Clara's War (32 page)

When the Halpern brothers started their construction business in New Jersey in the early 60s, they took Sol with them and made him a partner. They have been in business together for the past 42 years. We have been very lucky in our adopted homeland and are grateful, especially to the Halperns, who have become family.

Finally, in 1990, the communist regime fell. The first thing we did was contact Ala and arrange for her to come for a visit. She had two sons, and I had two sons and five grandchildren. Zygush and Zosia had children. Our families were reunited. The
first time our children met each other, they wept as much as we did. The recognition that they owed their very lives to the Becks overwhelmed their senses as much as ours. We were closer than blood. Our families had been brought together in a crucible and had become one. At every important event, wedding, celebration or bar mitzvah, we were together.

In 1995, the Becks were honoured at Yad Vashem in Israel. Ala came from Poland and we and the rest of our family came from the United States. Lola, who had married Artek, came from Montreal with her two sons. Ala planted a tree in the Garden of the Righteous. More than the tree itself and the honour it represents, the generations they protected by their heroism is their true memorial. We had a dinner in their honour with over 200 people, the survivors of Zolkiew and their families.

 

Looking back at my life, I can be proud that I have tried to live a life worthy of the Becks and my sister. I have devoted my life to Holocaust education. In 1982, I helped found the Holocaust Resource Center, which in association with Kean University educates 1,200 teachers a year in Holocaust history and prejudice reduction. In recent years, we have struggled to combat genocide wherever it occurs. I still speak between 50 and 100 times a year about my life and diary. Unless there is a family event, I never say no. I donated my original diary to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, where it is kept in the archives. I am still amazed that the entire document was written with one blue pencil that Beck gave me in December of 1942.

In the past 15 years, I have taken three groups of family members back to Zolkiew, which is now called Zhukova, its Ukrainian name. The Becks' grandchildren always join us on
these expeditions. The last trip we made was in the summer of 2005. We had a bus filled with 30 survivors and their children and grandchildren, all wanting to know and see their legacy first-hand. The bus was stuck at the Ukrainian border for over six hours. During the delay, someone asked if I remembered any of the songs we heard in the bunker above us. I was sitting next to Rosa's daughter, Mania. We started singing. Sixty-five years later and I still remembered the words and the music. The songs I had sung along to silently in duets with Norbert were imprinted into my mind. I realized it was the first time I had ever sung these songs aloud.

After 65 years, my house is still there. The factory has been rebuilt, but is still there. My school. The orphanage. The town walls. The churches. The castle. The church where Mania was caught. All there. The synagogue begs to be restored. The Lvivsky road still goes by the house, but now it's been repaved and widened. The garden is still behind the house, but there are new fruit trees. The Jewish cemetery where Mania lay had been used as a market during Soviet years, but is now empty except for tyres half buried in the ground (it is used for a soccer field) and a half-built house. The owner stopped building. He said the field was haunted and built somewhere else. Out in the marsh, by the mass graves, the survivors had a memorial built. Nothing has changed there. The willows. The tall marsh grass and the bluebirds. To say
Kaddish
there, with the breeze catching the ancient words before they retreat into the silence, is a blessing. There is not one Jew left in Zolkiew to say a prayer even once a year.

Diagonally across the street from my house, and across the street from the 800-year-old wooden church whose gardens are still tended by the great-great-grand-daughters of the women who tended the garden when I was a girl, is the Melmans' house. The scars and holes have been covered with new wood, plaster
and mortar. The house is the true reason for the visit. It's owned now by a Ukrainian couple, who let us in. They greeted us warmly. They'd been expecting us. Through the living room to the left is a bedroom. On the other side of the bed, he bends down and lifts up a wooden hatch built in the parquet floor. The bunker is still there.

T
here are many many people without whose help and inspiration this book would never have been written.
Clara's War
came to life as part of a film project based on children's diaries, the Holocaust and contemporary genocide with Artur Brauner, who at the age of 90 is still memorializing the Jewish experience in World War II. Working on his 23rd film has been an inspiration. I am very grateful to have worked with him on our Holocaust film projects. Dee Dee Witman's appetite for challenges led her to undertaking the enormous task of creating the apparatus that supported my work for the past several years as well as the infrastructure of the Children's Diaries project. I am also very grateful to her husband, Dr Gary Witman, and their children, Samantha, Zachary and Amanda Rose, for their tolerance and affection. Alan Hassenfeld was the first to see the project's possibilities and his sweeping generosity and leadership was our bedrock. I would also like to thank the Rhode Island Holocaust Education and Resource Center and in particular Selma Stanzler, Ellie Frank and Arthur Fixler. Our work would not have been possible without the ecumenical generosity of the community in my home state of Rhode Island as well as the generosity of so many others across the country.

Agnieszka Holland's insight in the early drafts of
Clara's War
helped ground the story in the reality of her native Poland. And without the partnership and friendship of Zlata Filipovic and
Melanie Challenger and their eloquent book of children's diaries,
Stolen Voices
, I would never have found my way to our wonderful agents and colleagues at Susanna Lea Associates. In particular, Mark Kessler, Jon Broadbridge and Susanna Lea, who is the wisest, most far thinking and committed of shepherds who has always brought her sheep to the greenest pastures. And especially Katrin Hodapp, muse with a capital M and friend who has guided the writing of this book with relentless dedication, talent and integrity and who was compelled to reach deep into the briar patch upon many occasion to pull this writer to safety. At Ebury Press, I would like to thank our editor Charlotte Cole whose belief has given
Clara's War
life itself and whose gentle hand shaped the book with so much grace. And also to Mari Roberts, our copy-editor, who made so many saves she could be in the goal for Manchester United.

To Michlean Amir, Vincent Slatt, Caroline Wadell, Nancy Hartman and Andy Hellinger at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. To Shimon Samet, the editor of the
Sefer Zolkiew
and all the survivors, especially Joseph Rosenberg, who wrote of their experiences in this book which is a moving and factual memorial to the town and its inhabitants before and during the Holocaust. To Gershon Taffet, Clara's Hebrew teacher during the Nazi occupation, author of
The Annihilation of the Jews of Zolkiew
, his account of the history of Zolkiew prior to and during the war. To Andrew Maximov, my guide in Lvov and Zolkiew who made history come alive. To Konbay Mykhajlo, director of the Zolkiew Historical Society and his prodigious knowledge of the town's history and architecture. To Zygush and Zosia for their remembrances. To Lola Patrontasch for the generous use of her diary which allowed us to better remember crucial conversations and events in Zolkiew. To her son Solly Patrontasch for his many photographs. To the
Dobriks, the couple that presently resides in the Melmans' house and who proudly make their home available to anyone who wants to look at the bunker. To Dr Bruce and Reba Evenchik, Margo and Eric Egan, the Tooles, John and Dawn, for their friendship and safe haven. To Ryan, Jena, Johnny, Justin, Nathan and Garret at Lenox Coffee, where much of this book was written, for their good natures and the over 1,000 cups of perfectly brewed coffee it took to get the job done. And to Charisse Charbonneau, owner of Lenox Coffee, who graciously allowed me to monopolize my lucky table for such a long time. To Clara's husband, Sol, for allowing me to interrupt his dinner almost every night for the last two years without a word of protest. To my brother and sister, Morton Glantz and Freyda Winick-Zeiff, and their spouses, Mary Ann and Norton, for their cheerful support over many years. And to my children, Jack and Harper, who have kept a sense of wonder alive in such an old dog.

And Clara. Words fail me. You've been more than an inspiration. It's been one of the great honours of my life to be able to help tell your story. Thank you.

Stephen Glantz

Jacket design by Allison Saltzman

Photograph of young girl courtesy of Art Resource, © 2009 Estate of Peter Fink/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photographs of Clara's diary courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum