Froy Tashma

Large shipments of baggage, including tons of disinfected sacks of bedding, clothing, shoes and Rumkes (ghetto money) were brought into the Altmaterialn in the Litzmannstadt ghetto, where my mother was working. Her job was to sort through the articles, putting aside any valuables that were found for the Germans.

One day, my mother returned from work very distressed. At first she was unusually silent and lost in her own thoughts. I was under the impression that she wanted to share something with me but was not sure whether she wanted to burden me with that horrid event, and she was hesitating about how to tell me. At last, my mother burst out crying. Then she told me about what had occurred that day at Altmaterialn.

Her co-worker, Khaye Tashma walked over to the big heap of clothing in the center of the warehouse to fetch a new pile of clothes for sorting. Among the pile, she noticed a familiar dress — a dress like the one her nineteen-year-old daughter was wearing when she last saw her through the fence of the Central Jail on Czarnieckiego several weeks earlier, just before her Baltshe was deported, along with Froy Tashma’s sister. The two of them — aunt and niece — were captured for resettlement from her sister’s home after the latter had disobeyed the notice from the ghetto authorities to “voluntarily” report with her luggage at the roundup facility. When the police came to search her home, they found both of them on the premises and took them into custody — the “criminal” and her niece. Mrs. Tashma appealed in vain to the authorities to release her healthy, productive, young daughter. Baltshe was registered as a member of her aunt’s household because her aunt, a welfare recipient of nine marks per month, wanted to remain in her home. As a single occupant, she would have been forced to vacate the premises, since she would not have met the regulation requiring a certain number of occupants per square foot.

My mother wept as she continued to tell the story: “It was so terrible!… Froy Tashma pulled out her daughter’s garment, picked up a razor blade and began to rip the dress in the seam, shouting: ‘Here! Here! This is where I myself sewed in the paper money and Baltshe’s birth certificate! Yes, yes, it is still here!’ She pulled out a jacket from the pile nearby, and with trembling hands, cut off a button yelling: ‘This is where I sewed in Baltshe’s pendant with the picture of me and my husband and our three children!’ She pointed at the picture, let out a wild scream and fainted. Everyone in the Altmaterialn thought that Mrs. Tashma could no longer be revived”

My mother felt crushed too. After all, she had been Mrs. Tashma’s friend for many years and knew her daughter Baltshe as well as Mrs. Tashma’s other children. When Froy Tashma finally came to, my mother tried not to show her own dismay and attempted to mumble some consoling words: “‘Because Baltshe’s dress is here, it is not proof that something terrible happened to your child!”

My mother confided to me: “I didn’t believe for one minute what I was saying, but I wanted to calm down my friend.”

“No, Rukhtshe, Baltshe is dead”, Mrs. Tashma insisted. “She would never have given up this dress voluntarily! She loved this dress and knew that I had sewn in the valuables here. Her clothing was taken from her either by force when alive or after she had been killed!”

My mother told me how Froy Tashma hurriedly went through the pile and found her child’s and her sister’s other belongings. She was endlessly screeching and wailing. My mother believed that her friend was having a nervous breakdown.

“My child!” my mother exclaimed after a long interval of silence. “There is no doubt in my mind that the people — among them Froy Tashma’s daughter and her sister — were deported to death! I heard at an underground meeting about a death place called Chelmno, to which several trains with deportees are going daily, and then return empty. The people brought there are pushed into specially prepared rooms – from which no one escapes alive. My sister Leytshe is also among the tortured dead! She refused to listen to me when I asked her to hide! She said that the idea of such mass killing did not make sense, and that we should not take for granted the story of a man who claimed to have followed the railroad tracks and to have found out where the people were being taken. She had insisted that ‘this man must be deranged’, because ‘the Germans were, after all, humans too and no human being would commit such atrocities.’ My trusting, naive, good-natured sister Laytshe, who could not believe that humans could become beasts and instruments of death, is now also dead and slaughtered by other humans!”

After she gasped for a breath of air, my mother continued: “We now have proof that Baltshe Tashma is dead! Oh, how terrible — they are gassing people and the last few belongings of the few items they were allowed to carry with them become the remains brought back among the sacks of people’s personal belongings. Then the relatives of the murdered individuals end up searching through the clothing of their beloved for valuables — to be delivered to the Nazi killers and thieves.”

Suddenly, in the midst of this emotional conversation, loud sounds of screaming, cursing and of blows were once again coming from our neighbors’ (the Kudlak’s) apartment. Father and son were again fighting over who stole bread from whom. Before the war, the Kudlak were considered a poor but decent and good-hearted family. Now, with the mother and baby having been deported, the two hungry men often stole food from one another, and continually fought. This was not uncommon. Starving people, deprived of nourishment, became like hungry beasts — unable to control their actions. Like locusts, they would throw themselves upon food without consideration for anyone around them — including their own flesh and blood. The Kudlaks and many others in the ghetto tried to alleviate their own feelings of guilt for stealing from their loved ones by blaming the other family member. When the police would get involved, members of these families would be charged with misconduct, assault or disturbing the peace. The consequences were frequently tragic ones, — since these families often ended up on lists of criminals to be destined for deportation.

My mother had no appetite for the meal that evening but after the disturbance had subsided, she continued to rave uncontrollably:

“They have different means of destroying us. They have starved us and confused us! We are all disoriented. The Germans are using different methods to annihilate us. Starving children are stealing food from their parents. Parents are stealing food from their children. The most gentle people are turning into beasts, and scoundrels become the highest officials who claim to be ‘securing our future.’ People are delivering themselves for deportation to death camps to get the promised food for voluntarily reporting for resettlement, so that they may once more before death fill their stomachs before death. We are washing with graygreen soap with the initials “RIF” — made of Rein Yuden Fets (pure fat from slaughtered Jews). It’s not enough for them that they are butchering our people, but they are also utilizing our body parts for their material purposes. First they exploit us for cheap labor to create their wealth and to plunder our valuables, then they annihilate us, and finally, they use our bodies to create more material booty!”

“Mama, what you are saying?” I interrupted. It does not sound like you at all! You are expressing such confused, disturbing thoughts, using such harsh language! Are you all right?”

Not until then did my mother realize that I was shaking all over; that her words were most disturbing to me. When she realized the impact that her language had on me, she apologized, but then added:

“Well, it’s time to stop being overprotective toward you. You must learn to face reality. I am not going to be around much longer and you will have to deal with the cruelty of life on your own.”

She hesitated momentarily and then said: “Feygele dear, don’t ever let them deport you! No matter what they say to deceive us, don’t believe their lies! We were aware of it before, but now we have living proof that they are deporting our people to death! Please, my dear child, save yourself — at all cost!”

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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Death, Deportation, Disease — Part 2

Early the next morning, my twenty and a half year old brother Shimon, who had been married eleven months earlier, came to find out what had transpired. The three adults in the room were discussing Elek’s last rites and a disagreement broke out between my older brother and my mother. “It is the last thing we can do for my son. I want him to have a Tare (ritual cleansing), Takhrikhim (traditional white shroud) and a befitting burial,” my mother was insisting.

“Mama, it wouldn’t help Elek any more. To sell your next portions of meager food rations, and punishing your malnourished bodies even more for the sake of a custom, is almost a crime!”

Aunt Laytshe, a pious Sabbath observer and righteous Jewess, stood there at a loss for words. When they asked her for her opinion, she admitted that she no longer knew right from wrong.

As soon as Shimon left the house to arrange the burial, there was a knock at the door. Tzivye, aunt Laytshe’s fourteen-year-old neighbor, was holding a post card in her shaking hand as she entered our room. She stopped at the entrance and stood there stammering, trying to get out words no one else could understand. Finally, she handed my aunt an “invitation” from the ghetto authorities to report immediately to the Roundup Center on Czarnieckiego, with personal belongings in a knapsack not exceeding the weight of 15 kilograms

My mother cried out with a choked voice: “No. Laytshe, you mustn’t go, you will not go to deliver yourself to Czarnieckiego! These people who are being taken away in trains are being killed! Do you understand? They are being led away to the slaughter!”

For the first time, I heard someone talking openly about the destiny of the deportees, and I knew that my mother, who was an active member of the underground, was better informed than most of the ghetto inhabitants about conditions outside the ghetto.

“Rukhtshe, I do not know what you are talking about, but I do know that I do not want to go into hiding and jeopardize your lives or the lives of others! Anyway, Rukhtshe, I do not have the strength nor the willpower to fight any longer! “

“Laytshe, I will not let you go to the Roundup Center! They are gassing the people that are being deported!”

“What do you mean killing, gassing?” my aunt asked. “Rumkowski promised us that they are resettling the people — to work! They are going to work in match factories that are being built in the countryside.”

Mama with a faint voice exclaimed: “Laytshe, they are not going to work in match factories. They are going to be the matches that will be ignited and burned!”

“Rukhtshe, you are talking nonsense! I do not know what the Gerrnans are doing with the people who are being taken away in trains or trucks, but I do know that if a contingent of people has to be delivered to the Germans, it is better that it’s me than one of the young ones! As I have told you, I neither have the will nor the strength to go into hiding. I surely could not hide in your house and jeopardize your life and Feygele’s. So, I have no choice! Look Rukhtshe, Elek was just nineteen years old, and he no longer had the physical strength to fight against hunger and disease. I am over sixty years old, and out of physical and spiritual strength!”

“Please, Laytshe, you were always such a good, devoted sister to me. You were like a second mother! Don’t leave, if only for my sake! I need you now more than ever! We both cried so much these last several days, and reached a point where our eyes are dry. But I plead with you, for my sake and yours, please hide here or in the homes of our other sisters, or wherever you prefer, but do not deliver yourself to be led away to death!”

My aunt could not be convinced. “Forgive me Rukhtshe for leaving you at such a critical time, but by my staying, Elek will not come alive again, and in my condition, I can not be of any help to you and Feygele. I am tired! I feel like a hungry smitten dog. Good-bye, Ruktshe! Good-bye, Feygele! I have always loved you both very, very much and will love you as long as I remain alive!”

The last hugs and kisses followed. Before we had a chance to think, to feel and to grieve her departure — the second of my three mothers was also gone forever.

•••••

One early spring afternoon, my sister-in-law, Shprintse, walked in looking very morbid and serene. I believe that the date was April 22nd, 1942. Shprintse somehow managed to tell my mother about my brother Shimon’s sudden death.

She told us that early that morning, Shimon reached out his hand for hers and tried to make love to her, but since it was getting late, she hurriedly brushed him off, got ready for work, kissed him good-day and went off to her shirt factory, where she and her twin sister were working on sewing machines stitching in collars. When she returned that afternoon, she found Shimon on the floor near the window – dead. No one knew exactly what had happened to him in the final hours, in the final moments of his life. We knew that Shimon was very sick. He was extremely skinny, his eyes had shrunk, and his face seemed to be very yellow.

The evening before, Shimon had stopped over to see us, but spent most of the time in a corner of the room talking to mama. They were talking in whispers, seemingly in a serious and intimate conversation — discussing something of great importance to both of them. I overheard the word Doctor several times, but that was all. Although I tried to eavesdrop (even though I knew that mama and her first born did not want me to hear what they were whispering about), I could not make out anything else they were saying. When they stepped forward, toward the center of the room, mama suggested that he sleep over that night in our home, but Shimon wouldn’t hear of it. “No, mama, Shprintse would be worried if I did not return tonight!”

Mama handed him some of our food rations, kissed him on the forehead and said: “Then, you had better hurry, Shimon, because it’s getting late. It will soon be curfew time and it will be too dangerous to cross the bridge.”

Upon leaving, Shimon said to us: “Take care of yourselves!”

These were the last words I heard him utter. He left our home moving unlike his usual self — slowly and unsteady on his feet. He was looking around — our home, at us — as if he were never to see us again. After he left, mama said: “Shimon is very sick!” Mama was agitated and then she became depressed. Later, when she lay in her bed, she helplessly stared mto the unknown.

When we arrived at Shimon and Shprintse’s living quarters, mama, a crushed woman, threw herself in despair over his body on the floor. “My gorgeous, intellectual, talented first-born son!” I always thought that Shimon was her favorite son, or that she had at least, a different relationship with him than with her other children. He was rather like her dear friend. He lay there on the floor — motionless, stiff, his face having the coloring of brown cement.

“Feygele, go to the cooperative to get Shimon’s weekly bread rations. It’s the first day of bread distribution,” mama said when she got up. “Elek was buried as he was, but I want to give Shimon a befitting Tahare, Takhrikhim and burial.” I did what mother instructed me to do. As I was returning with Shimon’s ration card and his loaf of bread for the week, a young neighbor of his, who seemed to know that Shimon was dead, approached me. She was demanding that I give her half of the bread and threatened that otherwise she would denounce me.

“Give her the bread she is demanding,” mama said when I asked her what to do. Mama later told me that Shimon’s watch — his Bar Mitzvah gift from my parents (which he wore the evening before) — was missing from his wrist. Mama believed that the very same family next door had robbed him of his personal belongings — after they heard him fall down dead.

•••••

After Shimon’s death, only two members of our immediate family remained alive — my mother and I. It is pointless to stress the fact that our home was now an empty and sad room pervaded by mouming. There was little talk between us, very few emotions were expressed and our belief in a future was shattered. We just went about the routine of going to work — mother to the Altmaterialn (where they sorted and searched the clothing that was brought into the ghetto from surrounding towns and villages) and I to Zbar’s Resort (where uniforms were made for the German soldiers, aprons were sewn for the German women, and beautiful frocks were manufactured for their children). Hunger and disease was rampant. People talked about some ghetto dwellers being caught leaving their dead — children, spouses and parents — for prolonged periods of time in their homes, in order to continue using their ration coupons.

In addition to work at the Resort, I now had to assume duties of decision maker, physical caretaker and provider of household goods. I had to assume the responsibility of standing for hours in lines at the cooperative stores in order to buy our groceries, potatoes, wood and brikev (a coal substitute). It was I who had to carry these allocations home. Quite often it seemed to me that they weighed nearly as much as I did, and I could barely pick up the burlap sacks filled with these essentials.

By mastering my last bit of strength (as well as some intelligence) to bring these items home, I managed to transport these things from the centers located a long distance away from our home to our living quarters. In the beginning it seemed like an impossible task, but finally I found a way to manage. I would step in front of the heavy sack, and as soon as I threw the sack over my shoulder, I would run a few steps and then drop the heavy weight in front of me. And again and again — I would walk forward, throw the sack over my shoulder, run forward and drop the sack in front of me — until I finally reached my home with the heavy weight. I did not complain about my new duties; I even joked about my ingenuity — but I was forced to mature rapidly.

Suddenly, our roles seemed to have reversed — I was forced to fulfill the traditional role of a parent, whereas my mother had become like a helpless child. At times, I resented my new status and my mother’s helplessness, but I never mentioned it to mama, because I knew that she couldn’t help it and that her physical condition and her depression might worsen if she were aware of my feelings.

Yes, I felt sorry for myself, but I felt even more sorry for my mother — to whom I was the only incentive to continue living.

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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Death, Deportation, Disease — Part 1

The period from January 1942 through the middle of 1943, was a critical time for the entire population in Lodz ghetto, and the most devastating period of my own life.

In January of 1942, my beloved grandmother, who was approximately eighty-four years of age, died of malnutrition. Her death was the first that I had ever witnessed personally. Her agony, as she fought for her life, remains singed in my memory. Her body was convulsing, her limbs shaking, rising and falling.

With her last words, she recalled the fate of another dying relative: “When my cousin Feygele, who was one hundred and four years old, was dying, I wished her a speedy recovery and many years of continued ‘nakhes’ (fulfillment) from her great grandchildren. Her answer was: “Oy, Fradele, umayn” (Amen). My own interpretation of these words was that she considered herself relatively young and surely had the desire to live on. My Buba died, still surrounded by four of her daughters, her younger sister Khayele, a number of her grandchildren, and a number of other relatives and neighbors. She was respected and adored by everyone who knew her, mainly because of her genuine goodness and devotion to the poor and homeless.

I loved my grandmother dearly and thought of her as one of my three mothers (in addition to my mother and my Aunt Laytshe), but it was too scary to stand near her deathbed and watch her suffer —struggling for her life. So, with the exception of the one time when she called me over to present me with her exquisite, golden cameo brooch— a gift from her son in England — I stood at the far end of the room, trembling and looking on from a distance.

At times, one or another individual in the room began to weep.

Sometimes, the wail rose to a chorus and all were crying at the same time. I heard my mother mutter: “I know that she has had a long and happy life, but if she hadn’t returned from England, or hadn’t been caught in the war and been a victim of Nazi discrimination and persecution, she would have lived on and on.” She hugged grandmother (or buba, as I called her) and said: “Mame, you were my friend, my support and my advisor, and in my eyes you are still very young.”

During the same month, mass deportations were speeded up. Among the deportees were my oldest cousin Malke Rakhl Wolkowicz (or Wolfowicz) with her three children (one of whom was my playmate Esther), and my grandmother’s younger sister, Khayele Fridman. Malke Rakhl’s husband had previously been deported to Czestochow — to work. My Great-Aunt Khayele’s husband, Avreml, had died in the ghetto during an epidemic of dysentery, and her children (Leybesh Wolf and Ratse) had gone off at the outbreak of the war with their immediate families to a small town in the hope that it would be easier to survive the Nazi occupation there. Both of them — Malke Rakhl and Aunt Khayele — were among the ghetto welfare recipients. The former, as the wife of a deportee who was allegedly employed by the Germans in Czestochow, was receiving twelve marks per month. The latter, as an unemployable elderly person, was receiving nine marks per month.

It was a bitterly cold winter, and tragedy was rampant in the ghetto. People actually froze to death in their beds and in the streets. Often, they just dropped down dead. Despite the fact that there was an increased number of gravediggers and that there were dozens of burials daily, numerous bodies were waiting — often for weeks, for burial. And there was more talk about deportations.

Approximately one month later, on March 6, 1942, my younger brother Elek died. He had just turned nineteen. He was brought home in mortal agony from the Tishler Resort. Earlier that morning, when Elek was getting ready to go to work, he had complained that his trepes (clogs produced in the ghetto – cloth with wooden soles) were too heavy and that he had difficulty tying his shoelaces. Mama bent down to help him and pleaded: “Elek, don’t go to work today. Stay home and rest your swollen feet.” But my brother would not hear of it. He kept on insisting that he had to finish the work on a beautiful credenza. Elek was a conscientious workaholic, and at work he was loved both by his superiors and his co-workers. Mama evidently knew that he was already very sick, but she was also aware of the fact that for Elek to stay home in the freezing cold room without the food allocation provided for workers at the Resort was neither beneficial, nor a cure for his rapidly spreading disease.

Elek kissed my mother and me as if he would never see us again. After he left the house, mama turned her unusually pale face and trembling lips away from me.

She was crying. When she turned her face toward me again, her eyes seemed to be unusually red and the black rings under her eyes were swollen. She said to me in a whisper: “Feygele, my child, your brother Elek is very, very sick.” I noticed that when she turned away from me again, she was wiping tears from her eyes.

“Elek, Elek, why did you return to this hell from the Soviet occupied territory?” mama asked him almost with reproach. “Didn’t your cousins Note and Khane (in Pruzany) treat you well?”

“Oh, mama, they treated me very, very well. They were like a brother and sister toward me. Only — I felt very guilty that I left you and Feygele. I didn’t think that Shimon, the intellect in the household, had the courage, the street smarts, the drive or the ability for self-sacrifice to help in your survival of the war.”

“Yes, mama! I wanted to live, I wanted to save my own skin, but I thought that if I returned here, I could somehow also save the rest of you!”

“Elek, Elek”, my mother responded, “you are such a good son, but I wish you hadn’t sacrificed your life for ours!” Mama spoon-fed Elek with the food “specialties” she prepared just for him, but Elek had lost his appetite. She caressed him, put compresses on his head and tried to conceal her broken heart from me. She also tried to restrain herself from shedding tears, to prevent Elek from seeing them.

Next evening, Elek became incomprehensible, his speech slurred, and though he continued to fight for his life for another day, he had lost consciousness. It was awful to watch my handsome, devoted brother lose his fight against death. The doctor, who had visited him, said that it was only a question of hours. Several times Elek asked whether mama could see the rackets up in the sky. Mama explained to me that he was in a coma and hallucinating.

I was asleep in the bed next to Elek. Our faces almost touched. Aunt Laytshe and my mother were standing over him on the other side of his bed, near the window, wiping the cold sweat from his face and pouring liquids between his lips. Occasionally their faces took on grimaces, and they expressed great helplessness and despair. Sometimes, they would just break out in tears

Intermittently, they would listen to Elek’s heartbeat and put their fingers to his wrist to hear his pulse. The dim wick in the glass of oil flickered and threw shadows over the room. When my aunt decided that Elek was no longer breathing, she pulled the sheet over Elek’s face. For a while, my mother and aunt Leytshe stood around — lamenting. I was trembling and shivering again. Neither my mother nor my aunt came over this time to calm me down. The tragedy of losing their son and nephew overpowered their desire to calm me. Eventually, they sat down at the foot of the bed that I was resting in, pulled the down quilt to cover their clothed bodies and sat up for the remainder of the night. I fell asleep several times. Whenever I woke up, I heard them talking in a whisper. Whenever they realized that I was awake, they stopped talking. When I asked them why they wouldn’t lie down to sleep, they explained that they were keeping watch over Elek’s body.

At one time, Elek’s dead left arm was suddenly lifted and just as suddenly fell down over my body. At first, it was scary — but then I cried out: “Elek is still alive! He is not dead! He just moved his arm! His hand fell right over my body!”

I am not sure whether mama and Aunt Laytshe noticed it too, but they had a difficult time calming me down. They explained to me that some limbs might still move after the person had died. “Get up, Elek, you can get up and walk!” I continued to cry. But when Aunt Leytshe checked again, I noticed that Elek lay there motionless, colorless, and that he was not responding to my request.

(to be continued…)

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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Homecoming

Sometime near the end of January of 1941, the shocking news spread among friends that my brother Elek’s 18-year-old friend Dovidl Kuperman had been killed by a bullet from a German post guarding the Ghetto. The rumor was that despite all the difficulties and dangers for Jews to travel, Dovidl managed to return to Lodz from his relatives in Lublin, cut the barbed wire fence and re-enter the ghetto; but suddenly a shot rang out, and he met instant death. His blood quickly scattered in a red patch between the white snow around him.

Dovidl, my younger brother’s close friend, used to be a frequent guest in our home. He was, like Elek, very tall, very slender and gregarious. When I was sick, he had showered me with delicious fruits and gifts, and said that if I promised to marry him, he would wait until I grew up. The shocking news about Dovidl’s fate was devastating to all who knew him, and even to many Ghetto inhabitants who didn’t know him personally. He became both a symbol of courage and a warning to be highly cautious of the German guards surrounding the ghetto on their raised posts. Actually, he was one of many to meet such a tragic end. One’s life was at risk merely by walking or standing near the fence. Quite often, the guards went on wild shooting sprees.

I can vividly recall that as the winter continued, frost flowers covered the windowpanes of our freezing room. Toward the latter part of February 1941 — as our hearts remained filled with pain and fear over the tragic event related to Dovidl’s homecoming — a messenger-boy came to tell us the news that my brother Elek was on the way home from Pruzany. My mother looked at the boy with great astonishment and asked him how he knew that. The boy answered: “Someone, a young man, paid me money to tell you that.”

My mother continued questioning the boy: “Who paid you money to bring me that news? What did the young man look like?” Her voice was filled with amazement, concern and fear.

“He was very, very tall and very, very skinny. He had dark brown or black straight hair, large black eyes, wide black eye lashes and black eyebrows; He was wearing extremely large shoes and…” It was clear that the boy was describing my brother Elek.

“Where is the young man now?” mama yelled out.

“I don’t know. But he said that he would be right over. Yes, he also asked me to tell you not to worry, that everything was all right, that he was well and that he can’t wait to see you!”

I believe that my mother was ready to collapse when the door opened and Elek hurried in. Actually, he was speeding in with a limp. He was extremely pale and seemed to have matured quite a bit in the few months that he was gone. He apologized for frightening us by having the boy come in to tell us about his homecoming, “but,” he explained “I was afraid that it would have been even a greater shock if I had suddenly appeared from the blue sky. So, I wanted you to be a little prepared for the idea that I was returning home.”

After the initial embraces, kisses and tears, mama looked at Elek’s feet and told him that he had a bad case of frostbite. She prepared a basin with some liquid for Elek to soak his feet in as well as a warm meal. Then she filled the little tub in the corner of the room behind a curtain with water for him to bathe in. I noticed that she carefully took away all the clothes that Elek was wearing when he came home and took them outside to bury in the ground because, she said, they were infested with lice. After she returned, she handed him fresh undergarments, pants and a flannel shirt.

“There you are again looking like my handsome, beloved son; not like a vagabond,” my mother exclaimed with warmth in her voice when Elek came out of the bathroom area in the corner.

Elek told us that he had been on the road several weeks. Soon after he began his travel homeward, he was caught by the Soviets crossing the border and wound up in a Soviet jail. He was laughing about the investigation by the NKVD (Soviet Secret Service) and how he succeeded in deceiving them about his aimed destination. Although he was actually trying to return home to the German occupied part of Poland, he told the Soviets that he was fleeing from the Germans and was trying to get to the Soviet Union. He told them this lie about the direction he was actually aiming for, because he had previously been warned that the Soviets were sending people back to wherever they came from. Those who were fleeing from the Germans were returned to the German-occupied territories, and those who were trying to return from the Soviet Union to their homes and families on the German side, were sent to Siberia or other parts deep inside the Russian countryside as alleged spies. “Sure enough,” Elek told us, “after one night in jail, they escorted me to the middle of the frozen river Bug, and with rifles pointed at me, they asked me to run back to the German side.

During Elek’s journey through the German occupied territory of Poland, he had stopped in the Polish capital of Warsaw, where he was unable to find members of our father’s side of the family. Life there was, according to his description, even more atrocious than in Lodz; the Jewish populace was dying there in the streets from hunger and cold. Of course, he did not know that since he left Lodz, conditions had worsened in our city too.

Elek also told mama about people from Lodz that he met in Warsaw, especially about Lererin Lazar, one of our teachers from the Medem Shul, who was working there for the JOINT (under the Nazis an underground organization). Lererin Lazar had entrusted Elek with the mission of bringing a larger sum of money for the underground movement in Lodz.

Elek was in pain and frequently had to soak his feet a solution. The doctor said that he had second and third degree frostbite — as a result of walking for days in the bitter cold during the freezing Russian and Polish winter. On the way home, he was unable to find shelter at night — so he had slept outdoors in the snow. “But if you know how to take care of yourself, it is really not that bad,” he bragged, with a special air of pride in his voice.

My mother repeatedly asked Elek the agonizing question “why, why did you return to Lodz?” His answer was always the same “I was homesick; had it on my conscience and felt guilty all the time because I left you behind.” I understand that Elek had it quite well in Pruzany. My cousin, Note Berlinski, took him in to learn the trade of carpentry and was working alongside him in the NKVD headquarters. Though our cousins’ home and farm had been requisitioned by the Soviet military, the living conditions in the part of our cousins’ home that they had occupied were still relatively good. I personally felt very much relieved and more secure with Elek being home, but I felt sorry for Elek in making the decision to return to this hell.

Soon, Aunt Leytshe heard the news about Elek’s homecoming and came running to inquire about her son, daughter-in-law and her granddaughter, Esterke. When she learned that she had another baby granddaughter of several months, her face brightened up and tears begun to flow from her eyes — which stained her beautiful face. But soon, a grimace appeared on her lips. She probably realized that she would never see or hold this baby granddaughter in her arms.

Elek’s and Shimon’s friends also came to visit. They were anxious to hear about his experiences and adventures in the world outside the fence. He told them many stories about life in the Soviet Union. The people, he reported, were living in misery there too. The populace there was often forced to refer to Stalin as Nash Bog (Our God), and had to carry his portrait during parades as though he was a holy man. “In the land of alleged equality, there are tremendous social and economic differences between the well-todo and the starving, and anti-Semitism is still very much alive there!” he told the crowd that gathered to hear him. He frequently heard the words “Zhid Parkhati” (Scurvy Jew) and “Zhidovskaya Morda” (Jewish snout) directed at him, from the Russian natives.

Many others tried to return from the Soviet Union and from different German occupied territories to their homes and families in Lodz, but few succeeded. Some of these were evacuated to Siberia as alleged German spies, and enslaved as free or non-free prisoners of war; some died on the roads leaving or returning home; others were killed by diseases, or were shot while trying to get through the high walls or the barbed wire ghetto-fences.

As soon as Elek recuperated from the severe frostbite, he went to work in the Tishler Resort. He never complained and said that his was basically a good job, “almost as good as the one I had in the Soviet Union”.

Elek was loved and respected by all — his relatives, friends, co-workers and supervisors.

My mother claimed that Elek — by then 18 years old — was extremely skinny, rapidly growing and developing, and needed more food than the rest of us. “He needs more food than we do and we must provide our main provider with additional energy”, she said.

At times, I brought Elek cooked meals to his Resort. After he ate everything up, he disappeared for a while, washed and dried the pot, and filled it up with broken up pieces of wood that we would later use as firewood. He himself brought it through the control room, because he did not want me to take the risk of being caught with stolen merchandise. Outside the Resort he would hand me the bag with the “empty” pot to bring home.

Oh, how good it was having Elek, our provider and protector, home again!

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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Foreigners

My first glimpse of Jews from foreign lands was in the winter of 1938 – 39, when a pair of twins from Berlin — a sister and brother — were brought in to our classroom as new students. The twins, my own age, were intelligent, charming, attractive and always well dressed. They learned eagerly and fast, and soon became my good friends. When they invited me to their home, they showed me fascinating photographs of their comfortable, wealthy home in their native land. They often spoke about their school, playmates and relatives in Germany. At times, they would tell us the story of having watched their house being consumed by flames after German hoodlums had lit it on fire; how they had been “escorted” to a special train that brought them to the German-Polish border; and how they were then forced, at gunpoint, to run across the border to Zbaszyn. We were fascinated by their stories and deeply touched by their sickening experiences at the hands of the Nazis. The fact that they, and other members of their family, were treated as if they were a lower species and ultimately misplaced from their home, being allowed to bring along only a few of their belongings, was mindboggling to us.

We welcomed them with open arms and they seemed to quickly assimilate into our culture. They visited our homes and we visited theirs. Within several months, they spoke Yiddish fluently and became excellent students in most of the subjects.

Those who were brought to Lodz from Zbaszyn in October of 1938-39 (German citizens of Polish descent and their offspring), were still able to establish homes for their families. But it was a different situation for the lot of those who were brought to us after the Litzmannstadt Ghetto was established. The plight of these “foreigners” was even worse than that of the Polish Jews who were suffering in the ghetto. Most of the native Jews had dwelt in that land for hundreds of years, and if it wasn’t for the Star of David sewn onto their clothes, and the hunger and fear expressed in their eyes, they could hardly be distinguished from the rest of the populace.

The new foreigners were brought to this strange place after being uprooted from a life of economic, social and financial luxuries. Their lives in their homeland — even during the Nazi era — seemed to have been much better than ours ever was in Poland. Their new life quickly became one of poverty and deprivation of basic necessities. When they were brought to Litzmannstadt, they did not seem to be malnourished as we were inside this cage. They managed to bring a small amount of money and other possessions with them, but with their German marks, they could purchase very little in the ghetto. Some of the goods that they had brought with them were actually completely worthless in this place. While the rest of the ghetto populace was struggling in congested living spaces, they had at least some housing and a bed to sleep in. Most of the foreigners — from Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria ended up homeless, sleeping on floors in tempora y shelters (in cinemas, schools ard other public places). They had no beds, no wardrobes, no stoves, no dishes nor any other necessities. With very few exceptions, they had few social connections within this new country.

The foreigners experienced a big culture shock. To some extent they brought with them the German attitude of superior and inferior nationalities, and at least for a while, they put on such airs. They considered themselves of better stock than the “inferior” Eastern European Jews. They spoke German, looked down on us and demeaned the spoken Yiddish (as if it were a “corrupted German dialect”). Some natives of Lodz claimed that they overheard the foreigners say that “Hitler was horrible,” but they were still hoping that the “Germans would not lose the war to the allied forces.” I never personally heard them say that.

While we were concerned about filling up our empty, convulsing stomachs, they spoke about vitamins, minerals and spices. Though the hunger and cold were unbearable to everyone, they were completely unable to cope with the situation. On a daily basis, the “foreigners” would be dying — from hunger, disease and cold — in huge numbers. One could see their dead by the dozens — in the streets, in homes, piled up at the cemeteries waiting for burial — in much greater numbers than the local ghetto dwellers. They were also the easiest targets for ridicule and deportation from the ghetto.

As early as the latter part of 1940, at a time when the ghetto area was again decreased in actual size, transports of Foreigners were brought to Lodz from various countries west and south of Poland. My mother had pity on an old Czech lady and invited her to be our guest in our one-room apartment — which was occupied by our family of five people at the time. My mother thought that although the woman would not find the comfort and privacy in our room that she was accustomed to in her native land, she would be better off than in the congested cinema across the street on the bare floor. We were forced to squeeze together, and made room for the old lady to sleep. We were flabbergasted that this woman — for whom we had sacrificed our own sleeping comfort, our bread, soup and other essentials — sneered at everything that we shared with her. I was rather annoyed when she made negative comments about our delicious beet borsht: “Beets? — That’s feed for horses!”

Approximately every fourteen days, posters appeared on the ghetto walls regarding our forthcoming food allocation. We all waited anxiously to find out about the new scarce bread, groceries and special rations. We, the Jewish children from Lodz, who considered these semi-monthly rations to be starvation diet foods, were annoyed by the remarks of the “superior foreigners” with regard to the nutritional value of these forthcoming “goodies”. So, we would at times stand beside them and mockingly emulate their form of speech, as they were engaged in deep discourse regarding how tasty and beneficial certain food rations might be. s, including spices might be. One of us might exclaim with alleged excitement:

“Mein Got, Paprika ist auch da? Und Kumel auch? Danken Got! Das hat Vitaminen A und B und inmitten C(tse) – ‘Tsureshen.” — “My God, Paprika is also available? And Kumel, too? Thank God! That’s Vitamin A and B with C in the middle.” (C was short for Cureshen, a German diminutive meaning misery)

The Foreigners as well as the deportees from other surrounding towns and townships were the most vulnerable targets for deportation. The majority of them were labeled as homeless, unproductive and defiant welfare recipients, unnecessary businessmen and intellectuals.

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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Ghetto Elite and Government

In the midst of all the misery in the ghetto lived a well-to-do ghetto elite. This elite establishment was headed by Mordechai Khaim Rumkowski — the Altester der Juden in Litzmannstadt ghetto, also referred to by the inhabitants, with sarcasm as the “King”, “the Prezes”, “der alter” (the old man) and “Chaimek” (the Polish diminutive for Khaim). Of the many poems and songs written, recited and sung about him — most carried negative connotations.

Since 1931, Mordechai Khaim Rumkowski — an ardent Zionist from White Russia, had been an elected member to the Jewish Kehile, on the right wing Zionist slate. At one time he had been the leader of their faction. Among the city dwellers who knew of him, he had been known as the professional “shnorer” (beggar), because of his position as a campaigner for funds for the orphanages. He was a moody, cranky, authoritarian man and was basically disliked by most people who knew him. There had been little respect for him even among the members of his right-wing party.

Despite his lack of education and failure in businesses, he had seemingly succeeded in his community work because of his good organizing skills and his devotion to the Zionist ideology. In 1939, he took over the management of the orphanage in Helenowek. Despite his self-proclaimed label as “the father of orphans”, an “orphan-lover and orphan-protector”, there was testimony by the children from the orphanages — some with whom I later became very familiar — and some newspaper reports that he was a maniac, a sexually deviant, child molester and abuser.

Rumkowski had a lot of “chutzpah” (brazen nerve or audacity), and truly believed in some of Hitler’s philosophies and ultimate victory. He believed that by cooperating with the Nazis, a golden opportunity existed for the Zionist dream of establishing a Jewish state, albeit under the Nazis, and the opportunity to achieve personal glory as the undisputed ruler of such state. The Jewish educational system under him was organized in such a manner as to form such a state.

Rumkowski worked closely with the German ghetto administration. At some point, he dismissed the remainder of the old Jewish community council and appointed his own relatives and friends to the new Judenrat (better known in Lodz as Beirat), which was to become an instrument to him (to establish control over the Lodz Jews) and a tool for the Nazi Germans. Despite the fact that he was actually a German puppet, he acted in a manner befitting an actual ruler — a king or dictator. A man in his middle sixties, he was often seen riding around in a “royal coach” (horse and buggy). He was always surrounded by a large security team — consisting of young men who had been known as boxers, wrestlers and members of the criminal underworld. They all belonged now to the privileged class. They were well fed, well clothed, and relatively well housed. His portrait had to be hung in all the ghetto offices. All the ghetto stamps and ghetto money, was engraved with his portrait and signature. All the posters and ghetto newspapers (usually in Yiddish and German) displayed his signature. He himself made all the final decisions regarding hiring and firing of the ghetto bureaucrats.

Khaim Rumkowski delivered fiery speeches in support of unconditional compliance with the German decrees and requests. His famous motto was: “work, obedience and order.” He often argued that “only work for the German war machine in exchange for food will save our center of productivity from calamity.” He frequently stated that if the Nazis requested a contingent of Jews and deportations were organized, “the “unproductive parasites” — smugglers, unemployed and welfare recipients — would be the first on the lists of deportees.” Many claimed that “the old crazy man’s main interest was saving his own skin and the autocratic rule by Chaim Rumhowski.

At first he claimed that his goal was to save the majority of the ghetto residents, but later his aim was reduced to saving “a percentage” or at least a small segment of the Jewish population. He used to say that those whom he will save, would be prepared to build a Zionist state in the holy land.

“The king” enjoyed having power over the nearly 250,000 Jewish inhabitants of the Litzmannstadt ghetto (natives of the city, and people from other towns and counties who were brought to the Lodz ghetto). He also tried, unsuccessfully, to expand his hegemony over other nearby cities and rural areas.

There were at least two versions of how Khaim Rumkowski got to become the Elder of the Jews.

According to one rumor, when the German authorities requested to know who was the “Elder” of the Jewish Community Council, he mistook the German word Altester (Elder) for the Yiddish word “eltster” (oldest) and called out: “Ikh bin der eltster!”

“Good, you will be responsible for the behavior, organization and cooperation of the Jews,” responded the German Chief. Thus he became the “Altester der Juden in Litzmannstadt.”

Another version that circulated in the ghetto was that when the Germans occupied the city, a high-ranking officer appeared at the Jewish Community Council and requested a list of the board members. Since most of the important leaders had already left the city (those who remained in Lodz had either been arrested, shot or were in hiding and were being hunted by the occupying authorities), and the remaining influential Jewish people did not come forward. The Germans insisted on getting together a “representative” body of Jews. Eventually, a lesser-known member of the council appeared at the German police station with Rurnkowski, whom he introduced as an authority. The Chief of the Police claimed that he was going to investigate the matter and requested that they come again on a given date and time.

In the meantime Khaim Rumkowski paid a solo visit to the Police Chief, without the knowledge of the other person. He told the Chief that he was the only true remaining leader of the Jews in the city, and explained that he was able and willing to be responsible for the behavior of the Jewish population in the city. He assured the German Chief that he would fully cooperate and satisfy all requests by the German authorities. The Police Chief immediately assigned him as the “Altester der Juden in Litzmannstadt.” When the other council member came to remind Rumkowski about their appointment with the police chief, Rumkowski announced that he was already declared as the Jewish Elder.

Rumkowski immediately began organizing the Jewish ‘self-governing’ apparatus. He organized a new Council, the Beirat, with his close political associates and relatives appointed to serve on it. He organized food cooperatives, ghetto (Jewish) police, a fire brigade, and, shortly thereafter, a Sonderkommando (Special Police). He appointed the members of the Beirat as directors of the various ‘governing’ units — the Departments of Food, Cooperatives, Justice, Health, Police, Sanitation and others. He allowed them special privileges, including special food allotments. Although the members of the Beirat also had the power over the ghetto dwellers, they actually served as Rumkowski’s personal rubber stamp, whereas he was the virtual undisputed, autocratic ruler of the ghetto.

When he began to organize the Food Cooperatives (in or about December 1939), and later the various Distribution centers and factories, he frequently made use of his favorite refrain: “Five years from now, the ghetto will tick like a clock!” Most of the people spat three times on the ground (an old Jewish superstitious custom to keep it from happening) and thought that the old man was deranged to speak of five years of war, hunger and horror.

He later married Miss Weinberger, a spinster who was half his own age (she was in the early thirties). Miss Weinberger was the Secretary to the Director of the Health Department in the Ghetto. There was much talk about Rumkowski thriving since he married the girl. With the exception of the few people who also managed to gain power after the German occupation, and lead comparatively comfortable lives, the ghetto inhabitants hated Rumkowski. They said that the Lilvak (White Russian, Latvian or Lithuanian Jew) was a crazy man, who would do anything to save his own skin and to rule over others.

No one could understand why he declared Yiddish, a language rejected by the Zionists, as the official language of the Jews in Litzmannstadt and later of the Litzmannstadt ghetto. Many believed that he was ordered to do so by the Nazi occupiers.

At the upper part of the pyramid, just below Rumkowski were the 31 Chief Directors of the various departments and social agencies who had been appointed directly by him. They occupied the best housing in the center of the ghetto and in villas in and around Marysin. They also received very enticing (larger than all others) first Beirat food rations.

The second tier consisted of the directors and managers of the social service agencies, distribution centers, resorts, law enforcement units, etc. The third tier of the elite, consisted of lesser government employees, law and order enforcers, legworkers and other bureaucrats.

All of the above wore white armbands with various styles of blue Mogen Dovids and enjoyed various degrees of privileges, including special allocations of food and clothing. They also had various degrees of other privileges — such as being allowed to frequent ghetto theaters, concerts, nightclubs and other entertainment (after the war, I was told about an established prostitution house for the elite and some German guests). Of particular importance to them was the priority they exercised in the long lines for bread, food, and coal at the distribution centers. What’s more, they had Rumkowski’s promises of security — for themselves and their families — during periods of “resettlement”. This was probably the most significant incentive for many to be compliant.

Khaim Rumkowski claimed that the protection of children, particularly orphaned children was his primary interest. He organized orphanages, old age homes, hospitals and dzialkes (garden cottages shared by ghetto youth). His main interest in the dzialkes was the advancement of Zionism among the young and that the young become efficient in agriculture. Despite his alleged “love for the children, the sick and old folks,” he was willing to sacrifice them on the altar of death, in order “to save the rest of the ghetto.”

Though it sounds unbelievable, many of his Jewish right wing colleagues, whom he had assigned to important positions, and even the Jewish Rabbinate, supported him in his attitude of collaborating with the Germans. It was never clear to me whether this was because they (like Rumkowski) agreed, at least partially with the Nazi’s super-nationalistic philosophies and believed in their final victory, or because they were primarily concerned in saving their own and their family’s skin. Even during the darkest moments of mass deportation, the Rabbinate voted in favor of the Jewish authorities continuing to perform the dirty work of capturing and delivering the victims to the Germans. Evidently, they too were willing to pay the biggest sacrifices in exchange for their prioritized opportunity to promote their own nationalist and religious goals, rituals and practices.

Rumkowski was used by the Nazi administration only as long as he was useful to his overlords, but he fully cooperated with them until the bitter end.

My maternal grandmother was considered by everyone to have been an observant and righteous Jewish mother, grandmother, neighbor, friend and member of the Jewish community, who had always been helpful to people in need — particularly to Jewish orphans. I overheard conversations about her devotion to poor children, and particularly, about incidents where she had cured small neglected children from canker, though others shied away from them. She was a very religious person and never missed Synagogue on Friday nights, Saturdays and Jewish holidays. This was the first Yom Kippur during which there was no seat in any synagogue for my grandmother to pray in. The Old Jewish Synagogue on Wolborska Street, had been blown up with dynamite. As I remember, it happened the same day as the other synagogues in town and the statue of Tadeusz Kosciusko on the Freedom Square, as well as some streets in the Jewish areas of Lodz (among them the Polnocna Street, where I was conceived) were destroyed. One day, we heard a big explosion followed by several other explosions, and people said that within minutes all these cherished places and relics were gone.

The experience during the High Holidays that year in the ghetto, was a particularly painful one for my grandmother to live through. She was still recuperating from a seriously broken leg that she suffered in a fall in early 1940. She had just returned to our home after several weeks in her daughter Khaye’s apartment, where she was rightfully accused by my cousin Sore Keyle to have been “stealing some food for me.”

Buba was very upset that there was no place for her to pray on this High Holiday. But the most painful experience for my grandmother occurred while observing the ghetto elite and their German guests stream toward the Cinema Bajka that had been turned into a synagogue for the holidays. They were demonstrating — in their new suits, holding taleysim (prayer shawls) and tfiln-zeklekh (boxes containing scripture) — under their arms and walking haughtily to the Yom Kippur services. We could clearly see the parade across the street from our window. My mother was able to point out every elitist and German official in the procession. It was an overwhelming experience. At the moment when she noticed the oncoming procession of known German ghetto administrators and overseers — famous Jew killers — being escorted by the Prezes who was dressed in the ceremonial garb of a high priest (a royal white robe with an ornamental collar, a white yarmlke and white slippers), then followed by the ghetto councilmen, directors and other Jews with elite positions in the ghetto, my grandmother was overcome by sorrow and exclaimed:

“Oh, how disgusting!” She turned her head up to the heavens and asked: “My God, is there such a thing as a God?” And she added softly: “For the murderers there is room to pray, but there is no place for me to pray on this High Holiday!”

I felt very bad for my pious grandmother and thought that the dramatic question and statement she expressed was that of a very religious person, inevitably turned agnostic at this very moment. She was turning toward God asking whether he existed! She could not understand how an all seeing, all-knowing, loving and powerful father could look down on earth and allow the atrocities and injustices we were witnessing, spurned on by our own people.

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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Ghetto Idioms, Games and Entertainment

The ghetto created its own idioms — words, expressions, humor, games, songs and entertainment.

Some of the most commonly used expressions were bialen (literally, in the German language to iron or press) or organizirn (in Yiddish — to organize). Both terms were a reference to taking without permission, or “stealing” for the purpose of survival. However, even though it was illegal, and engaging in such conduct would often cost the very lives of the individuals and their families, the ghetto inhabitants were quick to distinguish between stealing and biglen or organizirn.

Rumkowski, the Prezes, was usually sarcastically and resentfully referred to as Khaiml or the king of the ghetto, because he basically viewed himself as a king and behaved like one.

Breyte Pleytses (literally translated: broad shoulders or back) referred to one’s important connections — a necessary ingredient to survive.

Klepsidres (literally translated: obituaries or death announcements) referred to persons who were extremely skinny, sickly looking, physically and mentally depleted. Another expression for Klepsidres was Muzlman (Moslem), probably because the majority of third world Moslems were known to us as extremely malnourished people.

A katshke (literally: a duck) — referred to an unsubstantiated rumor that had spread in the ghetto. The most notorious katshke in the ghetto was in or around the summer of 1941, when the word spread that the German army fled from Litzmannstadt and the Russians were coming. “Proof” of that was the “fact” that “the sentries had left their posts and the ghetto was no longer surrounded and guarded by the Nazis. According to this katshke, “The Russian army was approaching our city from the east and would be in Lodz within the next one to two hours”. Despite the news reaching us during curfew hours, the ghetto-dwellers — adults and children — ran out from their buildings into the streets to rejoice about the Nazi defeat by dancing, singing, laughing and thanks giving. The police, who forcefully chased us back inside the gates of our homes, reminded us about the actual circumstances. The following morning new posters were hung all over the ghetto about our “horrible behavior and the deserved punitive action” against the ghetto inhabitants.

Khasene-Kartl (literally wedding invitation or wedding postcard) was the notice from the authorities to report (to the roundup place) with the allowed weight of belongings for “resettlement to workplaces outside the ghetto” (at times 12 1/2 kilograms and at other times 15 kilograms).

Rumkes was the ghetto money with the head and signature of Khaim Rumkowski with the Star of David on one side, and the swastika on the other side. It was of no value outside the ghetto.

One of the most popular ghetto jokes was: “What is the difference between Vigantol and Castor Oil?” Vigantol was a prescription drug used for rickets, physical depletion, weakness of the bones, and inability to walk. That lifesaving drug was very difficult to come by in the ghetto. The response was: “Vigantol makes one walk, whereas Castor Oil makes one run.”

Occasionally, our rations also included liquid soap. One day, a supply of small bars of soap came into the ghetto and was distributed among the ghetto inhabitants. The bars were small in size — probably the same size and shape of soap bars in workplaces, hotels or airlines in the USA. They were grayish green in color and had initials RIF in the center. A rumor spread (a “katshke?”) that the soap was made of the fat from the deported Jews who were killed first, and that RIF stood for “Rein Juden Fets” (Pure Jewish Fat). Very few inhabitants were ready to believe such a fantastic story. Most of us thought that it was a funny joke.

Because we had to spend so many hours in our congested homes after the 5:00 P.M. curfew, it would have been unbearable, if it weren’t for the fact that we became absorbed in games, reading, writing, and various cultural and creative activities. Many of the older residents of the ghetto spent a lot of time playing chess, checkers, cards and other popular or special interest games. My friends and I spent a lot of time playing word games, among which the Kvartet (quartet), our own creation, was frequently played. In order to win in quartet, it was necessary to gather more completed sets than the others. A completed set consisted of four cards of a given category. If, for example, we were playing an author quartet, a completed set would consist of four cards, each having one of the four works by that author underlined. We made up cards and played different quartets: geographical, historical, animals, household items and others. It was necessary to pay attention to what the others players called for and what the response would be, so that we could better estimate what they had in their hands.

Another popular game among my friends was “flirtation.” It became popular in our circle after I “borrowed” that game from my brother Shimon’s drawer. I found it there by chance among his hidden personal assets. Many of the children took part in this game. The game consisted of large cards with different numbered expressions, jokes or serious love declarations that we sent to or received from another — merely by telling the number of the message we wanted to communicate. Since we were just beginning to learn the facts of life, this was fascinating entertainment to us.

The younger children played group games in the backyard —”hide and seek,” “ascending” and a new wargame, during which the Germans were always defeated. The problem was that none of the children wanted to be one of the Germans.

A new entertainment became very popular — at least for a short while. At this time, new, low tables became available. Inhabitants of the ghetto said that they were magical tables that could predict the future. A group of people would gather around these magical tables and hold seances. The participants would close their eyes and hold their hands on top of the table; then the leader would ask the table to respond to his or her questions. For example:

“If the war is going to end soon, jump once; if it is going to take a long time then jump twice.” If the table jumped once, he would continue to ask: “How many months before the war will end?” The table would jump several times. Some people who participated in these seances took the responses by the magic tables very seriously; whereas others who did not believe in magic were laughing heartily about the jumping tables, considering it to be merely an entertainment provided by ingenious cabinet craftsmen.

Many new songs were written in the Lodz ghetto — mainly in Yiddish and Polish. Some of the music and songs were by renowned musicians and poets; others were written by unknown individuals. There were songs sung in the streets by everyday people; other songs were written for and sung in the ghetto theaters — usually at the famous variety shows. The following songs (with my own translation) were most commonly known:

RUMKOWSKI, KHAIM

(From Yiddish)
Rumkowski, Khaim, who gives us bran,
Who gives us barley and gives us manna
In ancient times Jews were eating manna,
Today every wife consumes her man.

Rumkowski, Khaim pondered hard,
Worked over plans day and night;
Created a ghetto, with a diet,
And he claims that he’s wise and right.

Listen Jews, I have for you some news,
But hell, I will not reveal my views.
Jews are wondering and do foresee
That by Shevuot we’ll all be free.

Another day “news” is spreading
Some are sure now and they are betting
The day of freedom’s very near
Happily they laugh, rejoice and cheer

But Rumkowski, Khaim
Laughs louder, sneering;
He claims: “The ghetto remains sealed
And I’ll continue to rule over you!”

He cries “Hear Rokhele,
if from your grave you rise,
You will be pleased to see
Your man is Kaiser.”

BIJA DZWONY

(From Polish)
Bells are ringing,
Crows are croaking,
Khaim the First, the madman,
Is now ruler over millions.

Horror propagated by a gray steed,
Our brave and handsome king,
Who fights against black marketing:
He designed for us a ghetto

A Jew, a caretaker, with his wife Chave
Who carries a broomstick like a trucheon.
Butter, eggs, flour, bread —
Give us, Khaim, all we need.

The ghetto child peddlers sold home made toffees (made from brown sugar, probably mixed with coffee grains), used a peculiar chant and words:

A huge brick for five pence,
A large bomb — for five pence!
Whole posts, whole buildings,
Sweet as honey, chocolate, rum!

As they were selling home made cigarettes, they chanted: “Papierosn, gute gemakhte!” (Well made cigarettes!”), and as they were selling saccharine they sang: “zeks a tsener, sakharin”. Sometimes, whole families were deported from the ghetto because of one member’s “criminal activity ” of black-marketeering .

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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The Resort

I continued attending school and remained basically worry free until I received a notification to report for work at the Resort (cooperative ghetto factory, temporarily controlled by Khaim Rumkowsk, but the property of the Nazis). Actually, I received three separate notices by ghetto mail — to report for work in three separate locations. Evidently someone or several people submitted three separate applications for work in my behalf. One notice ordered me to report at Zbar’s Resort (an underwear and hosiery factory). Another notice was to report at the Shtroy Resort, where straw would be braided and stitched together into floor rugs, shoes and other items; the third notification was to report to the Zatler Resort (a leather goods factory). My mother decided that Zbar’s Resort, only one block away, was the closest to our home, and that the work might be easier there than in the other two Resorts. Suddenly, I had become a worker; that is, almost a worker.

Since I had the status of a minor, I did not work as many hours as the adults did. The daily pay for our work was a soup allotment, a single slice of salami and a few ghetto marks. Later, we — the youngsters with the status of learners — received in addition to the regular soup all of the workers received, an additional half measure of soup daily. We also received coffee every morning. The man distributing the coffee yelled at us and complained a lot, particularly when people were coughing — as I did. He asked us to stop coughing, as he had heard too much of it the previous day. We thought that he was crazy and kept quiet.

We were led to believe then that the principal advantage of going to work was the workers’ ID card with our photograph that appeared on it. It put us in the category of “productive ghetto elements,” and we were made to believe that we would be spared from the deportations that were continually going on.

Not everyone was fortunate enough to get a job. Masses of unemployed job seekers would line up daily in front of the employment office looking for work. Without work, one did not get soup at the Resort, and one did not have the Rumkes to buy his bread and other allowances on the ration coupons, and without employment one did not get a workers identity card.

During the earliest stage of my “working career” at Zbar’s Resort, I was instructed to turn over belts, collars and other parts of garments, and to straighten out the edges. Later, we learned to use the iron, the hole puncher, and the snap and hole making machines. We essentially had to do whatever the group foreman and the older group workers demanded of us. Some of them treated us very well; others would take advantage of us, poked fun at us and sent us on ridiculous errands. One learner, for example, was sent to another work group, to bring back the pattern of an armhole, another was sent to get an invisible needle from the floor manager. At first, we couldn’t understand why the adults were roaring with laughter on account of our naivete in trade expressions. Then, we too thought that these jokes were funny, and joined them in their fun.

The tailors, dressmakers and seamstresses, who had initially brought their own sewing machines from their homes (in order to get employment at the Resort), would sit in long double rows, and speed along all day long on their treadle machines. The learners at the Resort, (myself included) would sit at the head of the double rows of machines that were facing each other, and would attempt to oblige the experienced workers and instructors in every way possible. I was treated very well there by the instructors and workers, but the work was very tedious; the noise from the hundreds of speeding machines in the huge hall was unbearable; and the rewards for our labor was very minimal.

At lunchtime, I would try to be among the first to receive the food and immediately, after receiving my soup ration, I would run home with my meager portion of soup and single slice of salami. My mother would cut the salami into two thinner slices, dip them in flour and fry them, so the portions seemed to become bigger and “sufficient” for the two of us. She would add a large amount of water to the already watery soup that we would share, so the amount of soup seemed to have increased and our stomachs seemed to be filled — at least for a little while.

Later, my mother also got a steady job — at Altmaterialn, a warehouse, where she sorted old clothing that was brought in from surroundings towns and townships after the deportations or the liquidation of their ghettoes. All valuables that were found inside the clothing were the “property of the Third Reich,” and had to be turned over to the “authorities.” Then my mother began to receive her own worker’s food allowance, her own small wages, and a worker’s ID card.

The hardest part of going to work was rising early in the bitter cold Polish winter mornings and the fear of arriving late for work. In addition to getting washed and dressed in the morning, I had to help mother put on her orthopedic shoe and tie it safely all the way to her knee of her stiff leg. This required extra preparation time and I frequently arrived late for work. Before we entered the factory grounds, we had to go past a little entrance hut where we had to sign an attendance sheet and write in the time of arrival. Luckily, Yosl Friede, the person in charge of the admission hut, knew my brothers and looked aside when I arrived late for work and signed an earlier time of arrival. If I arrived after the cards had been collected by the office, he sent me to the office building, to report to a girl, Miss Opatowska, who was not much older than myself. She would then assist me by writing in an incorrect, acceptable time of arrival.

We had to go to work no matter what the weather was like and whatever our health condition was. We were afraid that otherwise we would be blacklisted.

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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Shimon

In 1940, my mother’s name had been submitted to Prezes (President) Chaim Rumkowski for an Etat (government) position in the ghetto. A man named Jochimek, who was employed as a special courier or secretary for Rumkowski and had access to the office, saw to it that my mother’s application appeared at the top of the request pile. When my mother received the notice to report for an interview, she somehow managed to arrange for my brother Shimon to replace her. She explained that her future was much more uncertain, whereas Shimon was young, able, intelligent, and had more of a chance to succeed. She said that if Shimon got the job instead of her, our whole family would benefit from it and perhaps we would all have a chance to survive the war. There were several levels of Etat jobs. We did not expect either my brother or my mother to get a very high level position, but we were hoping for the best under the circumstances.

Shimon returned from the interview with Rumkowski very jubilant. He told us that Rumkowski, who was famous for his swinging moods, was apparently in an unusually good state of mind when they had met. He asked Shimon mainly about the composition of our family. As soon as Shimon told him, Rumkowski yelled out: “A mother, a brother, a sister and a grandmother, too? Oh, I’ll make sure that you get a good position!”

It took several months before Shimon was notified regarding a privileged job as a guard in a butcher cooperative. In the meantime a change had occurred in Shimon’s life. One evening, he told our mother that he and his fiancée, Shprintse, had decided to escape eastward to the Soviet occupied part of Poland. They had one problem, however: her parents, who were Khasidic Jews, wouldn’t hear about their daughter running off into the world with her fiancé before marriage. “So, mama, I would like to get your approval to marry the girl I love as soon as possible,” he said.

My mother expressed discontent. “First of all,” she said, “the year of mourning after father isn’t over yet… Secondly, you are not even nineteen years old, so you are too young to become a husband, let alone — a father. These are horrendous times and Jewish children are being condemned to death before they even have a chance to be born. Thirdly,” she asked, “how in the world could a young couple begin a decent marriage on ‘unstable footing’ — homeless, away from their families and without any of the material conditions necessary for a marriage to last?”

Shimon responded that he had known Shprintse for a long time, that he loved her dearly, that he must marry her soon, and that he could not live without her. My mother’s oldest and favorite son knew how to manipulate our mother.

So eventually, he had his way — but my mother managed to persuade him to postpone the wedding until the following spring. On March 27, 1941, the marriage between my brother and Shprintse took place in the bride’s home.

All of the attendees wore their best clothes – made before the war – for the occasion. Everyone looked very elegant and cheerful — that is, everyone but my mother. She sighed and cried a lot, mainly because my father had not lived long enough to share in the joy of seeing their son being married. Also, according to the religious custom followed by Shprintse’s father, my widowed mother could not escort her son under the khupe (wedding canopy) — because “as she was being a widow at the time she was not regarded as a married woman.” Eyl Mole Rakhamim (a prayer for the dead) was recited in the memory of my father and my mother cried again. Aunt Leytshe and Uncle Yosef accompanied Shimon under the canopy.

A wedding reception followed the ceremony. At the two long tables, with the bride and groom at the head of each table, sat the young couple’s parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles — a total of 45-50 individuals. We ate, sang, and prayed, and I recited a poem that I had written for the occasion.

The newly married couple got a room in the back of an old wooden, dilapidated building in the poorest and oldest section of Baluty. Before the war, this section (Fayferurke) was known as an area where the underworld and paupers resided. Both my mother and the mother of the bride, as well as several relatives of the young couple, tried their utmost to provide them with bedding, cooking utensils and other household items.

Shimon finally obtained the promised job (in a butcher’s cooperative); Shprintse, along with her twin sister Rozka, got jobs as seamstresses in a shirt factory. Very shortly afterward, the rest of Shprintse’s large family, the Zytenfelds, who did not have jobs and were therefore termed as “undesirables” (by the Nazis and by Rumkowski) — were deported to a concentration camp, and Rozka moved in with the young couple to live in their one bedroom apartment. I once overheard Shimon complaining to our mother that he and his newly married wife had lost the intimacy of marriage at a very early stage in their marriage. By that time, getting out of the ghetto had become virtually impossible.

On his privileged job, Shimon’s duty was to guard the lines for meat so that they moved in an orderly fashion and no one pushed in front of others. It was considered to be a third level etat job in the ghetto. Besides the special food allocations as a Government employee, he also received additional allocations of meat from the director of the cooperative. He also wore an armband with the blue Mogen Dovid (Star of David).

Shimon did not, however, hold this job for too long. A horrible experience almost cost him his life. It happened like this:

When Shimon was appointed to his new job, it was explained to him that his duties would be to make sure that the meat line moved in orderly fashion and that no one was allowed to push in front of others. It wasn’t explained to him that the police, firefighters and others wearing armbands — the privileged ghetto inhabitants — were exempt from these regulations. Shimon, a firm believer in justice, couldn’t see why the sick, skinny, undernourished and hard working ordinary people who could barely keep their equilibrium, should stand in line for hours; whereas the relatively well-to-do, well-fed, strong, privileged and not so hard-working ghetto elite should be allowed to get their meat rations without waiting in line for their turn. Shimon treated everyone equally, and didn’t allow anyone to push in front of others. The privileged, especially the police, didn’t appreciate his attitude, and repeatedly warned him that he would pay for his behavior.

One late afternoon, on a day that all the butcher cooperative employees received their special meat allocations, Shimon, who was heading home, was arrested by two policemen. He was charged with theft of meat. Inside the police station he was beaten up with blunt instruments and thrown into a jail cell, where they kept him until the director of the butcher store bailed him out. The director testified that he had personally given Shimon the meat and assured them that Shimon was a very honest young man.

Since the police station on Franciszkanska was practically across the street from us, after his release from jail, Shimon’s first stop was to our home. He told mama all that happened to him that afternoon. For the first time in my life, I saw Shimon crying like a baby. Mama was speechless and tended to his wounds. Soon thereafter, that meat cooperative was closed and my brother got another job as an attendant in a ghetto factory on Swiety Jakuba Street. Thus came the end to his special meat allocations, his armband and the special status.

Elek openly expressed resentment because mama had turned over her interview and thereby her potential good job to Shimon, who was sharing the allocations with his wife and his sister-in-law after his marriage — but not with us. Elek felt that if my mother or he had the better job, our whole family might have been in better circumstances and the job would have been more secure.

Shimon’s health rapidly declined — both physically and psychologically. It was heartbreaking to see this gorgeous looking young intellectual, chessmaster, excellent mathematician, talented caricature drawer, poetry lover and writer, and pre-war, Tsukunft-Shturem militiaman, reduced to an always hungry, and increasingly withdrawn person, continuously obsessed with searching for food. His eyes were now always wandering — looking to the ground, onto tables, or wherever — to find bread crumbs or anything else resembling food. He would pick up anything that came his way and shove it into his mouth. I could not understand what had happened to my older, handsome, talented and favorite brother, who had been my idol and my model. I couldn’t understand why he, who had more food than the rest of us (even if it wasn’t much more than we had), could become such a weak and helpless person. I felt both great pity and great resentment toward him.

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Food

Food had become the major preoccupation for the inhabitants of the ghetto Most of the ghetto dwellers spent a great part of the day in lines — lines for soups, lines for bread, lines for potatoes, groceries, coal, wood and other necessities. As far as I remember, I was generally spared this chore for about the first two and a half years of the war.

In the beginning, my father and my brothers were the major providers of food. They were the ones who risked their lives to get to bread lines during curfew hours, to stand for long hours and finally, to be recognized as Jews and to be thrown out of the lines empty-handed. At times, they succeeded, however, in getting one or two loaves of bread. My mother occasionally borrowed our neighbor’s baby, for whom she often baby-sat, and in well-spoken German appealed to the officer in charge of the line to have pity on her hungry child. Several times that stratagem helped her in getting bread — without struggling for hours in bread lines.

I often pleaded with my mother to allow me to attempt standing in bread lines too, but she thought that it was too dangerous for me. Eventually, one morning, my mother woke me up, and I joined my father and brothers in an unsuccessful bread line adventure. But after that frightening attempt, I decided to leave that chore to the others in my family. My brothers thought that my whole attitude that early morning was funny.

I was still only half awake, when after being shaken repeatedly, I had at last been awakened from deep sleep. Though I was walking, I could scarcely talk. When I met a cat in the hallway, I thought that it was a rat and was about to let out a big scream. When we walked in the dark of the night through the empty streets, and later, when we stood in line, I was shaking like a leaf, constantly holding on to father or one of my brothers for protection, and continuously pulling their arrns When it was announced that there was no more bread in the bakery, I began to cry This was my brothers’ version of the only time I attempted to help get food. I must admit that their account of my adventure was quite accurate.

Although, for a while, it was quite rewarding for Elek to substitute for those who were called for Zwangsarbeit, it did not last very long after father’s death. As previously mentioned, Shimon did not succeed in his slave labor endeavors.

After the ghetto was formed, “cooperative food stores” were organized and bread was distributed more regularly — a weekly allowance of 2 kilograms of bread per person. The bread, made mainly from chestnut flour, tasted like clay. Because we often had to wait for the arrival of promised foods to be distributed, bread was usually the only food for the day. We would eagerly chew on the bread, but still remained unsatisfied. Though a person ate more bread per day than the whole family consumed prior to the war, we were always hungry. The bread intake did not satisfy our need for food — obviously because we were lacking other nutrients (fats, vegetables, meat, dairy, glucose, vitamins and minerals) that were necessary for our physical and mental development, and well being.

One day, my mother stated that from that day onward, every family member in our household would receive his or her own loaf of bread allowance for the week, and be responsible for disciplining oneself in dividing and consuming the bread ration. She insisted, however, that since Elek, was rapidly growing and was the main breadwinner in our household, everyone else among us would cut off part of one’s bread ration as a bonus for him. Dividing bread was not unusual among the ghetto dwellers, especially among those whose family members were unable to control their appetites and wound up overindulging in the consumption of food at the expense of others in the family. But we were caught by surprise, because my mother used to say until then that in our home we would not carry on antisocial behavior that was not befitting a decent family. I do not know what exactly prompted her to make that move.

The responsibility of dividing the bread and distributing it through the week was a most difficult task and very hard for me to cope with. After Elek’s bonus portion was taken off my loaf of bread, I would divide the remaining bread into seven approximately equal portions, but the portion for that day disappeared within minutes. I was too hungry to wait any longer. I put the other six portions in the credenza. As the evening approached, I decided to cut off very, very thin slices from each of the portions that I put aside for the following six days. Normally, I would not stop there and kept on cutting off tiny bits of bread from each portion. If my mother noticed it, she would good-humoredly ask me whether I was stealing bread from myself. I felt very guilty about it, but not for too long. My stomach was gnawing and was giving me different instructions.

My daily bread allowance shrunk by the day and on the third or fourth day, I was left completely without any bread for the rest of the week. Most of the time, my mother would stop me on the way out “after breakfast” and would ask me why I wasn’t eating anything before leaving the house. I was very embarrassed and lied to her: “I just ate! Didn’t you see me eat?”

My mother denied having seen me eat and suggested that she should lend me, “only lend me,” a slice of bread and that when we received our next bread allowance, I would repay her. I did not want to eat my mother’s bread, but I could not resist the temptation of getting something into my stomach. When the following bread allocation arrived, I paid my mother back the bread I owed her and started off with less than before. So, the cycle of paying back and borrowing bread went on and on.

Since my grandmother had grown up on a farm in a tiny settlement near Dzialoszyce, south of Kielce, she had learned a lot about mushrooms, plants and weeds. In the beginning, at her initiative, we gathered and utilized weeds in our daily diet. Most frequently, we used the weed that she called Yarmuzhke (a weed resembling the leaf of the Chrysanthemum).

Yarmuzhke could easily be found in the fields on the outskirts of the city and also in backyards. Buba advised that “the weed was poisonous, but only if the white is used for cooking.” So, it was necessary to snip off the poisonous inner part from the plant. Then our hands as well as the plants were thoroughly washed. After that procedure, it was necessary to separate the leaves from the bough, and when these leaves were washed well, we would chop them up for fried vegetable burgers or cook them over the stove as a borsht or spinach substitute. I do not know what it would taste like if I ate it now, but during the war we thought that it was a delicious food. Eventually, either because other hungry people caught on to it as well, or because the harsh winter set in and weeds did not grow well, our consumption of Yarmuzhke soon came to an end.

Kohlrabi had become a popular food. Prior to the war, this vegetable was used in Poland only for cattle feed. During the war, kohlrabi became available on the ration cards. Elek sometimes brought home additional amounts. He claimed to be watching vegetable trucks go by, and whenever a Kohlrabi fell off the trucks he would be there ready to pick it up. I was under the impression that Elek was stealing food from wagons and from vegetable warehouses. We ate the kohlrabi — cooked, as a dessert, fried or raw — for breakfast, lunch and supper, and between meals. I promised myself then that if I survived the war, I would never taste or look at that vegetable again — but during the war, I devoured it eagerly.

After soup kitchens were organized, we were able to get some soup tickets in the communal kitchen on Lutomierska 2 as the family of a textile worker. When the second Bundist kitchen opened up on Brzezinska 59, my mother occasionally worked there — peeling potatoes, carrots and other vegetables. On the days that she worked, she would eat in the kitchen without using her ration coupons, and was able to get some soup tickets for the other members of our family. But in about August of 1941, Rumkowski permanently closed the Bund-kitchens — which supplied thousands of free soups daily to the unemployed workers of the ghetto.

Hunger and death from malnutrition and frost rapidly grew during the bitter cold winter of 1941-42. Soon, only those who were working for the government were able to get soup from the factory soup kitchens. In the new soup kitchens, there was greater inequality — both in the amount and quality of soup that was received The common folk would get a little thin soup from the top of the pot, whereas the more privileged would get soup from the bottom of the vessel. The soup distributors were considered to be among the most prestigious persons in the Ghetto.

We were hungry! Potatoes were rotting away on the Balucki Square, at the ghetto food warehouse, and we were hungry! Khaim Rumkowski and some members of the Yudenrat were coming to visit the hospital patients and staff — perhaps to tell them what a concerned, loving and devoted “father” he was. Rumkowski didn’t have to go far. His main residence was in a suite at the hospital. A children’s demonstration was called for that day to remind our ‘protector’ and the Yudenrat that we, the ghetto children, were hungry. It was a peaceful children’s demonstration in a small narrow street across from the hospital. We were going to request that the rotting potatoes be distributed among the starving people in the ghetto.

Rumkowski and the Yudenrat members did not come out to hear us. Instead, they called in the German authorities. The German Shutz-Polizei (SHUPO) arrived and used their guns to shoot at the child demonstrators. There were three casualties that day. As soon as the shooting began, the leaders of the demonstration advised us to disburse.

By the time the ghetto administration decided to distribute the rotting potatoes among the ghetto inhabitants, the vegetables were frozen too. Of course, the unpleasantly sweet, smelly, frozen and rotted potatoes were dangerous to our health, but we ate them anyway. They were, after all, edible goods and filled our convulsing stomachs. My mother tried to make potato pancakes, tsholnt, kugl and other treats from the rotted frozen potatoes, and we pretended that it was a delicacy. But my stomach could not tolerate these “delicacies”. For the first time during the war, my stomach was full, but I spent the night vomiting, having stomach cramps and diarrhea. I have suffered from abdominal ailments ever since.

At times, sick people, including my mother (who had swollen legs) were fortunate to receive special ration coupons for potato peels from one of the soup kitchens — as per the doctor’s prescription. We used to say that the food received on our ration cards was “nisht tsu lebn un nisht tsu shtarbn (neither enough to live, nor to die).”

(to be continued…)

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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