Clara's War (29 page)

I wasn't angry at Steckel for not telling us. He hadn't even told his wife. She seemed more surprised than any of us. We all knew instinctively that he had been trying to save our lives. If we had known and had let up our guard for one moment, it might have led to our deaths as well as that of the Becks. We were either vigilant all the time or not. To think that Mr Beck had heard yet hadn't understood this assurance from the Nazi soldiers was too much for our enfeebled minds to comprehend. I didn't know anyone who would have been so wise as Mr Steckel as not to report the conversation.

 

Even when the soldiers, having finally got their orders to go, said goodbye to Beck, they didn't tell him that they knew we
were downstairs. Hans the policeman left in such a hurry, he didn't even stop to say goodbye to his dear friend Beck. He honked, waved goodbye from his car and was gone.

After they left, the house seemed oddly empty. We had survived for 18 months, survived the searches, the trainmen, the soldiers, the SS, the Blue Coats and so many close calls that recalling them was enough to make me wonder why we were still alive. I still found it hard to believe that we might one day walk out of the bunker. Even with the sound of artillery and the thunder of bombs in the distance heralding our impending freedom, I didn't believe in the inevitability of our survival. Even with the trapdoor open, and with Kuba and Artek cutting wood in the cellar without fear. Even with the radio on and Beck and Patrontasch giving us reports that the Russians were taking Minsk, Pinsk, Borosov, Wilno, Baronowice and Kowel, which was especially important because it was part of our front, I did not dare believe in our good fortune. Only when Julia arrived late at night, exhausted from her trip, after having got stuck in Lvov for over a day with no place to sleep, did the house become alive.

Julia called Lola and me upstairs to scrub away the stains of the Nazis, clean their rooms and strip their beds and boil away the imprints of their bodies on the sheets. Even though I was sitting with Julia in the kitchen with my hands around a tall glass of cool water that was replenished before the last sip was taken, I fought down my joy. It was 11 July: Mania's birthday. Two birthdays since she died. She would have been 15 years old. I had dreamed about her last night as I dreamed about her so many many nights. In my dreams, she was always alive. I always saw her in front of my eyes when I looked out of my little brick window. She was waiting for us. What right did I have to be alive when my sister was dead? I knew that if we lived, everything I
enjoyed for the rest of my life would evoke her memory, her death, her courage and her absence. I vowed my life would be dedicated to her memory.

We finally went to bed that night with the hatch door open, letting the heat escape upwards instead of being trapped downstairs. The last thought I had before I drifted off was that it wasn't so bad down here. It was almost cool and, crazy as it was, I swore I could feel a breeze drifting through my hair.

I awoke to tanks and trucks rushing past the house and Beck staring into the hatch, whispering, ‘The Nazis. They're back!' Patrontasch closed the trapdoor just as the banging on the front door started. Four soldiers told Beck they were moving in and began dragging in their gear. The bunker started heating up at once. It was certain now that there was a conspiracy in Berlin to torture us and taunt us with the expectation of freedom, only to rip it from our grasp. We were starving, sitting in the dark without electricity, hot as hell, waiting to die.

The Russians were bombing the nearby towns. When the SS went out, we rushed upstairs to help prepare the house in case of bombing: filling sandbags for the attic and the sides of the house; getting everything of value packed in case of fire; filling buckets and washbasins and tubs with water.

Mr Beck started organizing, giving orders, cursing as usual, the old Mr Beck, the boss, the man I loved like a father; even his curse I loved to hear: ‘
nasry matry
, I shit on your mother' I preferred to sweet talk.

The bombing was so close, the walls shook; the dishes fell off the shelves; timbers were shaking. My mother fainted and the Becks came down to hide with us. We didn't know what was happening. All through the bombing, we heard trucks and tanks rumbling down the streets.

In the morning after the bombing, we saw a bloody convoy of Nazi troops drive by. The house filled with soldiers fleeing from the front. They begged the Becks to leave. The Russians were only 11 kilometres from Zolkiew. We put on clothes, even in the heat, clothes we saved in case we would ever get out of this hellhole. The bombing continued. The soldiers were in the cellar where we kept the wood.

Julia was crying. She heard fleeing Nazis had found some Jews who had come out of hiding on Szeroka Street. They had shot them along with another family of Jews who were being hidden by a Polish peasant. The peasant had gone to complain that Ukrainians were stealing things (the possessions of the Jewish family in hiding). It was against the law. Under interrogation, the peasant confessed and was shot along with the Jews he had hidden for 18 months. We knew we were not safe.

The General Staff fleeing from the front had heard about Beck and his hospitality and moved in. We heard everything that was happening from the front. The Jews listening to Nazi HQ upstairs. If they only knew! The Nazi colonel was getting ready to run. We heard him tell the Becks the Russians would be here in the evening, or by the next morning at the latest.

We were still afraid to leave the bunker until the last German was gone from Zolkiew. The bombing and shelling started on Friday, 21 July and it went on for three days, only stopping for a few hours each night. Not too far from the house, the Germans had positioned some cannons, so Russian fire was directed right
at us. One shell hit the house and half of one exterior wall was blown away. Another shell hit and part of the roof caved in. The Becks had gone to hide in a bunker the German soldiers had dug out in the backyard. With each shell we heard whistling overhead, we didn't know if it would be the one that hit the house. The ground was shaking with each hit and the dirt was flying off the walls. The floor above us and the support posts vibrated. Oh my God. The house was in danger of collapsing in right on top of us.

I held Zosia and Mama held Zygush for the whole of the three days. Once a day, Beck would run to the trapdoor and give us water. But it wasn't enough. The heat was brutal and I was becoming delirious from exhaustion and thirst. The small amount of water for each of us could not compensate for the sweat that poured off us in waves. The pallets, the straw, the bedding and even the dirt floor were soaked with our sweat. I wasn't able to sleep, but went into a stupor, not knowing day from night, only alleviated by a sip or two of water. Zosia's lips were as dry as cracked leather and she asked me if we were going to die. I told her we would be all right and asked God not to make me a liar. Despite the explosions that came as regularly as our breath, her eyes told me that she believed me. It became impossible for me to focus on any single thought as crazy, extraneous, irrelevant ideas flooded my mind without sense and without comprehension. I was happy to be alive. But happy? With the bombs bursting just metres away and my heart exploding inside my chest in terror? I was happy to be alive. But if we did survive, how could I face life without my sister? What right did I have? Why couldn't she have stayed with us? Trusted Papa and Mama's judgement? If she had been able to control her fear for just a few minutes, she would be here with me now, urging the Russians on and praying the last shell fired from the
last cannon attacking Zolkiew didn't drop into our laps. I didn't know what kind of sense life would make without her. While we were in the bunker, we had all the time in the world to grieve, but because we were so contorted around our own efforts to survive, we hadn't even begun to truly mourn her. I wanted to record every moment, but I couldn't focus on any thought before another one pushed it away. It sounded like the end of the world out there and we were the only survivors.

And soon, I had only one thought. I wanted the bombing to be over. I didn't remember anything else until Mr Beck came banging on the hatch, screaming that the Russians were here.

 

One by one we crawled out of the bunker and walked outside. I felt afraid to go out. My mind was telling me it was all right. The Nazis were gone. We had survived, but there was so much fear in my body that it was an effort of will that took me out into the bright, overwhelming sunlight. We were all dazed and blinded by the light. There were spots in front of my eyes as I looked out at the surreal scene. The Poles were as dazed as we were, seeing the bombed-out street and the charred houses. Dead Nazi soldiers littered the road as Russian army vehicles and soldiers walked up the street. The men were haggard, rifles haphazard on their shoulders, smoking and laughing and waving.

We just hugged each other and continued to weep. We couldn't stop the tears. The relief! Mr Beck came along with two Jews he had found. The Bernstein brothers were alive! We embraced and wept. They had been hidden by the same Mrs Ornstein who had jumped from the train with her daughter, Hela. Hela, whom I had seen one day while cleaning upstairs. They could pass for Polish, and being from another town had
been able to get papers. The Bernsteins had shown up on Mrs Orstein's doorstep. We shared the little we knew of the others. Mr Bernstein told us about a friend whose 15-year-old daughter had gone out to scrounge for food the week before. The Nazis had shot her. We wept at each story, each life lost. I wept anew for Mania and Uchka. Why wasn't Mania here with me? Why couldn't Uchka be a mother to her children? Somehow the reality of standing safely outside made their deaths seem all the more painful.

Zygush, Zosia, Igo and Klarunia tried to run after the soldiers who were passing out candy to the children. But they took a few steps and fell. Zygush helped the others up and they tried to run again, but their poor atrophied legs were useless. They looked at their legs, confused and crying, not knowing what was wrong with them.

I tried to run to Zygush but my own legs crumpled under me. I looked at our group of 18, our families; how many others were there like the Becks who saved 18 Jews? I was in a dream. I looked back at my mother and father, embracing each other, the Becks, the Patrontasches. Lola was embracing Artek, Kuba and Mrs Melman. In the bunker, they looked almost normal because that was what I was used to. But here in the sunlight and out in the open, I could see how close we all were to death. Our skin was translucent and hung off us like baggy clothes. We were sticks with lungs and hearts and not much else.

The Steckels stood alone and looked lost.

I got up and walked to Zygush and the other children, comforting them and telling them they would be able to run as much as they wanted very soon. Some Russian soldiers stopped and gave me and the children bread. We devoured it like little animals. The soldiers had to tell the children not to eat so fast, but their concern fell on deaf ears.

The soldiers asked over and over if we were Jews. We were afraid to say yes, until one with a kind face, no more than a boy himself, told us it was all right and we were safe now. I nodded. I heard a commotion and looked back at the house.

Mr Melman staggered out of the house, barely able to hold the Torah. He handed it to Papa. He stripped the wrappings off it, until the bright white of the satin covering, the gold and silver of the handle coverings and the golden thread dazzled in the sunlight.

I helped the children up and we walked over to Mr Melman. The men walked inside and came out with coverings for their heads. We started to say the prayers of thanksgiving.

I could see out of the corner of my eye, the spinster sisters walk across the street with our hand-carved wooden box of pictures, the only thing of ours they hadn't sold. But Mama embraced them and took the box of pictures. It was all we had of our old life, and of course Mania would be in there.

I passed out and when I woke up a few moments later, I was staring at the clouds floating overhead in a bright blue sky, a sight I thought I would never see again.

24 July to September 1944

T
he Russian soldiers gathered around us like little angels, not knowing what to do with us, but afraid to leave us. They shared their rations with us and supplied us with Soviet army blankets.

Papa walked across the street and found a Polish couple living in our house. We didn't know who they were. They asked if they could leave the following morning and Papa agreed. The three families decided to spend one final night in the bunker. We didn't know quite what to do with ourselves. We didn't seem to be able to make a decision about anything. The world above ground was alien to us and like a family of trolls we retreated into our dark and humid lair.

By the next morning, we had decided that we would move
back into our half of the house and Lola and Klara would move into my grandparents' half. Since their own house had been completely destroyed in the fire, the Patrontasches would move in with the Melmans. Our three families couldn't bear to be apart. Since Mr Patrontasch's sister and her family had died in the March 1943
akcja,
their house on the other side of the factory stood empty. Instead of taking it for themselves, they gave it as a gift to the Becks. As for the Steckels, within hours of our liberation they disappeared. No goodbye. Nothing. It was as if they had never even existed.

The first night we spent back in our home wandering around from room to room, looking for things that were no longer there, looking out of windows, breathing fresh air, not knowing that our freedom was real. But most of all, feeling the emptiness of the house without my sister. All the rest that weren't there were things. None if it mattered except Mania. It was a shock to sleep in the same room that I had shared with my sister since the moment she moved out of her crib. The lace curtains were gone, as was every other thing that wasn't nailed down and many that were. It was like we had never lived there. But our presence, our memories, our conversations still hung in the air. They had somehow avoided the thieves and looters that had come through our house again and again like locusts. I didn't know whether they were in corners or closets or cracks in the wall. But they were all there was to welcome us back.

 

If I had thought in the confines of the bunker and with our attention so much focused on our survival that I understood what Mania's loss would mean, I only began to comprehend the bitter fact of her death with the first bite of the first meal we had in our own home. Looking across at Mama and Papa, I wanted to be Mania for my father. I was afraid for Papa. When she died,
a part of him died with her and I knew he would never forgive himself. I wanted to be the daughter he had lost, but I wasn't my sister. Papa had fulfilled Mania's deepest and most frantic wish: that we would survive. And we only survived because of her courage. I dared not think what the Nazis did to her in her last hours, but I could not keep the thoughts of her face out of my mind. And as much as I wanted to enjoy the freedom and every tiny breath of air, they reminded me that my sister was no longer on this earth.

Over the first two days of our freedom, through the numbness of grief and our disorientation at living above ground, we slowly realized that we were human beings dressed in rags; that we had no shoes; that since the spinster sisters still looked Papa straight in the eye and told him everything we owned in the world had been stolen, we had nothing, nothing but some knives, forks, spoons and enamel plates, thin and worn towels and bedding. We wandered the city scavenging what we could. An old dress here or there. A coat there. A torn pair of shoes with hardly any sole left was a treasure. We went back into the bunker to see if there was anything of value. We found one thing. It was a shoe Rela left behind when she went back to the ghetto that first December to be with Josek. It was a half-heel patent-leather pump with a bow across the instep. It fit me. We took the one shoe to the shoemaker and asked him to make me its mate. He said he was sorry, but he had no patent leather. Patent leather! What would I need with patent leather? I just needed a shoe. He found a strong piece of leather with which he fashioned a shoe for me. When I picked up my new shoe, he found some shoe polish and gave it to me. I polished the new shoe relentlessly, but I could never get it as shiny as Rela's shoe.

Having survived on potatoes for 18 months, Mama had a severe gall bladder attack after three days of normal food. Artek
and my father carried her through our backyard to the hospital, which was on the other side of the yard. The fruit trees were filled with ripening fruit and the walnut tree with nuts. Our grass was knee high and in horrible need of mowing.

Mama was emaciated and barely conscious and we didn't know until we got to the hospital that she was millimetres away from death.

Dr Lucynski was there when we brought her in and he broke into tears when he saw we were still alive. He was genuinely thrilled to see us. But as he took care of my mother, we could see the growing concern on his face. He told us there was nothing for him to do except give her morphine for the brutal pain she was in and fluids so she wouldn't be dehydrated. Mama's organs were shutting down. She weighed 40 kilos and there was only a slim chance that her system, given how weak it was, could recover from this. I cannot describe the grief mixed with fury that I felt on hearing those words. I looked at my father and saw that he had become old. I had no choice; I had to be strong for all of us.

We kept a vigil over my mother. Either Papa or I was always there, 24 hours a day. More often than not, we would both be there, while Mama lay unconscious. I had gathered the perennials from our weed-choked garden for a bouquet for Mama's room, but she barely noticed them, and when she did it was only to complain that the perfume made her nauseous.

Dr Lucynski came by and we walked out of the room to get his latest assessment. He wasn't hopeful and wanted us to be prepared.

We were so engrossed in the conversation that we didn't notice the priest walk into Mama's room as the nurse was changing her IV. The priest wore a black cassock and carried a purple scarf and the unguent in a jar used for last rites. But I
didn't notice all this until a few moments later. We finished with Dr Lucynski, who again told us he was doing everything he could for Mama, and we walked into the room just as the priest was making the sign of the cross and placing the purple scarf across my mother's chest. Both my father and I were too stunned to speak.

The priest dipped his finger into the unguent and made a cross on my mother's forehead. My mother's eyes fluttered open, like a couple of butterflies whose wings were stuck in glue and couldn't get moving. The priest told her, ‘My child, you're about to go on a long journey…we must be prepared.'

My Mama's eyes cleared and were open now and she said, without skipping the proverbial beat, ‘Father, I'm not going on any journey. I just came back.'

The priest then recognized my mother and he began crying with joy. ‘Mrs Schwarz, Mrs Schwarz, you're alive.'

Mama simply said, ‘Until somebody tells me different.'

Salka the Cossack had returned to this world. And that's how my mother came back to life. My father and I were kissing and hugging her and embracing her and she just didn't know what the fuss was all about.

 

As Mama recovered over the next week and finally came home, the survivors of our town came out of their hiding places in the barns and the cellars; from living without shelter in the woods; from the pigsties, where my friends who owned the bus company had spent weeks and weeks in frozen slush, their hands and feet frostbitten. Papa was sitting on the front steps and a girl walked past him, also dressed in rags and as thin as we all were. She turned and walked by him again. Then again. Papa had a big nose which she started at, and then she asked if he was really Jewish too. She was a jumper who had hidden in
the woods with another child, a boy. Mr Taffet, my Hebrew teacher, emerged from the woods in rags with his feet blackened from frostbite. I was amazed he was able to walk at all. In the bunker, Papa had a day shirt and a night shirt. They were the only clothes he now had. Mama gave Mr Taffet Papa's night shirt and we took him to the hospital, which the Russians had taken over. Dudio, who had joined the partisans, emerged from the woods with a machine gun and a bandolier filled with cartridges around his chest. We embraced him like a brother. Zygush and Zosia were so happy to see their uncle.

I was asleep when I heard Mama screaming in the kitchen. I thought it had to be Ukrainian marauders. I ran to the kitchen and I saw Mama wasn't screaming from fear. She had thrown open the back door and standing on the steps, like two ghosts risen from a grave, were Giza Landau and her mother. I ran down the stairs and embraced her. Klara Letzer, Genya Astman and so many others were all gone. To find a friend, alive, flesh and blood with smiles and tears at the sight of me, was a miracle. We brought them inside and Giza told us a Russian soldier had given them a ride to Zolkiew to see what remained of their lives. When they walked by our house, Giza wanted to knock, but her mother said not to. It was too much to think that we were alive. But Giza insisted and they went around to the back because they were afraid to knock on our front door.

She told me their story. One night in March 1943, her father, a member of the Judenrat with special privileges, took her to the train station and handed her to a stranger. He told her that this man would take care of her. The man, whom she later found out was a partisan arms dealer, took her to his flat in Lvov. Giza's two aunts were there. Two days later her mother joined them. Her father never made it. He died in the March
akcja
when the SS murdered the entire Judenrat.

From the stories the survivors told us, I realized we had it better than most. I learned of friends hiding in the homes of peasants where they were betrayed in the last days of the war. One woman lost her daughter, the week before the liberation. She went out to forage for food while the Nazis were preparing to run for their lives. With Zolkiew surrounded by Russian troops, they were still killing Jews. And that's how we found out who was alive. Over the first days of the liberation, they wandered into town, in ones and twos, amazed to see that anyone else survived.

Out of 5,000 Jews in Zolkiew, there were only 50 left. Klarunia, Igo and I were the only children who still had both their parents left. Our house became a gathering place for all the survivors. The 50 of us clung together as if we were in a life raft in the middle of the ocean. Artek was a constant visitor at Lola's. The three families, the Becks and Lola ate every meal at our house and only went to the Patrontasches to sleep at night.

We hadn't been out of the bunker more than a couple of days, when there was a knock on the door. It was Pavluk. In one hand he was holding our pillows and the featherbed, freshly laundered, we had given him for safekeeping. In the other he carried a chicken, which he brought as a gift. He stood as straight as a pine and proud as a new father. He looked even more like a giant to me than he did before we went into the bunker, and the tears he was holding back told me he was grateful we were alive. For months and months before we went into the bunker, when I went out, I was used to being looked at like I was dirt; like I was nothing; like I was an affliction. And to see this one man with so much gratitude for our survival was more important than food. He knew Papa, but I was a stranger to him. And I knew his tears were not only for Papa. I saw the
way he looked at us. He told Papa that anything he could do for us, he would do. And I knew he would. He shook Papa's hand and said goodbye. Mama made us some soup from the chicken.

Over the next several days, we didn't wander more than a few metres from our house. I was still afraid. The Nazis were gone, but the area was still filled with Ukrainians, marauders and bandits. Beck still kept us informed and told us of several pogroms where surviving Jews were brutally murdered. I didn't want to be far from Papa and the children. I didn't want to be far from the Russian soldiers who passed up and down the street in front of our house. Zosia asked about Uchka all the time. ‘Where's Mama? When am I going to see Mama? When's she coming back?' She'd sit on the steps and watch the street waiting for her return. But nobody knew how to tell her and we kept up the ruse that she would be reunited with her at some point. Poor Zygush knew and was silent during all these conversations. He never mentioned his mother to us or asked about her.

When Mama started to feel better, she decided we should have a gathering of the 50 survivors at our house. I was overjoyed to see anyone who survived, but in that same moment was filled with grief and loss for their family members who perished. It was a party of ghosts. I couldn't help being reminded of all the other parties at our house, which seemed to bloom like new flowers over the course of the summer. With all our family and friends, dozens of them, laughing, eating and talking like there was no tomorrow. Everybody brought whatever food they could find. We had the rations from the Russian soldiers, and the Poles when they fled had left their vegetable gardens, which had been taken over by weeds. But there were still potatoes, carrots, onions and other vegetables to be dug up and picked. Mama was able to make a good soup.

And despite the fact that we were 50 out of 5000, we still felt
like we were a community. We were still the Jews of Zolkiew. We were eating in our backyard, sitting on the steps and under the fruit trees like in the old days.

I don't know when I noticed, but I sensed Zygush was missing. Mama was panicked and furious. It was my responsibility to look after the children. I didn't know when Zygush slipped off, where he went or why he went. He knew as well as any of us there were still pogroms and marauding bands of Ukrainians. He was a survivor and knew what he could do and what he wasn't allowed to do. All 50 of us went to find him. To lose him now would have been more than any of us could bear. We searched everywhere. The town. The Melmans'. The factory. Zygush's pre-war friend Helen's house down the street from us. He might have looked for her since he didn't know that Helen and her family had been deported. But he wasn't there. I thought he might be at the park and I started running there, praying that nothing happened to him. Not after all he went through. Halfway there, running past the bombed-out buildings and the streets littered with the burnt-out shells of German artillery and tanks and the earthworks and barricades that guarded the plaza, I thought,
Oh my God. He ran home.
I didn't know how I knew, but I ran there with the certainty I would find him.