All But My Life Read online

  Do you know what happened? No, you don’t know. Yesterday, yes, it was yesterday, early in the morning we heard a lot of noise–screams and crying and begging for mercy. They were the cries of Jewish people in the streets. Quickly my father and I ran down the back stairs to hide in the basement, while Mother went to get the baby out of his crib. He was sleepily rubbing his eyes. He was so small, he did not know that you had to be watchful even in your sleep, that night and day you must be on guard, quickly go and hide. Maybe he was dreaming of toys he never had. Maybe my mother did not wake him fast enough. I imagine how he stood, rubbing his baby eyes, when the murderers entered in their gray uniforms and took them both, my mother and the baby. He was not dressed because his little suit is still lying there on the chair. The pants of his pajamas are still lying there. He must have kicked them off and gone half naked. From the cellar we heard screams.

  Why does the world go on when things like this happen? We heard distant screams for hours and hours. Only when night fell was it quiet. We hoped and we prayed that Mama and the child had found refuge somewhere.

  After it had been dark for hours we crawled out of the cellar. The house was empty. Empty was our flat, empty the flats of all our friends and that of the boy I loved. Where are they? We went to the street. We went to all the homes. We met a few ghostlike people who were swaying as if coming from another world. In one house we found an old man dressed in his garment of white in which to stand before God on the Day of Judgment. He was saying the prayer for the dead. We begged him to tell us what happened. He looked at us wild-eyed, pointed with his finger to heaven, and continued to pray. Like a sacred figure about to enter heaven he stood there alone, around him a world of sin and unspeakable crime. Finally, we met a young man who told us the tragic tale. Old people, young people, and children all had been taken to the market place. There they had undressed and lain naked on the stones, face down, and the murderers on horses and brandishing guns trampled on that screaming human pavement. Many were killed by the horseshoes, the whips left bloody traces. After the initial thirst of the sadists was satisfied, those who remained alive had to march naked outside the town. They had to dig their own grave and stand on the rim until a hail of bullets killed them. Strangers embraced as they went to sleep forever.

  We went there. What were laws now, forbidding Jews to leave the city limits? But nobody caught us or cared. The moon was shining. We saw a great square grave, half-open yet, a mountain of naked bodies in it. Many we recognized. We found my mother. She was all bloody. We did not find my little brother. I found Henek, the one I loved more than life, who was to be my husband. I kissed his dead face. Not one tear did I shed in that grave. Only my heart died. Do you know what? If they would come tomorrow and kill my father I would not care. I would not cry. I would be glad for him. I wish they would kill me. From now on I will walk wherever it is not permitted. I want them to catch me. I want them to kill me because I don’t care. There is only one thing that could stir within me. I want a gun. I want a knife. I want to kill, just kill. I have no feeling. It won’t be a crime. Maybe it won’t even give me satisfaction, but I want to kill.

  What are we waiting for? My father’s hair is snowy white. He hasn’t spoken, or eaten, or slept, or cried. He is watching me while I write this. He is like an animal. I don’t think he knows me. My little brother’s clothes are there. I can’t touch them. There is a brooch on my dress, a little heart that Henek gave me. There are no hearts. All hearts are dead. How does one bury a heart? I am writing something to you. It’s good to tell it, but who are you? Are you alive? Didn’t they murder you yet? Too bad if you too have died–then you would not get this letter from a girl named Erika who has a dead heart.

  I never heard from Erika again.

  Chapter 10

  Two TENSE WEEKS FOLLOWED WITHOUT NEWS FROM ARTHUR. Troubled with the most horrible images of what might have happened to him, I had a hard battle with myself not to tell my parents about Erika’s letter.

  Abek came one afternoon when I was alone, and I could stand it no longer. I told him everything: about my wakefulness at night, my nightmares when I slept, my frantic worry about Arthur. Then I read Erika’s letter to him. For the first time in years I felt unburdened by talking without reservation. He understood. He offered no empty words of comfort but held me in his arms while I talked. When I finished and rested my head on his shoulder, he stroked my hair with loving caresses, he kissed my feverish forehead, my tear-streaked cheeks. I was comforted and at peace. I never liked him better, or felt closer to him.

  “Everything will be all right,” he whispered.

  Not looking up, not thinking I said, “I know it will be, Arthur.” I felt him grow rigid. I looked up. His face was stony. “Abek,” I said, but could not finish. Of course he resented my indifference to him.

  The next morning Arthur’s long-awaited letter arrived. It contained no real news, except a change of address. I thought his hand was not as regular as ever. I seemed to detect a certain strain. Was it only my imagination? Surely, Papa and Mama noticed it too. If they did, they said nothing.

  I admired my brother’s courage and strength, his ability to conceal everything that was painful. I imagined him sitting in some unknown dark room, late at night, writing home those banal words while listening for dreaded footsteps, fearing tomorrow.

  And so the winter passed, with Arthur’s frequent letters providing the only relief. Each day brought new announcements of deeper German penetrations into Russia. Far into the night our knitting needles would click in a desperate race against the ever-worsening food and fuel shortages, but nothing depressed us as much as the chilling thought that no army seemed capable of stemming the German advance. Somehow winter seemed to be our enemy. Fervently we hoped for an early spring. Spring would mean that we would no longer need to worry how to heat our cellar. There would be more vegetables, more food, the days would be longer, the fearful nights shorter. But had I known what else the spring of 1942 would mean, I would have prayed that winter should last forever.

  On the morning of the nineteenth of April all Jews were ordered to prepare to move to the shabby, remote quarter of town near the railroad terminal. Here, where cattle and produce were unloaded, there were a few unoccupied, decrepit houses. In two short days they would become our ghetto.

  Nobody said much. We all had expected it, but for Mama it was the hardest blow. She did not mind the cellar for it was ours in the house of her childhood–in the house where she had been born, and her mother and grandmother before her, where she had married, where her parents had died and her children were born. Now we had to leave it. Was it so hard to leave because we sensed that we would never return?

  Very early on the morning we were to leave, long before the hour when we were allowed to go out, I ran down the street to say good-by to Niania. I crept up the creaking stairs and without knocking gently pushed the door. I knew it would be open. Niania was sitting at the window. Her long gray hair lay about her shoulders, the big shawl on which I had fallen asleep so many times was wrapped around her. She held her prayer book in one hand, her crucifix in the other. Without looking up, she continued to pray. I saw her in that early dawn like a figure in a beautiful, long-forgotten dream. At her feet was the little wooden stool on which I used to sit in childhood when she would tell me stories while she sewed dresses for my dolls. Her window box was then full of flowers. She used to say, “Those flowers are for you when you grow up.” But Niania said nothing to me now. While she said her paternoster I looked about the room I had known so well. There was the green pillow cover I had crocheted when I was ten. In her cupboard were the gleaming cups I had sipped from so often. I knew them all–the one with the purple flowers, the fat one with the picture of Emperor Franz Josef, the one with the tiny crack that Niania would not pour anything hot into … .

  In her wooden wardrobe dresses were hanging neatly. The brown one with tiny glass buttons. The black one, a bit shiny and frayed, that she still wore to
church. There was the fine black silk dress covered with a sheet. Niania often said she would wear this one only three times. She had it made to wear at her granddaughter’s wedding, she would wear it when I got married, and then forever in her coffin. On her night-table there was a large Madonna in blue and gold with a flaming heart. She had brought it from a pilgrimage to Czestochowa.

  Niania’s room was as orderly as ever; nothing had changed in it since I could remember. I couldn’t help but compare her comfortable room to our cellar home. I could picture our few pitiful bundles standing on the floor, several old blackened pots and pans, some mended clothes, a basket with a few dried peas, a loaf of bread, a little salt, a small jar of homemade jam, a little cocoa from before the war, the pot of chives under which the remains of our jewelry had been buried. Now Papa and Mama were tying the bundles in a sheet. That was all that remained from a beautiful home.

  I despised Niania at that moment for her security. She could stay, but we had to go.

  With a harsh voice I finally said, “I came to say good-by, Niania. We have to go, you know. I hope I will see you soon again.”

  I wanted to get out fast. Niania’s deep voice went through me.

  “Gertele, come back.”

  She called me by my childhood nickname. At the sound of that long-forgotten name I felt a tightening in my throat. When I turned around, her work-worn hands stretched toward me. I ran into her embrace. She sat me on the little stool at her feet, her hard, calloused hands stroking my hair.

  “My poor child,” she said.

  I put my head in her lap, I felt her warm tears on my hair, I felt my own tears start.

  Then the picture of our cellar room came back to me.

  “I have to go now, Niania,” I said finally.

  She pushed me back into the chair, begging, “Stay, please, stay a little longer.”

  “No, Niania, I have to go to Mama and Papa. They send you all their love. You know they cannot come. It is too dangerous.”

  I embraced her once more and ran out.

  At home we sat silently. This was the last morning in our home. I could not stand it in the cellar. I went into the yard and then I jumped over the fence into the garden, the garden which I had so loved. I did not care if anybody caught me, I had to see my beloved garden again. It had rained during the night and the young fresh grass was wet. I looked at the rich moist soil under my feet. Everywhere memories surrounded me. On an old tall branch was a piece of rotted string. I knew it: a few years before, Arthur had flown a kite, it stuck in the tree, and we had never got it down. Wind, snow, and rain had blown the paper away but the little bit of string was still there.

  On the old pear tree there was a mark made by a Scout knife driven into it years ago by Arthur. There had been a note under it that day reading, “I am a prisoner of the Cow-Cow tribe.” We had played Indians and Arthur had been taken prisoner; that heroic sword and note were supposed to save him. The note was gone a long, long time and Arthur was far, far away … .

  There were the narrow, now overgrown paths where I rode my tricycle and wheeled my dolls. There was the little garden house, now badly in need of paint; we had used to paint it every spring. From one corner of its ceiling hung some faded yellowish paper. It had been a Japanese lantern in the shape of a full moon, for my fifteenth birthday party. We had left it there because it looked so funny.

  Was it really only three years since Mama and Papa, young and gay, had stood arm in arm with Papa watching us eat ice cream and cake? How happy I had been that day!

  I ran down to the edge of the brook where I knew I could find violets, and there they were, in their velvety brilliance, fresh, untouched, and fragrant. I picked a bunch and held them tight and then sat down on the moist ground and started to cry, thinking of the velvet lawn, of the yellow dandelions that soon would be blooming in abundance, thinking of the birds that sang in the trees at night, thinking of the blooming cherry trees, the red fruit hanging from the branches, of the rich autumn that would paint the leaves in bright hues, of the gleaming fruit, of the sunshine and rain that would come to my garden in all seasons. And all this we were not to see any more.

  There by the brook, thinking and crying softly, I bade farewell to my childhood. Then I walked toward the house, not the front entrance, but the side where the bedrooms faced. I did not care whether I was caught or not, I had to see my beloved home once more!

  A shade went up in my parents’ room and I saw the familiar cream-colored wallpaper. Soon Mama’s head would appear and she would say to Papa, “You had better take your umbrella, Julius. In April one never knows.” Then she would come into my room, gently kiss my forehead; I would stretch, turn around, and sigh. “Take your raincoat to school today,” she would say.

  I started to walk back now, not along the path but over the young grass. Here was the plum tree with the funny twisted branch on which we used to swing; it felt wet, cool, and familiar. I sat on it, closed my eyes. For a moment, for one moment only, I will pretend that nothing has happened. I leaned back, swinging on the old branch. I will go into the house now, I thought. They will be at the breakfast table, Mama pouring the hot coffee, Papa buttering his bun. Arthur will gather his books together and hurry to a lecture. The white cups will gleam on the table, crumbs will be scattered on the checkered cloth. “Look at the lovely violets; oh, they are perfect!” Mama will exclaim. “Go put them in the dining room.” “Which vase, Mama?” “Put them in the shallow silver bowl. Short-stemmed flowers look their best like that.” Yes, Mama is right, it’s hard to tell if the bowl does more for the flowers or the other way around. I better hurry. I will be late for school … .

  Late? Yes, late. Slowly I creep back to reality. I will be late because we are going away from here. Why is it all so hard? The war will end soon, we will all be back home. Somehow the thought brought no comfort. I felt way down in my heart that I would never be back again.

  A bird fluttered in the branches above me. Somewhere a dog barked. I embraced the twisted branch and kissed its rough wet bark. “Good-by, good-by,” I murmured.

  “Where were you?” Mama asked when I went downstairs again.

  “Out in the garden,” I answered.

  Then I saw Niania sitting on an old kitchen chair. She had braved danger to come to us. Papa was urging her to go. She refused.

  A wagon drawn by an old sleepy horse pulled up in front of the house and a peasant with his son started to load our meager belongings. Then Niania embraced Mama and they both cried. She grabbed Papa’s hand and before he could protest she kissed it.

  “You brought up my grandchild, you gave me a home for thirteen years, I loved you like my own son.”

  Papa embraced her and kissed her cheek. She wept on his shoulder and looking at me, she said, “It was a morning like this when she was born. You carried her in your arms toward the window. You said she was your princess, our little sunshine princess. Where are you taking her now?” Her voice was terrible. “Where?” she repeated. Then Niania started to pray. Papa and Mama lowered their heads.

  The wardrobe and Mama’s and Papa’s beds were on the wagon. The furniture was mildewed from the dampness in the cellar. It looked strange and unfamiliar on the wagon. We took a last look into every corner of the cellar. How gladly would we have stayed here, how desirable the cellar looked! The peasant snapped the reins. “Hetta wio. Hetta wio.” The old horse began to walk … slowly the cart started to move. Papa and Mama and I followed the wagon with bowed heads, as though walking behind a hearse. Here and there neighbors looked from behind curtains, waved mute farewells, wiping tears into handkerchiefs. Papa and Mama didn’t see them. Papa carried the pot of chives, Mama her black shopping bag with our bread, our salt, the dried peas, the precious cocoa and jam. I still clutched the violets I had picked.

  When we reached the bend of the street where Arthur had slowed down, instinctively Papa and Mama slowed down too. They wanted to look back, I knew, but at the crucial moment Papa took Mama’s
hand and they went on. I looked back though–the only one who did so. No one was in sight. The tree branches swung in the mild breeze. The windows of our home gleamed in the sunlight.

  Chapter 11

  BEFORE I OPENED MY EYES I FELT THE PECULIAR STRANGENESS of waking in an unfamiliar room. Most peculiar was the brightness–I was used to the darkness of our cellar. When I opened my eyes, there in the sunlight was our old furniture, shabbier than I had imagined, but at the same time clean and bright. Both Papa and Mama, with whom I shared our one room, were in much better spirits than I remembered in a long time. The thing that we had feared most was done. The act of moving was over.

  We had never lived anywhere else before. There had always been our home: the garden, the attic, the shacks in the yard, the garden house. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had always felt that the walls of our home would protect us. Now I fully understood why we had dreaded the move to the ghetto.

  The ghetto consisted of a number of buildings of which only three faced the street. Ours was one of them. Another one next door was occupied by the Kultusgemeinde. The one adjacent to it housed several families. The other houses, behind these, were grouped around a cobbled courtyard. Wooden porches ran clear around the courtyard, connecting all the houses on both floors. To me those porches were somehow symbolic of the way our lives were linked and I felt safer in the knowledge that we were not alone.

  All the Jews now remaining in Bielitz lived in those few houses and in a huge armory-like building with primitive plumbing, ten minutes’ walk from the Kultusgemeinde.