Sheva's Promise
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Copyright © 2013 by Syracuse University Press
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All Rights Reserved
First Edition 2013
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ISBN: 978-0-8156-1018-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lederman, Sylvia, author.
Sheva’s promise: chronicle of escape from a Nazi ghetto / Sylvia Lederman. — First Edition 2013.
pages cm. — (Religion, theology, and the Holocaust)
ISBN 978-0-8156-1018-2 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Lederman, Sylvia. 2. Jews—Poland—Biography. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Poland—Personal narratives. 4. Poland—Biography. I. Title.
DS134.72.L44A3 2013
940.53'18092—dc23
[B]
2013003948
Manufactured in the United States of America
Dedicated in memory of my beloved mother Gitel Weiler and my beloved sister Rose Weiler. They were burned alive in Rohatyn Ghetto, Poland, with many more Jews when the Ghetto was liquidated June 6, 1943. I’ll never forget them. They will remain in my heart and I will love them forever, until I die.
Sheva
Sylvia Lederman immigrated to New York, where she and her husband worked in the garment industry, and spent the rest of their lives in Queens, New York. She was known for being a caring and compassionate person who kept ties to her roots in her native Poland by becoming a member of two expatriate societies, the Rohatyn Society and the Lodzier Society, both fellowships of people from Poland. Her life’s work was to publish this memoir so the story told within would never be forgotten.
Contents
List of Illustrations
1. The Gathering Storm
2. The First Akcja
3. The Face of Hate
4. The Second Akcja
5. A Counterfeit Life
6. Into the Unknown, Alone
7. A Perilous Refuge
8. From the Jaws of Death
9. Hanka, the Nurse’s Aide
10. At Last—The Liberation!
Illustrations
1.Sheva, 1939
2.Sheva by the river in Rohatyn, 1937
3.Rose, Sheva’s sister
4.The Krupka family
5.The hospital where Sheva worked
6.Sheva’s working card from the Gestapo
7.The sisters at the hospital helped Sheva
8.A birthday party for Sheva in 1945
9.Israel Lederman
10.Sheva, now Sylvia Lederman, 1987
11.A monument to the murdered residents of the Rohatyn ghetto
Sheva’s Promise
1
The Gathering Storm
IT WAS A WARM, SUMMER DAY—July 6, 1941. The town of Rohatyn was suffused with bright sunlight. At this time of year nature could fill human hearts with happiness; people could be out in the fresh air, taking advantage of those lovely days and feeling full of courage and hope for a good tomorrow. The streets were alive with people. Some appeared to be in a holiday mood, expecting something, anticipating a coming change. But there were others for whom the same sun and the same bright day held no joy, and for whom the beauty of this town—all this natural beauty—meant little or nothing. They felt like strangers on these streets, as though they no longer belonged there.
This was the feeling of the Jews in Rohatyn. We were all withdrawn, lost in our own thoughts, concerned for our futures. Several days earlier, the Russians had abandoned the town to the advancing Germans. The Russians had occupied Rohatyn, together with all that part of southeastern Poland, since September 1939. For almost two years we had lived under Russian rule, not knowing exactly what was permitted and what was forbidden. Everything was nationalized; the wealthy citizens—at least, those the Russians considered wealthy—were deported at once to Siberia. Those of us who remained, and who were employed by the Russians, had no right to change our jobs, and we constantly lived in fear; any little thing we did could condemn us to five years in a Russian prison or to deportation to the dreaded Siberian wastelands. Every able-bodied person was expected to work, and any unemployed man was branded a “capitalist.” There was a general shortage of food and a lack of clothing. Everything was rationed. The Russians grabbed whatever they could lay their hands on and took it out of the country. We lived as though standing on one leg—everything uncertain, out of balance.
During the Russian occupation I was employed in a bookstore called the Knigokultur. It was one of several government-operated stores under Soviet control, and the only bookstore in Rohatyn. While I worked there I was always in fear of a five-year prison sentence for even the slightest infraction of the rules.
Only a week previously I had returned from a vacation in Yaremcze, a mountain resort, glad in spite of everything to be home again in my native town. I had had to cut my vacation short after just one week because of the outbreak of the war. When I returned to the bookstore I found the woman manager already packing, getting ready to flee back to Russia. Knowing the Germans’ hatred for Jews, the manager begged me to leave with her; she realized that we could expect nothing good from them. I thanked her, but said that I had done nothing to the Germans to make them punish me. I told her that my family and I had been born in Rohatyn, that we had lived here all our lives, and that I did not see why I should run.
In town chaos reigned. Some men and young fellows were mobilized for the war, and a few willingly made preparations to leave with the Russians. When they began to leave, my manager went with them, but promised hopefully that she would be back again in a short time. I was left with the keys to the store, not knowing whether to keep the store open or to lock it up and stay home. Rohatyn was now without any civil or military authorities. It seems best to stay home and wait.
The next few days seemed like eternity. Everyone was eager to get these first moments of the new occupation over with, to face the reality that, come what may, we would be under Hitler’s domination from now on. Even we were aware of the Germans’ hate campaign against Jews in other parts of occupied Poland since the 1939 invasion. So, although we waited patiently, we greatly feared their coming.
Then—on July 6, 1941—the silence was shattered by a violent bombardment somewhere out
side the town. As if moved by one impulse, all the tenants of our building rushed to the cellar and stood in a corner, clinging to each other in terror. One bomb fell on a house very close to ours and there was a wild commotion. I fainted from the shock. Later, after they revived me, I sat up and rested my head on my mother’s shoulder. The shelling had stopped and all was quiet. We went upstairs and reassembled in one room and sat there in silence, staring at one another. Our hearts were pounding. The faces around me were pallid with fear, and from time to time I heard muffled sighs and groans and whispered prayers.
One of our neighbors lifted up his voice. “Listen,” he said, “our God is a great God. We must believe in Him firmly.” Shema Yisra’el, the ancient prayer echoed: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord. Blessed is He . . . We are now in his hands, and He will protect us against our enemies.”
The night that followed was long. When the pale light of dawn at last filtered through the curtains, we began to look out of the windows, trying to catch new signs of the coming of the Germans. Now again we heard shots—at closer range, this time—and it was not long before someone shouted from the street, “The Germans are here!”
After a while we saw from the window two Jewish boys going from house to house. Finally they approached and told us to close our windows and doors and to stay inside. They needn’t have bothered; none of us wanted to go out looking for trouble—or to greet the Germans. Yet there were other people who were waiting with flowers . . .
Trembling, we heard the clatter of their horses’ hoofs and the thunder of their motorized equipment as it rolled through the cobbled streets of our town. The evening was approaching, and not knowing what the next hour might bring, we started to put on as much clothing as we could. In case of evacuation or deportation, we had to be prepared and a little protected. We all looked like clowns in our layers of apparel—clowns with sad faces.
Now everyone has the same thought: Would we be allowed to remain in our apartments? Would they let us keep our jobs? Would they let us have a chance to lead normal lives? As yet no one imagined that we would be tortured and murdered; that such crimes could be perpetrated en masse by a people who called themselves civilized and cultured was simply unthinkable. Our neighbors told us that my mother and sister and I had nothing to fear, because the Germans would not do anything to women and girls. The men, yes—they would be pressed into hard labor—but women would be left alone. And children—what could they ask from children? Our neighbors told us we were lucky that there were no men in our immediate family.
What irony! For many years past we had felt keenly the lack of our father, and we felt sorry for Mamma, who had only her memories to live with. She never wanted to remarry, and she still grieved over the loss of her beloved and ideal husband, Laizor. Now a time had come when we were lucky for having no father, or no brother, for the Germans to take away.
By the next day, Thursday, July 7, the Germans were in complete control of Rohatyn. They did not have to waste time in enforcing new regulations against the Jews; in the carrying out of their master plan they already had the help of many Gentile people, who had arranged everything in advance. All the Jews were released from their places of employment, while most Gentiles remained at their jobs in the nationalized stores. Thus, even the Gentiles whom we had known for so many years assisted in the destruction of the Rohatyn Jewry. Three days later, on Saturday morning, we awoke to shouts and lamentations. Jewish women and children were running along the streets in panic, trying to warn the men and to find them places to hide. Some prayed aloud, raising their hands and eyes to heaven. We soon learned that the elders of the Jewish community assembly, from the Rabbis to the leader of the Jews, had been rounded up and taken to the synagogue. There they had been locked up, beaten, and tortured. The Germans began to move from house to house, hunting down whatever Jews they could find, searching attics and dragging their victims away. Whoever tried to oppose them was beaten to the raw and pulled by the arms through the streets over the rough cobblestones. The gutters ran with blood. Rabbi Leizer was dragged out from his house and thrown into the public latrines, alive, where he sank in the sewage.
When they had collected all the male Jews inside the synagogue, the Germans took away their money, watches, and whatever else they had of value on their persons. This operation lasted almost the entire day, and in the sadistic beatings and tortures that attended it even young boys of the local Ukrainian community took part. Meanwhile the distraught women came to the synagogue, bringing food and parcels for their men inside, but were turned away. They tried to petition the Germans to release the prisoners, but were told that the synagogue would be burned down—with all the Jews in it.
Later that day, with a great deal of ransom money, much haranguing, and the help of God, the synagogue and the Jews were spared. Although some of the men were shot on their way home, most of them returned to their families. Beaten, broken, bitterly humiliated, and resigned . . . What a beginning! We now had a clear vision of our future under the Germans.
While this was going on in the town, my mother and sister Rose and I stayed at home, like frightened mice. Suddenly, the door of our apartment was flung open and a Gentile militiaman entered. Brusquely, he asked my mother, “Where is your husband? Where is your son?” As he looked around the room, his eyes rested on me and I saw in them a flash of recognition: he had come by the bookstore when he was still in the Soviet militia to buy office supplies. I returned his stare with cold defiance, and after a moment of uncertainty he turned and left our apartment. I thought, They are like straws in the wind—only yesterday with Russia, today with the Nazis! Our only consolation was that we indeed had no men at home.
But we did have male relatives in town, including my favorite uncle, Hirsch Wiener. Although mother and Rose did not want to let me go, when things quieted down, I ran to the Wieners’ house. They lived not far from the synagogue, and I expected that Uncle Hirsch would have been among the first to be involved in the manhunt. I loved my uncle; he was like a father to me.
Alas, when I found him at his home, Uncle Hirsch was a mass of wounds. They had pulled out hair from his head and his beard. He had been a very tall, strong man, but now I could hardly recognize him as he sat in a chair, his head bent forward, moaning. He gathered me to his breast and wept bitter tears, and I also sobbed as though my heart would break, and I looked at his misery and touched his head sticky with congealed blood.
“See, little Shevele,” he said, “you are very young, you are smart and full of courage. Maybe you will live through these times. But I cannot endure any more . . . I was so proud and happy. I saw my daughter married well. I have two grandsons. Alas, what does the future hold for them, for my son Chaimek—for all of us?”
Uncle Hirsch’s baby grandson Yehuda, scarcely a year old, stopped crawling on all fours and looked up at us with his great, blue eyes, as if understanding that something was terribly wrong. Uncle Hirsch sighed at the sight of this innocent child. “This child is fortunate now,” Uncle Hirsch said, “for he doesn’t know what awaits him. But we know there is nothing good in the future—nothing.”
Chaimek stood beside his father, tears in his eyes. During the raid his mother had hidden him in a wardrobe. Now, sad and frightened, he said to me: “Sheva, you often pass for a Christian because you do not look Jewish. You have so many Christian friends. Tell me, what do they—the people you know—think will happen to us?”
Gently I stroked the boy’s face. I told him that I wanted to take him home with me because I thought that he would be safer there. But he refused to leave: “What will become of my father and mother, my sister Glickel—the whole family? No, I’ll stay here. I don’t want to live without them.” I kissed the boy, and with tears in my eyes, I said goodbye. Even on the street, walking slowly homeward, I could not control my weeping.
On Monday morning, July 11, two Ukrainian men of the town came by our house. They told us they had been chosen by the Germans to manage the Knig
okultur bookshop and that they had come for the keys. I was asked to go to the store with them, take an inventory, and give them all the prices of the books and stationery supplies. Naturally I went, though with a sad heart, for I realized that I would not have the right to work there anymore after I completed these final tasks. I worked at the store for the next several days, but each time we saw a German about to enter they asked me to hide in the storeroom back of the shelves.
Soon we had the inventory completed and I was told not to come anymore. I felt unnecessary and unwanted; it was hard for me to accept the fact that I was unemployed. There was nothing I could do but stay home and listen to rumors. Our food supplies were beginning to disappear, and we had no right to purchase anything in the shops. We did not even have the courage to enter a store to buy what we needed. Before long we saw signs in almost all the store windows: IT IS FORBIDDEN FOR DOGS AND JEWS TO ENTER! Because I was well-known and liked in Rohatyn, I occasionally managed to get inside some friendly shop to purchase some food—a loaf of bread, a little sugar, just enough to fill our daily needs. My mother sometimes ventured to go to the marketplace to try to buy eggs or a hen, or potatoes. She also did not look Jewish, but quite often she returned pale and terrified, having almost fallen into a German trap.
These harsh conditions grew even more severe, however, when all Jews were ordered to live within a circumscribed locality—a single quarter, a ghetto. As long as the Jews remained scattered throughout the town, the Nazis could not exercise sufficient control over us. They attempted to further isolate us from the rest of the population by proclaiming that it was degrading to Gentiles to dwell in the same building with a Jewish family, or even to walk on the same street with Jews. In this oppression, the Nazis received most help from the Ukrainians.
For a time, we did not know where the ghetto would be established—the problem was to find a place that would be able to accommodate such a large number of Jewish families. It was understood that the central marketplace and all the chief streets of the town would have to be free of Jews. It was also quite obvious that we would not be allotted the same living space we had had before. My family would have been fortunate, indeed, to get one room for the three of us. As it turned out, we had to leave many surplus belongings behind—some of them costly and beautiful—when we moved to our tiny quarters in the ghetto.