Free Novel Read

Sheva's Promise Page 7


  All of us had but one prayer that day: that the New Year would bring a change for the better in our lives; that we could be delivered from our persecutors and murderers; that the war would end. When the prayers were finished, we exchanged personal wishes among our friends and relatives, but without the customary wine and refreshments. That did not matter now, as long as our wishes came true.

  After Rosh Hashana, the weather became worse; the rainy days turned the streets into seas of mud. In our houses dampness penetrated everything. I had to go to the market square once again to barter some more of our dwindling possessions. Our greatest need was for wood, for we had to have a fire to cook our food and to heat our room. Fortunately, we could count on Hugo Goldberg to help. When I traded two tablecloths for some wood, he helped me to carry it home; he also gave Mamma some useful hints on how to use the wood most economically and how to get the most good out of our dwindling food supplies. It was delightfully amusing for me to watch these two master “cooks”—Mamma and Goldberg—concocting some mysterious potions in our kitchen.

  After a week of enjoying some comparative relaxation, it was time to prepare for the great fast—Yom Kippur. On the eve of this holy day we again gathered for prayers at the neighbor’s home. I am sure that these people prayed from the depths of their souls—but the time had not come for God to hear them.

  Yom Kippur that year fell on September 21. The ghetto was quiet in the early morning. At about five o’clock, half asleep, we heard someone knocking on our window. Mamma was the first to jump out of bed to see who it was; to her surprise, she saw Hugo Goldberg’s face through the window pane. As soon as he came in—wearing house slippers and a robe over his pajamas—we knew that something had happened. He said that the neighbors in his building had gone into hiding, hearing that the Gestapo had surrounded the city and that a new akcja was expected. No one else knew about it yet, but as soon as he learned of the rumor he had come to warn us.

  We ran to alert our next-door neighbors, the Nemeths. Opening the door, Mrs. Nemeth heard me out, then began to cry woefully. She said that she had dreamed last night that her deceased father had come to tell them to hide because there would be an akcja. Cutting her remarks short, we urged her to get all the other neighbors together into our bedroom and to notify the butcher’s son. We moved the sofa aside and uncovered the little door leading to our hiding place. There were fifteen of us by the time the last person squeezed in, packed together as tightly as herrings in a barrel. As soon as we were packed into this hole, the helpful neighbor moved the sofa back against the wall and left, leaving the door open so that the Germans would think that we had fled from the house into the street. After that, he went to his own house to hide. Because Hugo Goldberg lived at the other end of the ghetto, we feared that he would not have time to go back, and so he remained with us.

  We lay there in the crowded darkness, not knowing whether this was a false alarm or the real thing. Several times already we had sought shelter, only to learn later that the rumors were untrue. Even now, we hoped against hope—but in a short while we began to hear cries and shooting, and the shouts of the Germans. The Gestapo had arrived! They yelled, “Juden, heraus!” We could hear their heavy booted footsteps. We tried to hold our breath, though we shook with fear, half-dead in our tomblike refuge.

  Then, with a crash that came from the house next door to ours, we heard terrible lamentations from the people who were being dragged out of the neighboring shelter. There was only a thin wall of bricks between them and us. They were discovered, and now it might be our turn. We heard the tramp of soldiers’ boots coming very close. In our panic, we covered our mouths so as not to cry out, not to breathe heavily. Some dogs were growling nearby—those dreaded police dogs! And then, more shouts: “Juden, heraus! Verfluchte Juden!”

  No one in our shelter dared to move, knowing that the end was coming closer. We could hear more people speaking Ukrainian in the room above us—they were moving things around in the kitchen—and it sounded as if they were removing the floor boards. Soon they would find the entrance to our hiding place . . .

  Then a young voice cried out, “We’ve found a shelter full of Jews—there are about seventy of them inside. We need help to drag them out in the open.”

  A miracle! The Germans left. We heard the dogs, their growling sounding always further away, until all was quiet again. But we were still afraid to move. We didn’t know whether we had managed to escape the hunt for long. No one said a word yet, but with a squeeze of the hand we tried to convey the feeling of relief. And there we remained, lying in the cellar side by side, the whole day and night of Yom Kippur, and even past dusk the following day, without light, without a morsel of food, without a drop of water.

  The morning of the next day, the neighbor who had locked us in—and who had managed to escape himself—came and spoke to us in Yiddish. “Come out! It’s all over!” We did not answer at once, fearing a trap, but when our neighbor started calling each one of us by name, we recognized his voice and called back to him to remove the sofa and let us out.

  One by one we emerged from the shelter. Our appearance cannot be described, but can be imagined. The apartment looked as though a revolution had turned it upside down. Some floorboards in the kitchen had been ripped up. Only one item of food was in sight: a jar of pickles left on a stool. We flung ourselves on those pickles like wild animals and ate until there was nothing left in the jar. What a sight we must have been: dirty, emaciated, unkempt, wet from urine and excrement!

  An ominous silence reigned in the ghetto. This time, the Germans did not do much shooting—bullets were too valuable—and they did not throw their Jewish victims into the pits outside the city. The Jews were loaded into freight cars and taken to Belzec where the infamous gas ovens were. The ghetto had been decimated, but at least we—thanks to Hugo Goldberg’s coming in time to let us know—had survived.

  And again, our first thought was to find out whether any of our relatives were still alive. I ran to Shloma Handschau’s house; he had taken refuge in a village with his older son, Nuchem. My mother’s younger sister, my aunt Sara, had been looking after his younger boy, Yudah. God help her! She was taken, along with the eighteen-month-old baby, in the transport to Belzec. I learned later that most of the people from the ghetto were packed so tightly into the box cars that many did not arrive alive at their destination.

  We—Mamma, Rose and I—were saved again . . . but for how long? There were only several hundred Jews left in the ghetto. Now we knew that any day could bring a complete liquidation. We had no illusions about the 100 percent probability—indeed the certainty—of our death. I had to take the only chance possible: escape from the ghetto.

  And so we got together one day, Goldberg, Srebrnik, and I, to discuss our plans of escape very seriously and to make a final decision. Srebrnik had formed a new acquaintance with a young Polish fellow, Kowalski, the son of a Polish official, who promised to get him out of the ghetto to Lvov, from where he could include him in a transport to Dnepropetrovsk in Russia in the guise of a laborer. The idea seemed good. They agreed, and in a few days Kowalski was to meet Srebrnik in the ghetto. He kept his promise and came to pick him up. Srebrnik took leave of us sadly, but promised to let us know if and when he arrived safely. Before their departure, Kowalski promised Hugo Goldberg that he would help him escape to the same place, and if I wished it, he would help me too. At Dnepropetrovsk was a Gentile work camp for craftsmen and workers of various trades. Obviously, I could not go there, but Kowalski said that he would try to locate me someplace in Lvov, and he gave me his address there.

  Goldberg arranged for the payment of a rather large sum—he would have paid any price asked. I still had hopes that Mr. Krupka would take me along with his family to the town of Brody when he relocated there, but if not I would leave with the help of Kowalski. I would sell my mother’s jewelry that was left, everything I could turn into cash, to raise the necessary amount. Slowly I began to put aside the things tha
t I would take with me when I escaped.

  In the meantime, we heard that in many small towns the ghettos were being liquidated and made Judenfrei—free of Jews. The ghetto in Rohatyn could expect the same fate. I called on the attorney Babink frequently; he promised me that when Mr. Krupka came to remove his furniture to Brody, he would let me know and would try to induce Mr. Krupka to take me, too. But the main thing was for me to have a passport showing that I was a Catholic.

  True, I had a forged passport, but I didn’t like the name of Maria Bandera, which had been entered on the passport without consulting me. Bandera was the leader of the Ukrainian Nationalists, who called themselves the Banderas; and I thought that if I got caught with a false passport that gave my name as Bandera, it might lead the Germans to think that I was in some way related to him. I spoke and could write Ukrainian perfectly, but there might be times when it would be safer to pass as a Pole. I began scheming how I could get still another forged passport, as a double precaution; if I got caught under one name, I might be able to escape under the other.

  Fate took a hand in solving my problem. One day, returning with a couple of girls from work, I met a Polish woman who at one time had been a servant in the household of a family I knew very well. She recognized me at once and greeted me with a big smile, saying how glad she was that I was still alive. I let the other girls go on home and stopped to talk with her. She told me how sorry she was about the troubles the Jewish people had. She did not live in town now, but worked as a servant for a village priest in nearby Ruby. She only happened to be in Rohatyn that day on an errand. When I heard her express sympathy for my people, I immediately thought of an idea, and feeling confident that she would not betray me, I asked if she could possibly obtain for me a birth or baptismal certificate from the church archives. I would pay for it; it could be in my name, as long as the date and description fitted me. With such a document in my possession I could leave Rohatyn.

  She pondered this a while and said, “If you wish, I can give you my own birth certificate. I don’t have it with me, of course, but I’ll tell the priest I need it and he will give it to me. So, after that your name will be Hanka Buczek—my name. Actually, I am much older than you, but that doesn’t matter. You will put on a peasant skirt and shawl and no one will recognize you.”

  I wept for joy and gratitude, and the tender-hearted woman wept with me. We said goodbye and agreed to meet again in a few days; she promised to take care of everything. I went straight home from that chance meeting and burst into the house like dynamite. Hugo Goldberg was in our apartment, waiting. I blurted out my big news right away. Mother did not quite believe that the Buczek woman would keep her promise, but I remembered the honest expression on the peasant woman’s face and believed that she would come back.

  I hardly knew how I managed to live during the next few days—I didn’t dare believe my luck! There were preparations to be made quickly; things to be packed, things to be sold. When I thought of having to part with my dearest ones, my heart was heavy. No one could say whether I would ever return, or whether we would ever meet again in this life. I could think of nothing else. I wanted so much to get away, and yet I feared I could collapse completely at the moment of parting.

  I waited impatiently for the day when I would meet Hanka Buczek again, and when the time came I went to the appointed place with a beating heart. From a distance I saw her standing in a corner behind a house. “Hanka!” I called out, forgetting myself. She waved to me and grinned. I knew then that she must have had the certificate for me. In silence, like two thieves, we embraced. She handed me the birth certificate and I passed her the money. She wished me luck, but begged me not to reveal that it was she who gave me the certificate. If her complicity in the transaction were disclosed, she would pay for it with her life. I promised her the secret would be safe with me. Her good wishes echoed in my ears as I turned to go home.

  I felt so rich now! To have two forged documents in those days was more than any fortune; one I would use as a passport, and the other I would sew into the lining of my coat to use in some emergency. But when I thought that I might get caught having two forged documents in my possession, shivers went up and down my spine. I tried not to dwell on the possibility, for if I did I wouldn’t be able to make even one step. I prayed that God would give me strength and courage.

  When I arrived home, I took out the birth certificate and kissed it before showing it to my mother and Rose. Now, Mamma and Rose, too, fully realized that I was not joking when I spoke of leaving Rohatyn. I could see the pain written in their faces, and I felt it too in my heart, but I tried to hide it from them, pretending that I was not doing anything unusual.

  But my personal plans did not alter the circumstances in which we lived. With each day life in the ghetto became harder to endure. The Germans kept transferring the last remaining Jews from outlying villages and towns to Rohatyn. With lack of supplies and sanitary conditions, an epidemic of typhus broke out.

  The following incident can serve as an example of life in the ghetto: One day a young Ukrainian woman came to our house. We knew her and admired her courage in entering the forbidden limits of the ghetto. She repeated rumors that we had been hearing from various people—that there would be another akcja soon and that everything, absolutely everything, would be taken away from the Jews. She said that she felt very sorry for us, for even if we managed to survive the akcja we would no longer have anything to exchange for food and other necessities. We looked at each other sadly, and at last Mamma ventured to ask her if she would be so kind as to keep some of our belongings; our clothes, table linens, the remainder of Rose’s beautiful handmade nightgowns and slips from her dowry. Mamma naively complimented the girl, saying how smart she was and how worthy of confidence, and if she would agree to keep those things for us just until the danger passed, she would be rewarded for it. Her house, though of course it was in the Gentile quarter, was not too far from ours, and it would not be much trouble to carry the things over—everything was packed, in readiness for an emergency. The young woman agreed immediately and assured us that she would be more than glad to help us. She certainly did! We arranged that as soon as it got dark we would bring everything over to her house. My mother thanked her with tears in her eyes, and the girl went home.

  Now we closed the door against possible intruders, and started choosing the best items that we still owned, the items we had been saving for barter. At last we had two large suitcases full, and when it grew dark Rose and I carried them over to her house. Going along the streets we felt a strange tenseness; surely, we thought, this night would bring on the expected raid. No one noticed us, thank God, and we didn’t get caught. We left the suitcases, blessed and thanked the Ukrainian woman, and ran home, feeling quite satisfied with our accomplishment.

  After a few quiet days, Mamma said that I should go to the house of that young woman and bring back some or all of our belongings. We should, she thought, be able to exchange some items for food before another storm came. When I went there and knocked on her door, however, her mother answered and stood blocking the entrance, her dog barking savagely. She denied knowing anything about our clothes, or her daughter hiding them, and claimed that her daughter was not home. I could hear her voice from somewhere in the rear of the house, but had no choice but to leave without saying a word. A couple of days later I tried again. This time I took Mamma with me, and we succeeded in seeing the young woman. She told us that they had been robbed and that our things had been stolen from the attic where she hid them. Everything was gone, she said, and we should not come back—for our visits might endanger their lives.

  Mamma took this so hard she started to cry. At that moment the husband of the young woman entered the room, but my mother’s tears had no effect upon either of them. The young woman persisted in her lies, and her husband and her parents backed her up in silence. We were even afraid to say too much, for she might call the police. We left brokenhearted and disillusioned. Sometime late
r, we saw the young woman wearing some of our clothes—I even saw her using my wallet, with my initials on it—yet there was nothing I could do, for we had no rights at all.

  As decided, I resumed my preparations for departure with increased diligence and speed. Meanwhile, Mr. Kowalski kept his promise. After the departure of Simon Srebrnik was successful, Kowalski came to set the date with Hugo and to send him to the same place, to Dnepropetrovsk. The date was set for November 19. He also promised to find a place for me in Lvov until then and I would follow after Hugo. So far we were satisfied, and we looked forward to these promises. Everything had to be kept in the greatest secrecy, for if not, we would be dead before any move could be made.

  A couple of days later, I came home with my friend Klara Altman. My mother told me that Babink, the attorney, had been to see me. He had taken a big risk to enter the ghetto, but he had come to let me know that if I wanted to leave I should not wait, because the ghetto would be enclosed with barbed wire and wooden walls at the beginning of December; escape would be impossible from then on. He said that the news about closing of the ghetto was still a big secret, and that if anything leaked out it would endanger his life; we must never mention his name to anyone. However, as he had promised me, he had persuaded Mr. Krupka to take me! Krupka would be in Rohatyn on November 20, and he had agreed to take me along with his furniture to Brody. Babink also said I should bring my valise to his house and that he would take care of it.

  The news of being able to leave the ghetto made me glad, for it was what I wanted. But the other news—that the ghetto would be sealed off—was a big shock to all of us. This meant certain death for its inhabitants. We looked at each other in heavy silence. We dared not speak of what was in our minds. I realized now that I couldn’t even be a help to my family; first of all, because when the Krupkas moved away from Rohatyn I had lost an important source of aid, and secondly, because I would no longer be able to go out of the ghetto to the Aryan side of town. If I stayed, I lost all my chances of helping Mamma and Rose. There might yet be a chance, a light of promise in the darkness, but that could only come from the Aryan side. There was no time to lose.