The Darkest Hour

by Roberta Kagan

  I laid my head on my Mama’s soft shoulder. The feel of her body was a comfort to me in a very distressful time.

  The truck turned into a gated area that was enclosed by a large, dirty brick wall. From my vantage point through the slats, I could see that the top of the wall was covered in sharp wire stretching the entire length of the enclosure. Later, I would learn that the wire was called barbed wire and it could tear right through human flesh. This place felt like a prison. I shuddered.

  The first thing my parents did after we arrived was to look for a place for us to live. They tried endlessly to find an apartment but there was nothing available. People were living in very crowded conditions. There were three and four families stuffed into small one-bedroom flats. Since we couldn’t find a place of our own, my father talked to other Hassidic families to see if they had room for us. Everyone was barely surviving. Although people tried to help by offering to take us in when they were already overfull, he was not able to find even one place that gave us any privacy. And it was also not like him to inconvenience others. Finally, we were offered space in an apartment where another family of four was already living with two single men. They were not Hassidics and so my father turned them down. Papa didn’t know what to do, so he went to talk to the Jewish men in charge of taking care of things inside the ghetto. He tried to explain to them that he had a young single daughter and it was unacceptable for an unmarried woman to be living in a home where there were men. These leaders of the ghetto pushed my papa aside. I overheard someone right behind us spit the word Judenrat. That was the first time I had ever heard that term.

  ‘Judenrat?’ I asked Mama.

  ‘I don’t know what that is’, she said.

  I turned around to see a young woman carrying a small child in her arms. She looked at me and whispered, ‘The man your father was talking to is a Judenrat. You’ll get to know all about them. The bastards. The Judenrats are the Jews who collaborate with the Nazis. They lie. They tell us that they make it better here for the rest of us by working with our enemies. But it’s not true. The truth is, they only make it better for themselves. They sell their own people out for a couple of extra slices of bread.’

  My mother covered my ears. But it was too late. I’d already heard what the woman said.

  My father looked around him and then he turned to my mother and said, ‘I think maybe it’s best we should accept the offer from the family and the two men. Look at all the people sleeping on the sidewalks. It’s not an ideal situation, I know, but at least we will have a roof over our heads.’

  My mother nodded, and we moved in. The other family, the Greenbergs, consisted of a husband and wife with two young children, a boy of eight and a girl of ten. The entire family of four shared one small cot. It was the size of my bed where I had slept alone in our old house. The two single men, whom I later learned were brothers, shared the only other cot in the apartment. There was no place for our family to sleep, except on the floor. I put my things down in the corner, wondering how I was ever going to get used to this new and terrible way of life. Then one of the two single men, a handsome, muscular, dark-haired, dark-eyed young fellow, turned to the other single man who was a slender fellow with the same dark hair and eyes and whispered something that I couldn’t hear. The slim one looked up at me and then he nodded to the other man.

  ‘You and your family can use our bed. My brother and I will sleep on the floor.’ The handsome one said to my father, ‘I’m sorry, but the bed is a little lumpy.’ He smiled. I was taken in by his looks. Not only was he easy on the eyes but he was kind and charming. I remember thinking, God forgive me, but as long as that man is here sharing our apartment, I don’t think I will hate it here in this prison in Warsaw as much as I probably should. What a crazy way to think. I fought back a smile.

  ‘Thank you,’ my father said, bowing his head. ‘I will sleep on the floor as well. The women can have the bed. But I must put up a sheet to separate my wife and daughter from the single men. This is our way.’

  ‘I understand. And I will help you to put up the sheet. It will give the ladies the privacy and respect they deserve. I am Azriel, and this is my younger brother Seff,’ the attractive one of the two said to my papa. That was when I learned his name was Azriel. I repeated it in my mind. Azriel.

  My father nodded. ‘We are the Rosenblums,’ he said and then said nothing more. I knew by the way the two brothers were dressed that they were not Hassidic nor Orthodox Jews. They were clean-shaven, without sidelocks. Neither of them wore a head covering. This meant that in normal circumstances, my family would not have associated with them at all. But these were far from normal circumstances. The Greenbergs were not religious Jews either and, because of this, I knew that my parents, especially my Papa, would want me to keep my distance from all the others who we were sharing this apartment with.

  I watched as the men helped Papa hang a sheet separating Mama and me from the rest of the group. I knew I should not be looking at any man with eyes of desire; it was a sin. But Azriel was so strong and attractive that I could hardly keep myself from glancing his way. His brother Seff was fine-looking too, but not nearly as striking or charismatic.

  It was a law in the Warsaw ghetto that all Jews were required to wear an armband with a Star of David on it. We had to wear this thing at all times. This was to ensure that everyone we met would know we were Jewish. The Nazis meant for it to humiliate us. Many of the Jewish people I met in the ghetto were angered and ashamed because they were forced to wear it. My papa didn’t feel that way at all. When my mother sewed it onto his coat, he smiled at her and then at me and said, ‘I am proud to wear this. I am proud to be a Jew.’ It brought tears to my eyes.

  But it didn’t surprise me. I knew my family history and I knew how proud my father was of his heritage. In fact, you see, my papa was a Hassidic. The Hassidics didn’t want to assimilate into society. They believe that the Jews are God’s chosen people so they want to stand out. That’s why they dress the way they do. In fact, many of them believe that the Holocaust happened because the Jews tried to assimilate themselves into regular society. I don’t agree with that. But I am no longer Hassidic, as you know. I am not even Orthodox anymore.”

  “Bubbe, there is so much I never knew about your life. I had no idea that you were born into a very religious family. After all, my parents did not raise me to be religious. But, over the years I’ve met some religious people and they rarely change. What happened to change your mind, Bubbe? And why?”

  “Keep listening to my story and you will better understand why.

  Next, my family was given a book that we would need to use in order to claim our weekly food rations. The rations were so small that they hardly provided enough to feed one person let alone three. But Mama and I were small and slender women while papa was a hefty man. I already knew that my mother would probably give most of our food to my father. I didn’t care. Food didn’t matter to me. At least not then. I didn’t learn to really appreciate food until I was starving. Then it became very precious. But of course, that was much later.

  Once we were settled into our new home, I sat on the edge of the bed. The blanket was old and dirty and the very idea of laying down on that filthy mattress made me cringe. In fact, I began to wonder if God had meant for me to go to America with Kalman. But if I had gone then my parents would have been forced to endure these horrific conditions without me. And I couldn’t bear to think of them here in this terrible place without my love and support.

  Mrs. Greenberg was a wealth of information about the way life worked in this strange new place called the Warsaw Ghetto.

  ‘As you can see, we don’t get much in rations. But if you have things of value to sell, you can buy extra food, clothing, and sometimes medicines on the black market. If you can find a way to afford it, try and buy a few extra blankets. You will need them once the winter comes. This apartment is riddled with lice, I’m afraid. The insects have infested the whole building, so it’s impos
sible to get rid of them. Believe it or not, you’ll get used to the itching.’

  I trembled at the thought. But my mother answered with the grace and calm she’d always shown to the world.

  ‘Thank you for the information, Mrs. Greenberg. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Charna Rosenblum, this is my daughter, Ruchel, and that is my husband Zindel,’ my mama said to Mrs. Greenberg. But she glanced quickly at me.

  ‘Also,’ Mrs. Greenberg added, ‘Watch out for the rats. They will try to steal your food.’

  Rats and insects, I thought. Oh, how I longed to go home. Yet I knew I must not complain. If I did I would disappoint my father.

  The following day, my father was assigned his work duties. My Papa, who had never done manual labor before in his life, along with the rest of the men in our apartment, was marched out of the ghetto by guards carrying guns. He was sent to work in a factory in Warsaw. His hours were long and the work was very physical and tedious. For a man who had never done anything but teach Torah this should have been devastating. Mama and I were afraid he would descend into a depression. But not my papa. Zindel Rosenblum bore his burden with dignity, returning from his daily tasks with a smile for Mama and me. Once he came home with bruises on his face. I felt sick when I saw him. I knew he’d been beaten. ‘Papa,’ I asked him. ‘What happened? Who hurt you?’

  ‘No one. It’s nothing, my child. I fell.’

  If my father ever lied to me, it was on that day. I did not ask him anything more. Neither did my mother. We just looked at each other and, although we did not say what we thought, we both knew he was enduring terrible circumstances every day.

  My mother, who had always been a good housekeeper, scrubbed down the apartment obsessively but it was too crowded, too old, and too bug-infested for her to achieve any degree of cleanliness. Still, every day when he returned from his job, Azriel would thank her for keeping our home so clean. The kindness that Azriel showed my mother impressed me. I couldn’t help but watch him when he wasn’t looking. Then one day, Papa caught me glancing at Azriel and gave me a strong look of disapproval, shaking his head and frowning. From that time on, I made a conscious effort to cast my eyes down and never even peek at Azriel when my father was at home.

  On Friday nights, Shabbos, my father went to the secret synagogue to pray while my mother and I sat on our cot behind the little privacy curtain and whispered our Sabbath prayers. Our Shabbos meals were meager but we shared them as a family. Papa would always tell us how blessed we were to be together.

  Two years passed. I don’t know how we got through them, but we did. The winters were unbearable. Mama and I huddled together to keep warm as we slept. At my mother’s insistence, we traded the mezuzah that her mother had given her for two blankets. We told Papa he must use one and we shared the other one. I tried to help my mother in her attempts to clean, all the while I couldn’t help but steal a glance at Azriel when I thought it was safe. Mama and I learned to bargain with the sellers on the street. We traded our possessions on the black market, mostly for food. Even though Papa was exhausted from working long hours on very little nourishment, he insisted upon becoming a part of an underground Yeshiva school that was established inside the ghetto for religious boys. The classes took place at night. Rather than getting his much-needed rest, my father chose to share the word of his beloved Hashem with the young seekers. And so he taught at the school three nights a week. Many of the Jews whom I met inside the Warsaw ghetto walls had given up on God, but not my father. Even though he’d lost weight from lack of food and functioned on very little sleep, he still stood up and danced on the high holidays in order to show his gratitude to God for all that he had been given. On Yom Kippur, he fasted and sang the Kohl Nidra, its beautiful and haunting melody melting into my heart and bringing tears to my eyes as it always had.

  The days were long and hard in the ghetto, and even though we were not living amongst other Hassidim, we were still living with Jews. I began to believe that there is an understanding that goes beyond sect. By that I mean there is a river that runs through our blood no matter whether we are Orthodox, Hassidic, Reformed, or have just given up on God altogether. I know that my parents would never have agreed with this, but I came to believe that Judaism was not only a religion or even a way of thinking but, secretly, I saw it as a nationality. I guess to me it is like a bloodline. The other people who shared our living space spoke Polish mixed with Yiddish. My parents and I spoke only Yiddish yet we could all understand each other. Until I came to America and learned English, Yiddish was the only language I spoke. Papa always told me that Yiddish is the language of God.

  Then Papa, along with the help of several other Hassidic men, organized a Hassidic Shul where they met for Shabbos services every Friday night and Saturday. That year in the fall when the holiday of Sukot arrived, my parents and I built a sukkah between two trees by hanging a sheet. Papa said the prayers in our little makeshift enclosure and then we ate our simple meal. I saw Azriel walk by with Seff. He turned to me and smiled. It may not seem like a lot, but it felt so wonderful to be with my family celebrating a holiday even if the circumstances were not ideal. At the end of Sukot comes the high holiday of Simchas Torah. I was excited to go to the shul my father had put together. I longed to see and hear the familiar services. This was a special holiday. Tonight the Rebbi would dance and the men would rock two and fro as they sang their way into spiritual ecstasy. The words to their songs made no sense, but the sound of their singing carried me to another world. I watched them swaying, their voices carrying through the small rooms.

  “Oy yoy, iy, yi,yi.” The old building reverberated with the joyful melody. The exquisiteness of it stopped my heart for a second. The men and women were separated. Men were close to the Rebbe while women were on the other side, much farther away. I never told my parents this, but every year on Simchas Torah, for as long as I could remember, I had wished that I could be caught up in the ecstasy of being in the presence of the Rebbe the way that the men were.

  The extreme beauty of the Simchas Torah service made the contrast with the hideousness of the Warsaw ghetto even more vivid to me. I had never witnessed the dark side of human nature. I saw things in that ghetto that I’d never seen before; tremendous cruelty was inflicted on innocent people by the guards. They thought nothing of murdering babies and children, let alone women and men. Once I saw a guard, a handsome young man who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old, with a group of his peers. He tore a baby from its mother’s arms and flung it against the wall of a building over and over. I can still hear the sound of the tiny skull as it cracked. The mother fell to the ground. My heart wrenched as I gagged. Laughing, the guard threw the woman’s murdered child at her. I have never been able to get that terrible image out of my mind. Even now I can taste the bile in my throat when I remember it. From where does a man so young get such terrible anger? Often, I wondered if absolute power had the same effect on all people. I don’t believe that it does. It was later in life when I learned that power only had that dreadful effect on some people, not on all. The men who respond to power by abusing it are men who don’t believe in their hearts that they deserve to have it. But I learned something else too. The ghetto also brought out the truest nature of a person. If a person’s heart was good they were driven to do what they could to help everyone they came in contact with, sometimes to their own demise. And there were also those who fell into the devil’s dark trap of selfishness, like the Judenrats who were willing to sell out their own people for a chance to survive, for a chance to save their families. Was it wrong? Of course, but I couldn’t hate them for it. I knew that they had succumbed to being human. By that I mean they put their own needs before the welfare of others. They chose to do whatever they had to do to save themselves and their loved ones. I pitied them because they had taken the bait that the devil dangled before them and swallowed it. Everyone I knew hated them. But somehow, I always knew things would not work out well for them. In the end, the
devil turned on the Judenrats the same way he always turns on his followers and the Judenrats ended up in the gas chambers standing right beside the poor souls they had sent there.

  One afternoon in the middle of the hot and sticky summer of 1942, I was outside hanging a load of wash out to dry on a clothesline in front of our apartment building. Azriel had stretched a thick line of rope between two trees for us to use. He surprised my mother and me with some wooden clothespins he bought on the black market. My mother was so grateful. She rarely had soap, but when she did, she and I scrubbed our family’s clothes. After I hung the few garments that we owned, I sat down out on the stoop in front of the house with a glass of water. The liquid felt good as it ran down my throat. You see, you could not leave your clothes hanging outside unprotected. People would steal your things even though they were badly used and worn. People were so poor that even stuff that seemed to have no material value was of value to them.

  It was getting late and I knew that Papa would be returning from his job in the factory soon. He would be marching with a group of other men back into the ghetto within a half hour or so and then we would share our small dinner of bread and a half of a potato. Our rations were so small, not nearly enough to keep a person alive.

  The ghetto was not a large area, even though it was very populated so it was not a far walk for my father from the gate to our apartment. I was surprised to see a guard escorting his group. They were walking down the street. It was a lazy day and so I watched as each man turned to go into his respective building. Most days there was no guard once the men were inside the ghetto walls. However, on this day a man wearing the uniform of a high-ranking Nazi officer walked on the side of the group of Jewish men. He was shouting at the men in German. I understood what he was saying because German and Yiddish are very similar. He was calling the men pigs. He was telling them that they were less than human. We had heard them say things like that before. Their words didn’t bother me but the power that they had to kill one of us without any consequences always loomed in the back of my mind. As the group came closer, I saw my papa’s face. His expression was one of a man who was completely unaffected by the Nazi. When he saw me he smiled as if it were a normal day and he was returning from shul. But of course, it wasn’t. Even though he was trying to send me confidence, I was afraid. And still, the Nazi was ranting. I sat on the stoop paralyzed, unable to move. I had learned that when the Germans were around, anything could happen, and it was never anything good. My heart was in my throat. I felt a little nauseated. Just then one of the men, a younger man, tripped and fell. His face grazed the pavement. I winced, knowing he’d hurt himself, but the Nazi was angry.