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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