Sheva's Promise Read online

  The policeman who stood guard at the door of the cell was a young, nice fellow, whom I knew quite well. I whispered to him through the grating: “Listen, I must get out of here! They can’t send me to hard labor. Help me!”

  Barely turning around to look at me, he muttered, “I’d gladly let you go, Sheva, but there aren’t many girls left. You know that nearly all were killed in the akcja. They don’t want older women, so there’s no alternative. Anyway, it doesn’t depend on me; I only carry out orders.”

  I assured him that I only wanted to get a message to one of the members of the Judenrat who knew me very well. If Max, the guard, couldn’t take it himself, he could summon another friend, Sal Kreisler, to send the message. Max consented to do this.

  When Kreisler came to the cell and saw me, he exclaimed, “Sheva, what are you doing here behind these bars?”

  “They are sending me to hard labor,” I said bluntly. “That is why I asked to see you, sir. I know what you will say: They need girls for the work, and there aren’t enough in supply. It is an order. Right? But please let Attorney Freiwald know that I am here. I hope he will remember how I used to supply him illegally with stationery when I worked at the bookstore under Russian occupation.”

  He bit his lip and thought a while. Then, without a word, he turned and ran upstairs. He returned with Dr. Freiwald, the attorney who knew me so well. From the expression on their faces I understood that my situation was really serious.

  I tried to explain to them that if I were taken away, my mother and sister would be left helpless, that they would die of starvation. Besides, I argued, did they forget how I helped to organize the hospital and the kitchen? Didn’t they remember how one night they sent someone to wake me from sleep so that I could help collect the tea and coffee that was demanded by the SS, and how once I and three others went the rounds of the ghetto, reminding people to bring their emergency contributions—thousands of zlotys—to the Gestapo?

  The two men left, promising to return. In the meanwhile, relatives of the other girls who were in the jail with me also came and tried to do something for them. The prison corridor swarmed with people. Among them I noticed Mendel Weiler, my father’s brother. He lived across the street from the Judenrat office, and my mother, instead of going home as I had begged her, had gone there to ask him to help me. Not satisfied with that, Mamma herself also came from time to time to inquire what was being done. Again I begged her to go home.

  The hours dragged by slowly. The girls talked among themselves, each one contributing some new bit of information, and all their conjectures were dismal. At last one of the men returned and told me, in a low whisper, that there was a chance . . . He said that they wanted a ransom for me! Three kilograms of sausage and three bottles of vodka. I did not ask who “they” were, but told him to get in touch with my cousin Chaim Weiler, who knew a sausage maker. I was stunned; I could not believe that the life of a human being should be valued at the price of sausage and vodka.

  Knowing that several people in the Judenrat were trying to help my cause made me feel sure that I would be freed. And indeed, after a time, one of the policemen opened the door and called out: “Sheva Weiler, report upstairs!”

  When I stood before the chief of police, he said, “You are lucky. We managed to buy one off of them, but now you must go away quickly. Go home and don’t show your face on the street until things quiet down again!”

  I thanked him and left. As I came out of the Judenrat building, I saw Mamma, overjoyed, looking out of the window in my uncle’s house directly across the street. She told me later that she had to part with some of her household belongings in exchange for three bottles of vodka, which she obtained with the help of one of my uncles.

  With every passing day, more people came to the ghetto from other places. Rumors of akcjas in surrounding towns became more frequent. There were some who even began to talk about suicide. When the Judenrat distributed bread—a quarter of a loaf, or sometimes a half, for each person—people would start a rush for it. Whoever was able to push his way forward to the head of the queue received his allotment, but the weaker ones and those who were not aggressive often stood in line for a long time, half-frozen and exhausted, and then went away without receiving any bread. Life under such conditions made us self-centered; everyone thought only of himself, and the only goal was to survive.

  Whenever we heard that food supplies were delivered to the Aryan population, we hoped to be able to barter some of our possessions for something to eat. That was my role in the family: to beg from my Gentile acquaintances. Whenever I went to the Aryan section, I dressed as well as I could, for I did not want to draw attention to myself or to evoke pity as “that poor girl from the ghetto.” And I removed my armband when I went to visit my Christian acquaintances, not wishing to endanger them. But most of my visits were futile, only a strain on my nerves and a needless peril. As I would return homeward, often empty-handed, brooding and pensive in the chilly drizzle that wet me to the skin, I would wonder what happened to all the prayers that were said in the synagogues . . . At least to His faithful, God should have shown that the days and years they worshipped Him in these places were not lost and in vain. But alas, facts seemed to point to the opposite.

  Once, I recalled how Chief Rabbi Tumin was put to death: Because he was a rabbi, the Germans wanted to make his death more painful and humiliating. They placed him on the ground between the legs of a horse and forced the animal to stamp on him with his hoofs until Rabbi Tumin was trodden to death. How could I find an answer to such a crime?

  While I was crossing a narrow street one day, engrossed in such dismal thoughts as these, our acquaintance Hugo Goldberg suddenly appeared before me. Smiling and bowing politely, he said: “You are still here! I thought you would have escaped from the ghetto by now!”

  As I started to explain why I remained, he took my umbrella and we walked in the direction of my home. We were so engrossed in our conversation that we almost walked past the house; we sat down on a bench in front of the building. Hugo was telling me that he had an uncle in Warsaw who passed as a Catholic, using a fictitious name and a forged identification card. Hugo said that he would try to get in touch with his uncle to see what could be done for himself and me. As he talked, I listened with intense pleasure to his voice. Hugo Goldberg was very charming, intelligent, and highly educated; a chemist, he had studied in foreign countries and had a fluent command of several languages. He was dark-haired, but his eyes were greenish-gray, and when he talked they were full of sincere emotion and warmth. I hardly knew him—this was only our second meeting—but I felt a complete confidence and trust in relation to him. It was a good feeling to know that a total stranger was so interested in my life.

  Hugo was older than I, and this I liked, too; it deepened my trust in him, for I regarded him as I would a guardian. It was so good to be able to sit here and talk that for the moment I forgot that we were like people living atop a volcano; I had the illusion that there were normal times again, that here in the company of another intelligent and sympathetic human being I could sit and talk and laugh and be happy as I had used to be before all our troubles began. But the moments flew by too rapidly. Dusk was falling and the air was cold. Not wishing to terminate our conversation, I asked him to come inside and meet my mother and sister. Mamma took a great liking to Hugo at once, and upon learning that he came from Bielsko, she began to reminisce about her girlhood days when she used to make trips to that city.

  After this first visit, Hugo became a frequent guest in our house. We hailed his coming with joy, for he was a wonderful person, well-mannered and always ready to cheer us up, lifting clouds of despair from our shoulders and giving us courage to go on living. Oddly, we always knew he was coming even before he knocked on our door, because we could hear him scraping his shoes on the mat outside. Mamma used to say that it was a waste of time; with the way things were nowadays a little more dirt in the house would hardly be noticeable. But he claimed that h
abits of a lifetime could not be forgotten.

  Hugo was very helpful in many ways. Being a chemist, he soon found a way to cure the rash that I had had on my legs since the akcja of March 20. We could get neither doctors nor medicines then, and if I had made a big tragedy of the rash they might have sent me to the dreaded hospital—which was the equivalent of a death sentence. But it had kept getting worse, until I had eruptions from the soles of my feet to my knees. Mamma had tried all sorts of poultices, but my condition did not improve. When we got to know him better, we asked Hugo’s advice, and fortunately he was able to help.

  Whenever it was our turn to stand on guard outside the house, Hugo did not let my mother or sister perform this duty. Instead, he and I would substitute for them. We often sat on the courtyard outside the house and talked in whispers, while we listened and watched for the approach of the Gestapo. During these vigils we planned how to escape the bleak tomorrows that threatened us with death. Whenever Hugo Goldberg talked with Mamma or Rose, he tried to console them and, seeing their spirits falter, tried to give them courage to live. Yet when he talked with me alone he did not try to disguise the fact that we Jews could be exterminated totally. That was Hitler’s goal, he said, and the only hope was to escape.

  Day after day I thought about leaving under an assumed name. I trembled when I thought of what could happen if I fell into the clutches of the Germans—and the punishment I would receive. I was not so much afraid of getting shot—a bullet through the head would be a quick finish—but I dreaded the tortures and sufferings that might be inflicted upon me before I died. Yet staying in the ghetto seemed no better. All around me I saw things happening. Every day someone would be hunted down on the street and taken to the compulsory labor. If anyone ventured out to a neighboring village, or to the Aryan quarter to obtain food through barter, it was certain death. We heard that some adults were hanged and that some children were held by the feet and dashed against the trees until they died while their mothers had to stand by and witness the horror. No matter which way one looked at our situation, there seemed to be only one answer: Death!

  Because of these rumors, I began to fear going out alone from the ghetto. So now, whenever I went to see the Krupka or the Babink families, it was in the evenings—and with Hugo Goldberg. I usually went ahead, as a scout—without my Jewish armband, of course. He followed at a little distance, and if I noticed anything alarming I would wave to him from behind as a signal to hide. It was a dangerous thing to do, but we had to eat.

  There was also the problem of constructing a shelter, a hiding place where we could go in case of another akcja. The Germans already knew the usual hiding places: closets, attics, cellars, and storerooms. We had to devise something that they would not immediately discover. And where, if not underground? Deep in the earth. Many meetings were held by our neighbors, and the several families planned together how much space they needed to dig their “graves.” Everyone had some suggestion to make and as each plan had some drawback, they could not decide. And the threat of another akcja hung in the air—it could descend upon us like a thunderbolt out of the sky, suddenly.

  As our situation became more ominous, I began to come around by degrees to Hugo Goldberg’s way of reasoning. I had to admit that there was but one possibility of surviving: to escape. Even my mother perceived that this was the only hope.

  Through Goldberg I made the acquaintance of his friend from Warsaw, Simon Srebrnik, who now lived in Rohatyn. Srebrnik, a tall, blond, and blue-eyed man, did not look Jewish at all. He spoke Polish faultlessly, and he too dreamed of escaping from the ghetto. The three of us used to discuss various plans; we saw that an escape had to be made soon, before it became too late. The first step was to obtain documents. The latest passports we had were issued by the Russian authorities, and they were marked “Yevrey”—Russian for “Jew”—a damning brand that rendered the document useless. Besides, we would have to change our names. Here was where Goldberg’s profession as chemist would be of help in forging the documents.

  At last I decided to speak of our plans openly to my mother and sister. I told Rose that I would take her passport and have it changed, and that she should be prepared to escape. I realized that our mother would be satisfied if we could leave and survive; as for herself, she did not care if she could only see us saved . . . Rose was frightened, but she wanted to live; she gave Hugo her passport and so did I. He managed to concoct an ink eradicator that would leave no trace on the paper, and the blank spaces were to be filled in with different names. He also, with considerable effort, succeeded in finding a Pole who counterfeited documents and who was able to imitate the original handwriting perfectly. All this was done in the greatest secrecy; if we had been caught, it would have meant death for all. After a couple of days we received our passports back, and no one could have told that they had been tampered with. I had a new name, Maria Bandera, and I was now a Ukrainian.

  But it was not enough to have forged passports. We had yet to solve another problem: Where to go? Where to escape? Who could help us in this escape? The only ones who might be able and willing to help were the Gentiles, but in helping us, they would be placing their own lives in danger. Discovery meant death for them and for us. And even if we succeeded in escaping, we still had to worry about how we would live, where we could locate. We thought about all this constantly, day and night, taxing our brains to the utmost. But, while we planned, the daily life in the ghetto continued to go on all around us. The Germans kept thinking up ways of complicating our existence, leaving us no peace. And still I would have to make trips to the Aryan side occasionally to barter for food and to listen for news. The people in town seemed to know more about what was going on than we in the ghetto; in fact, many of them worked for the Germans.

  One day, while outside the ghetto at the Krupkas, Mrs. Krupka happened to mention that her husband was being transferred to a new and higher position in the town of Brody and that the whole family would move there. She said that she would try to give me something for the things I had brought to barter, and that she felt sorry that she would not be able to help me or my family any longer. The news came as a big shock to me, and tears sprang to my eyes. For a while I stood still, not being able to utter a word, but after a couple of minutes an idea came to my mind. Without hesitation, I asked if it would be possible for them to take me along. I was willing to do any kind of work; I could be a governess to their child, Janko, or even a simple servant. “You wouldn’t need another servant,” I said, “and you know me well enough to know you can trust me. I just want to get away and save my life.”

  Mrs. Krupka listened to me with tears in her eyes. Knowing how good-hearted she was, I realized that she was deeply moved, but she said that she would have to discuss this with her husband. And, she added, did I fully understand what danger this would mean to their family? Yes, indeed, I knew . . . and I also realized what danger threatened me if I went with them.

  Meanwhile, Jews in the ghetto were called with greater frequency for compulsory labor—usually menial jobs calculated to humiliate us—cleaning offices, classrooms, toilets. Sometimes, when one brutal guard—Ukrainian—wanted to debase us further, he would tell us to clean the toilets with our hands, without a brush. We had to endure this in silence.

  In addition to our worries about obtaining food supplies, fuel, and water, a new and important problem obsessed the inhabitants of the ghetto: where to hide from the threat of extermination? It seemed impossible to continue existing without a shelter of some kind, and all the other problems now appeared of lesser urgency. We finally gathered in the living room of a neighbor’s apartment and began exchanging plans and suggestions. After a lengthy discussion, we decided to make the entrance to a shelter for the tenants of the building under a sofa in our bedroom. We took out a few planks of wood from the floor, nailed them together, and made a sort of handle on the underside, to permit grasping and locking of the cover from within the shelter. When the sofa was replaced over the openin
g, no one would be wiser—but, of course, this meant that we would have to engage the assistance of someone on the outside, someone we could trust implicitly. Most of the shelters in the ghetto were constructed in complete secrecy, because people were afraid to entrust their plans to anyone outside their most intimate circle. We thought about the problem for a long time, until we found someone who was satisfactory in this respect to all concerned. He was the son of Schachter, the butcher, and he lived in the house next to where we lived. All he would have to do would be to get across the broken-down fence to reach our house. We took him into our confidence, and he promised to help us.

  All our neighbors pitched in to dig the hole under our house. The earth had to be carried at night to some spot far away, because traces of freshly excavated soil would have betrayed our secret to the Germans. All day long the digging went on behind locked doors, and when dusk fell the earth was carried out in pails or whatever utensils were at hand. We estimated the number of persons and the amount of space needed to accommodate them in our shelter—adding a little extra space for a small barrel of water and a place to store food.

  After a fortnight the shelter was finished; it could give refuge, though in cramped quarters, to about fifteen people. We made a test drill and found out that not only did our shelter work, but that it would be difficult to discern the entrance to it under our sofa. We also decided that in the event of a real emergency, we would scatter everything in the room in great disorder to make it seem as if we had fled in haste, or had been taken away already by another party of bloodthirsty Germans.

  Having this shelter, however flimsy, gave us at least some sense of security amidst the chaos.

  4

  The Second Akcja

  WITH ALL OUR TROUBLES, we did not even realize that the holy days were approaching, and before we knew it Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, was only a few days away. Several families in our house decided to gather in the home of a neighbor to say their prayers. We had no right to pray in public, and the synagogues were on the Aryan side of the city, besides being burned and in ruins.