I said.
“‘If you want to leave tonight, I’ll go with you,’ she said. ‘I can’t speak for your father, but I know mine will never leave Zamość as long as there’s a sick patient in the clinic. He knows the consequences; so does your father. They’re making their choices and we have to respect them. But just as they’ll make choices about their lives, so we have the right to make ours. Without guilt.’ She leaned over, kissed me on the forehead and whispered, ‘All my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay, And follow thee my lord throughout the world.’”
Catherine smiled. “That’s Juliet’s promise to Romeo.”
Ben nodded. “Exactly. Hannah was so wise – our future, our escape, it all seemed to make sense. So we agreed to gather our things and meet at ten that night. We’d get in the car and drive south to Zdziar. Our plan was to ditch the car there and backpack south through the pass and into the Bratislavska Dolina Valley, following the route Krzysztof had drawn. Meanwhile, I felt terrible about the blow-up with my father, so I decided to find him and seek his forgiveness.
“I found him later that day at the synagogue and I apologized for my anger. I never meant to demean him or the men who served on the Judenrat. He hugged me and held me close like I was six years old and said, ‘I have never been disappointed in you, Ben. You have made me proud every day of your life. Go with Hannah and may God protect you both.’
“I told Lucyna of our plans. She was nervous about going back into the Podhale, but she was spunky and courageous. She said she wanted to go along. We each packed our bags, said our farewells and walked from the ghetto at ten that evening. By now, Jews were forbidden to leave the ghetto and our presence on the street was illegal, so I wore the Nazi uniform I had hidden under the mattress, reasoning that at a distance we would appear to be German. If we were stopped, well, I had the gun and I wasn’t afraid to use it.
“Turning the corner on Dolna Street, my heart sank. The car was gone. Immediately I knew that Otto must have taken it. We quickly made our way down the block to Elzbieta’s.
“‘He was here earlier today,’ she said to me. ‘He knew you would be coming and he said to tell you to go back to the ghetto, because if you’re caught on the streets, he won’t be able to help you.’
“I thanked Elzbieta for her help and started for the door.
“‘What are you going to do now?’ she asked. There was fear in her voice. ‘Otto’s coming back tonight. What am I going to tell him? He’ll be here soon.’
“‘I’m not going to involve you, Elzie. If I tell you, then I put you in the middle. Tell Otto the truth – you gave us his message and you don’t know where we are.’
“We kissed her and left by the back stairway. ‘Where are we going,’ asked Hannah.
“‘To Grandpa Yaakov’s. We’ll take some of my family’s jewelry to use for barter. Then we’ll hitch up Buttermilk and take her south. Are you still with us, Lucyna?’
“She put her hands on her hips, stuck out her chin and said, ‘Of course, I am.’”
The tea kettle whistled and Catherine walked into the kitchen to answer it. Ben followed.
“Wasn’t it a long walk to the farm in the dark?” she said as she poured the tea.
“Six kilometers – three miles, more or less. We got there in the middle of the night. I entered the barn, and as you may have guessed, Buttermilk wasn’t there. There weren’t any horses. I cursed Otto. Then it dawned on me. If he had been there to take Buttermilk, he probably took the valuables from the cache. I ran to the corner, pried open the floorboard and confirmed my fears. The chest was gone.
“I sat on the floor of the barn with my head in my hands. Finally, I said to Hannah, ‘We’ll have to go back. I need to make a new plan.’
“We spent the rest of the night in the barn and returned to my parents’ apartment just as they were getting ready to leave for their jobs. My father was surprised to see us, but when I told him what Otto had done, he shook his head and said, ‘He’s been seduced by his position. I’ve misjudged his character, Ben. He’s a much weaker man than I thought.’
“Hannah and I were exhausted and we lay down on the bed to rest. Sometime later that morning we were awakened by Elzbieta sitting on the edge of the bed. She had a bruise on her left cheek.
“‘He sent me to get his uniform,’ she said. ‘He wants me to bring it to him right away. “Mach schnell,” he said.’
“‘Did he do that to you?’ I said, pointing to her face. She didn’t answer me. I pulled the uniform from beneath the bed and handed it to her. She thanked me and stood to leave.
“‘He’s not the same man that we knew before the war. It’s all gone to his head,’ she said.
“‘I’m sorry for you, Elzie. I never meant for you to get hurt and I’m sorry I put you in this position. It’s better if you don’t see us anymore.’
“She shook her head, started to speak, but turned and left the room carrying Otto’s uniform.”
Catherine rose, walked into the kitchen and returned carrying a tray with a plate of cookies and a tea service. Ben stood at the front window watching the activity on the neighborhood sidewalk; a child with a school backpack, an old woman walking her dog, a mother pushing a stroller loaded with grocery bags, her toddler scurrying behind. The sun was setting earlier now – dusk came shortly after 4:30.
“Thanksgiving’s just a week away, Ben,” Catherine said as she set the tray down on a table. “Do you have plans?”
He shrugged.
“Then you’ll dine with me?”
“Don’t you have family? I don’t want to butt in.”
“Oh, there’ll be a few relatives and I’ve invited Liam, but we have plenty of room and lots of turkey. Can we count on you?”
Ben smiled. “Sure. Thanks.”
Catherine handed a mug of steaming tea to Ben and took her place on the couch beside the fireplace. Ben settled into the easy chair holding the warm mug with both hands.
“Our plans for escape to the mountains were tabled. We had no way of getting through the countryside, and even if I could get my hands on a car, I no longer had Otto’s uniform. It was just too risky. Hannah and Lucyna went back to working at the clinic and I to helping Father at the Judenrat.
“The winter of 1941-1942 was particularly severe and many of the buildings lacked adequate heat, or had no furnaces at all. And even if there was an operable furnace, we had no coal deliveries. It seemed like we lost people every day to the unforgiving cold or to malnutrition or disease. Aunt Hilda finally succumbed to typhus in January. Yet more refugees arrived daily in the ghetto and as we would bury one poor soul, three more would arrive.
“It was in the midst of all this suffering that Hannah and I decided to get married. We could endure a lot, but not living apart – we hadn’t lived together since the mountains – and we wanted to be joined in the eyes of God. No matter what the world had in store for us, we would face it together.
“My mother and father were delighted with the news, as was Dr. Weissbaum. A wedding was planned
for February, just enough time for my mother to make a dress and veil for Hannah and for my father to build a chupah.”
“A chupah?”
“Traditional Jewish wedding ceremonies are conducted under the open sky beneath a canopy called a chupah, supported by four posts and open on all sides. The rings and the vows are exchanged under the chupah. The groom gives his bride the ketubah, a marriage contract, his vow to honor and provide for his wife, which in Judaism symbolically affirms the wife’s dignified status. Then there are seven blessings and the groom breaks a glass with his right foot. Surely, Catherine, you’ve been to a Jewish wedding.”
“I have but I’ve never had the ritual explained to me. I suppose, with the ceremony taking place under the open sky, that would account for the abundance of June weddings.”
“Perhaps. Today most of the weddings are indoors. But we wanted to do it the old, traditional way so we planned to have it in the synagogue courtyard even though it was February. Winters in Poland are harsh, but on our wedding day, the sun shone brightly, the winds calmed, and for a short moment, the horrors of the war were lands and eons away.
“Many of our friends had come, including Elzbieta and Lucyna. Hannah looked dazzling in her gown – my mother had outdone herself. The women had worked for hours on Hannah’s hair and makeup. Her auburn hair was woven and covered with a veil. Everyone said she was the most beautiful girl they’d ever seen.”
“My goodness, that sounds lovely, but I wonder, where did the women get the cosmetics?” Catherine said.
“In their time, before they were displaced, these were elegant ladies. Many of them squirreled away a little makeup for special occasions to make them feel like ladies, to remind them that they were women of refinement and not dogs in a cage. And where he got it, I don’t know, but Dr. Weissbaum had scared up a tuxedo, and he looked so proud as he walked with Hannah.
“I was mesmerized by my bride as I waited under the chupah and I had to be prompted to speak my vows. The ceremony ended, I smashed the glass, the crowd yelled Mahzel Tov, I kissed my bride and looked up at the happy gathering. There standing at the back, leaning against a brick wall in his black uniform, was Otto. He nodded at me, tipped his cap and withdrew into the shadows.
“The guests cheered and hustled us off to be alone before the dinner party, a traditional time of privacy. Hannah was now my wife, my dream come true.”
Ben stopped talking. He had traveled back to Zamość and was with Hannah once again. His lips formed words that only Hannah could hear. Catherine gave him his time and his privacy, as did his friends and family sixty years earlier. She sat silent and still until Ben returned to the present many minutes later. “Thank you,” he said.
He took a sip of tea, regained his composure and resumed his story.
“Rank had its privileges, even in Zamość, and my father found us a room in a nearby building. Our own apartment. Or should I say compartment. It was probably eight by eight, but it had a bed and a door. My mother and her friends found linens and we had a small chest of drawers. For a while that little corner was our marital abode and it couldn’t have been any sweeter if it was the Taj Mahal.
“It was later that spring, in 1942, following a meeting of the Judenrat, that my father and I were visited by Jan, a former high school classmate, who told us about a secret resistance movement in the Zamość region. He was tall and square-shouldered, a wrestler in his high school days. In a small anteroom in the synagogue, Jan quietly described his group and started my heart pumping.
“‘We meet in the forest, in the old mill house on the river,’ he said, ‘and we need strong, young fighters like you, Ben. We supply aid and arms to our brothers and sisters in Warsaw and do whatever we can to foil the Nazi pigs in their subjugation of our country.’
“As we talked, I realized that other young people were taking a stand and maybe making a difference. It excited me to think that I could have role in battling these bastards until the end of the war. Following the meeting, I asked my father what he thought about my joining the resistance.
“‘Ultimately it’s your decision,’ he said, ‘but you should ask Hannah, not me.’
“That night when we went to bed, I tried to find the right moment to tell her all about my meeting. but lying with my Hannah, with her soft body curled around me…I confess I got a little distracted and decided to wait until a more appropriate time. In the morning, she said to me, ‘You didn’t sleep so well last night. Do you want to tell me what’s on your mind?’
“I detailed the meeting with Jan and asked what she thought. Hannah was supportive, as always. She believed it was the right thing to do, though she feared for my safety.
“So, that night I slipped out of the western side of town, into the woods and to the river a few miles away. I walked along the stone river banks as I had been instructed, my German pistol in my belt, until I met up with Jan. He led me toward the mill house, which at first seemed unoccupied, but as we drew nearer, I could see it was well fortified. The whole scene reminded me of Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest – you didn’t know the men were there until they wanted you to. There were guards in hidden embankments and in foxholes dug into heavily wooded areas, covered with brush and undetectable to the casual eye.
“Inside the mill house, several partisans had gathered – both men and women. They welcomed me and gave me a code name – no one used his real name. I was called Lis – that’s Polish for fox. Why they gave me that name, I didn’t know, but I liked it.
“When I arrived the group was making plans to steal a shipment of weapons from a railroad depot near Zamość in the village of Wojda. Before disbursing for the night, we gathered in a circle, put our hands together and said, ‘Nigdy się nie poddamy!’ – Never surrender!
“For the first time since the war began I felt like I could make a difference. I wasn’t running to escape. I was standing up for my country and my people. The raid on the Wojda depot was to occur in seven days, on April 14, but before that, a major event happened in Zamość.
“It was on April 11, 1942, Erev Pesach, Passover eve, and my family was preparing for Seder as was nearly every other family in New Town. At noon, without warning, the entire ghetto was surrounded by German soldiers with automatic weapons. Sirens and megaphones announced that all Jews were ordered to assemble in the market square. Soldiers on horseback charged through the streets, whipping and shouting and trampling pedestrians. People were ordered to take a suitcase of clothing and go immediately to the square.
“Sadly, many of our older residents thought it was another registration and they dressed in their best clothes to impress the Germans. Three men stood at the front of the square, standing on a platform: Commandant Schubert and Otto were joined by Bruno Myers, the head of the Zamość Gestapo.
“We crowded into that square, thousands of us, waiting for five hours without any food or water. Some collapsed, some fainted and some were hauled away. Eighty-nine people were shot. While we stood there, the Germans searched the ghetto. They shot any person found hiding or remaining in his home. The sick and injured, too weak to come to the market square, were executed and their corpses flung out of the windows and left in the street for us to bury.
“Finally at 9 p.m., long after the time we would have been sitting down to our Passover Seder, Otto and Schubert walked through the crowd, pointing at groups and families, instructing them to march directly to the railroad ramps and board the box cars for deportation. We didn’t know the destination but there were announcements that people were to be resettled at a new work camp. Three thousand people were put onto the train that night, packed over a hundred to a car.
“During the selection process, Otto walked up to our family, looked us over for a moment, said nothing and passed us by. At 11 p.m. those who were not selected were dismissed to go home.
“The next day was burial day. Over two hundred bodies had been left on the streets, in the buildings, on the sidewalk and in the clinic. If anyone ever harbor
ed a doubt as to who these Nazis were, or what was in store for us, it was all brought home that day. Mournful cries were heard throughout the night. I saw the resistance as our only way to fight back.
“That evening I ducked out of town and made my way to the mill house joining up with thirty others, mostly young, some Jewish but many Catholic, some from Zamość but many from surrounding villages, and all dedicated to Polish freedom. The leader, an older man known as Irek, was detailing the mission on a map nailed to the wall. A drawing of the arms depot near Wojda was also tacked on the wall. It was reported to be lightly guarded.
“There was a fierce debate over the raid, some claiming it would cause serious reprisals from the Germans. Irek countered that all Poland was condemned anyway, and why would death by reprisals be any different than death by extermination? The majority was firmly behind Irek and was intent on doing whatever it could to disrupt the German occupation.
“The conversation then turned to Zamość and the mass deportation. I told them about the selection and what I’d seen the day before. ‘The Germans told us the people were being transported to a new work camp,’ I said. ‘I believe it to be Izbica.’
“‘There has been some construction at Izbica – it’s a transit camp and some barracks have been built,’ answered Irek, ‘but the Zamość transport went directly to Belzec. I’m sorry to tell you this, Lis, but the entire group, all three thousand, was executed as soon as they arrived at Belzec.’
“I was stunned. I knew so many of them. ‘Are you sure? They told us to take a suitcase, to bring our clothes. There were little children on that train.’
“‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Our information is accurate. They were all killed by carbon monoxide exhaust piped from a truck into locked chambers. As to their suitcases, that is a Nazi ruse – to make the victims more comfortable and compliant. Once at Belzec, the suitcases are taken by the Kapos – money, jewelry, eyeglasses and clothing are collected and supposedly sent to Berlin, although we know that much is stolen by the local SS. All the rest – the family pictures, the bibles, the mementos – is discarded.’
Once We Were Brothers Page 21