War Torn Love

by Londo, Jay M.

  Consequently, if we were not at work, then we ended up spending our time eating and we slept a lot, due to the physical demands being placed on all of us, and still we nearly starved; we seemed to always be exhausted, no amount of sleep could help us. There was nothing available we had could do for amusement to let off some steam. This was not the sort of place to attempt such things, like the any semblance of a normal life we had all left behind. Our old lives seemed like nothing more than a fleeting dream. The only thing any of us wanted now was to survive, and get as far from this place as we could. To survive this, we turned inward to our family, and religion to try to get through this, drawing on each other’s strength, we tried helping one another out.

  As a very close family, we did our best to look after each member, so when ever were all in the apartment together, we make a genuine effort doing our best to completely shut the outside world out. We shut the drapes to the windows, so we would not have to look out on the scenes that could very easily be from the last days. Pretending that it does not existed. Trying to make some kind of resemblance out of our lives, inside this small confining space with the one thing, we still had accessible to us, our imagination our place becomes magical, by using our imagination we our able to achieve just about anything. Poppa and My father-in-law told us all amazing stories. We also played games, sang songs, it help us all to fell just a smidge better. And while in the apartment we did our best to practice our religion. We could not let our faith be robbed from us.

  Through all this, melancholy I am very pleased, and ecstatic to say we survived. At times, I believe my husband was the only one that could possibly still keeps my spirits up, these days through the darkest of times. Times I challenged my own faith. Abram and I were still very much in love with one another, as much so as the day that we married. I could not fathom him not in my life. It surprised me at times, that he could still possibly remotely find me beautiful. As a young couple, it could be quite a challenge to try keeping the romantic interludes between us alive, burning with passion under such extreme of circumstances. You might ask how that could even be possible. Before the German’s occupation started, we made love to one another just about every single night, the feeling I got, I really enjoyed making love to my husband, he tended to always be so tender with me, it made it more enjoyable knowing that he would never hurt me, or take advantage of me. Fast-forward to our time there – one major drawback to being able to make love, we never have any resemblance of privacy. We all shared a tiny room with my sister as well as her husband, and daughter, and our own daughter, it was wall to wall bed; one could not get out of bed without disturbing someone lying nearby. There was not an inch to spare, modesty had to be completely over-looked and then thrown out the window. It is just not us experiencing this problem, every couple in that tiny apartment had at one time or another suffered from this. We heard at least one couple almost every night going at it. Out of respect to the couple, we never brought it up with one another - that we had heard them from the night before. This was out of respect; we had tried keeping our love alive. And we do not desire to ruin it for anyone.

  My personal fear for my own relationship was, we as a couple was able to survive through the war. Especially when so much was being stacked against us. I sometimes lay awake at night crying to myself, wondering whether or not our relationship could endure all this, asking myself how it could, - I was dreadfully worrying about losing him. Could be very insecure at times, this place was only making it even worse. It had not helped that Abram had been barely touching me these days - the number one thing on his mind these days seems to be obtaining food for the family. Though concerning my husband, one thing he does every single morning and night without missing a single day. I have to when say he pulls me aside, pulls me into him and hugs me, holding me tightly for a minute or so, all wrapped up in his powerful arms, my head buried in his chest, I feel fractionally better.

  Glancing into my eyes, and then so delightfully telling me, “Hana - my love - with you in my life, I could go through anything, I draw my strength from your love, and your beauty you make my day, my life. You are my best friend. I have to remember that I truly love you; you have to remember to never forget that!”

  Some days those precious few moments, are the only thing that got me though the day.

  This place had taken all the hope of bearing more children from us, at least not until this was all over and finally behind us. I do not want to have another baby just to watch it being forced to slowly starve. Nervously - for me every time we made love, I secretly hoped and prayed to our God I did not end up getting pregnant. Imagine me not wanting to get pregnant, when it had always been my dream to have a large family. I would not want to bring in another child into such a cruel world with the presence of such malevolence all around us, knowing I would not be able to feed this child – that would truly be selfish. My worst fear was if the day arrives and I cannot feed my daughter, then I do not know what I would do. Not when I am forced like straight out of a real nightmare, looking into my daughter’s heartbreaking eyes every single day, and had to witness firsthand the anguish on her adorable face, with no improvements. She was always asking me the painful question “why this was happening to us, had we done something bad, was she a bad girl?” However, her young mind she was only two-in-a-half years old she could not possibly wrap her mind around it. However, when she started crying and then pointing to her tummy, saying, “I am hungry!”

  I just do not know what to say to her to comfort her, since she is constantly hungry.

  “Mommy I am hungry!”

  It tears my insides apart. Thing you have to understand my daughter was saying this after we had already eaten; most nights she went to bed crying from hunger. Sometimes we only had sufficient amount of food to eat once day. The worst is knowing there was nothing I could do to alleviate her hunger pains!

  We do not actually live here in Tuliszkow, rather we barely exist and I have learned there is a big difference between the two. We do not live much better than the rat’s that hang about. We have a few things in common. The rats, as well as us are both willing, and search out food scraps. I even have seen people firsthand eating scraps off the ground when something was dropped; no food went to waste ever.

  Gitla had finally gotten pregnant - somehow through all this madness life couldstill flourish. We were given hope by this blessed event for more than three months we fed off this wonderful news for strength.

  However, it was to prove to be not so good news for very long, she suffered a miscarried. I think in her fragile condition going into this, she had needed some happiness to snap her out of her depression, she had been barely been hanging on to reality as it was. I think that this was compounded with all the suffering - it proved to be too much. None of us could had possibly imagined. For a brief time while she was pregnant, she started smiling once more. She had such a pretty smile. But a couple of days after suffering the miscarriage, When we arrived back from work, she had told us she was excusing herself to go the bathroom, she walked over and kissed Judka, her husband, told him,“I love you Judka,”

  I had not thought anything wrong with her behavior to make me suspect anything was wrong, but Judka on the other hand thought she was acting a bit strange.

  Instead of going the bathroom, she went up to the top of our apartment building where we were living, and ran building up speed as she made her way across the roof top, and then leaped off the roof. There was no hesitation on her part whether or not she should do it or not. She did not even scream out as she fell to her death. She had been completely heartbroken, had not been sleeping, or eating, she had shut down, yes, we all had been concerned about her, on hind side, we should had been even more so. The Nazis had managed to completely break her. She left this world, leaving a brief note, we found later on after her death, which read as followed, “I just cannot do this any longer! I am sorry to all of you, especially you my dear Judka. Please try to forgive me!”

  T
hen more tragedy and sadness struck, another dark forbidding cloud passed over our family like a heavy evil weight, about a week after Gitla’s death. Judka was not right in the head after his wife’s death. Due to the requirements of Judka’s job Judka went outside the Ghetto, to a makeshift cemetery, while digging graves in the hot afternoon sun, when I guess he too had snapped, completely heartbroken with the loss of his wife. He deeply loved her. She was his first and only love. She had been the only thing that had been keeping him going all this time.

  He laid down his shovel. Screamed out, not trying to hide his next move, “No, no more, you Nazi bastards you took my wife from me I want to go to her!”

  He tried to make a run for it. Escape all this madness; just leave it all behind him, before he laid down that shovel. He knew darn well what it was he was doing. He knew what the outcome was going to be ahead of time. Honestly, that is exactly what he had sought. He had managed to make it about five-hundred yards from the grave he had been digging, before two soldiers spotted him tearing off, and he was plowed down with a hail of machine gunfire. Frankly, I do not think he had, had any sort of intention at all of actually escaping, but rather he intended on only escaping the sheer madness this place represented, and the loneliness he had been experiencing, living in a world without his wife proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  In less than a week, the Ghetto had claimed two of my dear family members, plus a baby that should never have died. This place was dragging us down like an anchor, which we could not seem to escape from. The Nazis had taken too much of my family - enough was enough. Truth be told what they both ended up doing because of despair. Absconding from this world nothing. Nothing of us had not thought of doing, including me before, probably at least a couple different of times in a single day, nearly every day. We would all be lying if we said anything otherwise, but our strength comes by not acting on such a dark thought. Those of us that stayed behind, we chose to survive. They left us behind to pick up the pieces. We could not possibly blame any of them. It helped that we could understand. With understanding, came forgiveness.

  But our God forbids us committing such atrocities. We had to draw solace, knowing as long as we had our devotion to each other, and faith to our God, we could somehow miraculously survive through all this. And come out of this stronger, with the hopes that just maybe one day The God will hear our many unanswered prayers, and then will finally all come to an end all this needless suffering.

  We all had hopes the Americans will come to our rescue. Since it seemed the French and British had yet to come, it would seem they had completely failed us, it had been so long. Perhaps they were losing the war. We just do not get any news, other than propaganda in favor of the Germans.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Preparing to ship out”

  In the middle of December 1942, in the thralls of an exceptionally harsh winter, the Ghetto was over flowing with people many times, over what it should hold - it was quickly becoming an unsafe living environment, a cesspool disease, and despair was running rampant. The conditions for all of us were utterly deplorable and only getting worse by the day. Sickness and death was spreading quickly.

  Then there was a complete lack of a housing situation. Which was now beyond dire, a long time ago; everyone that was fortunate enough to have previously been assigned a place to reside now had to share even more. The residents started over the last several months taking on the added responsibility to keep as many of the poor souls off the cold streets, and try keeping them warm, and not freezing to death. Still we could not help them all - not even close to it. We all did everything humanly possible to though the deficiencies were breaking my heart. In fact, there was no more room anywhere - people slept in hallways, doorways. They huddled in the street, built fires in barrels in the streets to keep themselves warm. All the blankets and clothing that could be spared were given to them, we even resorted to taking the belongs - including clothing off of the dead - if it could go to assisting others. Not much reprieve for our people where still freezing to death, right on the streets, out in the open. As the Polish winter was taking an extreme toll on them - weeding out those that could not stand it. The ones that died in the streets, bodies became as hard as ice, as the carts made their rounds to acquire the most recent of dead bodies. Because of the vast numbers of the dying, it sometime took a couple of days to come around and collect. And by then, there were more…and more.

  My family did our own part, sacrificing all what we could and took in another family of four. Our apartment was now swelling with way too many people; we hardly had room to move about, let alone handle even more people. Nevertheless, it was our duty - anything else would have been shameless.

  Production in the many factories set up throughout the Ghetto was at its highest levels since the founding, - running more smoothly than ever, but we would learn a painful lesson from the Germans. It did not matter how hard any of us had pushed ourselves, and worked ourselves to the bone, just in the hopes our family would get more to eat. No longer was this going to matter to the Germans. Our work was no longer worth it to them and we started to find that our things were not the only thing we would lose.

  We got word that people were starting to be shipped out of the Ghetto, on trains; this was a brash policy amendment. The very same way we came in, were beginning to leave again.

  The first question I asked myself - Where exactly where the people being shipped off to? No one really knew for sure, but there was an awful lot of speculation going on where or why this was all happening. A woman that worked at the sewing machine next to me said that her husband claiming Hitler is making Jews fight against their enemies, the Russians on the Eastern front.

  The influx of Jews had entirely stopped flowing into the Ghetto for the first time, at least since we had arrived. Rather now, what was happening, the train was flowing in the opposite direction, taking people away. Each time the train was pulling out the boxcars was either full of Jews, or goods produced by the Jewish work force of the ghettos.

  Along with the food we once were being supplied, the quantities had been drastically been cut back – repeatedly and with no explanation. It was nearly impossible to survive on what they were giving us. It seemed we were no longer relevant to the Germans and it would seem they no longer needed anything from us - rather we had become irrelevant as a people. If we threaten to strike, so we could increase the rations provided, enough to keep our families alive, then all rations would be cut off altogether. Then would allow us to starve. When a strike was formed thirty of the strikers were shot - killed were they stood.

  The trains were rolling out with more people aboard them each time - taking them away every couple of days and then another train full of people would roll out. We knew our day would be coming to an end at some point. The Ghetto was going to completely cleared-out eventually - still, there were at too many people to count, still here. When my family and I had arrived here, there were maybe five thousand people at most. But, we just made the best of our situation.

  When an apartment became vacant, than a new family moved on in within minutes of the previous family leaving. Sometimes fights would break out over it, sometimes to the death. When people are desperate enough, they are willing to do just about anything in order to keep their own family alive.

  On the morning of January 3rd 1943 there was a plainly typed note slipped under the apartment's door. My father-in-law went over and picked up the note, briefly opened it, glanced through it quick, dawning on him of its importance as it pertains to the family. He had a somber looking face when he called us all together for a family meeting, calling us away from our many activities, cooking, cleaning, conversations; he wanted us all to find out at the same time, the children were sent off to the bedroom to play.

  Then he glanced around the room, searching for our undivided attention, he cleared his throat, and then began to read from the typed note.

  Dated January 3rd,

 
“To all the occupants of the building #12. As you know there are those of us that have been shipped out, taken away from the Ghetto over the last months - This brings me to the point, you are now officially being ordered to report to the front of the building at 6:00 am the following morning January 4th, along with everyone else in this building. We will be coming through to make sure that you have vacated, and not trying to sneak off. We have all your names. Therefore by the orders of the Furor himself, you are asked to cooperate fully with the soldiers, and avoid putting yourself or your family in any sort of peril. The Nazis had requested us taking this action at this time; we hope that this will turn out to be a good thing for all of us! God be with you all, it pains me greatly to have to do this.

  Sincerely

  The head of the Jewish council”

  At first, the council was just randomly selecting individuals that were to be shipped off out of here to be able to meet the quotas. However, according to my brother-in-law, who just so happened to work in the Jewish community main office, and handles such matters, as papers pass by his desk, that was changing.

  On one particular day while he was working at his desk, he looked up and spotted the presence of the Nazi commanders. The entire office fell awkwardly silent as he was passing through - he was well guarded, and he was being escorted by a half dozen of his finest soldiers. The officer had come with a specific agenda. That was to give an updated, revised mandatory quotas. He upped the quotas for the month – ordering more Jews to be taken away. He casually suggested choosing whole blocks, then laughed and asked if they could call it a holiday gift. Each week the Nazi officer seems to be stepping up the quotas, they kept ordering more and more of us - this was drawing much suspicion amongst our people. Many questioned, quietly, and in hushed backroom meeting, why this was happening, and why was the rate in which we had to be shipped out was rapidly increasing.