Our own teachers maintained a distance from the new teachers who were forced upon us. One day, when we were ordered to come to the schoolyard to pose for a school photograph, they demonstrated their dislike toward them openly. We were all congregated in front of the school, waiting for our teachers to join us, but they merely walked by and did not participate in the picture taking. We wanted to follow them, but it was too late – the photographer hurriedly snapped a photo. And we felt — ashamed.
In our repeat of the sixth grade, a fourth girl — Rutka Dombrowska, a physically unusually well developed adolescent who always laughed a lot — became one of our intimate friends. Based on a Polish story, “Nasza Trojka W Lasach Beskidu,” (“The Three of Us in the Woods of Beskidy Mountains”) we stabbed our fingers with a needle, squeezed some blood onto a sheet of white paper and mixed our blood together into the shape of a heart. Then we artfully inscribed the name of our newly formed “sisterhood,” SHAFER inside the heart, formed from the abbreviations of our names. We signed our names and used this page as the cover page for a journal we kept. We revealed our most intimate thoughts, dreams, ideals and personal secrets — both to one another and in the journal. Since we thought that our aims were great and that it would be beneficial to spread our ideals to others, we later expanded our circle to include several other youngsters from our class. Among our aims were the following: to provide excellent orphan homes and to build a just, equal society for everyone.
At first, Rutka was fun to be with. She revealed to us her knowledge of developmental sex differences, which were largely hidden from us until then. Soon, however, I became disenchanted with her and it was difficult for me to embrace her as a friend any longer. I thought that she was extremely loud, laughed too much when it wasn’t called for, was constantly preoccupied with sex, mocked others, and was very boisterous and unreliable. One day she blasted out – aloud — about my puppy love for a boy in our school. I was very upset about it, and in protest, I left our SHAFER circle and never rejoined. I still loved Feygele Falc and Sorele Olsztejn, both very intelligent and decent girls, but I made the decision to leave the group if Rutka remained part of it. I believe that Feygele and Sorele were still fascinated by Rutka because she satisfied their curiosity about their bodily development, the menstrual cycle and desire for boys. Rutka was infatuated with Geniek Boczkowski, one of our two young teachers, and she showed it whenever she had the opportunity. Sorele, Feygele and I were different.
I was invited by my new close friends, three beautiful but modest girls — Rivkele Shuman, Esther Chaimowicz and Libe Zelmanowicz — and three short but most adorable boys — Leybele Bornsztajn, Abramek Szalewicz and Szmulek Ber — to organize a drama club. The drama club met in the one-room, walk down apartment where Rivkele lived with her mother. We liked this meeting place because it was very close to school, only a few houses from the Dworska gate. We were able to use the gate to cross Zgierska Streets, though using an alternative route from school.
Rivkele’s mother made us feel most comfortable in their home. We spent two or three hours daily there, several times a week, in a world of make believe. Each one of us – individually, in twos or larger groups — gave presentations of poetry reading, story telling, dancing, singing, or play-acting. We were also rehearsing for a large open performance, which never came to be. It was a very jolly place. Whenever we met there, it became a place full of laughter. This drama club became our escape from the daily hunger, drudgery and tragedy around us, but in addition to that, it was also a source of important educational nourishment. On our lengthy walks to and from the drama club, we often discussed Yiddish and Polish books – including certain literary translations from other languages. During the last phase of the drama club’s existence, our favorite discussions were centered on sex education. The translated Yiddish version of the German book “Knabe-Mädchen” about maturation, physical development, sexual relationships and pregnancy — became the most popular topic of our conversations.
Often, we visited our sick friends. Among them was Marylka Lustigman, who lived in a tiny, narrow attic room with her mother (and according to one friend’s version — her father, too. I actually never met him and thought that he had escaped to the Soviet occupied territories of Poland.) Her older sister, who had been at the time of the outbreak of the war in the Medem Sanatorium, had remained there, because she was unable to return home. Marylka had pleurisy and water on both lungs. We were very sorry for her, but we were unable to help her other than to try to cheer her up.
Despite the fact that death was lurking at our doorstep every minute of every day, life still seemed to be bearable as long as we were attending school. Among my hardships at that time, during the bitter cold winter mornings, seemed to be getting out of bed, changing my clothes in our unheated home and combing my long hair with a frozen steel comb. Quite often, my grandmother would put the comb and the clothing I was to going to wear that day under her bed covers, and also rubbed them with her hands — to warm them up. Many people were telling us about ghetto inhabitants who actually froze to death in their beds and in the streets.
One afternoon, instead of a regular singing lesson with Geniek Boczkowski, he arranged a free singing class. Anyone, who wanted, could present a song. Some of the songs were sung solo, some in duets, and others by the whole gathering. We were standing in a circle around the popular Geniek, who loved to sing. One of his favorites was “Di Krenitze” (The Well). We all sang along. Suddenly, he began to sing in Polish “Czuway” (Guard) — a song we never heard before — about a prisoner who gradually filed through the prison bars of his cell, and when he finally jumped through the window toward the long awaited freedom, a gunshot rang out and he was killed. As he fell to the ground, his blood scattered around him in the white snow. The prison guards, indifferent to the fate of the man, continued the watchword “Czuway!”
I was standing next to Mumek Morgentaler. I noticed him wiping his eyes. His face was tear-stained. I pretended not to have noticed his emotions, because I was uncertain what his reaction would be had he been aware that I knew that he cried. Mumek’s father was a Trade Union leader in Lodz, and as such, he had been among the first arrested hostages who were executed by the Germans in Radogoszcz.
Our school, along with the all other ghetto schools, was permanently closed in or round the late spring of 1941. Of the sixty-two children from the two classes, only 8 survived the war, one of whom died soon after from complications of a disease contracted in a concentration camp. To the best of my knowledge, only 2 children from the lower class survived.
(to be continued…)
©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
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Child In Captivity 