When I had free time, I went to the local library. There I found some novels by Tolstoy and Turgenev, short stories by Chekhov and even a Hemingway “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” The librarian, a middle-aged woman with gray hair in a bun, looked at me from behind thick glasses and told me that only two books may be checked out at one time. I settled for Hemingway and “Resurrection” by Tolstoy. I took off my shoes as soon as I left the library (I had put them on upon entering) and walked back home barefooted, but this time I did not feel the hot ground under my feet. I was looking forward to reading once more.
I was looking through the books, when in my mind I heard my friend Genya from back home in Poland say: “I finished all of Balzac and now I’ll start reading Hugo.” Genya and I used to discuss books and if we disagreed we asked for her father’s opinion. Her father was secretary of the city hall (“gmino”) and was very much revered by the local population. In his youth he traveled a lot and had photographs of famous historical places in France, Italy and Greece. I was very impressed by him. Genya had a younger sister, Sophie, a very bright and beautiful girl.
I was told after the war that my friend Genya with her sister and parents were told to dig their own graves by the Nazis before they shot them. In the last minute her father’s life was spared after some local Polish residents told the SS commander that he was a Pole. This wasn’t really true. Genya’s father jumped into their grave after his wife and daughters were shot. The Nazis killed him too.
It was summer again and we were allocated a small piece of land outside Chilik, where we planted corn. My younger sister did the weeding and Father the irrigation. In the fall we had big bags of corn on the cob, the fruit of our hard labor. We had cooked corn, we had corn cereal and we had cornbread.
And then came winter and the cold brought sickness. First my sister Fanya got pleurisy, her fever was very high and she hallucinated. One of the refugees from the Ukraine, a former nurse, put on Fanya’s chest daily little glass jars called “leanki” which she heated before applying. She kept them on for a few minutes, and when they filled up with fluid she took them off. After a few days Fanya got better but was very weak. Father brought her a couple of eggs and sugar every day. I mixed the eggs with the sugar and some milk and she drank it. Her strength returned and in two weeks she went back to work.
Then Father came one day from work and complained of a pain in the throat. The next day he couldn’t swallow or talk. The doctor in the clinic diagnosed it as an abscess and prescribed compresses and gargling with salty water. Another day passed and his condition got worse. The doctor told me that only streptomycin can save him but it can be bought only on the black market. Mother’s wedding ring paid for the pills and my father’s life was saved.
My brother Herzl received a draft notice. He was 18 and was called up to serve in the Red Army despite the fact that he was born in Poland. Mother was desolate; her only son will be inducted into the army in wartime. She didn’t stop crying for days. Herzl went before a medical commission and was classified physically fit, A1. Father got him a certificate from the representative of the Polish government saying that he is a Polish citizen. He took the paper with him on the day he left with the other inductees.
The night before he left I helped him pack his duffle bag, some very dry bread, dried fruits, mended underwear and socks. Among his papers there was a diploma from “semiletka,” a seven-year elementary school from which he had graduated back home.
It was early morning when we said goodbye to Herzl. “Don’t forget to show the Polish paper,” Father reminded him again and again. “Write to us every day,” I told him when he hugged me before he left. And then they marched away in formation. Father was wringing his hands following the column of young boys for a while. The rest of us were crying loudly.
The first letter came a week later from Karayanda. He had shown the letter to the commanding officer and they left him behind to be sent to the “trudovay,” or labor front. Our joy was immense. And then two weeks later another letter came from Tonisk in Siberia. “I am working in the mines,” wrote Herzl. “I wear a light on my forehead. It’s very dark in the mine. It feels like you are buried alive.” I couldn’t imagine my little brother Herzl working in the mines, alone in Siberia. Will he come back to us?
For a while the letters kept coming, all full of despair, blackness. And then one day Herzl wrote: “I am no longer a miner. I was accepted to a technical school. It is a good thing that I had the certificate of graduation with me. I live in the school dormitory and I get one hot meal a day and bread in rations. It is much less bread but I am happy. I see the daylight.”
A few weeks later another letter came: “I couldn’t live on the ration. I was very hungry and cold too. So I decided to join the army. They accepted me and I am being trained in an officers’ school. I am well fed and have good boots and a warm uniform and coat and hat. I am very happy. Please don’t worry; the war will be over soon.”
It was 1944, the Germans were being beaten on all fronts, but still the war was not over yet. Herzl was sent to the front in the summer of 1944. He wrote postcards now, very short, but hopeful. “You should prepare for your trip back home. It will be over soon. I am lucky to take part in the liberation of the occupied territories. Do not worry about me.”
The newspapers were full of articles about victories of the Red Army. At the same time they wrote about the destruction of whole towns by the enemy, thousands of their inhabitants who were killed by the Nazis, of the desolation of the survivors.
Herzl wrote: “I will fight to avenge the death of our grandmother, of all our relatives and friends and of all the Jews killed by the Nazis.” The atrocities of the Nazis became public knowledge, but it was still hard to accept the facts.
(To be continued next week.)
By Norbert Strauss, Dr. Ida (Melcer) Zeitchik, Dorothy Strauss
Norbert and Dorothy Strauss are Teaneck residents. Norbert was general traffic manager and group VP at Philipp Brothers Inc., retiring in 1985. Dorothy worked as a senior systems analyst at CNA Insurance Company. Dr. Ida (Melcer) Zeitchik was Dorothy’s mother.
