My Mother’s Death

The most memorable and traumatic experience of my childhood was the death of my beloved mother. She, my grandmother and aunt Leytshe were the only people in my entire life that loved me unconditionally. For the thirteen months prior to her death, my mother was the only one that remained of my immediate family.

She died on the 24th of May, 1943. At the time, I was fourteen years old.

I knew that she was dying. The doctor had told me that she had Galloping Consumption (a rapid progression of Tuberculosis). He had asked me to allow him to hospitalize her, but I stared at him bewildered and very quietly murmured: “Dr. Zackheim, you know what they are doing nowadays in the hospital with patients like my mother.”

He did not deny it. He only lightly touched my shoulder with his tender hand and muttered with a choking voice: “Child, you can no longer help your mother anyway! You are only prolonging her suffering and endangering your own life! The longer you are around her, the greater the danger that you may also catch this highly contagious and incurable disease.”

I felt as if I was sinking into a bottomless pit. I do not know how long we stood in the entrance hall, with our heads bent and speechless, but eventually I mastered the courage and said resolutely: “No, Dr. Zackheim, she will not be taken to the hospital! She will stay with me, in her own bed, and I will do everything that is humanly possible to help her!”

I had known Dr. Zackheim for a long time — probably since my early childhood. Prior to World War II, he belonged to the sarne political organization as my parents; he was my mother’s co-worker at TOZ; and he was my parents’ personal friend. In the Ghetto — after a full day’s work in the hospital — he would make house calls (free of charge) and do whatever he could to rescue his patients from death, ease the suffering of the sick, or at least to give people some confidence that someone cared for them. By visiting these sick people in their homes instead of at the clinic or the hospital, he also protected them from being put on the “list of the sick” and thereby, to fall into the category of the next to be deportation.

I do not remember whether he came to us when my father died in November, 1939; but I do remember him being there one year earlier, in 1942, during and after the death of my grandmother and of my brother Elek. Dr. Zackheim was a kind man, a good friend and a devoted doctor. Usually, he would leave medicine, or a prescription.

This time he left our home without leaving any medication.

I was able to get hold of a serum that Dr. Zackheim had prescribed earlier. It was actually a medicine to counteract pneumonia. My mother’s friend, Mrs. Engel, who was an experienced registered nurse, administered the injection. She also told me that this medication would not cure the tuberculosis, but since there was no other available cure and the serum would not harm my mother in any way, she would inject the serum according to my request. I was not going to let my mother die! I was hoping that perhaps the next day or the day after, the Nazis would be defeated, and help would become available.

My mother’s sister, Aunt Surtshe, came one day to visit her very sick sister. Although one could hardly see anything in the dimly lit sectioned off part of the kitchen (which had become our bedroom), I could not help but to notice the tears in my aunt’s eyes as she lovingly held my mother’s hand. My aunt made a pledge to my mother to take good care of me. I knew that two of Aunt Surtshe’s teenage children were on their deathbeds at that time as well. Upon leaving our tiny sleeping quarters, she called me out to the hallway and warned me of the danger of catching my mother’s disease. She insisted that I must find a separate bed to sleep in.

I tried to obey my aunt’s instruction and that night, I slept in a separate folding cot that I received from a neighbor. After one night, however, I got rid of the cot and went back to sharing the single bed in the corner of our tiny living area, with my mother — primarily because the cot was infested with bedbugs and other vermin, and I spent most of the night fighting with them. Also, the truth about my mother’s disease became increasingly obvious to her, so she began to talk more openly about it — and I could not bear to hear the truth. Until now, I had lied to her — insisting that she had pneumonia and that she would soon be well. Additionally, I had become accustomed to sharing a bed with my mother for so many years, and the close proximity, as her death approached, brought us even closer than before -by exchanging intimate thoughts and feelings, and of course, by moving physically closer during moments of emotional distress and upheaval. Even when words were left unspoken — the warmth of my mother’s body, her touch, her unconditional love and concern, just having her beside me – seemed to be enough to relieve my frustrations, my fears and uncertainties. I needed my mother! I felt lost in the lonely cot without my mother beside me.

“Mama, are you angry with me? Why have you lately been turning away from me? You are drifting away from me farther and farther!”

She muttered: “Because I do not want to breathe into you! I want you to survive! You must survive the war!”

After a short pause, she continued: “I am dying, my child. I hope that after I am gone, you will continue to fight — however you can — so that you may rescue yourself! Please, Feygele, you must endure! You must survive! You are the last one of our family! And when the war is over, you must go to England. My sister Kaltsche and my two brothers are good people and they will take good care of you!”

“Mama, mama, please don’t talk that way! You are scaring me! You will not die! You will live! You must live! I will sell all our last remaining belongings; I will buy medicine for you, and soon you will be well again.”

No! I could not accept the truth that my mother was dying and was soon to be torn away from me forever.

It was now several weeks since my mother was able to get out of bed. Laying in her bed quietly, she looked at me with sadness in her once lively, bright blue and now faded watery eyes. Only the sound of her constant cough and her spitting-up phlegm interrupted the deathly silence in the room. She could no longer swallow the food that I had prepared for her. My dear mama was very sick, very silent and very helpless. I was helpless too! I was helpless to save my mother from the clutches of death. I still tried to pretend that all would end well, and tried to go on with daily life as before. Every day, Mrs. Engel came to give her the injection. Sometimes Dr. Zackheim would also look in. As quietly as he would enter, he would leave. He just stared somberly at me and at my mother. Sometimes, I thought, I detected a feeling of guilt; guilt because he — once a great, respected physician — could do nothing to save his patient, colleague and friend.

Two large, pearl-like tears came rolling down her eyes onto her once rosy, high, and now dark-yellow, cement-like, sunken cheeks. I believe that she was trying hard to hold on to life — for my sake. But death was spreading its wings over her. She was gasping for her last breath of air — she wanted to utter one last word.

Suddenly her eyes rolled back and she expired. My mother was gone!

I became like a wild, uncontrollable beast. I threw myself on the bed, lifted my mother’s body and shook her, shook her, shook her with all my might, shrieking: “No, no, don’t die! Don’t do that to me!” (My mother was dead — and I was concerned about me)!

Perhaps she felt that so much remained unsaid. A feeling of guilt seemed to be reflected in her face. I noticed that two pearly tears were again rolling down from her eyes. I kissed her eyes and those teardrops. They were still warm, and so was her body. But not for long.

A neighbor dragged me away by force and put me on a low stool in his room, across the hallway. I do not remember what anyone said to me or around me at that time — or who made the arrangements for the last rites. I only remember that when I came into our quarters again, I noticed blisters all over my mother’s body, and saw that women were washing her. Then they sewed the white burial shroud on her. I also remember watching the Khevre Kedishe (Burial Society) carrying out my mother’s body, putting her in a black cart that was waiting in front of the building and riding away with her. When I arrived at her graveside, the grave diggers were already lowering my mother’s body into the ground.

I was standing alone at my mother’s grave while her body was being covered with soil. I did not cry any more. Complete darkness was all around me, within me, consuming me. Although it was the end of May, I was shivering from cold. This darkness and coldness has followed me throughout my entire life.

••• End of Section One •••

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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Typhoid Fever — Part 2

An eleven-year-old girl occupied the bed across the room from mine. When I was brought into the ward, the girl was already walking around the room — frequently joking, and bringing laughter and good cheer to the rest of us. She had already gotten over the crisis and was well on the road to recovery. I was still bedridden and weak. Though my temperature had subsided, it was still quite high. One day, a curtain was drawn around the girl’s bed and there was a long consultation by a group of doctors. In the following days, there were other consultations and she remained in bed. She told us that she was suffering from severe joint complications following the typhoid fever disease, and that doctors were trying to save her leg. One day, her left leg was removed. The operation was performed on the bed that she had occupied — without any anesthesia! We could hear her screaming, moaning and heavy breathing brought on by the excruciating pain that the girl suffered during and after the amputation. It was certainly a tragic event in the life of the young girl, but it was also devastating to the morale of the rest of the children in the ward.

Eventually, my temperature became normal and my appetite increased. I began to sit up, later to stand, and eventually, to walk across the room. Since my bed was next to a large window, I was able to look outside frequently. At first I noticed the building across the yard from our three-story building. Then I noticed the building to the left of it, and finally, the other connecting hospital buildings around the courtyard. To the right of us was a fence with a barrier. Whenever I looked to the right of that barrier, I noticed my devoted mother, pacing up and down the street, with her head turned up toward my window. It was pleasant to see her, but I was very concerned for her health. I was quite aware that when I had become sick, my mother was already very sick and swollen throughout her body — and I feared for her life. I felt guilty that my mother had to walk such a great distance every day, in all kinds of weather — merely to take a glance at me and to wave hello.

Like the other typhoid fever survivors, I had an insatiable appetite for food. My mother must have heard about it, because she found a way to send a pot of food and a letter to me on a daily basis. They were smuggled in against hospital regulations by a friend of my mother, who was working as a registered nurse on a lower floor. When she got off her shift, she would stop into my room and pick up the empty pot along with letters from me to my mother, place them in a linen bag, smuggle them out, and return with new items from my mother the next day.

One day, I received the usual pot of food with an enclosed letter. But this letter was unusual and most disturbing: “Feygele, my dear child, please return home right away. I have received information about another deportation. So, I want you to return immediately. Do not delay and do not tell anyone about the contents of this letter, because it may result in an outbreak of panic among the children.”

I read the letter over and over again. It did not look like my mother’s familiar, steady handwriting. I looked to the right of the barrier, but my mother was not there. Now I was certain that something dreadful had happened to my mother and that someone else had written the letter in my mother’s name. I was panic stricken and hardly slept that night, imagining that my mother was very seriously ill, deported or dead.

At sunrise, I began to pace up and down the floor like a maniac. Frequently, and in vain, I continually looked out of the window. When the doctor eventually came that morning to make his daily rounds, he said to me with a smile that I was making remarkable progress.

“Good”, I answered, “because I want to be released from the hospital today.”

“Sorry, dear child, I said that you are making progress, but I did not say that you are cured and ready to go home!”

“Doctor”, I interrupted, “you have to release me right now! I had a terrible dream about my mother last night, and I know that she is very sick, perhaps dying, and that she needs me.”

The doctor insisted that I wasn’t ready to be released and that patients who are prematurely released after typhoid fever soon return with a relapse of the disease — and in worse condition than during the initial illness. But I was not going to let the doctor persuade me to stay. I only hoped that I would find my mother alive and in good health. I was determined to go home and told the doctor clearly: “If you will not release me, I will find a way to run away!”

The doctor was opposed to my leaving, but after an intensive effort at persuasion, appealing to his emotions, crying, begging and insisting he signed my release papers and ordered an ambulance to take me home. I got dressed within minutes, but I had to wait for quite a few hours until the ambulance came for me. It was already dark outside when the ambulance driver personally brought me to the door of our living quarters.

I opened the door. My heart sank. I couldn’t see my mother in our bed. In panic, I called out: “Mama, mama, where are you, mama?”

Suddenly, my mother — surprised and shocked by my unexpected entry, almost fell off as she stepped down from a chair in the kitchen part of the room and ran toward me with a happy exclamation: “Feygele, my dear, you are really home! Oh, how good it is to see you! I was hoping they would be releasing you, but I didn’t think that it would be today! I was so worried!”

“Mama, who wrote the letter and what is going on?”

“What do you mean, who wrote the letter? Of course, I wrote the letter! What do you mean, what is going on? I wrote you that we are expecting another deportation within the next few days. So, I wanted you to come home right away! No, we don’t know who the next victims are going to be! But I believe that the hospital is the most dangerous place for you to be right now”.

I missed the hospital food, the care and cleanliness, but it was so good to be in the embrace of my mother. Though her eyes had sunken further, her face, hands and legs were more swollen and her hair was much grayer, I was satisfied that her condition had not noticeably worsened. It was good to feel her touch, to hear her voice, to be able to kiss her dear face and to caress her once light blond, now gray, but still beautiful, wavy hair.

“Mama”, I said, “it is so good to be home with you! I love you very, very much!”

I returned to the resort, though I still wasn’t well. It took a lot of effort to walk to and from work. I found it most difficult to walk in the snow, since a great deal of snow got stuck to my wooden clogs and formed very high platforms on the soles of my shoes. Though I often tried, I could not master the strength to shake off the snow. It would take a long, long time for me to get home.

As the doctor predicted, several weeks later, I returned to the hospital in critical condition. But I fought and survived the relapse of the typhoid fever, too. I was released again from the hospital just in time for my fourteenth birthday. My mother baked a cake in honor of the two important occasions — my birthday and my survival from typhoid fever. She told me that the cake was made of potato peels and fakhes (flakes of imitation coffee), with sugar that she had managed to save up during the many months of my illness.

I was very touched. It is difficult for a person who has not been in the ghetto to understand the greatness of that gift and the extraordinary love reflected by it at that time.

“Mama, how can I ever repay you for your concern, generosity and devotion?”

“Repay me, dear, silly girl? You have repaid me over and over by getting well and merely by being around. Without you, I would not have wanted to live! Life would not have had any meaning or reason for me to continue!”

That birthday remains the most appreciated of all my birthdays, and the most memorable event of my entire life. And that potato peels-coffee cake remains in my heart and memory as the most delicious food I ever ate.

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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Typhoid Fever — Part 1

The most widespread diseases in the ghetto were Typhus, Typhoid Fever, Tuberculosis and Dysentery.

One afternoon, while at work at the learners unit in the Resort, I got a splitting headache and terrible stomach pain. I received permission from my instructor to go to the nurse’s office. The nurse was very busy, but hurriedly took my temperature, handed me a cup of water and two aspirins, and told me to go home immediately. She added that I could not return without a doctor’s note. As soon as I came home, I lay down on the bed — just for a few minutes — without removing my clothes. I fell asleep and was unable to get up to prepare our dinner as I had been doing every day in the last year, since I had been returning from the Resort much earlier than my mother. And these days, it would take many hours to prepare a simple meal.

When my mother returned from work that evening she found that the stove was cold, no dinner was on the table, and I was sound asleep. She later told me that when she touched my forehead, it felt as if I were on fire.

“What is going on here? Why is the stove cold and the dinner not even started? Why are you asleep?” My mother shook me gently, but I was startled when I was awakened — as I realized that I had overslept.

“I don’t know, mama! I just don’t feel well! I have a terrible headache and stomach pain,” I answered guiltily. I knew that mama was very tired and very hungry after a long day at Altmaterialn.

I remember very little of what happened during the next several weeks. One of the few things that I do remember is Dr. Zackheim standing over me and telling us that I had Typhoid Fever, and that he would allow us to make the decision as to whether I would be admitted to the hospital.

It was a very difficult decision. My mother felt rather helpless and was incapable of decision making. Since she had to go to work every day, for me to remain at home would mean that I would have to stay in bed burning up with fever — unattended for many hours. The thought of being admitted to the hospital was even more frightening; it was only several months since all the patients from the hospitals were brutally forced into wagons and dragged away.

“Child, you tell me what to do!” mama cried and pleaded.

I could not decide. Actually, most of the time I was delirious, and was not in a state to think and make decisions.

One night I woke up from a horrible nightmare. I dreamt that I was in a hospital. The Germans had surrounded the hospital and were about to drag us off. In my dream, I wanted to escape — but was too weak to get out of bed. So, I rolled off the bed and hid underneath it. Then I rolled on the floor. I kept on rolling and rolling. I could see my mother, away in the distance — too far away for me to get to. She was also rolling on the ground — rolling toward me; but she could not reach me either. We tried very hard, but someone or something kept us from reaching one another. We were forced to roll away from each other — toward two separate cemeteries. I screamed out in horror: “Two cemeteries, one cemetery for mama and another cemetery for me. I do not want to be in a different cemetery. I want to be with you, mama!”

My mother woke me up. “Dear child, you must have had a terrible nightmare! I am not going away from you. I am here — at your bedside!” I told mama about my nightmare and cried out: “I don’t want to go the hospital! I don’t want to be forced to go to another cemetery — a cemetery for children!”

“Don’t worry, Feygele mayn kind (my child)! If you are afraid to be admitted to the hospital, I will not send you there!” Mama tried to calm me down, but that nightmare remained in my memory forever.

During my illness, every morning before she went off to work, mama would put a pitcher filled with fresh water at the foot of my bed. I would gobble the water down within an hour, and then, until mama returned, I would lay crying and pleading: “Water! Water! I want a sip of water”! Lunchtime, mama would come running as fast as she could to attend to me, and again left me a pitcher of water. But my constant desire for drinking was never quenched. Despite the compresses mama would lay on my head, the headaches hardly subsided and the stomach cramps became increasingly unbearable. Most of the time, however, I was delirious, incoherent or just slept.

One evening, I opened my eyes and noticed my mother sitting in the dark, or half-darkness, near my bed. I heard her crying and complaining: “I bore and raised children for the devil!” I wanted to pacify her, but I couldn’t even raise my head, and fell asleep again.

Quite often, I could hear my mother plead with me to eat something. She said that she would get me whatever my heart desired. On one occasion I imagined that I was at the TOZ Kolonie (a sleep over camp) and heard someone sing out the song: “Vos Hobn Mir oyf Mitog Haynt? (What is for dinner today?)” I must have sung along: “Knobl Zup! (Garlic soup!)” My mother jumped up with joy, happy that I spoke out and that I wanted something to eat. She hurriedly picked up my brother Elek’s best suit that she was unable to part with before, and went off somewhere to sell it and to purchase a head of garlic in a black market store.

My mother spent longer making all the necessary transactions than she had expected. In the meantime, the night drew close. I noticed that my mother forgot to pull down the window blind. I remembered that light shining through windows when it was dark outside was considered to be a serious war crime. So, I pulled myself up with all my might, climbed up on the chair next to the bed and pulled down the window cover. Suddenly I fell down unconscious onto the floor and was unable to lift myself up. It wasn’t until my mother returned with the garlic that I was helped back into bed.

My mother probably spent a long time cooking the delicacy. She tried to spoon feed me, but after one or two teaspoonfuls of soup, I told her that I felt nauseated, that I could not swallow the food and that I would like to sleep again. My mother became frantic: “How in the world can you fight the disease if you are too weak, too undernourished and drained of strength to fight the disease?”

There was no medication to cure the disease. All we could do was to wait out the crisis that occurred on or about the twenty-first day of the illness. Either one survived the crisis, or died.

One day, I told my mother that both for her sake and for my own, I had decided to be admitted to the hospital. I am not certain what the determining factor was in my decision; but after I assured her that this was my own conscious decision, she informed Dr. Zackheim about it, and he sent an ambulance for me that brought me to the children’s hospital for contagious diseases on Dworska Street.

I spent the first few of days of my hospital stay in the nurse’s room, which was between two children’s wards. I shared the room with a boy from Czechoslovakia, who was of approximately the same age. The two of us were under constant, intensive care by the doctors and nurses. After several days (perhaps when I was considered out of imminent danger), I was moved to a regular ward and placed in the bed near the window. There were ten beds in that spacious, immaculately clean and bright ward. It had a constant smell of ammonia and medicines. I do not know whether the entire hospital or only that wing was for the care of children with typhoid fever, a very contagious disease.

After several days, the Czechoslovakian boy was also brought into our ward and placed in the bed next to mine, but that same night the boy took a turn for the worse. Though no visitors were allowed into our ward, an exception was made for the boy’s parents. A curtain was drawn around his bed and his parents were allowed to sit with their son. I could not help overhearing all of the activity going on there. On the following day, the boy, with whom I had become friendly, died. I had quite pleasant feelings toward this loving, intelligent, music-loving family. I was devastated when I heard the nurses remove his body, and heard his parents weeping.

to be continued…

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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Arrested and Chased

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
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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The Sperre — Part 3

During the morning of the seventh day of the Sperre, a neighbor knocked at our door — holding his five month-old baby in one arm and his young wife around her shoulders with his other arm — he stormed into our home. In stammering phrases, he hurriedly advised us that the selection was now proceeding in a wild, uncontrollable manner; that there was no clear system to it, and that deportation authorities were now catching and dragging away anyone, merely to fill the required quota. He opened the trap door to our tiny cooling and storage area under the floor, commanded my mother and his wife to hurriedly jump down, swiftly handed the baby to his wife and lowered the door over their heads. The fearful and uncomfortable baby began to cry. The father yelled out last minute instructions to his wife: “Shut the baby up! Put the bottom of your dress into the baby’s mouth, and if necessary, choke the baby, but don’t jeopardize your life and Froy Infeld’s life.” He was yelling in a loud voice and was evidently overheard by other neighbors in the building. Only seconds later, a fifty-year-old neighbor was brought in by her two daughters and lowered down into the tiny cellar. Following them came two sets of parents with their three three-year old children. They too began to squeeze their children into the approximately 3’xS’x3′ area. My neighbor and I were out of control! We begged the new arrivals: “Please find another hiding place for your children.” I was asking them: “How long could all of them sit silently in such squeezed-in positions without screaming and fighting?” I also urged them that if so many persons were discovered in one area, they would surely all be led away to be deported, whereas if only one, two or three people were found, the hunters might possibly have pity on them and spare their lives.

“Alle raus! Alle raus!” The commands were given in drilled shrieks and were escorted by gunshots and by banging with instruments on the walls of the entrance halls to the buildings. It all happened very suddenly. The seemingly preplanned, drilled shrieks were creating fear and producing panic all around. I hurriedly placed a chair over the trap door to the cellar and threw bedding over the chair. I can hardly remember anything that happened between then and the moment outside when I noticed that the three children (the twins and an upstairs neighbor) were dragged out from their new hiding place in the garbage box in the back of the yard. Apparently the children were discovered when they became curious about the turmoil going on around and stuck their heads out from the garbage box. I saw other familiar people —young and old — being dragged out from their hiding places. Among them were my friend Frania, who was found hiding under her bed; a handicapped woman in the late thirties and her fourteen-year-old son who were hiding in the attic; and a couple in their mid-forties hiding in a stable. Whether it was as a result of the fear that my mother would also be discovered, the sadness connected with familiar people being dragged out of hiding, the guilt of chasing the neighbors’ children out of our cellar, or a combination of these factors — I suddenly experienced an unusual weakness in my legs, and felt as though I was paralyzed and drained of blood. My face turned white, my eyes rolled back into their sockets and when I was supposed to have gone past the German doctor who was busy with his selections, I stopped short in front of him — immobile and in an unprecedented stupor. His finger pointed at me and before I realized what had happened, I was dragged out of the line and pushed into the corner of the yard where the others selected for ‘resettlement’ stood. As soon as I regained my equilibrium, I realized my circumstance. Minutes later I regained my courage and was looking for a way to escape. At first I tried to run across to the adjoining courtyard that I knew so well. Only about ten feet separated me from freedom, but at every attempt to flee, the two policemen responsible for guarding the delivery of the captured, stopped me and dragged me back to the corner where the detainees were kept.

When I stood up in the wagon — which was about to wheel us away to the roundup center, I realized that once the wagon wheels began to roll I might not have the opportunity to escape. Though I was aware of the danger of being shot on the spot, I decided to jump — there in front of our home. I thought that anything was preferable to being dragged away. I noticed that Milus, one of the twins, was standing right next to me — with his little hands stretched toward the windows of his home and his parents’ barbershop. I clearly heard him whimper: “Papa, mama, you promised not to let them take us away! I want to go home! Please take us home!” His twin sister Lubka and their friend Simkhele were also standing with their hands stretched out and weeping. I turned my face away from the three young children toward our windows, which were next to theirs. There seemed to be complete silence. I sensed that my mother’s hiding place was not discovered.

Once again, I sized up the height of the wagon walls and was trying to determine the total distance from the pavement, and contemplated the position from which to jump. I thought that it would not be easy because I couldn’t pick up the necessary speed before jumping, but that it wasn’t impossible. It would be even more difficult, I thought again, to jump once the wagon was in fast motion. I was almost ready to jump when I heard a voice: “Not now! Sit down next to me and I’ll tell you when to jump!” The policeman in the back of the wagon spoke to me in a soft voice. At first I looked at him suspiciously. I thought that he wanted to hold me tightly, so that I would not be unable to escape. He must have read my thoughts because he reassured me that he would help me. I decided to trust him, walked over toward the back and sat down next to him as he advised me.

The two seats across from our seats were occupied by the invalid woman with her fourteen-year-old son, my playmate Motl. They pleaded with the policeman to let them escape too. The woman offered money for the favor of letting them go, or at least to let the boy jump off. Occasionally, she attempted to shove money into his hands right in front of his face. The policeman was very harsh toward them — and at times even struck at them with brutality. My heart was filled with sorrow. I could not imagine that one who could be so cruel toward the other two “passengers”, could possibly be kind toward me.

Suddenly the driver slowed down the horses, the policeman in the front seat jumped down from his seat and helped a middle-aged neighbor jump off the wagon. At the same moment, my newly found friend, the policeman, gave me a sharp nudge and exclaimed: “Now, jump quickly!” It was so unexpected, that I jumped more clumsily than ever before in my life. As I hit the pavement, I badly cut and scraped my knees. I managed to lift myself up quickly, and though limping, with blood was dripping down from my knees, I began to run, run, run.

Perspiration was running down from my forehead. I kept on running toward the cemetery in Marysin, where I intended to hide inside a family grave.

“Where are you running, Fela, and why are your knees and feet covered with blood?” I heard a familiar voice behind me. It was an Orthodox girl, Opatowska, who had been working in our Resort office and had on numerous occasions helped me by adding my name to the list of those who had started work on time, even though I had arrived late that particular morning.

Opatowska’s father, a Khasidic Jew, was wearing a long black robe. He hardly spoke to me and hardly looked in my direction, as I explained my situation. But he listened attentively, with sadness in his eyes. Her mother washed the blood off my knees, put compresses on them, handed me something to eat, and led me from the relatively spacious and airy room to an unusually large and lovely vegetable garden. She asked me to rest on a cot that she had brought out, and assured me that if their house became the selection target, they would hide me.

I do not know whether I spent minutes or hours with them, before I heard happy exclamations In the street: “The Sperre is over! The Sperre is over!” As soon as the Opatowskis confirmed that the Sperre was really over, I thanked them for their kindness and quickly ran home. I later heard that on that day the cemetery where I intended to hide was searched thoroughly and that all of the people who had hidden there were captured and deported.

As I ran homeward through the streets of the ghetto, I noticed that hungry ghetto dwellers were pulling carrots, rhubarb, tomatoes, lettuce and other vegetables from other peoples’ garden plots. Too hungry to wait, they would eat some of the vegetables immediately; other vegetables they gathered in bundles and ran away with the plundered food. At certain moments, thoughts crossed my mind to do the same. I could envision bringing these treasured items to my starving mother, but my feet didn’t obey. I was always a fast runner, but never before had I run as fast as now. I did not stop until I opened the door to our home. “Mama, mama!” I yelled out. But my mother was nowhere to be seen. It was very quiet in my home. I ran outside and began to scream. A neighbor told me to go to another neighbor’s home, on the other side of the gate, where the woman who had hidden in our cellar with my mother lived. I did not know what to expect there. When I came in, I found my mother there in a chair, her face immobile, a blank stare in her eyes with many people surrounding her. “Mama, mama, I cried out. What happened? What is going on?”

My mother opened her eyes. Upon seeing me, she grabbed me, pulled me toward her, lulled me in her arms like a baby and cried: “They told me that you escaped from the wagon, but I didn’t believe them. I thought that I had lost you too, my youngest, my beloved, my last child! I thought that I had nothing left to live for anymore! Oh, how good it is to hold you on my lap, my sweet baby! You have really come home? You are truly here? Oh, my darling child, I wouldn’t want to live without you!”

I merely muttered, with tenderness, the word “Mama” and felt as if the whole world was mine. We were both weeping. We were weeping for joy to be alive.

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The Sperre — Part 2

Since the procedure of catching and delivering the required numbers of people that were demanded by the German authorities proved to be too lengthy and tedious, a new method for delivering the 20,000 or so ghetto inhabitants for deportation was devised — an eight day curfew, known as the Sperre or Gassen Sperre. Through the duration of the Sperre, all the factories, ghetto groceries, bakeries, clothing stores, soup kitchens and all other public places were closed.

Only persons with special passes were allowed in the streets —which were now basically deserted of pedestrians and unusually quiet. The rare sidewalk passers-by were generally policemen, firemen, and other privileged few with special armbands. Much more frequently one could hear the monotonous galloping of horses and the frightening sounds of the rolling wagon wheels, and one could see the large wagons filled with people (mostly children), regularly going toward the Umschlagplatz and rushing back in the opposite direction empty.

Every day a given section of the ghetto was sealed off. The inhabitants of that area were ordered to line up in the backyards of their buildings, and to pass through a selection by a Gerrnan doctor and his aides. Though they at first claimed that only young children, the elderly and sick were to be selected for deportation, it was later apparent that people were chosen indiscriminately. Whoever the German doctor’s finger was pointed at was pulled out of line. The selected were gathered in a designated restricted area of the yard, watched by policemen, and were later loaded onto high-walled wagons and taken away to the Umschlagplatz. Those dragged out of hiding places were put with the people who were selected by the doctor. The others — those who had safely passed the selection and were not stopped — were later allowed to return to their homes, which had been ransacked in their absence by the authorities that were searching for hidden inhabitants.

As soon as rumors of the Sperre had spread, the shelves of the ghetto grocery stores, bakeries and soup kitchens had been emptied. The only item available for purchase (at the onset of the Sperre) was Ersatz Coffee (imitation coffee). During the Sperre, food stores were closed. Since we did not work during that period, we were deprived of our soups — the major daily reward for our work. So, the only food and drink for the majority of the inhabitants of the ghetto during that period, was indeed, Ersatz Coffee. It is not surprising that during that hot, late summer period — a time of great fear, extreme starvation and stench from the unburied dead — there was a lot of togetherness, a time of great concern for one another.

But sometimes, fights erupted — particularly about food and one could hear allegations: “You stole my last slice of bread!” Starved decent, concerned and loving family members, suddenly turned against each other during that tragic period of unprecedented panic and hunger in the ghetto.

Several times, I could hear through the walls that separated our living quarters from that of our neighbors, the three-year-old twins, Milus and Lubka, pleading with their parents: “Remember, you promised not to allow the bad Germans to take us away!”

The parents reassured their beloved children, but I was under the impression that the certainty of their answers and their voices had faded.

These young children, only three years old, though hungry, full of fear and deprived of necessities — like the other ghetto children, never cried, never complained, never demanded. They must have recognized and understood the horror that permeated the atmosphere of the ghetto at these times. One personal recollection regarding these toddlers (as well as about most of the other very young ghetto children), is the fact that though they had learned so early in their lives about horror and human cruelty, they had never even got to know what an egg looked like.

Most of the time deadly silence reigned among the ghetto dwellers during the eight days of the Sperre (September 5-12). It seemed like an eternity.

In the early morning of the fifth day of the Sperre, my mother suddenly woke me from my sleep and hurriedly said: “They are surrounding our street and I heard many neighbors run away. Get dressed as fast as you can, help me tighten my orthopedic shoe, and let’s run!” Her voice was decisive, unlike her weak and apathetic voice since my two brothers’ deaths. Seemingly, mama had regained her courage, strength and determination. About three minutes later, we were ready to leave. Though trembling with fear and shaking like leaves during a great storm, we left the blocked off area and soon reached my Aunt Surtshe’s home where the Cwern family had returned earlier that week. To our great disappointment, Uncle Avrom and my mother’s sister didn’t welcome us with open arms as we had welcomed them — as we expected they would. Uncle said that he couldn’t risk his family’s lives for us. My mother took my hand in hers and turned toward her brother-in-law: “We are going back, but if we are sent to our death, may it be on your conscience for the rest of your life!”

We were about to return to our home when a policeman stopped us: “Are you meshuge (crazy), an invalid with a child going right into the arms of the killer?” He chased us back, away from the danger zone.

“Where can we go,” my mother murmured. “If we couldn’t find shelter in my sister’s home, then I don’t know where to go!” We just walked aimlessly through the empty ghetto streets until my mother turned onto the familiar doorsteps of her niece Hendl’s home.

“Mume (Aunt) Rukhtsche, I am so happy that you and Feygele came out alive! When I heard that your street was blocked off, I thought that you were taken away! Sit down, Mume Rukhtsche, and put up your feet to rest on the chair; your ankles are so swollen. Eat a piece of bread, and you too Feygele. I wish I had more to offer, but unfortunately, that’s all we have left of the meager rations that we managed to take out before the Sperre began. Please, Mume Rukhtshe, don’t worry about anything. Just relax and be assured that you are not in our way. Wherever I will hide my own three little children, I’ll hide you and your child! Just let me look at you, and hold you tight, my beloved aunt, so that you will not disappear.” Hendl kept my mother in a tight embrace, continually kissing and caressing her face, her hair, her shoulders, and wouldn’t let go of her. Her husband sat on his cobbler stool, pretending to be repairing a pair of shoes and that he was unaware of what was going on around him. The three little children — two girls with blond hair and bluish-gray eyes, aged six and seven, and their five year old brother with sky blue eyes and crooked legs (he may have had rickets) that were hardly able to support his little body as he was holding on to a chair — were standing around in silence, looking on with great fear and concern in their eyes.

I was still agitated, hungry and weak, but felt relieved that my cousin Hendl was going to hide my mother. After all, I was still a child, and the burden of not knowing how to protect my mother from deportation was overwhelming. I was unable to perceive that my life was also in danger. After all, I was already over thirteen years old, very tall, had rosy cheeks, and although I was physically underdeveloped for my age (as were most of the ghetto children), I looked as strong, healthy and capable of working as anyone in the ghetto. And, I had a worker’s identification card, showing that I was a “productive” inhabitant of the Litzmannzstadt ghetto. My mother — 42-years-old but rapidly aging had a pronounced limp, large black bags under her eyes, a skinny, sick-looking, colorless face, and swollen all over. It could not escape anyone’s notice that she was all skin and bones — throughout her body. I was certain that she had absolutely no chance to pass a selection process and this remained my major concern. This experience with my cousins served as a poignant reminder that despite the misery, some people were still good at heart and expressed love and concern for others.

When the evening came and our street was no longer surrounded, we kissed them good-bye, wished one another “good luck,” and returned to our home. We never saw Hendl, her husband or their three children again.

to be continued…

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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The Sperre

In the latter part of the summer of 1942, the Sonder Kommando surrounded all the hospitals, orphanages, old age homes and the few remaining dzialkis (cottages with gardens), and the inmates were captured and dragged away by force in large vans. Very few of the patients, orphans, dzialki dwellers and inmates in the homes for the elderly managed to come out alive to join the rest of the ghetto population. Most of them were brought to the train station outside the ghetto, and according to some rumors, they were taken away in sealed trains that were filled with gas.

My cousin Pinkus was one of the very few patients who managed to escape from the hospital on Lagiewnicka Street, where he was recovering from an illness. I was later told by his family that a nurse who was particularly fond of Pinkus, lowered him from the second floor window in the back of the hospital, on a rope she made of sheets. As suddenly arranged, his sister Hela was waiting for him with a blanket on Mickiewicza Street to cover him up and take home. Another few patients, whose relatives had the right connections, managed — for large sums of money — to be escorted out of the hospital dressed as hospital attendants or doctors. Evidently, some Sonder Kommando were in on the deal, because the patients managed to get past their watchful eyes to escape. These were, however, exceptional cases. Even the few ghetto inhabitants who could afford to pay the very large sums of money to bribe the authorities, did not know whom to contact to arrange such escapes.

Soon, the news spread that when the hospitals discovered a patient missing from his bed, it was their responsibility to notify the ghetto authorities immediately — and a police hunt for the missing person would begin. The initial search began in the patient’s home. If the missing person could not be found, a substitute family member, or anyone shielding that person would be arrested as a replacement. It was, therefore, very dangerous for Pinkus, his parents or sisters to remain in their home. So the five members of the Cwern family — my Aunt Surtche, her husband Avrom and their three children (Pinkus, 19 years old, Hela, 18, and Elke, 16), came to share our one-room living quarters with us. Pinkus and his father slept in one of the two adjoining beds, Aunt Surtshe and my mother in the other bed, while my two female cousins slept in a corner on the floor. I would sleep either with my mother and aunt in the bed or on the floor alongside my cousins.

Pinkus was very sick. He was coughing and spitting phlegm, never left the bed and needed constant attention. For the rest of us, it was almost business as usual — going to our resorts early in the morning, returning toward the evening tired and hungry, cooking our meager meals for hours and then guzzling it up within minutes. The biggest problem in having these relatives in our household was the necessity to be on constant guard. The house watchman of the building, who lived with his wife in a tiny room across the hallway from us, had the reputation of being a dutiful informer of non-residents in the building. So, every time one of our “guests” had to leave the building (especially in the early morning), I had to go outside, look around carefully and if I found the surroundings safe — I would signal for them to quickly tiptoe out of the room and out of the building. Although we knew that by shielding a runaway from the hospital we were endangering our own lives, we believed that it was our humane duty to help our relatives and we never questioned the correctness of our decision to help them.

In the afternoon of the fourth of September, posters advising ghetto residents to gather to hear the latest development concerning the deportation appeared on bulletin boards. When the people anxiously assembled that same day, they were shocked by the speeches of the leading ghetto authorities. They spoke about the German decree that required all children under ten, the elderly of sixty-five and over and the sick to be delivered to the German authorities. The last and the most despised speech, was the one delivered by the Prezes Chaim Rumkowski about the “decision by the council” to cooperate with the German authorities `’in order to save the ghetto”:

“Yesterday, they asked me to fulfill the horrible task of delivering a new contingent of over twenty thousand individuals for deportation. They are asking us to give up our most precious possession — the children and the elderly. I gave the best years of my life to children, but when a person has gangrene in a leg or arm, it is necessary to amputate that limb in order to save the rest of the body. Now, in my old age, I am forced to perform this difficult and bloody task… I am coming to you like a bandit to take from you what you treasure most… With a broken heart, I am stretching to you my trembling hands and am begging you: Fathers and mothers, please hand over your children voluntarily!…

Give me the sick… Give into my hands the victims so that the rest, a population of 100,000 Jews can be preserved… If you don’t do it voluntarily, it will be worse — the Germans will come in and capture people indiscriminately and there will be a blood bath. I am trying to save the ghetto!…

I gave the appropriate instructions to the doctors… I cannot proceed in any other way. The part that can be saved is much larger than the part that must be sacrificed…”

A panic broke out among the listeners. Parents, grandparents and relatives were screaming and weeping. They were not willing to give up their most beloved treasures. Neither the speeches nor the posters and notices by ghetto-mail — to deliver the “unproductive elements” to the given Umschlagplatz — were very successful.

Then came the second phase — the capture of the “criminals” and “delinquents” in hiding. It was a common sight to look out of the window and see a Jewish policeman with a crying infant in his arms moving with long steps through the ghetto streets, with the child’s mother running behind them — with outstretched hands toward the skies, toward the child or toward the policemen. At first she would be calling, deploring and shrieking, then pleading with the policeman, and finally cursing him: “Murderer, give me back my child!”

I heard my mother whispering: “Bernard, how lucky you are to have died early enough to avoid the tragedy of burying our two sons, and unlike me you have escaped witnessing scenes like the one in front of our window”. I noticed the bewildered stare in her eyes. Soon thereafter I heard her weeping and saw tears rolling down her face. Since my mother had lost four extremely significant people in her life several months earlier — her mother, both of my brothers and her most beloved sister — she often wept at night and spoke to my deceased father. But this was different. It was tragic, scary and heartbreaking to observe the pandemonium outside; and it was even more devastating to watch my mother’s reaction.

To encourage the Jewish police, firemen and porters to conduct the operation conscientiously, 1,500 of their lucky family members were isolated in several factories and in a hospital in Marysin, and promises had been made to them that their families would be spared deportation. In addition to their wives, children and parents being exempted from deportation, they received bonuses of 3 lbs. of bread, sugar, sausage and other foods daily.

One afternoon, my Aunt Khaye stopped in front of our window, with her hands pulling her unkempt hair that was partially covered with a scarf, and wailed: “Rukhtshe, they dragged away our crown, our treasure! Our sweet Khanetshka is gone! We tried everything to have her released from the roundup place — all in vain! Now it is too late! They have sent her away already! They deported our KhanetsUka! Oh, my God, why, why, why?…”

My cousin’s little girl was a truly delightful child and all her grandparents’ wealth couldn’t save this beautiful, clever six-year-old.

to be continued…

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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Froy Tashma

Large shipments of baggage, including tons of disinfected sacks of bedding, clothing, shoes and Rumkes (ghetto money) were brought into the Altmaterialn in the Litzmannstadt ghetto, where my mother was working. Her job was to sort through the articles, putting aside any valuables that were found for the Germans.

One day, my mother returned from work very distressed. At first she was unusually silent and lost in her own thoughts. I was under the impression that she wanted to share something with me but was not sure whether she wanted to burden me with that horrid event, and she was hesitating about how to tell me. At last, my mother burst out crying. Then she told me about what had occurred that day at Altmaterialn.

Her co-worker, Khaye Tashma walked over to the big heap of clothing in the center of the warehouse to fetch a new pile of clothes for sorting. Among the pile, she noticed a familiar dress — a dress like the one her nineteen-year-old daughter was wearing when she last saw her through the fence of the Central Jail on Czarnieckiego several weeks earlier, just before her Baltshe was deported, along with Froy Tashma’s sister. The two of them — aunt and niece — were captured for resettlement from her sister’s home after the latter had disobeyed the notice from the ghetto authorities to “voluntarily” report with her luggage at the roundup facility. When the police came to search her home, they found both of them on the premises and took them into custody — the “criminal” and her niece. Mrs. Tashma appealed in vain to the authorities to release her healthy, productive, young daughter. Baltshe was registered as a member of her aunt’s household because her aunt, a welfare recipient of nine marks per month, wanted to remain in her home. As a single occupant, she would have been forced to vacate the premises, since she would not have met the regulation requiring a certain number of occupants per square foot.

My mother wept as she continued to tell the story: “It was so terrible!… Froy Tashma pulled out her daughter’s garment, picked up a razor blade and began to rip the dress in the seam, shouting: ‘Here! Here! This is where I myself sewed in the paper money and Baltshe’s birth certificate! Yes, yes, it is still here!’ She pulled out a jacket from the pile nearby, and with trembling hands, cut off a button yelling: ‘This is where I sewed in Baltshe’s pendant with the picture of me and my husband and our three children!’ She pointed at the picture, let out a wild scream and fainted. Everyone in the Altmaterialn thought that Mrs. Tashma could no longer be revived”

My mother felt crushed too. After all, she had been Mrs. Tashma’s friend for many years and knew her daughter Baltshe as well as Mrs. Tashma’s other children. When Froy Tashma finally came to, my mother tried not to show her own dismay and attempted to mumble some consoling words: “‘Because Baltshe’s dress is here, it is not proof that something terrible happened to your child!”

My mother confided to me: “I didn’t believe for one minute what I was saying, but I wanted to calm down my friend.”

“No, Rukhtshe, Baltshe is dead”, Mrs. Tashma insisted. “She would never have given up this dress voluntarily! She loved this dress and knew that I had sewn in the valuables here. Her clothing was taken from her either by force when alive or after she had been killed!”

My mother told me how Froy Tashma hurriedly went through the pile and found her child’s and her sister’s other belongings. She was endlessly screeching and wailing. My mother believed that her friend was having a nervous breakdown.

“My child!” my mother exclaimed after a long interval of silence. “There is no doubt in my mind that the people — among them Froy Tashma’s daughter and her sister — were deported to death! I heard at an underground meeting about a death place called Chelmno, to which several trains with deportees are going daily, and then return empty. The people brought there are pushed into specially prepared rooms – from which no one escapes alive. My sister Leytshe is also among the tortured dead! She refused to listen to me when I asked her to hide! She said that the idea of such mass killing did not make sense, and that we should not take for granted the story of a man who claimed to have followed the railroad tracks and to have found out where the people were being taken. She had insisted that ‘this man must be deranged’, because ‘the Germans were, after all, humans too and no human being would commit such atrocities.’ My trusting, naive, good-natured sister Laytshe, who could not believe that humans could become beasts and instruments of death, is now also dead and slaughtered by other humans!”

After she gasped for a breath of air, my mother continued: “We now have proof that Baltshe Tashma is dead! Oh, how terrible — they are gassing people and the last few belongings of the few items they were allowed to carry with them become the remains brought back among the sacks of people’s personal belongings. Then the relatives of the murdered individuals end up searching through the clothing of their beloved for valuables — to be delivered to the Nazi killers and thieves.”

Suddenly, in the midst of this emotional conversation, loud sounds of screaming, cursing and of blows were once again coming from our neighbors’ (the Kudlak’s) apartment. Father and son were again fighting over who stole bread from whom. Before the war, the Kudlak were considered a poor but decent and good-hearted family. Now, with the mother and baby having been deported, the two hungry men often stole food from one another, and continually fought. This was not uncommon. Starving people, deprived of nourishment, became like hungry beasts — unable to control their actions. Like locusts, they would throw themselves upon food without consideration for anyone around them — including their own flesh and blood. The Kudlaks and many others in the ghetto tried to alleviate their own feelings of guilt for stealing from their loved ones by blaming the other family member. When the police would get involved, members of these families would be charged with misconduct, assault or disturbing the peace. The consequences were frequently tragic ones, — since these families often ended up on lists of criminals to be destined for deportation.

My mother had no appetite for the meal that evening but after the disturbance had subsided, she continued to rave uncontrollably:

“They have different means of destroying us. They have starved us and confused us! We are all disoriented. The Germans are using different methods to annihilate us. Starving children are stealing food from their parents. Parents are stealing food from their children. The most gentle people are turning into beasts, and scoundrels become the highest officials who claim to be ‘securing our future.’ People are delivering themselves for deportation to death camps to get the promised food for voluntarily reporting for resettlement, so that they may once more before death fill their stomachs before death. We are washing with graygreen soap with the initials “RIF” — made of Rein Yuden Fets (pure fat from slaughtered Jews). It’s not enough for them that they are butchering our people, but they are also utilizing our body parts for their material purposes. First they exploit us for cheap labor to create their wealth and to plunder our valuables, then they annihilate us, and finally, they use our bodies to create more material booty!”

“Mama, what you are saying?” I interrupted. It does not sound like you at all! You are expressing such confused, disturbing thoughts, using such harsh language! Are you all right?”

Not until then did my mother realize that I was shaking all over; that her words were most disturbing to me. When she realized the impact that her language had on me, she apologized, but then added:

“Well, it’s time to stop being overprotective toward you. You must learn to face reality. I am not going to be around much longer and you will have to deal with the cruelty of life on your own.”

She hesitated momentarily and then said: “Feygele dear, don’t ever let them deport you! No matter what they say to deceive us, don’t believe their lies! We were aware of it before, but now we have living proof that they are deporting our people to death! Please, my dear child, save yourself — at all cost!”

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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Death, Deportation, Disease — Part 2

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
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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Death, Deportation, Disease — Part 1

The period from January 1942 through the middle of 1943, was a critical time for the entire population in Lodz ghetto, and the most devastating period of my own life.

In January of 1942, my beloved grandmother, who was approximately eighty-four years of age, died of malnutrition. Her death was the first that I had ever witnessed personally. Her agony, as she fought for her life, remains singed in my memory. Her body was convulsing, her limbs shaking, rising and falling.

With her last words, she recalled the fate of another dying relative: “When my cousin Feygele, who was one hundred and four years old, was dying, I wished her a speedy recovery and many years of continued ‘nakhes’ (fulfillment) from her great grandchildren. Her answer was: “Oy, Fradele, umayn” (Amen). My own interpretation of these words was that she considered herself relatively young and surely had the desire to live on. My Buba died, still surrounded by four of her daughters, her younger sister Khayele, a number of her grandchildren, and a number of other relatives and neighbors. She was respected and adored by everyone who knew her, mainly because of her genuine goodness and devotion to the poor and homeless.

I loved my grandmother dearly and thought of her as one of my three mothers (in addition to my mother and my Aunt Laytshe), but it was too scary to stand near her deathbed and watch her suffer —struggling for her life. So, with the exception of the one time when she called me over to present me with her exquisite, golden cameo brooch— a gift from her son in England — I stood at the far end of the room, trembling and looking on from a distance.

At times, one or another individual in the room began to weep.

Sometimes, the wail rose to a chorus and all were crying at the same time. I heard my mother mutter: “I know that she has had a long and happy life, but if she hadn’t returned from England, or hadn’t been caught in the war and been a victim of Nazi discrimination and persecution, she would have lived on and on.” She hugged grandmother (or buba, as I called her) and said: “Mame, you were my friend, my support and my advisor, and in my eyes you are still very young.”

During the same month, mass deportations were speeded up. Among the deportees were my oldest cousin Malke Rakhl Wolkowicz (or Wolfowicz) with her three children (one of whom was my playmate Esther), and my grandmother’s younger sister, Khayele Fridman. Malke Rakhl’s husband had previously been deported to Czestochow — to work. My Great-Aunt Khayele’s husband, Avreml, had died in the ghetto during an epidemic of dysentery, and her children (Leybesh Wolf and Ratse) had gone off at the outbreak of the war with their immediate families to a small town in the hope that it would be easier to survive the Nazi occupation there. Both of them — Malke Rakhl and Aunt Khayele — were among the ghetto welfare recipients. The former, as the wife of a deportee who was allegedly employed by the Germans in Czestochow, was receiving twelve marks per month. The latter, as an unemployable elderly person, was receiving nine marks per month.

It was a bitterly cold winter, and tragedy was rampant in the ghetto. People actually froze to death in their beds and in the streets. Often, they just dropped down dead. Despite the fact that there was an increased number of gravediggers and that there were dozens of burials daily, numerous bodies were waiting — often for weeks, for burial. And there was more talk about deportations.

Approximately one month later, on March 6, 1942, my younger brother Elek died. He had just turned nineteen. He was brought home in mortal agony from the Tishler Resort. Earlier that morning, when Elek was getting ready to go to work, he had complained that his trepes (clogs produced in the ghetto – cloth with wooden soles) were too heavy and that he had difficulty tying his shoelaces. Mama bent down to help him and pleaded: “Elek, don’t go to work today. Stay home and rest your swollen feet.” But my brother would not hear of it. He kept on insisting that he had to finish the work on a beautiful credenza. Elek was a conscientious workaholic, and at work he was loved both by his superiors and his co-workers. Mama evidently knew that he was already very sick, but she was also aware of the fact that for Elek to stay home in the freezing cold room without the food allocation provided for workers at the Resort was neither beneficial, nor a cure for his rapidly spreading disease.

Elek kissed my mother and me as if he would never see us again. After he left the house, mama turned her unusually pale face and trembling lips away from me.

She was crying. When she turned her face toward me again, her eyes seemed to be unusually red and the black rings under her eyes were swollen. She said to me in a whisper: “Feygele, my child, your brother Elek is very, very sick.” I noticed that when she turned away from me again, she was wiping tears from her eyes.

“Elek, Elek, why did you return to this hell from the Soviet occupied territory?” mama asked him almost with reproach. “Didn’t your cousins Note and Khane (in Pruzany) treat you well?”

“Oh, mama, they treated me very, very well. They were like a brother and sister toward me. Only — I felt very guilty that I left you and Feygele. I didn’t think that Shimon, the intellect in the household, had the courage, the street smarts, the drive or the ability for self-sacrifice to help in your survival of the war.”

“Yes, mama! I wanted to live, I wanted to save my own skin, but I thought that if I returned here, I could somehow also save the rest of you!”

“Elek, Elek”, my mother responded, “you are such a good son, but I wish you hadn’t sacrificed your life for ours!” Mama spoon-fed Elek with the food “specialties” she prepared just for him, but Elek had lost his appetite. She caressed him, put compresses on his head and tried to conceal her broken heart from me. She also tried to restrain herself from shedding tears, to prevent Elek from seeing them.

Next evening, Elek became incomprehensible, his speech slurred, and though he continued to fight for his life for another day, he had lost consciousness. It was awful to watch my handsome, devoted brother lose his fight against death. The doctor, who had visited him, said that it was only a question of hours. Several times Elek asked whether mama could see the rackets up in the sky. Mama explained to me that he was in a coma and hallucinating.

I was asleep in the bed next to Elek. Our faces almost touched. Aunt Laytshe and my mother were standing over him on the other side of his bed, near the window, wiping the cold sweat from his face and pouring liquids between his lips. Occasionally their faces took on grimaces, and they expressed great helplessness and despair. Sometimes, they would just break out in tears

Intermittently, they would listen to Elek’s heartbeat and put their fingers to his wrist to hear his pulse. The dim wick in the glass of oil flickered and threw shadows over the room. When my aunt decided that Elek was no longer breathing, she pulled the sheet over Elek’s face. For a while, my mother and aunt Leytshe stood around — lamenting. I was trembling and shivering again. Neither my mother nor my aunt came over this time to calm me down. The tragedy of losing their son and nephew overpowered their desire to calm me. Eventually, they sat down at the foot of the bed that I was resting in, pulled the down quilt to cover their clothed bodies and sat up for the remainder of the night. I fell asleep several times. Whenever I woke up, I heard them talking in a whisper. Whenever they realized that I was awake, they stopped talking. When I asked them why they wouldn’t lie down to sleep, they explained that they were keeping watch over Elek’s body.

At one time, Elek’s dead left arm was suddenly lifted and just as suddenly fell down over my body. At first, it was scary — but then I cried out: “Elek is still alive! He is not dead! He just moved his arm! His hand fell right over my body!”

I am not sure whether mama and Aunt Laytshe noticed it too, but they had a difficult time calming me down. They explained to me that some limbs might still move after the person had died. “Get up, Elek, you can get up and walk!” I continued to cry. But when Aunt Leytshe checked again, I noticed that Elek lay there motionless, colorless, and that he was not responding to my request.

(to be continued…)

©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
©2009 First Look Marketing All Rights Reserved

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