The End of Days (35 page)

Authors: Helen Sendyk

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #History, #Holocaust, #test

BOOK: The End of Days

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Page 227

bathroom, I staggered a few steps and then fainted. When I came to, Nachcia was standing over me, spilling some cold water onto my face; there was nothing else she could offer me.

The next day we went to the Planty, where a soup kitchen had been set up by survivors who had returned some weeks ago. Our cousin Hania was there, and we found out that her brother Sholek had returned very ill from a camp. Through the good graces of Mrs. Lask, an older Jewish woman who had survived in Chrzanow, Cousin Sholek was placed in the hospital. Together with Hania, we went to see him. Sholek's body was all swollen, filled up with water, his lungs only partially functioning. We sat by his bedside for two days, but he was unable to communicate with us. After dusk on the second day, Sholek died.

Hania was hysterical. Nachcia and I had to tear our cousin away from her brother's corpse. We arranged for a simple funeral. We slowly walked behind a horse-drawn cart, Sholek's body in a white sheet resting on its planks. The cart rolled through the streets of our hometown from the hospital to the Jewish cemetery. Sholek's body banged against the wooden boards of the wagon as it rolled down the cobblestone road. Now there were only the three of us from our large family.

The next day we went back to the soup kitchen, praying to catch sight or word of someone in the family, and our prayers were answered. Hunched over his soup and looking terribly aged and ill was our brother-in-law Jacob. We wept in his arms, slowly rocking back and forth in our grief. It was not easy for Jacob to talk, but over several hours his story emerged.

When Jacob first heard the German rifle butts banging the boards covering our hiding place, his heart sank. In seconds the trapdoor was opened and rifles poked at our feet.

The physical pain from being cramped beneath the low roof was now joined by pangs of anguish. He was the man, the one to protect his lovely Blimcia, his precious baby Aiziu, his sisters-in-law Nachcia and me, who needed him now as a father. He had failed us all.

"
Raus schnell, Du Judenschwein!
" barked the soldiers.

There was no time to wallow in guilt. Jacob lowered the

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ladder and helped everyone down. His mind spun with turmoil as Nachcia was brutally struck and Blimcia struggled down the ladder with Aiziu in her arms. He was reeling from kicks and slaps, trying desperately to find Blimcia's hand. There was a swirl of noise and a throbbing pain in his head during the swift march to the marketplace. He was jostled in a sea of agonized victims crying out for loved ones torn away. Where was the wife he loved more than life? Where was little Aiziu?

Barely conscious, Jacob realized he was with a group of men and boys. He tried to locate the women's group, to at least discover their destination, but the men were all pushed into cattle cars. The dark car was packed solid. People were passing out from suffocation and could not be revived. Feeling the wall behind him, he instinctively pressed his face to a crack in the boards to suck in some fresh air. Jacob was convinced that suffocation and thirst would kill them all before the train finally stopped.

After an endless, deadly journey, the doors were flung open. The lights of the camp blinded them, as the living were chased out like sheep to a clearing fenced in by barbed wire. At each corner of the camp stood a guard tower with a machine gun. The prisoners, now devoid of human dignity, were made to strip and line up for inspection and to have their heads shaved. They were issued a pair of striped pants and a striped shirt and cap, plus a pair of wooden clogs. Jacob would remain in Markstadt labor camp for a full year, beginning in the winter of 1943.

They were awakened every morning before dawn by the shrill sound of whistles and the bellowing of the cruel capos. They were lined up for roll call and pushed into exhausting maneuvers before being marched away in different work details. Jacob was assigned to the Krup munitions factory, producing pipes and parts for antiaircraft and torpedo rockets. He became emaciated and broken-down by the starvation rations and the endless hours of forced labor; and his spirit sank lower with each day. After their first year of slavery in the factory came a changea change for the worse.

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Markstadt was closed down and the prisoners were shipped to Fünfteichen. The SS made them construct a barracks for their living quarters. The meager ration of soup got thinner, the slice of limy bread got smaller, the icy winds cut more sharply through their flimsy striped suits, and their wooden clogs bruised their feet even more deeply on the long marches to reach their work at Krup. The resolve to survive for Blimcia's and Aiziu's sake kept Jacob alive.

In February of 1945 the camp was evacuated. The inmates were loaded like so much cargo into open coal wagons. The trains inched forward for days on end, then stopped in the middle of nowhere. For twelve hours they witnessed the bombardment of Dresden. Totally exposed to the icy wind, the starving prisoners warmed and fed their souls with the twelve hour downpour of fire and brimstone that thundered from the sky upon their wicked foes.

When the human cargo was finally unloaded at Gross Rosen, one third of the prisoners had to be shoveled out. Still among the living, Jacob was then lined up for the infamous death march to Buchenwald. When the American army arrived and liberated the camp, the Americans wanted to place Jacob in a sanatorium to nurse him back to health, but Jacob wanted only one thing: to return to Chrzanow and find his wife and child.

After a perilous journey, he did reach Chrzanow, but he did not find Blimcia and Aiziu, nor any indication that they had survived. As powerful as his will to live for them had been, so was his determination not to live without them. He blocked out the world and would not be consoled by us or anyone else. We left Jacob with our own spirits bleak, but with the driving need to find some of the other ten souls that had comprised the Stapler family.

It was weeks later that we discovered that Jacob had been placed in an American hospital. He refused all medication and food. He had survived a hundred wartime hells only to die shortly after liberation.

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Page 230

On the next day's walk to the soup kitchen, I suddenly noticed something peculiar about some laundry I saw hanging on a line. It somehow looked so familiar. When I examined it closer, I found it to be my family's laundry: there were my brothers' monogrammed shirts and my sister Blimcia's lacy nightgowns with her
B.S.
embroidered on all of them.

Who was using our family's clothes? I had to find out. I began removing the clothes from the line, and sure enough a woman stuck her head out of the window, yelling, "What do you think you're doing, stealing my laundry?"

I recognized Mrs. Madeia, the shoemaker's wife who had been our next door neighbor on Zielona Street. I promptly went upstairs. Upon entering I felt faint again, as though I were a ghost haunting my former home. The Madeias had apparently moved to the more affluent Planty, where the Stapler furnishings fit better. Somewhat taken aback, Mrs. Madeia now brought out a pillow that stunk from little Krisia's urine. She offered it to me saying, "I know you have nothing, so here is a pillow for you to sleep on."

I looked around the room; everything was eerily familiar. The furniture, the linens, the tablecloths, even the white enamel water barrel. Displayed on the dresser was Shlamek's beautiful box for his shaving gear, the one he received from the army as an award. The set's mirror was open to adorn the room.

My heart was breaking. Mrs. Madeia still stood there, the generous offering in her hand. "I don't want anything," I declared. "You can keep all our furniture and our clothes and linens. Where would I go with it anyway? But this box belonged to my brother Shlamek, who died fighting for this country, for Poland. I don't know about the rest of my family, but I know that my brother Shlamek is never going to return. And I want this box to keep as a memento."

Mrs. Madeia put the pillow away and adamantly said, "And what do you suppose I will have as a souvenir of your dead brother? Certainly I need something to remember him too."

I just turned and walked out and down the steps. Nachcia and Hania were waiting, waiting for God knows what. We

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only knew that we had to leave this town, this country, this continent that had forsaken us.

Only in the years ahead did we discover what had happened to our family, and to a million other families in the hell that came to be known as the Holocaust. Our bodies and souls were seared for life, but we came to be known as survivors. The only other survivor, the third Stapler left of the twelve of us, was Vrumek in Palestine.

It has been fifty years. I am now the last of the Chrzanow Staplers. I offer these pages, these memories, to my children and to yours.

Page 232

Stapler, Sara Miriam

Mother

Perished in Auschwitz.

Stapler, Symche

Father

Perished in Auschwitz.

Rauchwerger, Blimcia

Oldest sister

Perished in Auschwitz.

Stapler, Shlamek

Oldest brother

Killed on the battlefield.

Stapler, Heshek

Second brother

Died in Siberia.

Stapler, Goldzia

Third sister

Killed by the Nazis.

Stapler, Sholek

Fourth brother

Killed by the Nazis.

Rauchwerger, Jacob

Brother-in-law

Died upon liberation from Markstadt Fünfteichen Buchenwald.

Rauchwerger, Yitzchak

Blimcia's son

Perished in Auschwitz.

Laufer, Chaya

Grandmother

Perished in Auschwitz.

Bromberger, Esther

Mother's sister

Perished in Auschwitz.

Bromberger, Pinchas

Esther's husband

Perished in Auschwitz.

Bromberger, Sholek

Esther's son

Died upon liberation from Markstadt Fünfteichen Buchenwald.

Bromberger, Chamek

Esther's son

Perished in Auschwitz.

Bromberger, Gucia

Esther's daughter

Perished in Auschwitz.

Laufer, Nachman

Mother's brother

Perished in Auschwitz.

Laufer, Lieba

Nachman's wife

Perished in Auschwitz.

Laufer, Sholek

Nachman's son

Perished on death march from Markstadt to Fünfteichen Buchenwald.

Bachner, Channa

Chaya's sister

Perished with her seven children and twenty-six grandchildren in Auschwitz.

Bachher, Moishe

Channa's husband

Perished in Auschwitz.

Enoch, Ruchele

Father's sister

Perished with her husband and two children in Auschwitz.

Stapler, Pinkus

Father's brother

Perished in Theresienstadt.

Stapler, Elsa

Pinkus's wife

Perished in Theresienstadt.

Stapler, Freddy

Pinkus's son

Perished in Theresienstadt.

Stapler, Dolfi

Pinkus's son

Perished in Theresienstadt.

Schein, Sabina

Cousin

Perished with her husband in Auschwitz.

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