My Bridges of Hope (10 page)

Marko's face is flushed. I touch his head—it feels hot. What do you do when a child has fever? I remember that Mrs. Gold had children before the war. She would know what to do. I must run to the kitchen and ask Mrs. Gold to come examine Marko.

“Children, I'll be right back. In the meantime go to the bathroom and brush your teeth.” Little Ruti also begins to cry: “I'm not supposed to leave my brother. I have to stay with him. I have to take care of him!”

I know it is useless to reason with Ruti. “Okay, stay with your brother. I'll be right back.” As I am leaving the room, Elka, the youngest, starts sobbing.

“What's the matter, Elka? Why are you crying?”

By now I am desperate.

“I'm sick. I'm not feeling well.”

“What hurts you?”

Elka shakes her tear-stained face. Nothing hurts her. She is just not feeling well. She cannot get up.

“Ruti, please take care of Elka, too. I'll be just a few minutes.”

Mrs. Gold helpfully interrupts her chores in the kitchen and follows me upstairs to serve as medical consultant. She examines Marko by touching his forehead with her lips and feeling his neck with her fingertips. Her diagnosis: Marko has fever and swollen glands. Elka's checkup yields good news: She is not sick. No fever. No swollen glands. Yet she sobs uncontrollably as I dress her and she refuses to stand on her feet. I have no choice but to carry her in my arms to the dining room. Once I seat her next to the table, she resumes her loud wails.

The teens have finished breakfast. On the spur of the moment, I decide to hand out “work assignments” to them. The two oldest
are sent on an “important mission” to the boys' camp to fetch Mr. Goldstein. One is appointed the task of taking breakfast upstairs to little Ruti. Others, of straightening up the little campers' rooms. A number of girls serve as my “assistants,” helping me to feed the little ones at breakfast.

Elka continues crying and refuses to eat, despite all my assistants' coaxing. Finally, I draw her into my lap. Instantly she stops crying. Tentatively I bring a spoonful of cereal to her lips. She begins to eat with a hearty appetite. The problem seems solved. As long as she remains in my lap, Elka keeps eating cheerfully, eventually finishing her breakfast.

Before breakfast is over, Sruli appears in the dining room, with the familiar patronizing smile on his face. “Sle
č
na Friedmannova. Problems? What can I do for you?” There is more than a touch of mockery in his tone.

“We need a doctor, Pan Goldstein. Or some medicine. One of the little boys is sick. He's upstairs in bed.”

“May I see him?”

“Of course. This way to the bedrooms.”

Sruli's facial expression turns serious after
visiting the feverish Marko. He offers to send two boys to the village for aspirin and to call a doctor if Marko gets worse. In the meantime, he volunteers to take the older girls to join his study group and to bring them back for lunch. I sigh with relief and gratitude. Thank God. I will manage the little ones, somehow, by myself.

After the older girls have gone with Sruli, I gather the little children in a circle on the carpet in the vicinity of Marko's room. I begin to tell a story, loud enough for Marko and Ruti to hear. Soon my little audience is deeply absorbed in the story, and Marko's rhythmic breathing reveals that he has fallen asleep. When the story is finished, I succeed in coaxing Ruti to join us, and we all go down to the garden to play.

The children are quickly caught up in the game. Their cheerful laughter dissipates my heavy burden. Suddenly I feel as if I could fly. Mrs. Gold agrees to watch Marko, and I take my little group on an expedition into the nearest wood.

When the children clamor for a story once again, I hit on the idea of teaching them a
lesson in physics. “The Secret of the Rain Cloud,” is the title of my story. How does rain happen? In the course of the tale, the children marvel at the discovery that water can evaporate and clouds are made of vapor that rose to the sky from lakes and rivers. They are fascinated with the notion that cold air causes clouds to compress and precipitate rain, and the cycle begins anew. They laugh out loud when I point out that the clouds hovering above were once rivers and lakes, and even the ocean. When the children beg for more, I continue with the story of snow, hail, and fog, and they plead that I repeat the tale over and over.

I do not notice that Sruli and the older campers have been trailing right behind us, listening intently to my tales. All at once, a rustling sound makes me turn. A loud cheer rings out, followed by a burst of applause.

“Bravo! Bravo!” They all shout with faces beaming. Sruli cheers loudest: “Go on! Go on! Please don't stop. We all want to hear. Very interesting lecture.” Is he mocking me again?

“Please, go on. We want to hear more,” the teens join in.

I continue, describing the water's composition of different elements, explaining what distilled water is and how it is made, pointing out the difference between rainwater and well water. And how a rainbow comes about.

By the time we reach the villa, it is time for lunch. I have to promise them all that I will continue my stories after lunch.

When we sit down to lunch I know my battle has been won. A sense of contentment permeates the atmosphere. The little ones cluster about me, vying with each other for a seat near me. The pain over Frieda's absence is somewhat slackened.

Perhaps I will make it after all. At least until Frieda's replacement arrives.

The Tatras, End of July 1946

In these past three weeks I have come to know the older campers and their life stories. We have grown together, and I feel deep personal affection for each. This morning Rivka is the pre-cantor, and the prayers take on a special, animated quality. I believe it is Rivka's dynamic personality that resonates in the group. I love to watch them during morning services. As I watch them individually, I watch as many separate worlds. Separate tragedies.

Miri, a tall, slim girl with a long neck and slightly buck teeth, is a retiring day-dreamer. Her clear white skin, brown eyes, and fine features are accentuated by dark brown hair parted in the middle and tucked behind her ears. Miri has no relatives at all. Her parents and little brother were arrested by the Gestapo when their hiding place in a
mountain cavern was discovered. At the time, Miri was away playing with children of friends hiding out in an adjacent cave. She is now living with this family “until her parents return.” Nothing has been heard of them since their arrest three years ago. But the prospect of their return is a constant, unhesitating allusion. This is an element of post-Auschwitz mentality. Everyone about whom there is no specific news is expected to return. Over a year has passed since the end of the war. Many, many have not been heard from. Yet, they are expected to return. No news is good news.

Edita, a quiet, chubby eleven-year-old, has an older brother in the boys' camp. The two children, who are cared for by an aunt “until Mommy comes home,” witnessed “Daddy choked to death in our garden by a group of rough men.” They were members of the “Hlinka Guards,” followers of Andrej Hlinka, the Slovak Nazi who looted Jewish homes and businesses and attacked Jews on sight. Edita's face seems to reflect both the memory of her father's violent death and the expectation of her mother's homecoming. Anguish and hope
in equal measures are etched in her childlike, vulnerable features.

Herta, the slight, soft-spoken blonde with pale blue eyes and hair like cornsilk, never lets go of her brother's hand. She is only eight but acts as mother and protector to six-year-old Milo. Although the two children have found a home with a distant relative, Herta believes Milo's care and comfort is her sole responsibility. And the little boy responds in kind. He clings to his sister's hand as to a lifeline. Although he cannot read or follow the Hebrew prayers, Milo sits docilely holding hands with Herta while his peers are at play in the bedroom.

Herta and Milo are too young to remember their parents. Herta was only four and Milo two when the Hlinka gangs burst into their home during the night and dragged the parents out of their beds to an unknown fate. Neighbors found the frightened children in the morning and took them into hiding together with their own family. It was there that the two turned into extensions of one body, a Siamese-twins unit, and they continued that way even after the war, when the
neighbors adopted them. “Until our Mommy and Daddy return.”

Alice is twelve but looks older. She is tall for her age, and the light brown braids piled on top of her head make her look even taller. Her oval face is dominated by large hazel eyes that dart restlessly in every direction. Always in a state of perpetual motion, high-strung Alice is appealing and lovable in her bristling disquiet.

Alice is the only camper who has a parent. Her mother survived the camps but suffers from tuberculosis and has been hospitalized ever since her reunion with Alice thirteen months ago. Passionately devoted to her ailing mother, Alice talks of her visits to “Mommy” in the TB sanatorium incessantly, her face alight with longing and pride. She, too, was hidden in a “bunker” in the Carpathian Mountains while her parents, two sisters, and a brother were in Polish concentration camps from which only “Mommy” returned.

From the start the sisters, twelve-year-old Ester and ten-year-old Jutka, have sought out my company; they sit near me and walk
alongside me whenever they can. The little striking brunettes are refugees from Hungary and have not yet learned to speak Slovak. I am their primary avenue of communication, as the other children know only a smattering of Hungarian. Both girls show early signs of great beauty. Lone survivors of a large family from Budapest, they were smuggled into Czechoslovakia en route to Eretz Israel by
Briha,
the illegal underground railroad Miki spoke about. They are sheltered in the Home until Youth Aliyah operatives arrive to smuggle them across the border to Vienna, and from there to the Italian coast. They have been waiting, together with many other children, for a Haganah boat to take them across the Mediterranean to a youth village in Eretz Israel.

Alzhbeta, sitting next to Jutka, does not seem to follow the prayers. I suspect that she has not mastered the Hebrew characters and is only pretending to go along. During the war she was hidden in a convent and received no Jewish education. An angelic child with a pink bow on her head and dark blond curls reaching her shoulders, Alzhbeta moves about
gingerly, like an exquisite china doll, unaware of her surroundings. A rose-colored bubble seems to envelop this fairylike creature who never mentions her parents and does not expect them to return. They were shot by a firing squad on the bank of the Danube while Alzhbeta was picking berries in the woods nearby. The little girl was found by the nuns, and the convent became her home till war's end. Her father's brother found her after the war and adopted her. It was he who brought her to the Home and enrolled her in the Beth Jacob School so that she could learn about her Jewish heritage. But Alzhbeta has been unaffected by her Jewish education and environment in the Home, just as she was untouched by Christian teaching at the convent. Now she is sitting and staring out the window while humming a soft tune. What is she looking at? What is she thinking about?

Medi, a serious girl with an ascetic, narrow face and long auburn braids, is absorbed in religious devotion. The thirteen-year-old is well informed about most aspects of Jewish custom and ritual, and is zealous in performing them. Together with three brothers, Medi is a resident
in the Home on Svoradova Street in Bratislava.

I see Bronia tiptoe down the stairs and slip quietly into her seat. She is the skinny little girl with the large head and enormous eyes who begged me for a story on the train and who puzzled me by knowing neither her name nor her age. Later I learned a little more about her background. When she first came to the Home, she could not speak. She gave no answers, asked no questions, did not cry, laugh, or complain. She was a silent little creature without a name, age, or history. She was part of a transport of children handed over to the
Briha
at a Polish border town. The
Briha
smuggled the children into Czechoslovakia and across the Carpathian Mountains all the way to Bratislava, looking out for the children's safety. They had no time to find out about their histories.

The young girls who cared for these children in the Home believed the tiny creature was deaf and dumb, or brain damaged. She recoiled from all human contact. When the girls attempted to remove her rags, bathe and dress her, she did not claw or kick or strike out, like many other children, she only huddled in a
corner like a frightened animal, silent and withdrawn. Months went by and she did not respond to the name Bronia the girls gave her, or to the affection they lavished on her.

Until one morning. The girl on duty entered the children's room to help them dress, and to her astonishment Bronia greeted her by name.
“Dobré ráno, Gitta!”
Good morning, Gitta! “How are you this morning?” Bronia called cheerfully in perfect Slovak. Gitta almost fainted, but pretended to remain calm.

Soon it became apparent that Bronia's speech and mind were unimpaired. She knew her surroundings, the names of all the children and grown-ups in the Home. But her own name she did not know. Neither did she know her age or where she came from. She knew not a word of Polish, nor did she have any recollection of other people outside the Home. So she has remained Bronia, the quiet, withdrawn little girl who has been sometimes stubborn but never violent or hostile. Bronia has been the favorite in the Home, pampered by all yet unspoiled by all the pampering.

As Bronia sits down she makes a slight
scraping sound with the chair. Rivka glances in her direction, and the semblance of a smile crosses her intent face. A pretty girl with light brown hair, blue eyes, peachy complexion, and dimples when she smiles, Rivka is chanting the last paragraph of the prayer, and all the girls join in. Rivka commands her peers' attention with natural ease. And this competence extends into the realm of personal relationships, where her easy charm softens the sense of authority. If only her mother, her father, and her siblings were alive to see her now, so lovely, with so much promise.