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
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Child In Captivity 