Two Sides of Me

by Nora Sarel

  From day to day, the apartment was becoming dirtier. Each person cleaned only his own corner, but there were plenty of fights over the general cleaning. I remember that one of the children once had a high fever and a runny tummy and was throwing up all night. The following day, the tenants came to his mother with demands and complaints, as if he’d done it deliberately, and Yanek’s mother in particular shouted at her, “Clean up your dirty, smelly children”, Yanek was so embarrassed by what his mother had said that he ran away to the kitchen, and the woman they’d shouted at started crying.

  “Someone should go down to Tadeush’s pharmacy to get the child some medicine,” Leo called out. Although he had no young children of his own, he actually treated the kids better than all the other occupants.

  My mother immediately went off to the pharmacy down the road and returned fifteen minutes later with medicine.

  “Tadeush said that you should give him two teaspoons now, and one teaspoon every four hours after that. He’ll be fine by tomorrow”, she declared confidently, and shot a reproachful look at Yanek’s mother.

  You know? Tadeush’s pharmacy is still there, on the outskirts of the ghetto, and many people visit it. The pharmacy was turned into a museum, and that’s very important. That way people will know what happened in the Krakow Ghetto, and how that man helped the Jews. Tadeush died a few years ago. It was a Saturday, and Israeli school children from a religious Jewish school happened to be there at the time. They decided to accompany him on his final journey, even though he was Christian and was naturally being buried in a Christian cemetery. His funeral was on a Saturday, a day that Jews are forbidden to enter cemeteries, most certainly not Christian cemeteries. That’s how much that man, that dear man, was cherished, a Righteous Among the Nations. Tadeush was a friend of my parents.

  We also had our fair share of happy moments at home. I remember the Passover Seder, the ceremonial dinner we all celebrated together. All the children sang the song about the four questions together, as is customary. You do know what that is, right? No? Well, never mind. All the children participated in the celebration. A few fathers put on a show, and one of the mothers danced the spring dance with colorful scarves. I also remember when Gusta was born, a beautiful baby girl. We were all standing around the mother when little Gusta came into the world. No one was alarmed by the birth, no one ran away, and even we, the children, thought it quite natural.

  One morning, my mother woke me up and said, “Winter has already arrived. It’s very cold out. Let’s put on warm sweaters and go quickly to look out the kitchen window”.

  “But it’s still so early in the morning. The room’s still dark and I want to sleep,” I complained.

  “That’s right,” my mother replied, “but it started snowing today and the snow is as white and soft as down.”

  Again, as always, she helped me to climb up, drew the curtain as she did every morning, opened the window slightly, and a cold wind rushed toward us. We felt good. That day, the entire yard area was covered with fresh cushions of snow; even the bench in the corner had disappeared. It was a special feeling that I have no words to describe, a wonderful feeling that one wish would last forever.

  There was nobody out in the courtyard. It was empty. Everyone was hiding in stuffy, crowded apartments. And I, I stayed sitting on the windowsill and stared for hours at the soft blanket of snow that enveloped the bench and covered the tree, which stood out against the white background, covered in white flakes. I prayed for that snow to never melt. I was happy.

  And so, day after day passed, although there is one day that I remember very well. It was the last time I sat on the sill. As I was sitting there, looking at the bare tree in the corner, an old man walked slowly along the snow-covered sidewalk. He could barely lift his feet. He was hardly moving, his shoes leaving wet tracks on the cobblestones and carrying white snowflakes that quickly melted. Suddenly, German soldiers entered the courtyard and soiled the glaring white image.

  “Mom, Mom! Come look at the soldiers!” I cried out quietly. Before I could even finish the sentence, I saw a soldier in uniform pull the man by his beard and drag him like that, like a rag. I can see this picture before my eyes as we speak, as if it’s happening right now, and I was maybe four years old, perhaps less.

  “Why is he pulling his beard?” I whispered so that I could hear, but my mother didn’t answer me. Tears welled up in her eyes. All the occupants came to watch the scene through the kitchen window. They each climbed onto the wooden stool in turn, glanced quickly, then stepped down, immediately followed by the next person. They were like me, seeing and unseen, and yet they were still afraid that someone would notice them, so they quickly moved away from the window. I noticed their tears; how they clasped their fingers and raised them to their mouths. They had no idea what to do. Only my mother knew exactly what to do in such a situation. She drew the curtain, lifted me in her arms, and said, “You shouldn’t watch such things. It’s not for children.” Then, with the resolution of a leader, she marched to the main room of the apartment. Everyone followed her in to discuss the matter.

  The following day, Mom packed a suitcase with a few belongings and we quickly left the apartment, just like that. We were in such a hurry that we didn’t even have time to say goodbye to Yanek, Or to my oak tree.

  2.

  A new place.

  The home we moved to was quite different from our old apartment. It was a double-story house, spacious and quite luxurious, built of bricks and colorfully tiled. The garden surrounding it was thick with pear and apple trees, and it had a white wooden fence. The house was covered by a red tile roof from which a silver-colored chimney protruded. There was a small attic in the roof, which we could reach only by climbing a ladder, but it seemed to be blocked off and the ladder was nowhere to be seen.

  True, this beautiful house didn’t have a courtyard, or a high window to climb to, to look at the yard through. There were no noisy children and no laughter in the rooms. The adults also whispered, and I missed the other children and the view from the window. I missed everyone who lived with us in the home we’d left so quickly and so suddenly. I especially missed Yanek.

  Now, while I’m telling you my life story, and I know very well what real life was like then, I can tell you without a doubt that our new place was truly a dream house. I have the address, and I visited there yesterday. It’s located at the southwestern end of the Krakow Ghetto, on Stromostowa Street, by the old wooden bridge. The house stood far from the harsh bustle of ghetto life. Even before the war we couldn’t have dreamed of such a house, and especially now with the situation worsening, with hungry children roaming the streets, when there was an Aktzia every day. Do you know what Aktzia means? It is a concentration of Jews prior to their deportation and murder. At that time, we had the luck to live in such a house, far from the war, from the occupation, and from fear, as if everything happening just a few feet away from us was only a nightmare.

  Naturally, back then I didn’t understand how absurd our situation was. After all, I was barely four and half, and maybe that’s why I took it all for granted. That’s how children see the world.

  The ground floor of the house was divided into three rooms that were used as offices during the day and were locked at night. Three German soldiers worked there. Every morning, they came to work and opened the front door using their key. I don’t think we had a key to the house. I think that the soldiers left the house in the early hours of the evening, and only occasionally stayed in their offices until late at night. I was asleep by then, so I don’t know more than that. There were two rooms and a kitchen on the top floor. A young Jewish newlywed couple without children of course, Paula and Lonek, lived in a long narrow room. My parents and I lived in the other room, the larger of the two. There was even a dog to guard the house, and there was a huge crucifix in the entrance hall. It too may have been watching over us. Now I say this cynically, but then, I
accepted things without question.

  I don’t remember lacking anything or being hungry in those days. On the contrary, if my memory doesn’t fail me, I think that there was plenty of food, and my parents were always well-dressed. I remember how Dad left the house every morning and returned at dusk. They both wore white patches on their arms like decorations, as did Paula and Lonek. Only I didn’t have a patch.

  “I also want a patch with a Star of David,” I told my mother, but she snapped that children didn’t have patches. Years later, after I learned of what went on inside the ghetto walls, I always wondered and asked myself how it could be, how come we were given such a fancy home.

  I thought about this hundreds of times, but I had no answer. When the war was over, I asked my mother, “How come we had a different life from other people, there in that beautiful house in the ghetto? Why did we live with German soldiers?”

  The answer I received always seemed evasive to me and certainly didn’t satisfy me: “Your father worked for the ghetto administration, and he was very important to the Germans, so they arranged that house for him.”

  I didn’t believe her. Naturally, I didn’t want to ask other people; I was afraid of nasty responses. I was ashamed to admit that my family received preferential treatment and I wondered if it was all so simple, why did she say it so quietly? What were they ashamed of? Maybe there were things I wasn’t allowed to know? Eventually, I learned the truth. Yanek’s father told me when we met in Israel, and after he told me, I gave my mother a piece of my mind for leaving in me room for doubt. The answer she always gave was with such suspicious discomfort that even I couldn’t believe her, and why did I have to hear the truth from a stranger, who proudly and enthusiastically told me about my brave father, how he saved dozens of Jews whom he hid in that house after my mother and I left him? Jews who were going to be sent to the concentration camps were saved by my father.

  Mom trembled as I spoke and told me that she was sure I wouldn’t understand. I think that they were simply ashamed of being different and receiving preferential treatment. And maybe they were still afraid of Papa being caught for his actions. My father was an important water engineer in Krakow and he knew the city’s water and sewage systems. The Germans needed his services because without his help, they couldn’t run the city. He took advantage of his connections with the Germans and moved us to live in comfort in a house that was an island of sanity inside hell.

  At first, my parents didn’t want to be different from the other Jews so that they wouldn’t suspect them of collaborating with the Nazis, so they stayed in their apartment in the ghetto, but Mom put pressure on Dad, claiming that she could no longer live with all those families in such a small apartment, and persuaded my father.

  That’s how we came to live in the beautiful house by the old wooden bridge. But not for long. A few months later, the Germans forced my father to send us away me and my mother, and that brought our good period to a close.

  Oddly enough, I can clearly remember moments that occurred when I was a very young girl, even though most people are unable to.

  I remember in detail the beautiful house we moved to. I can tell you exactly what it looked like, and how pleasant it was to sit on the five stairs leading up to the house, with two decorative stone lions on both sides to adorn them. I was sure they were protecting me. Every morning I sat on the first stair with my tiny feet on the second and watched. I sat there and watched. I remember it as if it were happening right now. The soldiers working in our house came out every now and again for a few minutes, to rest or to smoke a cigarette, and they always smiled at me, pinched my cheek, and pulled the white ribbon decorating my braid, unraveling it so I’d have to run to my mother to braid my hair again. Sometimes they picked an apple or pear from the trees in the yard and gave it to me, and I’d greedily bite into it, the juice running down my dress, and I would run back to my mother to clean up the stains. I remember a big dog lazing next to me, warming himself in the sun with me, but I don’t remember him ever barking. I also remember two colorful chickens clucking in the yard, and every so often I saw the eggs they laid. Mom was always delighted when I collected them and gave them to her.

  Perhaps it is because of the front stairs that I remember everything so well, because I was always sitting on them and watching. I wanted to know more and more, and when you spend so much time observing, your brain eventually retains something.

  My mother still sang a song to me every evening, before bedtime. Not the lullaby she sang to me at our old place, but a different song, in Polish. I didn’t ask her why the songs had changed, why she sang in Polish now, and I also didn’t ask her the meaning of the difficult words, which I’d never before heard anything of the sort.

  Mom explained the words to me:

  Violin play, play

  Play all night, play

  Give your violin heart

  Until all my emotions flare up erupt

  It was a terribly sad song, and an even sadder melody. You may have noticed that the lullabies we sing to children are always sad; songs that speak of bad times, adversity, and yet these songs are meant to lull the babies to sleep. I listened to the words of the lullaby without devoting much thought to them. The mournful tune, I guess, is what lulled me to sleep.

  Three or four months passed, or perhaps a little longer. I was just a small child and I didn’t really have a feel for time, but I could tell that something was happening. There was an abrupt change that even I, a four-and-a-half-year-old, noticed. Lonek and Paula unexpectedly disappeared from the house without even saying goodbye, and my mother stopped singing lullabies to me, something which she’d never before neglected to do at bedtime. I didn’t fuss and I didn’t beg her to sing to me, I simply hummed myself to sleep.

  One evening, when my father came home, he huddled with my mother in the other room, as though planning a secret operation. I don’t recall asking where Lonek and Paula had disappeared to. In Poland, it wasn’t customary for children to ask questions. I also don’t remember asking them what they were talking about, but I do remember that afterward, Mama came up to me and whispered, “Lenishka, Lonek and Paula have moved to Russia, and we too have to leave. Today, after dinner, we won’t be going to sleep, we’re moving to a new home. The apartment isn’t far from here, and so we won’t take many of our belongings with us. I’ll pack a few clothes in a small knapsack for you, and you can take only one doll with you, whichever you choose.”

  “I also want the book about Pavel and Gabel,” I said, and my mother packed that in the knapsack as well, without arguing.

  I stood looking at my two dolls for a long time, thrilled that my mother had shared her secrets with me. I didn’t cry; I only deliberated over which of the two dolls to choose, Anna or Katie.

  Finally, I said goodbye to Katie. I kissed her and hugged her tightly, then left her sitting on the sofa as if she were waiting for guests. And then I picked up my doll Anna, who was prettier, and we left the house together for the chilly street. Other than to my doll Katie, we didn’t say goodbye to anyone. We left dinner on the table, all the dishes, the salad and bread, as if we were going out for only a minute and would be right back. We didn’t speak out loud; we whispered and walked in frightening silence. The soldiers who worked at the house were busy with their work, sheltered in their offices, and I think they didn’t hear us, or they pretended not to. I remember everything precisely. And yet, how old was I? Not even five, yet I knew that it was not the time to ask questions although there was plenty to ask. My mother had already told me not to ask or speak. I remember that I wore a plaid pinafore dress made of fine wool fabric, with a thick blue coat on top. It was in the fall, and lightning lit up the sky. We could hear thunder, the kind that comes before the rain.

  My parents, with me between them, strode toward the city center. I had the rucksack on my back, Anna in one hand, and I held tightly to my mother’s hand with the o
ther. Dad was wrapped in a long coat and wearing a gray hat. Mom was carrying a large tote bag, and she too was wearing a felt hat and a black wool coat. My parents both had a white patch on the sleeve of their coats. We rushed, as if someone had arranged to meet up with us.

  The streets were packed with people despite the freezing and dreary weather. Children dressed in tattered clothes and worn shoes were sitting on the curb and begging. Some of them were lying on the sidewalk as if they were planning to sleep there. Night was falling. A cart passed by on the road, pulled by a man who looked poor and miserable. I knew he was one of us, because he too had a patch on his arm like my mother and father. The silence on the street was oppressive. We didn’t make a sound the whole way, and I wanted to talk, to laugh, to shout, but I remembered my mother telling me not to. Police officers and soldiers wandered among the people with bayonet rifles slung over their shoulders. And we walked, warmly dressed as though we didn’t belong there.

  But then, all of a sudden, a soldier with a gun stopped us. Neither Mom nor Dad looked scared, and without saying a word, they handed the soldier some papers. He showed them the way with his hand as he kicked my father in the leg, but we pretended that nothing had happened, as if we were used to it, as if talking to someone and receiving a hard kick from him at the same time is normal and acceptable.

  We continued until we reached the square by Tadeush’s pharmacy, not far from our first home. The square was lit with huge projectors, so we didn’t go in through the main entrance, but instead through Tadeush’s apartment, which was on the same floor as the pharmacy but behind it.

  We stood in front of the wooden door to his home and rang the bell. Dr. Tadeush opened the door, stuck his head out a little, glanced left and right in alarm at the dark alley. He motioned us to enter quickly. He locked the door twice and showed us to a room on the side where Max was. Now I realize that he was also waiting for us and that it was all prearranged. Tadeush gave us something warm to drink. Everything was done quickly. I remember that they even talked quickly, gulped down the warm tea, and it felt as if everyone was afraid of not having time to convey all that they had to say. I don’t remember what they talked about, since I fell asleep on my mother’s knees.