I Shall Live (20 page)

During the day we could hear the search parties out in the street, but they never entered the house while we were there. The owner told us that they had come to the house on the first day of the action, knocking on the walls, looking everywhere. Then they had left, and hadn't come back.

As the days passed, the situation grew worse. How long could we stay there, even if the Germans didn't find us? We were exhausted, dirty, hungry, and thirsty. We discussed the possibility of going out into the fields, but we knew, really, that Father and Mother were both too weak now to survive out there for long.

During our last couple of days in the skrytka conversation came to
a virtual standstill. We sat or lay in silence. I was struck repeatedly by how incredible it all was—total strangers remorselessly hunting down people who had done nothing whatsoever to hurt them. The world was mad. Did I want to go on living in it? Bad as things were, though, cruel as the world around us was, the answer was still yes. The thought of being killed and watching others in my family killed petrified me.

Time dragged still more slowly. The street was quieter now, the search parties less frequent. Then, early on the morning of the 28th, we heard a commotion outside and a loud voice shouting, “Amnesty! All Jews can come out of hiding. The action is finished.” We were so exhausted and sick of the skrytka that we decided to come out. We had little to lose; life in the skrytka had become unendurable. We climbed out, washed our faces, and went out into the street, where we met a few neighbors who had also succeeded in hiding from the Germans so far. The Germans and Ukrainians were going around the ghetto announcing that an amnesty had been declared, and all surviving Jews were to go to Gestapo headquarters, which were located in what before the war had been the town jail.

Suddenly, as we were standing there in the street talking to our neighbors, Fred and Hanka appeared, to our surprise and grief. We had thought they at least were safe, and here they were, in the same boat with us.

It seemed that when they arrived at the colonel's house, they found him in a very bad way and getting worse every day. He knew he was dying, and called in his mistress-housekeeper. In the presence of Fred and Hanka, he made his mistress lay her hand on a large cross hanging behind his bed and swear, by Jesus Christ, that she would continue to permit them to hide out in the house after his death. He had left her everything he possessed in his will, he told her, but only on condition that she keep her promise. A few hours later he was dead.

The next morning the mistress told Fred and Hanka that she was sorry, but she couldn't let them stay. The Germans were searching every Polish house and threatening to kill anyone caught hiding Jews. Fred begged her to let them stay at least until dark, and she reluctantly agreed. When evening came, they left.

They went to a nearby farmhouse and looked in through a window, where they saw the farmer and his family having dinner. Fred knocked on the window. The farmer came out and recognized them immediately. “You are Orenstein's children!” he exclaimed. He took Fred and Hanka to his pigsty, so his children wouldn't know that he was helping Jews, and let them stay there for two days. Then he too started to worry about the danger, and told them they would have to leave. Fred asked him to get in touch with the president of the Polish Landowners Association, hoping that he might find a place for them to hide. The president came to see them and told them of the amnesty. By then Fred and Hanka were also tired of running, and decided to go back to town.

Since the number of Jews left was too small to be sent by train to the gas chambers, we assumed that the Germans would simply shoot those who had emerged from hiding at the news of the amnesty. We were worn out, beaten. The promise of an amnesty didn't fool us, but we decided to go to the jail anyway, to put an end to our misery.

We started walking over to the jail, all seven of us, the whole family. We walked in silence, like the families I had seen going to the town square at the start of the action. My heart ached to see the grim faces of my parents, my brothers, my young sister. So this was how all our lives, my whole family's life, was going to end. Shot and then thrown into a mass grave. “What did we do?” I wanted to cry out in protest. We passed a woman who had occasionally worked for my mother, helping with the laundry. She saw us all walking voluntarily to be executed, and exclaimed, “It's the Orensteins—all of them!”
But she said nothing to us, nor we to her. She knew how prosperous we had been before the war, but that meant nothing now. We were Jews; we had to die. There were very few people in the streets, and in about ten minutes we had reached the jail. Ukrainian guards let us in through an iron gate leading to the yard behind the jail. The gate loudly clanked shut behind us.

In the yard were about a hundred other Jews, all, like us, survivors of the skrytkas who had decided that it no longer made sense to continue hiding out, that the suffering and humiliation were too much to bear. For the first time since the war began I saw some of my school friends: Nirenberg, a short boy with quick, lively eyes and a ready smile; Zajd, with whom I used to play soccer; Zalmen Regel, an earnest, very intelligent boy who was a student in the gymnasium. We sat down on top of a woodpile and talked about old times. We knew we were all going to die in a matter of hours, but no one spoke of it.

Then Hans Wagner, Fred's Gestapo patient, appeared at the fence, looked around, and noticed Fred standing in the yard. He motioned for him to come over. “What are you doing here, Doctor?” he asked, as if he didn't know. “We just got tired of running and hiding,” Fred replied. “There was nowhere to go.” “Is your sister here with you?” Wagner asked. “Yes, she is,” Fred answered, “and so are my three brothers and my parents.” “Let me see,” Wagner said, and walked back into the side entrance to the jail.

An old Jew who was saying his prayers overheard the conversation. Sensing that Fred might have a chance to get out, he came over to him and surreptitiously placed a packet of money in his hand. “Here, take this money, Doctor,” he said. “Use it, if you can, to feed the Jews.” Then he blessed Fred, turned back, and with a serene face resumed his prayers.

Wagner evidently spoke about Fred to Ebner, the Gestapo chief executioner, for Ebner came into the yard from the back of the building
and gestured to Fred with his stick, looking him over from head to foot. “Is this the elegant doctor?” he said mockingly. Even in the ghetto Fred had managed to look well dressed, but after a week of hiding he was unshaven and his clothes were rumpled. Fred motioned to Hanka, who stepped forward. Ebner remembered her too from the ghetto. “… and my brothers,” Fred continued. Felek, myself, and then Sam, who looked very tired, moved a little closer to Ebner. When he saw Sam he made a face. “He's no good, he's sick,” he said. “He just looks bad now—he is younger than I am,” Fred pleaded. Ebner seemed very displeased.
“Vier Brüder”
(Four brothers), he said, as if the mere thought of letting four Jewish brothers out, however briefly, gave him pain. Poor, desperate, courageous Fred pressed the matter, well knowing that by pleading on our behalf, he was jeopardizing his own chance for life. “And my parents,” he added. Mother and Father hesitated. They knew Fred was going too far, and they didn't want to endanger this unexpected opportunity for their children to get out.

The whole thing began to annoy Ebner, who didn't even look at our parents. “What do I need old Jews for?” he yelled. Now he changed his mind about letting any of us out. He pointed with his stick and shouted,
“Alles zurück zum Haufen”
(Everybody back to the crowd). Instantly Father and Mother realized that our chance was slipping away, and stepped back into the crowd. Our lives were all that mattered to them. Now Ebner spun around and went back into the building. It looked as if Fred had lost his gamble.

In the meantime, two trucks had pulled up to the fence and the Polish police started pushing the people toward them. The Gestapo chief came down the steps to see that the loading of the Jews into the trucks proceeded smoothly. We still stood in the same spot where Ebner had left us, and a Polish policeman stood nearby. He didn't understand German, and wasn't sure himself what Ebner had decided to do with us. The chief looked at us questioningly. “What are they doing here?”
Almost simultaneously Fred and the Pole said, “Ebner.” The chief apparently understood this to mean that Ebner didn't want us to be killed with the others. He himself was uncomfortable with that madman, Ebner. “If Ebner said OK—go.” He waved his hand at the staircase. As we turned toward the stairs, we saw Father helping Mother into the truck with the other Jews. We heard her call out, “Niuniek [Fred's nickname],
rateve di kinder!
” (Fred, save the children!). Although she almost always spoke to us in Polish, her last words to us were in Yiddish. At the last minute, the chief picked out two others, two young girls, Jentka Cohen and Tobka Beker, and told them to join us.

I felt as if my heart would explode. I was gripped by an unendurable tension. Wild emotions were raging within me, almost tearing me apart—an overpowering desire to live, to save myself, and a terrible guilt at not joining my parents, at abandoning them when they were about to die. We started walking up the steps, seven or eight of them, turned right, three more steps, walked through the Gestapo office on the second floor, and down the steps leading to the street. A policeman told us to go to Jatkowa Street, where the Gestapo were setting up a small service camp of about thirty Jews to work for them.

Our parents and the others in the prison yard were loaded onto the two trucks and driven to the execution pits in the Jewish cemetery nearby. Bencio Fink, who later became a friend of mine in the camps, and Rechtshaft, a
droshka
driver before the war, were among the burial crew. They later described to us what happened at the cemetery.

The Jews were ordered to undress and lie down in a row at the edge of the pit. Demant, a short, fat, red-faced member of the Gestapo who sometimes filled in for Ebner as executioner, went from one end of the line to the other, shooting each one in the head. Among them were the Krajzer family. Krajzer was a druggist who
had rented his shop, which was next to our fabric store, from my father. They had a daughter, Hela, a pretty, buxom, blond girl. The Krajzer family lay down next to our parents. After the shooting, Demant went up to Hela's body, turned it over face-up, and rammed his fist into her vagina. The Jews in the burial crew were ordered to throw the bodies into the pit and bury them.

Meanwhile, we had arrived at Jatkowa Street, where we met the other Jews who had been selected by the Gestapo as members of the new work camp. Julek Brandt, Bluma's brother, was put in charge, and Rabinowitz, an attorney, was made his assistant. They assigned rooms to us in several of the houses on Jatkowa Street that stood empty, their inhabitants having all been gassed or shot to death.

We were in a state of extreme exhaustion and shock. We knew our parents were dead and could only weep quietly. It was growing dark. There was no conversation in the room, only an occasional sob or a new outburst of crying. The door opened and Wagner appeared, flashlight in hand. “Where is the doctor?” he asked. Fred got up, his eyes red from weeping. Wagner tried to console him: “At least you still have your brothers and sister.” Then he went out. I was physically so exhausted and emotionally drained that I fell into a fitful sleep. Through the night I would wake up, remember what had happened, and cry myself back to sleep.
*

In the morning Julek Brandt assigned various tasks to our group
of about thirty, including eight or ten women. Julek was about thirty years old, very energetic and a good organizer. He had been one of the leaders of the Judenrat in the Hrubieszów ghetto. He dealt directly with Ebner, who had led him to believe that when the final action came, in appreciation for his services Ebner would allow him and a small group of other Jews to remain in town. To his surprise, when the time came, Ebner personally made certain that Julek was put into one of the cattle cars of the train used to carry the three thousand Hrubieszów Jews to the gas chambers of Sobibór.

After the train had started, Brandt, Rechtshaft, and some others succeeded in forcing open a few of the wooden slats that formed the sides of the cars and jumping out of the moving train. Some of them were shot by the guards, but Julek, Rechtshaft, and a couple of others managed to escape. For two or three days they hid in the fields about ten miles from Hrubieszów, but eventually they were spotted by Polish peasants, who alerted the local police and helped them to capture the Jews. They were brought to the nearby village jail, where Hy Silberstein, his girlfriend Mirka, and a few others were imprisoned after they too had been captured in a nearby forest.

Hy was a few years older than I, from a good family, and had been a good student in the Hrubieszów gymnasium. We knew each other well, but each of us had his own group of friends. Hy was the best-looking boy in Hrubieszów, and girls used to chase after him. His father worked for the Judenrat, and one day he was called in to the Gestapo headquarters. He never came back; Ebner shot him dead right then and there. Hy's mother was killed by Demant in front of their house.

When the action started, Hy and Mirka had gone to hide at the home of a Polish friend of Hy's, Wanka Adamiuk. After a few days Wanka's family started hinting that they were afraid to keep them any longer, lest they themselves be shot by the Gestapo. Hy and
Mirka were forced to leave, and at night went to hide in the woods near Czerniczyn, a small village not far from Hrubieszów. There they ran into my school friend Chaim Ajzen and about a dozen other Jews. After two or three days they were surprised by a detachment of Ukrainian police. Some were killed; Chaim and a number of others escaped. Hy, Mirka, and a few others were captured and brought to the village jail.