I.
There is a thin glass
between life and myself.
Although I can clearly see
and comprehend,
I can’t touch life.
Fernando Pessoa
June 12, 1986
It has already
been two days in Warsaw.
It feels so
strange, familiar, known and foreign, close and yet so far away!
The Saxon
Gardens, the Krakow Boulevard, the New World Street, the Jerusalem Avenue, and
the Memorial for the Unknown Soldier ...
The Polish
strolling under the shining sun in the sky, the government workers waiting in
the bus stops, moms guiding their children. I am back again in the country
where only Polish is spoken, the land of my childhood, youth, and lost dreams.
I am breathing in
the sight of the city, the houses and the air. Surrounded with my memories,
with all my existence I feel so close to Warsaw.
Tears hiding behind my eye lashes, a funny feeling in my throat, but here at
the entrance of the Saxon
Gardens, these tears are
different; they are tears of my childhood.
Under the
inviting, warm June sun, everything is just like it used to be. This climate I
grew up with is part of me. That feeling, most extraordinary, and real, the
feeling before the war, before the Germans came, all of a sudden captures me.
Suddenly, as if history just erased time, time becomes immemorial. I am here born
here. I have always been here. I was born here. My father was born here, my
grandfather and my great grandfather…
I learned so much
from them; to walk, to talk, to understand, and to feel. Why didn’t I live here
just like my father and his father and my mother and her mother?
Yes, this is the
place. Exactly the same place as 45 years ago. The streets that I am strolling
like a stranger are like a faded melody now. In every step I take, a song like
a Cecisad feeling of unity overtakes me giving me a shiver.
Here are the Saxton Gardens
where they held my hands to play with me, showed and taught me hide and seek
and hop scotch. I remember our escape from this garden, running through these
same streets seeking refuge in our home when the storm broke out suddenly.
These walls are my childhood walls. This is real. One more time, I am
traversing the same sidewalks, the same streets, and the same buildings. Too
many years have passed by, but I still remember so clearly as if it is carved
in my brain.
When was all
this? When were all those years I used to walk with my parents holding their
hands! We used to go to the park together with my parents walking in harmony,
their steps echoing in the streets. I used to hold my mother’s hands tightly as
if we were equals, a whole life in front of us.
I am all alone.
They no longer are living in these houses nor walking on these streets, but
their voices are everywhere. Their voices, their steps, and their laughter all
are silenced now. I remember all the
obligations of the childhood: two hour afternoon naps, short poems to be
memorized and the social studies homework, and then, mother preparing tea in
the kitchen, while I sit at the tea table, drinking my milk and waiting for my
eye lids to grow heavy by sleep while listening to the grown-ups in the evening.
My mother’s voice, so sweet and so pleasant, would speak to my heart. Not to
sleep, I would blink, get up occasionally to walk around, spin around, and try
to do some ballet moves that I’ve learned but to no avail…
I would make
myself comfortable pulling my legs under in an armchair.
My mom would say:
-You better go to
your bed my dear, you will fall asleep again.
-I am not sleepy
mommy, I would say and fall into a vague and sweet dream, and in a minute the
restful childhood sleep would close my eyes and I would slip into a dream world
until somebody woke me up. I would feel the touch of a gentle hand and
recognize it right away. She would caress my hair with her tender hands and
whisper into my ear:
-Cecile, get up
my angel, time to go to bed. My love, my sweetheart, go and sleep! She would
not shy away from showing her love towards me, but I would not budge.
-Get up my angel,
she would say and tickle me moving her fingers on my body quickly. Tickling and
waking up would get on my nerves, but the voice, the scent and the smile of my
mother sitting close to me and caressing me…, it is as if remembering an old
song now. Like longings, old songs are slowly distilled to my mind. My mother’s
already beautiful face when in a smile would become more beautiful and spread
sunshine around. In my opinion, what is called the beauty of a face is summed
up in a sweet smile.
One picks up so
many memories from the past trying to revive the beloved in one’s dreams. Our
vague remembrance of them as if through fogged lens is because they are our
tear drops in our dreams. Whenever I try to remember my mom in my childhood
memories, her compassionate eyes full of love, her embroidered white dress and
her thin and delicate hands caressing me come to my mind.
When my mother
reminded us that my brother’s birthday was approaching and we needed to come up
with individual gifts for him, I thought of writing a poem for him.
Hoping to
complete later, I came up with two lines that rhymed right away. I can never
remember how such a startling idea for a child came to my mind but I liked it
at that time. I kept telling people that I definitely was going to give my
brother a gift but that would be a secret. After I finished the poem, I would
go to my bed room and read it out loud using my hands and arms and adding all
my feelings to it.
My father loved
poetry and knew the subtlety of it, too. He believed that only when read out
loud, a poem could be understood properly and fully appreciated , if read out
loud properly of course. We had parents who knew the value of art being a must
in the education of children. We didn’t have to turn into artists and yet they
grasped the value of art in creating a quality individual. Especially for my
father who owned an art gallery, art was a passion. He used to say every
picture was an adventure.
In our house
there was a chess set that had ebony and boxwood pieces in a box. Every Sunday,
my father would as if holding a sacred safe keeping take out the chess pieces
and with an utmost care arrange them in order on the folding table. Then he
would take out some shingling coins from his pocket and place them by the chess
set. That was his symbolic betting. His goal was to make his son, Halek love
playing chess. With the simple pleasures of Sunday mornings, that was a big
opportunity for Haelk’s best friend, Romek to learn chess, too. Watching those
three play chess was a privilege for me every Sunday. They would all stare at
that shiny square as if waiting a prediction from an oracle. There was something
mysterious about that scene, something I couldn’t understand what was happening
while watching the game through their sunken shoulders and heads sloped down.
In reality I was far from the logic of the game. While arguing loudly by the
chess board, it seemed to me as if Romek and Halek were trying to excavate some
treasure hidden in these precious little statues. On his first chess lesson, my
father summarized the game like this:
‘Look! Placing
the pieces in the chess game is like placing the furniture in a house inhabited
for a long time. You put the arm chair here, the chair there, the table in the
middle of the room…But all of a sudden when any piece of the furniture is
changed place, or something that has been there for a long time is taken out,
you find yourself in a difficult situation. In a room where you have been
comfortably walking around, sooner or later you find yourself hitting a chest
or falling down trying to sit on a chair that used to be there.
My father was not
a chess genius but he played it pretty decent. He was a good theorist with
perfect openings. Although he was not very creative, he was a good opponent for
them. It was not easy to beat my father. They were always very careful playing
chess with him and would choose only those moves well tried and safe.
Sometimes, they would spend a long time on a single game or just stop in the
middle of it to analyze with a great satisfaction all the variations of the
move played so far. It is a common trait of all the chess players not to accept
the defenselessness of their guard when beaten. This was especially true for
Romek. Every time he lost, he would try to study every move he had made
relentlessly to see where he erred. With his choices, beliefs, and intolerance,
a person’s approach to life is partly very similar to playing chess. He was one
of those people who never knew defeat and never sacrificed from what he
believed to be true.
All those
memories and emotions are still secure in me. And now, walking in Warsaw these
feelings of love are randomly piling on top of each other and slowly rolling
back on to present that was broken off from me. Because of the self pity that
is knotted in my throat and the deep feeling of yearning I feel for everything
I lost, I had to hold my tears back; but still, I owe the determination to come
back here to my courage.
My grandmother’s
once black hair was now silver and she would wash it only with rainwater to
keep that color and wear it in a bun on top of her head. She had big dreamy
brown eyes and a perfectly shaped nose: her small lips that never came to know
any lipstick would always be curled in a sad smile.
My grandfather
with a long heavy whistling sigh would prop his old head on the chair and
follow the news from the newspaper. He would keep his calm although he was
aware of the troubled moments that never vanished in the house. After a
quivering sigh, he would be still and so subdued that it seemed he never was
with us but somehow evaporated in thin air. My brother, Hilek to whom my
grandfather taught all his secrets one by one was his big hope and only
grandchild. He was the heir for all his possessions and unfulfilled dreams. He
was the footprint of our family that would mysteriously carry over our name from
generation to generation.
All my life I
tried to behave well as much as I could. I tried to be honest, worked hard,
raised a family, and loved as much as I could. That was all.
Under the Polish
sun, I can feel the presence of my mother and my family. The tears rolling from
my eyes this moment are for them. Their presence is growing in my tears and my
childhood is watching me with thousand faces. The melodies of their existence
are so natural and clear! I so wish to stay here until eternity… Feeling them
beside me, so close, just like how it was in the past. I don’t know any more.
Who am I and to whom do I belong? I am alone. My home is far away.
Look what
condition I am in!
I am walking in
front of myself like a stranger, obviously.
Katya who raised
us from childhood as far as I‘ve known myself, and whom I remember so lovingly was our house
maid and an old family friend. She would advise my sister Pola and me to always
improve ourselves. A non approving glance, a mimic characteristic of her would
bring us back to proper behavior. I would understand her every suggestion right
away. When my beauty was praised, she would make a face and laugh, trying to
find faults in my appearance and teasing me about them. Sooner or later we
would get what she was expecting from us. She didn’t like frivolity in young
ladies. Once we noticed that, no trace
of self importance would be left in us.
In fact, we became snobs of simplicity that became fake right away.
On a Sunday
morning, an old friend of my father, Wilhelm Koch, showed up before Katya’s
lunch of soup, fried spinach and pie topped with whipped cream. I saw him
approaching the house and ran to the guest room. I wanted to pretend I wasn’t
expecting him, but hearing his foot steps, his strong voice and Katya’s run to
greet him, I couldn’t wait any longer and got out of my room. He was speaking
loud and looked at me for a while without greeting me. I was surprised and felt
blushed. Coming towards me with opened arms, and sincerity,
-Ah! Are you
really Cecile? Can one change this much? You have grown up so much! Look at
this violet, turned into a rose!
He held my hands
with his large hands and squeezed gently, firm but politely. Thinking he would
kiss me, I leaned forward a little but he squeezed my hand firmly one more time
instead and gazed into my eyes with a happy, piercing look.
I hadn’t seen him
for six years. He was changed a lot, as if aged a little, and got darker, but
his sincere behavior, his delicate face with deep contours, his brilliant
intelligent gaze, and child like cute smile were still the same.
In five minutes,
this truly good hearted man was no longer a guest in our house but a family
member to all of us.
At some point,
there was a clang from the piano.
-Pola! Come and
play something for us.
I liked his
friendly, honest and slightly commanding call. He got up, and opened the music
book to the adacio of Beethoven’s ‘Quasi una fantasia’.
-Let’s hear how
you play this.
With a tea cup in
his hands, he retreated to a corner in the living room.
My sister, seeing
the futility of the excuse of not being that good on the piano and therefore
rejecting the offer, sat at the piano involuntarily. Knowing his taste and love
for music, she was trying to play as well as she could. We were experiencing emotional
moments and I think she was playing correctly, but he didn’t let it be
finished. He went to her and said, ‘You understand music’. Pola was contented
with this moderate compliment. I felt she was blushing. We were all very much
affected by our father’s friend talking to us very differently than when we
were just kids now giving us so much importance.
My father told us
how they met, those happy days they shared when I was still playing with my
toys. As I listened to him, I imagined him for the first time with his pleasant
ways unknown to me until then. Wilhelm
Koch asked and advised me on topics I was interested in, the books I
loved and my plans for the future. He was no longer the happy, fun and witty
person who would bring toys for me, but a serious and pleasant friend I
couldn’t help feeling respect and closeness to. I was feeling comfortable,
cheered up but at the same time trying to keep my poise weighing my words while
talking to him.
He was talking to
us like a father or an uncle. It felt like our lives were brightened by a
radiant light. By his arrival, he
created a vast life filled with joy for us.
Alex Krantz
another Polish friend of our family was a bank manager. One day, my mother and
I met him on the street while we were taking a walk and we chatted with him for
a while. It was easy to see his hatred towards the Germans. He was shaking with
rage, but it surprised me when he became so meek seeing the guard suddenly
appearing in front of us.
The whole city
was covered with signs, all of them telling the same story. There was a
reflection of an unlikable, cold, disgusting and ugly face that looked like a
rat with a pointed nose on a mirror and it wrote under it ‘Are you a Jew or
not? To find out, look at the mirror’.
I can see people
are gathering their belongings. Women are running here and there, rubbing their
hands against each other with hopelessness in the middle of their destitute
houses. From the window, my empty eyes wander through their bundles. These
people will soon move to the ghetto but we are lucky in a way because our house
is already in the ghetto.
The view in front
of my eyes reminds me of a picture from the middle ages. The men in grey
uniform are pushing and shoving people carrying big packages. Will it ever be
our turn? I am looking at the scattered homes, bundles everywhere, and hopeless
people frozen with bewilderment. The
furniture they cherished are scattered all over the floor. People are carrying
their stuff to the courtyard. The Jews that will be settled in our ghetto are
moving in masses. Already a handful of Jews have piled up their bundles at the
door. Our non Jew neighbors are sharing our pain by feeling pity on us. Some
Jews are paying Polish children to carry their stuff, a family loses his
packages, all of a sudden everything around me starts to cry, people who don’t
know what to do are crying gazing at their bales, and a bundle opens up and
eggs scatter all over the place. The sun as if ashamed of what people are doing
hid behind the clouds and rain starts. There is nothing on the streets except a
flood of people carrying things, people tripping over the bundles and falling,
things spreading everywhere, rice falling out of bags of a woman bent double
under the weight she is carrying, and the Litanies keeping watch, not letting
them to stop and rest. It is twilight now, and it is still raining. People with
bags on their back and carrying stuff in their hands are at the gates of the
ghetto, a big crowd pushing each other. There is no end to people coming. Some
are already placed in the ghetto, a family of four sharing a dirty and stuffy
room.
How does the mind
pick up sentences? These lines that grow and multiply where words are broken
into pieces! The hand rears all of a sudden and the words are aflame. My face
retrieves and I am being born and die every moment. C’mon, don’t stop, waste
your soul! Let everything in you foam and froth today. Hold on to your heart
that cries out. Listen to the sounds of the past. Wake that fragile young girl
up from the deep chasms of her memory. I can hear the vague and far songs of
the past. I hear the ground beneath my feet, my roots going deep into the
earth, drier than bricks, into the moist soil, fiber by fiber. All the tremors are shaking me, my ribs sunk
under the ground. I am moving from Africa to Asia, taking a breather in
Mesopotamia and Vietnam, in Hiroshima and Afghanistan. Beneath me are the
Black Sea, the Mediterranean, Euphrates, Tigris, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. I can feel the oppression. The tremors are
all over me. Who am I? Where am I from? I am the mother from Hiroshima who lost
her child, the Indian father, the Aborigine grandfather, I am from earth and
belong to earth, the American black student, the south Vietnamese priest, Thic
quang Duc, the child burnt with the Napalm bomb, the baby victim of the famine
in Nigeria, the Palestinian refugee in Beirut, the peace missionary in Uganda,
I am from Kosovo, Ruanda, I am the Albanian, the Chechen, the Algerian, and the
nurse from Somali. I am finding my continuity again, and becoming part of the
text that will finally make me a whole and keep me upright here. I am in the
dark, hiding, but now rising to the light I can see. I am a story here. The sun
and the cosmos also have a story. I am flying away forming sentences, ascending
like the string of a balloon, ascending to a place where I can exhibit my
treasures so finely embroidered. I promise myself, I won’t cry.
I am not crying
mommy… You used to say, ‘You need to grow up and learn to stand on your own feet…’
I’ve grown up my beloved. Suddenly, I found myself in a distant morning in the
Ghetto, many years ago one morning. We used to stand there, worried and in
pain. Days were like cloudy water and we used to hear words nobody understood,
waiting with our last breath for the days of freedom like a parrot waiting the
cage to be opened. That’s how the days passed and the ghetto rules dictated
relentlessly. We learned to obey more and more every day. Our skin learned to
match the color of the days, and we learned to greet the morning behind the
Ghetto walls squeezed tightly together, oppressing, and murdering. We, the
children used to look at the adults with eyes filled with questions, and knew
that the Ghetto life would not change, and lived under the sharp gaze of the SS
soldiers hoping one day we would climb over the walls of the future.
Romek told us a
story he encountered just before he came to the theatre rehearsal that he never
missed.
‘On the way here,
I met this sergeant who was pasting Mayor’s notifications on the walls. They
actually were not notifications but caricatures of Jews. On the first picture,
was a Jewish butcher grounding meat, and feeding mice into the grounder, on the
second, he was filling the milk bucket with water and on the third, he was
kneading bread dough with his feet, worms falling off from his fingers into the
dough. On top of the paper, it wrote, “The Jew is Deceitful, the Jew is Your
Enemy.”, and it continued as:
Dear readers,
this is how the Jews are deceiving you shamelessly.
If you are buying
their milk, be very careful because they sell you milk mixed with dirty water,
they throw dead mice in ground meat, cheating you as real meat and worms swarm
in their home baked bread because they knead it with their dirty feet.
After hanging the
caricatures’, he continued his story, ‘the soldier was so ashamed of the
laughter of the people reading the notifications, that he got a headache’. That
was how they were degrading us those days and we were all ashamed.
We were scattered
here and there like the pages of an old book. Nobody loved the Ghetto, but just
like the laws of nature we got used to it slowly. Lonely, homeless, open to all
kicks and fists…
Here, I am alone
with my memories.
November
17, 1939
Feeling
the truth with its burden we had to be strong, however hard it was. Things
endurable at first all of a sudden became unbearable. Everything was changing
so fast…
Germans
without giving any reason had started to barricade the side roads north of the Marszalkowska Street
with barb wire. Even the notion of such a thing was unconceivable for us up to
that time. What’s more, they had an announcement that horrified us. By the 5th
of December, we were supposed to wear a band with David’s blue star on our arm,
to mark us in the society.
Voluntarily
we secluded ourselves in our homes, for no Jew wanted to go out with a brand on
his arm. At times when we had to, our eyes were cast down walking in shame and
fear, trying to be invisible.
The
Germans were looting the Jewish houses carrying all our furniture in trucks,
worthless and unattractive goods were slowly taking their place.
We were
becoming poor very fast.
Worries of all
kinds of people inhabited the Ghetto. This Ghetto where hundreds of thousands
of people were gathered witnessed all kinds of pain, defeat, worry, fear,
anxiety and helplessness when the iron doors closed; it kept all as a secret
hiding the fatigue of people’s lives every day, and the nights kept all the
secrets hidden. The Ghetto walls were
not deaf; they listened to and heard everything and they were far from being
mute. When the shrill whistle of the night guard echoed and all the humming
stopped, the daily worries and the feelings of inferiority we were exposed to
would ooze through the walls.
People who
believed in the virtue of silence, who surrendered as if they were a sacrifice
given to that silence, took shelter behind these walls. My grandfather used to
warn me all the time, ‘Don’t make noise! Don’t jump around on the streets and
be very quiet.’ We were the Jews and attracting attention was not wise for us.
It was a long
journey in an instant, from my childhood to old age and death.
It is so
difficult for me to feel the past trying to remember it…I can’t feel the past.
How can I remember the Jewish Poland
of my childhood, oblivious to me even when I wandered among them? I don’t
belong here, but still this sky, this June sun, these gardens, these houses and
these streets… so familiar. I carry them with me, they are part of me. Can I
deny them? That’s why most of us don’t want to come back.
No, no! It is
beautiful to feel this pain with tears running on my cheeks, knotted in my
throat; it is beautiful to feel those no longer alive and walk where they
walked. They were here until eternity and yet I went far away, very far
becoming someone entirely different, without roots and tears. I am not who I
was anymore.
In spite of
everything, I am back for a short time, back in Warsaw just like I was in the past.
I am walking,
stepping on the ashes of my family no longer alive.
Their and my
ashes…
My memories..
My desires…
My tears…
I am in Warsaw…
I am in Warsaw…
I have to repeat
many times…
I am in Warsaw…
I can’t believe
it…
I am here…
What was I
searching for in foreign lands?
What was it that
carried me away from here?
What was I doing
in another country?
Only here, in Warsaw, I can understand
myself and my own history.
I can feel my
heart beats, feeling dizzy, breathless, as if I was sunk, but into what? Not
into water, something thicker, more viscous; into time… into the old and cold
time, into the old sorrows like the layers of dirt and mud piled up at the
bottom of a pool. I was feeling so heavy and soiled and at the same time, flat
and formless, like the indistinct sun setting down interrupted, straining as it
comes closer to the west, turning from pink to purple, shaky and pale with the
redness of the air exploding and the small fires piled up behind…like the
visionary hero who was forgotten in his own novel’s pages, left to wither and
rot away like his own book.
This is how
experiences fill life! If we lived
something, but really lived it, we never lose them and want or not, still live
them at old age. The memory that doesn’t let go even the least important
details in life is so remarkable!
I am being sad
but hiding my sorrow. I am mute, but constantly talking in my mind. I am and
yet not, burning but freezing at the same time. I know something have changed
in my heart, for I know that I grew into another I, existing and not at the
same time…I am searching for the little girl who is putting hair pins on her
hair at her every step.
I am sitting at
my work table with the uneasy feeling of not being able to finish a story. For
several weeks, I have been trying to give its final touches but this is not the
first time I fail to complete it, and maybe this unfinished paper will be
rewritten, forgotten and discovered again in years to come. This writing that
seems to be out of my control is the story of my life. How can a person put
down the last period in his life story! Maybe I will never be able to complete
it and one day if I may succeed writing “The End” to this never ending story,
it would only be meaningful if seen as an interruption to my memories, and
sooner or later, it may sneak back, and mockingly quote Calvino,” Just like we
can never announce a piece of art
finished.” Anyway, I am sensing the change of the light outside and as I watch
it move, I am trying to capture the meaning of the story sitting motionless at
my table with a faint feeling of
discomfort of loneliness coming from writing the story..
In the
summer of 1940, our connection with the outside world was completely cut
off. Every day, tens of thousands of men
were handed over to the invaders for temporary jobs by Judenrat (the Jewish
Office). Besides, hundreds of Jewish men innocently walking on the streets were
being captured and every Jew between sixteen and fifty five years old had to
report to the office to work nine days a month. This was not an absolute and
unconditional rule to increase the income of the Judenrat. Another alternative
would be to pay it a bribe of 60 zloty a month which would create a guaranteed
monthly income for the office.
The
invaders closed down the Jew owned printing press and the publishing houses. Even the street vendors selling books were
banned. Their merchandise, instead of being neatly ordered on the shelves
inside the stores, would be sitting in the carts outside, on the street
corners. At first, although they were permitted to own a cart for a fee of 150
zlotys, by that summer all book trade was prohibited. Tens of thousands of
refugees who escaped to Warsaw
were placed by their brothers living in misfortune. There was no Jewish
courtyard that was not overpopulated. All the people whose houses were burned,
the refugees, the fugitives and those on exile were all living with us. The
Jewish streets were noisy and overpopulated, the side walks crowded with no
space to move, and the people were pushed onto the middle of the streets.
Shortly
after the occupation of Warsaw,
Judenrat thought of the idea of forming a ghetto and published a detailed list
of all the streets the Jews were not allowed to live. Every decision and order
was a shock for us but the idea of building a ghetto crushed us the most.
Later, although this topic was taken out of the agenda, it still kept its
ambiguity. On 24th of October in 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto took its final form and
everyone started to evacuate his apartment and move into his new place in the
ghetto.
There
was another suspicion that was eating us away.
Was
this going to be a locked up ghetto? We were hoping for a miracle because a
locked up one would mean a slow death while an open, only a partial disaster.
Finally,
the ghetto was put in reality; the Jews living in the areas outside the walls
would move inside the wall, locked up and imprisoned, and the Arians(Polish)
who lived inside walls would move out to the Arian streets before 31st of
October. Up to a point, this decision hurt the Polish more than the Jews
because they were ordered to move not only out of the ghetto but also from the
German region. One hundred twenty thousand people would be evacuated and left
to find some place for themselves inside the walls. The non-Jews were also
worried, for no merchant or store owner wanted to move to a place he felt alien
to. A Jew or Arian, nobody wanted to start a new life. On 15th of November,
1940, the Jewish Ghetto was officially established, and the Jews were banned to
move out of certain boundaries. This situation created a lot of confusion. People moving in a nervous bustle were
whispering rumors to each other.
When I
looked down the dark street, I saw the projectors illumining the new wooden
fence and I thought of the Polish who were free to roam living comfortably
beyond it. The walls 3
meters high were already started to be built. The Jews
under the supervision of Nazi soldiers had already started to plaster the
bricks. These walls were our companions
casting their glances toward us at our side. They stood up for us made from
clay and soil and cried out their innocence in their grayness. These walls that
were built for us were nothing but glowing loneliness! We had said yes to a
life embedded in the darkness outside of time, outside these walls…
Without
any hesitation, the supervisors were whipping the slow ones constantly making
me think of our imprisonment in Egypt
as told in Torah. Where was our Moses
who would liberate us from imprisonment?
Beyond
the closed Ghetto doors, everybody was agitate;, we were like animals locked up
in a cage who didn’t understand what was happening to them and running back and
forth disturbed. The women squatted down by the street walls with their beds
and quilts already soiled with the dirt of the streets were wailing and the
children were crying in fear. These were the Jewish families that were brought
behind the Ghetto walls the last minute with no hope to find a place for
themselves. Half a million people were squished in an area enough for a hundred
thousand. We were all sensing that we were living the darkest hours of the
mankind history. Either something would happen or we would be shaken deeply
anticipating to live something very foreign to us. No body knew anything and
the situation was changing every hour.
The
knowledge of being excluded from the rest of the world was creating
restlessness in us. We were a Jewish crowd timidly walking on the streets with
fearful eyes, stricken with terror.
There
were unusual meetings in every house with an utmost tension. Some, the young
ones, were thinking that a general protest would be appropriate, but the
elderly had different ideas. In their opinion, a protest would be too
dangerous. We were cut off from the rest of the world, no radio, telephone, and
newspaper. The only telephones were inside the hospital and the police station.
The
walls that were isolating us from the rest of the world were rising steadily
bringing with them fear and horror.
We had
no doubt left that it was going to be a locked up ghetto. The Jews would pay
for papers to leave the Ghetto for a few hours everyday while the military
soldiers patrolled the streets.
Since
food was rationed, most of our time was being spent on the queues in front of
the grocery stores and the rest of it pursuing special connections to find
fresh milk, eggs, and calf liver. The calf liver was for my grandmother; she
had a liver disorder and was not supposed to eat fatty food. Calf liver was
lean and good for her.
By the
time1940 came to an end, finding food had already become a serious problem. We
were allowed to get a quarter pound of bread daily, and an egg and two pounds
of jam sweetened with saccharine monthly. A pound of potato cost one zloty. We
couldn’t even remember the taste of the fresh fruit, and it was not possible to
bring anything from the “Arian” region where everything was plenty. Slowly,
black market had started to turn into a profitable business because to the
smugglers, hunger and greed weighed more than the heavy penalties they were
subjected to.
Sienna
Street, one of the boundaries of the ghetto, was separated from the streets
that ran into it only with walls. The barbed wire temporarily isolated the
houses whose courtyards opened to the Zlota
Street which ran parallel to Sienna, from the
outside world. Most of the smuggling took place here. Bold, hungry and
resolute, they would jump over the wall escaping the guards, sneak through the
holes on the walls, stealthy like a cat.
Our windows opened to a court yard like this where there would be
incessant activity the whole night long. In the mornings there would be trucks
carrying produce and the stores would be piled up with bread. It was even
possible to find sugar, butter and cheese and the prices would be unreasonably
high because people were jeopardizing their lives to get them.
Sometimes,
a big truck loaded with all kinds of goodies would enter through the gates,
thanks to a bribe given to a German soldier.
The
German asked the Jewish leaderrs of the community to take steps to stop the
smuggling and ordered the Polish police to create a Jewish army to keep order
in the ghetto. Two thousand men between twenty and thirty five years old were
being gathered giving priority to the veterans and those of good education,
with at least a high school diploma. My
mother who saw the first world war was trying to keep our morale high, ‘Not
being able to find eggs and butter is what a war is all about, so that’s
exactly what we will do, not eat them’. That was the biggest mistake of my
life. I would find out later that war was much more than that.
B U N K E
R W E E K L Y: N U M BER 1
Price: One
Cigarette
From the Editors
Today, dear readers, we place in your hands the
first number of our bunker newsletter.
Our task will be to keep you informed of all major events of interest to
the citizens of our tiny but turbulent state.
To this end we will provide updates on the political and military
situation as well as on internal affairs-social, economic, and others. As our paper grows we will also include an
advertising section. As of this
writing, the prospects for our new venture seem promising indeed; it is probably the only paper in the world
that will be read by all citizens in the land without exception and regardless
of creed, gender, nationality, age, or education. Our only momentary complaint is the chronic
shortage of paper, which drastically affects the aesthetic format of our weekly. We call upon all people of goodwill to remit
to the editorial office any clean piece of paper they chance to find. Contributions are gladly accepted. In presenting to you, dear readers, this
first issue, we sincerely wish- for your sake as well as our own- that it will
also be the last.
What’s Happening
on the Front?
As there are no signs in the air or on land that
would indicate the launch of a major offensive, we must confine our report to
the repeated skirmishes taking place over the past several weeks between our
citizens and the local insects.
Following fierce battles, we have held our position while inflicting
great losses on the enemy. Space will
not permit us to recount further details from our interview with our military
spokesmen; we plan to include this in our next issue. Here we wish to communicate that, for the
moment, none of the dream auguries regarding the war have yet come to
pass. Nevertheless, we vow that if they
do, even at a later date, we will become loyal adherents of such divination to
the end of our days and will bring up future generations in the faith, so help
us God. Amen.
Market Report
As a result of the change in our monetary system,
the cigarette has been declared the official currency of our small state. All attempts to monetize soup or pancakes have
proven futile.
Dangerous Epidemic
Reports have been confirmed that our shelter has
recently been hit by a dangerous and distressing epidemic of hemorrhoids. The worst and most notable case is that of
“white” Hela. As the editors possess no medication
that might alleviate the suffering, we offer instead this little verse by a
major author, who, like Heine, is of unknown origin:
The Suppository and the Tortoise
The suppository was distraught
By the tortoise in his carapace.
“It must be very hard”, he thought,
“to live in such restricted space:
How does he fare?
It must be hell”.
The tortoise then assured his brother,
“I’d rather be penned in my own shell
Than pushed into the ass of another.”
Corsairs on Quest
Last Sunday, in the quiet of the night, under cover
of darkness, our pirate cutter embarked on a raid and returned with a rich
store of plunder. Due to limited space
we are unable to provide more particulars:
Suffice to say the episode was rich in hair-raising moments of
danger. We permit ourselves to recall
that our most intrepid adventurer, Wandzia, a devotee of such missions, is
already hatching plans for new and even bolder quests. Tact compels us to keep these plans shrouded
in secrecy, so we must leave the reader in suspense until the next issue.
For Young Housewives
In view of our citizens’ growing tendency to put on
weight-a trend resulting solely from the climate in which we live, the
Housewives Association has conferred with the High Commission and passed a
resolution limiting high-lifers to a maximum of two meals a day. In keeping with this resolution we offer all
our lady readers an excellent weekly planner for preparing meals, which we
present in the form of a calendar:
Monday
2 wheat pancakes with coffee
Barley soup
Tuesday
Barley soup
2 wheat pancakes with coffee
Wednesday
2 wheat pancakes with coffee
Barley soup
Thursday
Barley soup
2 wheat pancakes with coffee
Friday
2 wheat pancakes with coffee
Barley soup
Saturday
Barley soup
2 wheat pancakes with coffee
Sunday
2 wheat pancakes with coffee
Barley soup and noodles
Official Notice
Wherefore my husband Kubus, able-bodied seaman aka
Jacus, has managed to escape my subversive influence. I hereby officially proclaim myself not liable
for his appearance (see exhibit A: dirty
pajama top).
“Black” Helen
(Read but don’t pass it on- lest it cost the editors
a cigarette.)
Romek was among
the editors of the underground newspaper who believed that we should show
resistance to the occupation and the “youth theatre chapter” would be the best
to carry this responsibility. Our liberation was depended on unity without
which no future would await us, the youth! We were going to build a well
equipped underground web to establish a unity among us all. That was our only
hope. These activities were like the sparkles of spring in those sad days and
our growing hopes, the heralds of its blossoms. We were yearning for happiness,
dreaming for hopeful bright futures. We were going to inform the Ghetto people
about what was happening, becoming more united, a whole as we spread the news.
What we could offer the Ghetto was the spirit of unity. We were young, and we
wouldn’t be suppressed under oppression and fear. We were going to oppose the
power trying to annihilate us, taking over thousands of obstacles waiting for
us. We were on an adventure, hitting the bottom once in a while but we would
kick back hard to surface again, sooner or later. What should not be forgotten
was the necessity of keeping top security all the time. Romek would say,
‘Nobody should be behind you. Prepare to be alone on this road.’ He knew very
well that there was no time for self pity in this life. Hadn’t we held hands
with our fate in this dance of Macabre! That’s how a group of writers took its
place in the youth theatre chapter.
II.
Others’ freedom extend
mine
to infinity.
Mihail Bakunin
June 13, 1986
I sprouted in the
Polish soil, took shape from the glistening drops of the Polish sky, and this
is my story…
Funny, how some
years get erased from the memory almost completely.
Trying to talk about them from the
impressions of the past sometimes is very difficult and painful, and some
events are carved in my memory with all the clarity in details. I had decided
to tell this story chronologically, not because of my worry to adhere to
reality but because I have learned by now that nothing is less real than
chronology. Ghetto life is not easy to tell about and I don’t even know if I
can accomplish this task. As the memories flood in, the descriptions get more
complicated and I find myself telling them, just as they are without any plan.
These events took place 39 years ago. Although my thoughts, feelings, judgments
are all piled up on top of a chronological layer formed by my present
convictions, I am not who I was then. That’s why I will not talk as if I am
there, because I am not, anymore. I will never be there as I was then. That 17
year old girl, the ghost of the past
