It was a cool and lovely early autumn afternoon. My mother grabbed her sweater and ran out saying: “I am going across the street just for a minute to see Sara and will be right back.”
Sara was my mother’s younger friend. Both Sara’s baby and her mother were deported during the Sperre. Her husband, whom Sara had married about six months before the outbreak of World War II, had left Lodz when the German army was about to occupy the city, in an effort to get to the Soviet Union. He had planned to fetch his pregnant wife and the expected baby once he got settled there and was able to provide for the family. Sara never heard from him again and did not know whether her husband was alive or dead.
Sara now lived with her spinster sister in a small room in a wooden house across the street from us. Despite the difference in age, my mother and Sara formed and maintained a close friendship.
Over an hour had gone by and my mother had not yet returned. I ran across to Sara, but was informed that neither she nor her sister, who had been at home for many hours, had seen my mother on that day. I now became worried. I ran around the ghetto — to all the homes where I felt that there was a possibility that my mother might have gone. I went to her sisters’ homes, my paternal aunt’s home, to her friends, acquaintances, and whomever else I could think of — but none of these people had seen my mother on that afternoon — and they were unable to help me find her.
Towards the evening I became desperate, but I did not know to whom to turn or what to do. At last, a policeman knocked on our door and informed me that my mother was held in jail after being charged and sentenced in the local police station for disobeying the law. He also explained to me that I could get her out of jail for a ransom of a given amount of money. We did not own such a large sum of money, so I again began making my rounds to the homes of friends and relatives throughout the ghetto who might be able to help — until I collected the amount of money that was demanded.
At the police station, I paid the fine and waited for a long time for my mother’s release. In the meantime, I found out more details about my mother’s “criminal” charges. Evidently, one of her gele lates (yellow patches) that was sewn on to the back of her sweater had come loose. When she left home, she did not notice that it was missing. As soon as she stepped out of the building, an Ordnungsdienst policeman who happened to be passing by apprehended her and charged her with the “serious offense” of disobeying the strict German law.
Eventually, after the release process was concluded, my mother was freed. We held hands, as we walked homeward in silence. I was relieved to see my mother again beside me. I understood that she had suffered a lot since I saw her many hours earlier, during her incarceration, but since I did not know how to react and what to say — I kept my silence. My mother did not utter a single word either. She just held my hand tightly as if afraid that one of us might be blown away by the wind. Both of us were absorbed in our own thoughts and emotions, and it was clear that we were both shaken up. When we returned to our one room apartment, my mother let out a deep sigh and said: “So, now I have finally had the privilege of sitting in jail too.”
I never asked my mother what jail was like or about her thoughts and feelings pertaining to the incident. Regardless, I understood that to be held in a jail cell was a horrendous physical and emotional experience for her. Since I did not know what to say or what to ask that could possibly help ease my mother’s pain, I just told her that I was glad that she was safe at home and kept my silence.
Although new deportees from surrounding towns and townships were continually brought into the ghetto in increasing numbers, the ghetto area was once again decreased in size. In the autumn of 1942, a ghetto firefighter — also one of the higher echelon members within the enclosure — came to look at our living quarters. He measured the length, width and height of the room, and told us that we would have to move into a smaller place because this room was “too large for two of us.” It was obvious that he had decided to occupy the apartment himself.
Several days later, we were officially ordered to vacate the premises on Franciszkanska 26. We were given three options from which to chose our new housing: (1) to share a one room apartment with another family on the third floor of the same building; (2) to share a room with another family on the second floor of the neighboring building; or (3) to occupy a small kitchen of a two room apartment on the first floor of Franciszkanska 10 (about two blocks away). My mother said that she was too sick to climb stairs with her swollen legs, so, the third option became the only feasible choice for our new living quarters.
Before we moved in, we went to see the premises and met the three women with whom we were to share the apartment. We received an extremely unwelcome greeting from our new neighbors — a provincial bunch, who wore the fact that they were the family of a Rabbi from a shtetl near Lodz as a badge of honor. The older daughter, Baltshe, who opened the door for us, looked the way I had always envisioned a witch in appearance. She was an extremely skinny, bent over, old spinster, with long straight black hair, a long humped nose, two long ears, a thin long face and a pointed chin. The mother introduced herself as the Rebetsn (the wife of a Rabbi) and made certain that we knew that her husband’s brother and other close relatives were also Rabbis in nearby townships. She too was as ugly as sin. A second daughter, Reyzl, was far less unattractive, but she was very arrogant. We also noticed several piles of dust and dirt in the corners of that kitchen.
We were both very upset. I was unable to visualize sharing that place there with these three individuals. I objected mostly to the fact that they would have unlimited access to our room, that we would have to share the stove with them, and that we would be living in a place that was being kept in such unsanitary condition. I complained bitterly that this place would be the cause of our death and told my mother that I categorically refused to move in there.
My mother was probably just as upset about our new housing as I was, but she was trying to be more realistic about it. She attempted to talk “sense” into me and claimed that we were now considered to be people of low status, and that this was not a time to fight with police and firefighters. Although I insisted that nothing could be worse than moving there and that we must make an appeal to change the order, my mother hired a man with a little hand drawn wagon to bring over our credenza, one wardrobe, one bed, two chairs, and a few furnishings, clothing and linens. The rest of our belongings the table for twelve, the other furniture, our cutlery, dishes, pots, pans, glassware, portraits, wall portraits, hand paintings, personal items and most of the clothing — remained there, at Franciszkanska 26. We never went back and never saw these family quarters again.
Mama scrubbed the floor, cleaned the only window in the narrow little room, hung up a pair of curtains and wartime room darkeners, covered the tiny square table that she had gotten from somewhere with a tablecloth, and said: “it could have been worse!”
Thus, we were deprived of the privacy and the small amount of happiness that we had found in our home lately. The Rebetsn and her daughters were completely disrespectful of our rights and desire for some personal space altogether. They walked into our tiny living space any time they felt like it, and repeatedly lectured us about our failure to observe the “holy” Sabbath, Jewish holidays, religious customs and dogma. They would also shamelessly steal our food, clothing and jewelry — in a not so surreptitious manner. As I had predicted, sharing with them the cooking stove that was in our room, turned out to be a source of great controversy. Although the Rebetsn and her daughter Baltshe were home all day long and could have used the stove when we were at work, they occupied the stove that we shared in the late aftemoon, after our working hours. After we returned from work hungry, tired and weary, we needed the stove desperately — but we had to wait for hours to get to it. Also, the chimney there was clogged up and we often had difficulties starting a fire. We had no kindling splints and the “brikiev” did not elicit much heat. So I had to spend many hours blowing into the flames and banging with a towel into the vent to create a draft. Quite often, I was too hungry to wait until the food was ready, so I would continually pull out half raw food from the pot and “taste” it. By the time that the meal was ready, I had already indulged in a substantial part of the food, and I felt that I was no longer entitled to share the meal. So when my mother came home I told her that I could not wait until she had returned home and had already eaten my share of food.
One evening, as I was standing over the stove in the dimly lit kitchen — continually banging with the towel against the vent with one hand and pulling the half raw food from the pot (“to taste”) with the other — my mother returned from the Altmaterialn earlier than usual and caught me in the act. She was very hungry and more dejected than ever. I thought that the puffiness and blackness under her constricted eyes were now more pronounced than ever. Her steps were shakier. She muttered, though hesitantly:
“Feygele, Feygele, wouldn’t it be better, and nicer, if you waited until the food was properly cooked and we both sat down at the table to eat our dinner together in decency? Swallowing one tablespoon of raw food at a time is not good for your stomach, you cannot enjoy the food, and it does not satisfy your hunger.
“Mama,” I answered quietly with tears in my eyes, “what is the sense of talking about decency, health, enjoyment and satisfaction when the hunger gnaws and gnaws, and my intestines are convulsing? I am trying not to eat from the pot, but I cannot control myself for so many hours of cooking and waiting until the food is ready. Please, believe me that I don’t wish to behave in such an uncivilized manner.”
“I know, my child,” said my mother, embracing me tenderly. When people are hungry and deprived of nutrition for so many years, they cease being in control of their behavior.”
I said: “Mama, your food will soon be ready. I will just add the flour that I browned, and it will taste heavenly.”
I felt like a thief and was crying. Now, my mother knew my eating habits. Later, I felt guilty and wondered whether my “tasting” of the food was not a contributing factor to my mother’s premature death. Had I “tasted” more than my share and thereby stolen her food? After all, how could continual “tasting” be measured? Could I actually determine at what point I had reached my half-share of the meal?
This sort of guilt still pervades my thoughts.
©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
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