by Meryl Ain
He shuddered, remembering the heinous work he was forced to perform. He, along with other strong, young Jewish men, had been ordered to open the doors of the crematorium after the Jews had been gassed, and then carry the bodies to the ovens. The worst was when I recognized someone I knew, a friend or a neighbor or a cousin. Then it wasn’t mechanical, and I knew in my heart and my mind what I was doing. The Germans forced us to crush the bones by pressing the bodies through a coarse sieve. When we were finished crushing someone’s wife, grandfather, mother, sister, daughter, or son, a car came to pick up all of the ashes and pour them into the river so all traces would be gone.
“So, yeah, Irv,” Jakob finally said. “The deli man was in Auschwitz too. He was an SS guard; he was the guy who stood there with a whip and was in charge of the other SS guards—all with whips. He oversaw the whole operation. I’ll never forget that smirk of his. He told Jews to hurry—that they were going to take a shower. Thousands of naked people would come in at a time. The Germans tried to cram in as many people as they could. The room would then be locked for about seven minutes until the gas took effect and everyone was dead. My job was to clean up after the Nazis and bring the bodies to the ovens.
“I was sure I would never survive to tell about it. They would kill us because we knew too much; we knew what they were doing. We knew the depth and breadth of their evil.”
“Did you think about escaping?” Irv asked.
“I did, but I was sure I’d be caught. I also thought about suicide. I could’ve easily done it, just by running into an electric fence or striking a guard.”
“What stopped you?”
“It was an act of vengeance—to stay alive. I wanted revenge for the deaths of my parents, my brothers and sisters, and all of the Jews who were annihilated just because they were Jews. I wanted to live to keep their memory alive. I wanted to carry on the legacy of the Jewish people. I actually thought there were no Jews left in Europe, and I wanted to tell all who would listen what the Nazis did.”
“Did you lose your faith?”
“No, I grappled with it and argued with God. But in the end, I still believe I survived for a reason. And that is to tell the story so it will never happen again. I would prefer to tell you another story, one in which I look brave and fearless. I would prefer a story where I was a hero and saved people. But that wasn’t possible in those circumstances, and I wouldn’t be honest if I embellished what really happened to make myself look better. If you wanted to live, you did as you were told. And then most people still didn’t survive. Someone needed to survive to tell what happened. I did, and I’m telling you the God’s honest truth.”
The group at the table sat in stunned silence. Irv knew he had asked enough questions; anything more would be superfluous. Lenore had tears in her eyes. Cantor Yudenfreund looked ashen. Becky had a glazed expression on her face.
After a minute or two, Jakob spoke. “Let’s get something to eat before the food is all gone.”
“Okay,” said Irv, judging from the faces of the other guests at the table that they had heard enough. But for Irv, it was never enough. He always wanted more detail. He was in the news business. He particularly wanted to know more about the man who delivered the delicatessen, the man whose photo he had snapped.
As they walked to the food table, Irv put his arm around Jakob.
“I think you’re very brave, Jakob. You not only survived that horror, but you’re courageous to speak about it honestly. Most people in your circumstances wouldn’t say a word, or they would invent another story. If you like, I’ll develop the photo of the deliveryman, and if you think he’s the murderer from Auschwitz, I’ll try to help you do something about it. I’m not sure if anything can be done, but I’ll give it my best.”
“Thanks,” said Jakob, as he began to pile his plate with food.
For Bronka and JoJo, the birthday party was a big success. For Eva and Jakob Zilberman, it unleashed their profound differences and gave them a reason to continue their ongoing argument.
“I don’t know why you have to talk about Auschwitz to everyone you meet,” Eva said to her husband as they walked the few blocks home from the party. “I don’t tell the whole world about what happened to me.”
Eva had been the subject of one of Mengele’s experiments, and although she survived, she had almost died from typhus later. In addition, she had also lost her entire family.
“It’s my private hell,” she told Jakob.
“That’s your choice. I need to talk about it.”
“Other people would hide the fact that they were Sonderkommandos. It’s hardly something to be proud of. Why do you have to tell complete strangers?”
“It’s not any more shameful than having Mengele experiment on you. What choice did anyone have? If you wanted a chance to survive, you went along with it. And what of those who didn’t? Sure, a handful escaped, but wasn’t there a woman who shot a guard? The word was that she was stripped naked and about to be gassed, and she pulled a gun from a vicious guard, and shot and killed him. So, she made a point, but where is she now? They killed her instantly, and she doesn’t even have a grave on which to put a stone. She went up in smoke like everyone else.”
Esther, who was walking a few feet in front of her parents, holding her little brother’s hand, was starting to put two and two together.
“Are Faye and Izzy the twins’ grandparents?”
“No, they’re relatives, but they’re not their real grandparents. I suspect, like you, they have no grandparents,” said Eva.
“Why don’t I have any grandparents?”
“They were killed by the Nazis.”
“Why did they kill my grandparents?”
“Because they were Jewish.”
“What’s wrong with being Jewish?”
“Nothing, dear,” said Eva.
Ever since the day her daughter arrived, Faye hoped she could foster a friendship between Becky and Lenore Mandelstern. Since her scrape with the law, Lenore had lost some of her airs and was friendlier. With her new job, she stayed closer to home. Lenore was about Becky’s age, and she had a social life, as was evidenced by the young men who occasionally parked their cars in the Mandelsterns’ driveway. Faye had no idea that these dates provided a subterfuge for Lenore’s ongoing relationship with Irv Rosen. She reasoned that Lenore might agree to bring Becky to a dance or go on a double date with her. She worked in a hospital; perhaps she could even introduce her to a nice young doctor. She told herself that a boyfriend or a husband would provide Becky with the stability she needed. As progressive as she was, part of her agreed with Izzy when he said, “The most important degree a woman needs is an MRS.”
As they were cleaning up from the party, Faye said to Becky, “How was Lenore? Did you like her?”
“She was okay.”
“Did she discuss her social life?”
“Not really; she just said that she plays the field.”
“Anything else?”
Faye was now hanging on her every word.
“Yes, she mentioned that she would work on finding someone for me, so we can double date.”
“That’s great,” said Faye, feigning surprise, pretending the thought had never occurred to her. “How was the food at the party? What did you eat?”
“I just had some turkey,” Becky said.
“That’s all?”
“I had a piece of cake.”
“I know you love hamburgers. Didn’t you have one?
“No, I was afraid to.”
“Why? We got the chopped meat fresh from Morty’s this morning. People told me they were delicious. Izzy grilled them just perfectly.”
“I heard that Hitler poisoned the hamburgers.”
“Hitler?”
“Yes, and I also heard that he’s looking for Aron. He’s going to come after him.”
“That’s ridiculous, Becky. Hitler has been dead since 1945.”
“I know what I heard,” Becky insisted.
Izzy was not a subtle man, and he had never concealed his dislike for Faye’s daughter. This bothered and hurt his wife, especially because Faye was so accepting of his son, Henry, and his family. Now that Becky was living in their home, he would roll his eyes and make disparaging remarks about her. This made Faye even more defensive. She continued to rationalize her daughter’s behavior. She is a smart girl and a good-looking one too, especially when she fixes herself up. Look how loving and generous she is with the twins. She was social at the birthday party. The strange behavior isn’t consistent. Some days, she is as normal as apple pie.
So, instead of accepting that there was a problem with Becky and addressing it, Faye did nothing.
“Can you imagine Jakob Zilberman holding court at the party about his time at Auschwitz? Most Sonderkommandos wouldn’t even admit it,” Aron said to his wife when they were finally alone in their room.
“It wasn’t his fault. He had no choice. He did what he could to survive,” she said. “You know the girls are getting older,” she added. “They’re in Hebrew School, they talk to the Rosen girls, who know everything, and now they’re friends with Esther Zilberman, who must be very well aware of the Shoah. It’s only a matter of time until they figure out that we have a story too.”
Aron’s face became sullen and he did not answer her.
“You are so ashamed of our story? You are so ashamed of our love? You should be proud of it!” Judy cried. “I am.”
“You are proud of your father, of your people, of your country?” He turned red as he said it, and he knew as the words shot from his mouth that he should not have said this.
“I forsake them for you and your religion, like Ruth in the Bible. Isn’t that enough for you? I love you so much I gave up everything for you. And you are ashamed of me. I don’t think you love me anymore. In fact, I wonder whether you ever loved me.”
Aron could not say a word. He didn’t know the answer. Had he ever loved her, or had he gone with her because he was bereft and at the end of his rope? Had it just been an easy fix? But those were feelings that were best unuttered. She did not deserve those thoughts. She had done everything for him; he doubted that he could live without her. She was his guardian angel; of course, he must love her.
He understood that she had loved him from the moment she’d first seen him as a young boy. He knew that she continued to love him, even though he was not available to her. It was an unspoken, pure, hidden love, but he could see it in her eyes and in her actions. At the peril of her own safety, she had protected him when Jews were endangered. The punishment in Poland for hiding Jews was death. But she helped him over and over again. With the agility of a cheetah and the cunning of a fox, she had hidden him and moved him from place to place—always at her own peril.
After the war, when he returned to Kielce and experienced yet another catastrophic persecution, she’d lifted him up again. He’d been numb and had not wanted to go on. But it was she who gave him hope and comfort and provided him with a roadmap to move forward. For him, she renounced her family, her religion, and her country. She declared herself a Jew and said she would go with him. She had even quoted Ruth. “For whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
Why couldn’t he make her a Jew? He had pondered this question and prayed on it. How many Christians had Hitler made Jews in order to torture and eliminate them? How many of the baptized—who had never thought nor uttered a Jewish thought or prayer—ended up in the ovens of the crematoria because the Nazis had determined that they were Jews. Hitler’s definition of a Jew included tens of thousands of people who did not think of themselves as Jews. Even if they had converted to Christianity from Judaism, they were nonetheless considered Jews by the Nazi regime. Even if their parents or grandparents had converted, they were still Jewish in the eyes of the Nuremburg Laws. Why couldn’t the reverse be true? Why couldn’t a Christian woman—who wanted to be one—become a Jew?
After the Kielce pogrom in 1946, like many other displaced persons, Dyta and Aron had headed to the American sector in Germany. They were both done with Poland—forever. Poland was a graveyard filled with people who still wanted all the Jews gone.
On the way to Germany, he continued to pray. He prayed for the souls of his entire family. He prayed for understanding of why he alone—of all of his loved ones—had been the one to survive. Surely God who made the heavens and the earth would provide him with an answer.
Dyta begged him to teach her about his religion, and she absorbed his lessons like a sponge. He began to teach her how to pray—the Shema, Modeh Ani, Shehechiyanu. Prayer came to her naturally; she had been a devout Catholic. Although prayer was also intrinsic to Aron’s being, he now questioned his faith. He sometimes wondered why he was still praying. He had lost his entire family—not only his immediate family, but also his extended one. The vast majority of his friends and acquaintances were gone too. But he was still alive. It must be for a reason. God was infinite; God knew why. He was praying for the answer to his existence, to his survival. Then it came to him in a flash—a message from HaShem—even before they reached Germany. God wanted him to marry Dyta and raise a Jewish family. By the time they reached Warteplatz, they were a couple, ready to be married in one of the many group weddings.
“Why don’t you just leave me now?” she cried, interrupting his reverie, and bringing him back to the present. “Marry a nice Orthodox wife with yichus from a family of rabbis. A divorce—that’s what you really want; isn’t it? I renounced my religion, my family, my country. I have taught our daughters to pray the Jewish prayers. I pray with them. And it is not just lip service; I pray with my whole heart. I am kosher and have taught them to be kosher. I go to synagogue. I observe all the holidays. I have stood in the kitchen with Faye for six years. I have absorbed everything she knows about Jewish living. What more do I need to do to be Jewish in your eyes? No matter what I do, you still think of me as a shiksa.”
Aron knew he would never leave her. And even if he wanted to, how could he? She had saved his life—he owed her—and she was the mother of his children. He now felt ashamed. He knew that he had committed a sin. She was innocent; he had made her complicit in his scheme. He should have told her at the outset that only a rabbi could convert her. But then, in his grief and his pain and in the chaos of anti-Semitic Poland, he could not have imagined finding a rabbi who would officially transform her into a Jew. Weren’t most of the rabbis dead anyway?
Who was to say what was true and what was false in the shadow of the Shoah? What did right and wrong mean in the crucible of World War II and its aftermath? What was real and what was fake? Wasn’t everything relative?
He had made her a Jew as best he could. She had given birth to their two children, who were being raised as observant Jews. She had done everything he had wanted her to do—and more. And she had done it all without guile, with sincere kavanna
h and a good heart.
He cradled her in his arms as she sobbed.
“I would never leave you; you are my life,” he said. “And I would die if you ever left me. I cannot live without you. You are right; we cannot keep so many secrets. When the girls ask, we will tell them about what they need to know about the Shoah, and that it was you who saved my life in a terrible time. We will tell them that you chose to become a Jew and now you are a model Jewish mother.”
It was a rainy summer Sunday, and the girls were reenacting a scene from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Mindy had joined them since her mother and Becky had gone to Manhattan to see a Broadway matinee, Brigadoon. Lenore had gotten Becky a blind date, a friend of a man she occasionally dated. While Lenore carried on an intense long-term affair with Irv Rosen, she casually dated others, so as not to arouse suspicion. Bringing Becky along provided even more cover.
All three of the girls were in the process of reading Little Women, which chronicles the life of the fictional March sisters who lived in New England during the Civil War. The girls were busy setting up the living room of the March family’s home on their bedroom floor and assigning roles of characters in the book to their dolls. Mindy had brought along her Ginny doll.
The game had been triggered by their interest in reading, which Aunt Becky had started to assiduously encourage since she came to live with them. Becky, unlike most women of her age, was a college graduate. She had a degree in English Literature from Smith College. Lenore’s BA was from NYU, so the two of them quickly bonded because they both considered themselves intellectually superior to the vast majority of their peers.