One day, my two cousins — Doved Yosef and Yakev Hersh (the sons of Aunt Khaye and Uncle Kive Chencinski) — were captured for Zwangsarbeit, tortured and returned barely alive. Uncle Kive came to the realization that they must run away from the savagery of the occupiers in Lodz. Though the family always lived modestly, Uncle Kive was quite a wealthy man prior to the war. He was the owner of two paint and glass stores in Lodz as well as of a glass manufacturing factory in the suburbs of the city. He served as the respected President of the Small Business Association, and was quite a knowledgeable man. Despite the differences in their political outlooks and in their religious beliefs (or disbelief), my mother and Uncle Kive were very devoted to one another and always seemed to enjoy one another’s company and advice. When his very large family — including their six children, two daughters-in-law, one son-in-law, and two grandchildren — left the city for the province-town Kalish, he invited us to come along. For some reason, it was decided that they would leave immediately, and take along some of our belongings on the hired horse-drawn wagons. We were to follow soon thereafter. Uncle Kive was born in Kalish, where his parents and some of his siblings were still residing. Like most of the people in Lodz, he believed then that it would be safer, that food would be more available and that survival would be more probable in the provinces.
Only two days after their departure, the Chencinski family returned – robbed of the horses, wagons and the belongings they had taken with them, including our luggage that they had taken along. They had also been severely beaten. Large sections of my uncle’s beard and my cousin’s mustache had been torn out — with the skin. They never even got halfway to their intended destination.
After they returned, they knocked at the door of their ‘good Polish neighbor’, with whom the family had maintained a close friendship for thirty odd years and had shared many joyous and sad occasions including their children’s births, circumcisions, christenings, communions, bar mitzvahs, marriages, illnesses, and other important events. Before my relatives left Lodz, they had left my aunt’s fur coat, my uncle’s fur jacket, golden watches, their silver candelabrums, cups, cutlery and other valuables with them for safekeeping. To their amazement, their devoted neighbor and friend of yesterday, now identified himself as a VolksDeutsh, was wearing an armband with a swastika and told them that “if they didn’t clear out immediately, their bodies would be removed from the premises” – meaning that they would be killed.
The coal, wood, potatoes, sugar, flour and other groceries that my mother had prepared at the outbreak of the war was of great help to the family during the first winter of the war. We used our supplies sparingly, but I believe that we were not as cold and desperate for food as were other starving people in the city (at least, not I personally). Since I refused to consume food or liquids that contained saccharin sweetener, the family decided that the small amount of sugar in the house should be saved for me (the youngest, pampered child).
Soon, these supplies came to an end. My 16 year-old brother Elek went into “business.” He started by buying loose tobacco and tissue papers, rolled these into cigarettes which he sold in the streets, chanting: “Papierosn — gute gemachte (well made cigarettes)!” His next endeavors were: selling some form of bread rolls made of chestnut flour, then homemade toffees, saccharin and other items. Elek tried to encourage Shimon and me to help him in this new endeavor. He put a little stool in front of our window, put the merchandise on top of the stool, taught us how to attract passersby with a sales pitch to buy the items and how much to charge.
Shimon categorically refused. He said that he “wasn’t going to become a street peddler.” I did not refuse, but I didn’t embrace my new role either. I, too, was actually embarrassed. Every time someone passed by, I imagined that I recognized a familiar face and felt uncomfortable about it. So I often tried to stand silently in front of the stool to hide the merchandise with my body and large shawl. I never actually told Elek or my mother how I felt about being a street salesperson, because though illegal, the sale of these items helped us subsist through the bad times and to survive for a while. If it weren’t for Elek, we wouldn’t have lasted very long.
In February, 1940, an order was issued by the German authorities that all the Jews living outside the area designated as the Jewish ghetto were to vacate their premises and move into the ghetto-area, and all the non-Jews residing within the perimeter of the designated ghetto, were to move out.
I watched my friend Marysia Krawczyk, her lovely mother Janina, her disgusting anti-Semitic father Jozef and her five-year old sister Sabcia, leave their tiny room under the staircase, across the hallway from our regular one-room apartment. I was choking back tears in my throat. Marysia and I had shared many intimate and interesting moments, and I felt very sad that she was moving away. I did not approach them, however, to say farewell, because my friend’s father, an alcoholic, known to be a member of the Polish Narodowa Demohracja (National Democracy – a Polish nationalist party similar to the Nazis), was walking right beside her. Before the war, on paydays (each Friday), Jozef used to stop in a bar on the way home from work, spend all his wages on vodka, turn the bottle over and pour it into his throat. When he eventually came home, he battered his wife, children and whoever else was under foot. He later blamed and cursed the Jews (including the poor working Jews) for his poverty, and did not allow his children to play with Jewish children. Whenever he was around, Marysia and I had to pretend that we were complete strangers. Had he found out about our friendship, he would have severely beaten her up. (About six months before the war, he had brutally beaten up his five-year-old Sabcia by kicking her in the belly, and the little child had to be brought by ambulance to the city hospital with a ruptured appendix.) For the same reason Marysia and Janina didn’t come over to say farewell and kiss me goodbye. We merely stared at each other with regret in our eyes, and each of us knew exactly what the other might have wanted to say and what remained unsaid.
At around the same time, my Aunt Surtshe, who resided with her husband and three teenage children in a luxurious and spacious apartment on Andrzeja Street, were forced to move into the overcrowded, and generally dilapidated part of the old city. They brought several pieces of furniture, kitchen utensils, clothing and some personal belongings with them, on a handcart or in their arms. My grandmother, who had returned home after she fully recuperated from her paralytic stroke, went one freezing day to help her daughter and family bring some of their belongings to their new living quarters that were assigned to them in the ghetto.
She managed to successfully walk for about a half-hour with the heavy load in her arms, but when she reached the corner of our street, she slipped on the ice and broke a leg in several places. Grandma, a strong 82 year-old woman, who could easily have passed as a gentile and taken the tramway, later claimed that she felt safer walking with the belongings in her arms than she would have felt using the forbidden public transportation system.
My grandmother spent several weeks in traction in a big hospital. When she was brought home she was still bedridden — in a cast and in traction. It took her at least six months to have the cast removed and to be able to stand up. I loved my grandmother dearly and helped her as much as possible through the difficult period in her life. I sponge-bathed her, tried to keep the area under the cast clean, frequently fed her and I somehow managed to bring her outdoors for fresh air. When she was ready to stand up, I was training her step-by-step to walk again. At first, I did it by pulling a chair in front of her with her holding on to the chair, thus teaching her to just take a few steps. As she progressed, I held her tightly around her waist with her whole weight leaning on me. Gradually my grandmother was able to walk alone with a cane.
My mother’s two sisters, Surtshe and Khaye, often brought cooked meals for their mother. Grandma used to pretend that she had just eaten something and would ask my mother to save the fresh warm food her daughters brought her “for later”. She did that deliberately so that my aunts would not complain about grandmother sharing the meal they brought for her with my mother, with me, or my brothers. My mother used to beg her, “Mother, don’t do that! Your daughters are bringing the food for you, and you ought to eat it!” But my grandmother insisted that if she did not share the meal with her daughter and grandchildren, she would end up choking on the food, and that if she couldn’t share the delicious food with us, she would rather not get it at all.
My Aunt Laytshe used to join the throng of young men, women and children digging for sunken bits and pieces of coal, wood and coal dust in the old garbage dumps and places where there had once been coal magazines. She would bring some of her finds in a little bundle and share these with my family. Once, my aunt took me along to participate in the dig. I had the opportunity to observe her, and all others who were squatting, kneeling, sitting or Iying down on the hard ground — with spoons, knives, forks, spatulas, hooks and other primitive tools or utensil that they could get hold of. They would continuously dig, search, and sift in the mud, and collect their meager finds in little bundles. The finds were minimal, the labor was extremely demanding and the dig was generally unrewarding. One had to be very determined by nature to do it. To share these finds with others, one had to be very loving and willing to sacrifice. Of course, my Aunt Leytshe had always been a most unusually good-hearted individual, a truly righteous person who would share her last morsel of food with others who were needy. She would surely, even at the risk of losing her own life, do anything possible to help my mother, my grandmother and me. Her husband, uncle Yosef, whose horse and droshkes had been confiscated, was then in his middle sixties. He now had to carry heavy sacks and luggage on his back to earn a living. Despite extreme food deprivation, he too was willing — until his last breath — to share with me the little food he had.
After soup kitchens were organized throughout the ghetto, I would often go to the backyard of the kitchen on Lutomierska 2, where Khaver (Comrade) Angielczyk, the father of one of my school friends and a leader of the Textile Workers’ Union, was distributing coupons for soup. Since my father had been a member of that union, my family was entitled to receive soup allocations. It’s possible that Khaver Angielczyk was treating our family a little more favorably than some others.
After one obtained the coupons, it was necessary to stand in line when the soups were ready to be distributed, but that was handled by other members of my family.
One afternoon, when I returned from school, I found my grandmother very excited. She triumphantly told me how she had deceived two policemen who came to search our living quarters. “They were searching in every corner, in every drawer and every pocket in the closets,” she said. “In one of the pockets they found the little purse with the secret pocket that Shimon made before the war.”
Actually there was a trick to opening the little secret pocket. One had to hold two sides together and pull threads apart with other fingers. Everyone in our household, including my grandmother, knew how to pry that little purse open. “In order to divert their attention from whatever they were searching for, I pretended that I didn’t know how to open it. I merely told them that as far as I know, my grandson is the only person who knows how to open it, and that he is claiming that there was a magic trick to it!” The two policemen were intrigued by the ‘magic purse’ and were curious about the treasure it held — a worthless monetary Polish silver coin. In the meantime they had forgotten what they actually came to fmd in our home.”
Actually there was a trick to opening the little secret pocket. One had to hold two sides together and pull threads apart with other fingers. Everyone in our household, including my grandmother, knew how to pry that little purse open. “In order to divert their attention from whatever they were searching for, I pretended that I didn’t know how to open it. I merely told them that as far as I know, my grandson is the only person who knows how to open it, and that he is claiming that there was a magic trick to it!” The two policemen were intrigued by the ‘magic purse’ and were curious about the treasure it held — a worthless monetary Polish silver coin. In the meantime they had forgotten what they actually came to fmd in our home.”
The following day, my Uncle Kive (as well as his son Shmul Nute, the accountant in his father’s glass and paint businesses until the war broke out), was arrested by the police and taken into the KRIPO (German Police Station). They were kept there several days, and were being interrogated and severely beaten with various instruments in a room surrounded by mirrors. There, they were “persuaded” to disclose where they had hidden their treasures. We now understood why our home was searched. Actually some of Uncle’s “treasures”, cans of paint, had been hidden in our cellar (underneath the house where the coal and some food supplies had once been kept). Evidently somebody who knew our relationship with the Chencinskis, denounced us. My dear Buba’s strategy in detaining them from further search saved uncle from more extreme torture and from being deprived of the cans of paint which he later sold on the blackmarket in order to get money to purchase bread and other necessities for the family to survive.
My brother Elek once came up from the basement with two cans of paint in his hands. When my mother questioned and scolded him for stealing our uncle’s goods, my brother claimed that if we were risking our own lives for Uncle Kive, uncle could surely spare a few cans of paint to save us from starvation too. An hour later he returned with some food. My mother disapproved of Elek’s deed, but my grandmother, Shimon and I thought that he had the perfect right to do it.
One day a boy came in to our home and hand-delivered a message from my brother Elek:
“Mama, Please forgive me for leaving you at such a tragic time, but I just have to do it. I feel that I have no other choice. I am leaving Lodz hoping to reach Nute in Pruzany!
It was a difficult decision. I am leaving with a heavy heart and a lot of guilt, but I feel compelled to do it! Again, there is no other way for me!
With great love,
Elek.”
And Elek, once thought of as a mischievous, “problematic” child, Elek who had become a most devoted son and brother, and had become instrumental in our day by day survival, was gone from the scene. Though it was a bitter pill to swallow, no one blamed him for his determination to escape the horror under the Nazis and to save his own skin.
(to be continued…)
©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
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