A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy (18 page)

By the time Mutti left the hospital, she had regained some of her strength. It was not easy for her to find herself back in
the Göttingen she remembered from her once-happy childhood and then the Nazi period. Almost as soon as the Nazis had come
to power, most of Mutti’s non-Jewish school friends acted as if they had never known her. They would cross the street when
they saw her approaching or look the other way in order not to have to greet her. She was treated even worse the two times
she returned to Göttingen from Lubochna to visit my grandparents and show me off, her new baby. Now, after the war, these
same women embraced her on the street and acted as if nothing had happened in the past.

On the Gronerstrasse, one of the town’s two main streets where my grandparents’ home and shoe store had been located, the
store’s name — “Schuhgescht Silbergleit” — could still be faintly seen under the painted-over name of the new owner, to whom
my grandparents had been forced to sell the house for a pittance. Mutti was born and grew up in that house, and now all that
remained of that past and of her family’s life in Göttingen were those rapidly fading letters spelling out her father’s name.
It is not surprising that in those early days in Göttingen, she frequently wondered whether having survived the camps was
yet another punishment she did not deserve.

It was during that very difficult period, and as she agonized over the lack of any news of me, that Mutti was approached one
day by an elderly woman who asked her to help her cross one of the busy Göttingen streets. Turning on the poor thing, Mutti
screamed, “Nobody ever helped my mother across the street in this damn town!” and walked off. Years later, once the past had
gradually lost its painful immediacy, Mutti would frequently recall her “shameful behavior,” as she characterized it. It bothered
her that she had been so terribly mean to that woman. “After all,” she would ask, “how could I blame the old lady for what
the Nazis had done to my mother?”

Not long after leaving the hospital, Mutti walked into the bakery next to where her parents’ store had been. She was immediately
recognized and lovingly embraced by Mrs. Appel, the baker’s wife. Despite Nazi orders not to fraternize with Jews, the Appels
continued to maintain contact with my grandparents until their deportation to Warsaw and helped them whenever they could.
After a happy and tearful reunion with Mutti, Mrs. Appel told her that she had something for her. She disappeared and returned
a few minutes later carrying a dust-covered suitcase. “Your parents left this suitcase with us for safekeeping,” Mrs. Appel
told Mutti, as she handed it to her. “We were always afraid that the Nazis would find it and punish us, but we promised your
parents we’d hide it, and we did.” The suitcase contained some tablecloths and sheets, as well as a few pieces of silver.
Near the bottom of the suitcase, Mutti found a batch of family photographs and some letters my grandparents had received from
her and her brother, Eric, in America. For Mutti, the pictures were a treasure trove. All her family pictures, including photos
of her parents, my father, and me, had been lost in the camps. Erased with the destruction of these pictures, it seemed to
her, was proof that her family had ever existed. Now Mutti could again look at those images of a happier life long ago, before
the Nazis destroyed it all. It was the first good thing that had happened to her since her return to Göttingen.

The Silbergleits’ home in Germany with the shoe shop on the ground floor

Housing was very difficult to come by in Göttingen after the war, despite the fact that the town had not been bombed. But
that was precisely why the population of the city had almost doubled with an influx of German refugees who had lost their
homes in the East. Mutti had been assigned an apartment, but she was not very happy with it because it was small and dark.
Her problem was solved when she ran into Mr. Fritz Schügl. She knew him as the owner of a jewelry store that was located one
street down from my grandparents’ store. He wanted to know whether she needed a place to stay and offered her an apartment
on the second floor of his one-family home. Housing and rentals generally were very strictly controlled in those days, but
concentration camp survivors were given priority and were entitled to larger apartments. When Mutti moved into the sunny apartment
with a large balcony overlooking the Schügl garden, her spirits improved dramatically and with them her health.

Throughout this period, Mutti never gave up hope of finding me. She contacted the many search bureaus in Germany and elsewhere
that had sprung up after the war to help reunite families. She was also in touch with those Kielce survivors whose addresses
she had been able to obtain, hoping to hear from anyone who had seen me or might have information about my whereabouts. In
one of the letters she found in the suitcase Mrs. Appel had hidden for my grandparents, Mutti came across her brother’s address
in the United States and immediately got in touch with him. Until then, Eric did not know that his sister had survived or
what had happened to their parents. He also learned that my father had not survived and that Mutti was still looking for me.
Eric thereupon contacted various Jewish organizations in the United States and in Palestine, seeking their help in finding
me.

Despite all the negative responses she received and suggestions from friends that I could not possibly be alive and that she
should face this sad reality for her own peace of mind, Mutti insisted that I was alive. “I know that he is alive. I can feel
it,” she would say. It was only a matter of time “before I find him,” she would tell anyone who tried to get her to face “reality.”
She was dramatically confirmed in that conviction by a blurred photograph she happened to see in a newspaper. According to
the photo’s caption, it showed a British soldier in Berlin walking with a group of liberated Jewish children. In that picture,
Mutti was sure that she recognized me. “Here is the proof I’ve been waiting for,” she told her friends, as she showed the
picture to all who had doubted that I could have survived. Although I was in Berlin at roughly the same time, I never saw
a British soldier in that city, nor was I one of the children in that picture. But Mutti did not know that at the time, which
was good, for the picture sustained her in her belief that I was alive and gave her the hope she needed in those difficult
days.

More than half a year after returning to Göttingen, Mutti learned that Dr. Leon Reitter, with whom she had worked in Henryków,
had survived the war and was in a displaced persons camp in the American Zone, near the Dachau concentration camp from which
he had been liberated by American troops. Born in Poland, he was a pediatrician who had received his medical education in
Czechoslovakia because in those days only a limited number of Jews were allowed to study medicine in Poland. My parents and
I came to know him in the Ghetto of Kielce; he was the doctor they called whenever I came down with a high fever or some other
ailment that needed attention. Dr. Reitter and my father became close friends in Henryków and spent many hours in the evenings
talking about the course of the war and what the future had in store for us. Dr. Reitter’s only daughter was killed with the
other children when the labor camp was liquidated. Mutti was, of course, overjoyed that Dr. Reitter was alive and invited
him to Göttingen. Although it was not easy in those days to move from one zone of Germany to another, he eventually made it.
Not long afterward, they decided to get married. When I arrived in Göttingen, Dr. Reitter was by my mother’s side at the railroad
station.

As soon as we reached the apartment in the Schügl house, I began to ask hundreds of questions, and so did Mutti. The questions
just rolled out, and some of the answers produced tears, but we were impatient to know what the other had gone through in
the years of our separation. I heard more details about my father’s death, about Mutti’s death march out of Ravensbrück, about
Dr. Reitter’s liberation from the Dachau concentration camp, and about the transport from Auschwitz to Germany that he and
my father were on after we were separated. One group from that transport was apparently shipped to Dachau and the other to
Flossenbürg.

Of course, I also wanted to know how Mutti had found me in Otwock. It appears that, true to her word, Lola, my counselor at
the orphanage, had placed my name on the list of children who wanted to emigrate to Palestine. The list was transmitted to
the Jewish Agency for Palestine. In the meantime, my uncle Eric in the United States had sent my name to a search bureau which
that agency maintained. Despite the fact that millions of people were searching for lost relatives and friends, an employee
of the Jewish Agency found, among the vast numbers of research requests received by his office, a letter indicating that a
Mrs. Gerda Buergenthal in Germany was looking for her child. He then somehow remembered that, days earlier, he had seen the
identical name on a list of children from an orphanage in Poland who wanted to be brought to Palestine. Considering that the
person at the Jewish Agency was performing this search manually in those precomputer days, it borders on the miraculous that
he managed in this fashion to make the connection between my mother and me. It is not surprising, therefore, that whenever
Mutti told the story of how we were reunited, she would declare that it had been “
beschert
” (preordained). “After all,” she would proclaim, “the fortune-teller in Katowice already predicted it.”

The Jewish Agency immediately informed my uncle in the United States, who contacted my mother. Unable to travel to Poland
after hearing that I was alive and afraid to write to me in German, Mutti had Dr. Reitter write to the orphanage in Polish.
That was the letter I was convinced had been sent by someone who wanted to adopt me. In the meantime, at the request of my
uncle, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee embarked on its efforts to reunite me with my mother.

Some ten years later, on her first visit to Israel, Mutti passed a building identified as the headquarters of the Jewish Agency.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she went in and asked to speak to someone in charge. She then explained that she had come to
thank the agency for reuniting her with her son. While no one remembered the case of the boy in the Otwock orphanage who found
his mother with the agency’s help, she was given a joyous reception because, she was told, this was the first time anyone
had come to thank the agency for bringing a family together.

WHEN I ARRIVED IN GERMANY
at the end of December 1946, I was twelve and a half years old. During my first few days there, I did not let Mutti out of
my sight. I kept kissing her and holding on to her, probably because I wanted to assure myself that I was not just dreaming
and that we were really together again. It was such a wonderful feeling to be with my mother, to know that I was no longer
alone in this world, that she loved me and would take care of me. Almost as soon as I first embraced her at the train station,
I felt that a tremendous burden had been lifted from my shoulders and put on hers: now Mutti was again responsible for me.
As I reflect on this attitude, I realize that it was probably a product of the selfish sentiments of a child: Until then,
I had been responsible for my own life, for my survival; I could not afford to depend on anyone but myself; I had to think
and act like a grown-up and be constantly on the alert against all possible dangers. But once I was back in her arms, I could
be a child again, leaving these worries and concerns to her.

Portrait of Thomas taken in 1947, shortly after his arrival in Germany

During much of the time I was separated from Mutti, I did not have many opportunities to speak German and lost some of my
fluency. Within a week or two of coming to Göttingen, though, I was once again comfortable speaking German and even lost the
slight Polish accent Mutti claimed I had acquired during my time in the Polish army and at the Otwock orphanage. It helped
that young Fritz Schügl, the son of our landlord, lived with his family on the ground floor of our house. He was only two
years older than I, and we became inseparable friends in no time.