Читать книгу Noike: A Memoir of Leon Ginsburg - Suzanne Ginsburg - Страница 12

Maciejow Poland. September 1942

The town synagogues were still shuttered when Rosh Hashanah arrived the following September, but most Jews continued to pray in secret, inside their homes. Noike and his brother were invited to one of these clandestine gatherings, this one held at a neighbor’s house down the road. They quietly entered through the back door, closely guarded by two teenaged boys from their school. “Shana Tova,” the young guards whispered as they ushered the boys into the house.

At least thirty worshippers were crammed into the tiny living room. They leaned against archways, squatted on the floor, and sat on the occasional chair. In the center of the room a group of older men wearing prayer shawls were huddled around the Torah, swaying from side to side as they sang. The prayers were the same ones they read every year but the atmosphere had never been so tense. Posters all over town had warned Jews about large gatherings: “More than three Jews found in assembly are to be shot instantly.” But forgoing prayer was not an option for these religious Jews: Rosh Hashanah was judgment day, the time when God would decide who should live and who should die.

One of the men leading the prayers, Itzchak Shochat, was dressed in a kittel, a white robe worn on religious occasions such as this one. Itzchak had a beautiful, long white beard, soft as cotton. He belonged to the same synagogue as Noike’s family, the Trysker Synagogue, and sat in the same section as Noike’s grandfather. “Noikele, come here,” Itzchak would say after the Shabbat services, “such a sheina punem.” Squatting down, he would reach out and pinch Noike’s cheeks until they turned pink. It hurt but Noike liked his attention.

As they were softly chanting the holiday prayers, one of the boys on watch ran into the living room and announced that two SS officers were heading towards the house. Itzchak grabbed the Torah, stuffed it underneath his kittel, and ran out the back door. The worshippers frantically hid their prayer clothes and books, placing them behind curtains, inside furniture, under couch cushions. Noike stuffed his prayer book inside his coat.

Within seconds two SS officers stormed into the living room with their guns drawn. They wore riding pants, black leather boots, and tall hats with the Totenkopf symbol, the skull and crossbones, the same uniform worn by officers who had raided Noike’s grandfather’s house the previous summer.

“Jewish assemblies are forbidden!” one officer shouted in German; the other panned his gun across the room.

The worshippers remained silent.

“Raus, raus!” he ordered the group. “Everyone must leave immediately!”

Noike kept his head bowed as he followed his neighbors out of the house.

No one was arrested that day; no one was instantly shot. Hours later the reason for the reprieve became clear: a large-scale massacre, an aktion, was planned for Monday. One leak came from a Jewish woman, Sheva Berelson, who worked as a maid at German headquarters and had befriended a soldier in recent months. Upon learning that Jewish workers would not be needed that Monday, she asked her soldier friend about the sudden change in schedule. He confided that the situation would get much worse for the Jews in Maciejow—pregnant women would soon be removed from the Jewish clinics and shot.

Another leak came from a Ukrainian hospital administrator who was close friends with Avram Avruch, a Jewish doctor who studied medicine in Switzerland and was fluent in German. Avram was no longer allowed to treat non-Jewish patients—a racial law introduced by the Germans—but he wrote medical reports and completed other hospital administrative tasks that had to be done in German. The hospital administrator told Avram that the next aktion would be the final one.

Noike’s mother, Pesel, tried to maintain a sense of calm around her children, even as she prepared for the inevitable. She went from house to house, meeting with close friends and relatives; they exchanged what little information they had on the raids and their strategies for survival. After everything had been arranged, Pesel shared her plans with her children: “We are going to stay with Gitel Silverberg for a few days. She has built a hiding place in her basement and will let us stay there until the next aktion is over. The rebbe also has a secret room, but it’s too small for all of us.”

Hiding places had saved many people during the last aktion; this plan seemed to be their only hope. Gitel Silverberg, a second cousin, started building her hiding place a few months earlier, a short time after a Polish woman returned from the neighboring town of Kovel and told her Jewish friends about corpses lying in the streets. The Germans had massacred 15,000 Jews, decimating Kovel’s entire Jewish population.

“But what about all of our things?” Noike’s sister Blima asked.

Many homes had been ransacked during the raids of the previous summer. The police had been the biggest culprits but many peasants from the neighboring villages had also plundered. Anything left out in the open was for the taking: dishes, armoires, mattresses, bed frames, clothing—even children’s toys.

“We can bring some blankets and food,” Pesel said. “But the police will be suspicious if they see us leaving the house with anything else. We’ll hide the silver and photographs later tonight.” One room was left unfinished when Pesel expanded their home before the war; she planned to bury the silver, photographs, and other family heirlooms under its bare, clay floor.

The next afternoon the four of them left their home, keeping everything but their most sentimental valuables in place. They locked the door and crossed town as if they were on an ordinary social call, visiting neighbors for afternoon tea. But instead of walking as one group, they split into two: Noike and his mother walked through one side of the square; Herschel and Blima walked through the other. Noike followed his mother, clutching at his pillow.

They entered the hiding place through an outhouse behind Gitel Silverberg’s grocery store. Pesel and Herschel went inside first, pushing the toilet aside to reveal a tiny dirt entrance carved into the floor. One by one they squeezed through the hole and climbed down a long, narrow ladder. At the base of the ladder was a short passageway that led into a room.

The basement was crowded with at least fifty people, mostly women with young children, the only demographics left in Maciejow. It was dark but in one corner Noike could make out Gitel Silverberg’s lively brown eyes and warm smile. She was wearing a long, black dress and had a babushka over her hair like his mother. He also saw his brother’s friend Haim Rosenberg sitting with his mother and sister.

Pesel led them through the basement until she found an open spot away from the original entrance. Gitel had sealed off and painted the door when they created the hiding place but one could still see the street through small cracks along the bottom. Pesel laid a blanket across the cool cement floor, trying to secure enough room for her family to sleep later that night. Noike sat down with his mother while Herschel and Blima wandered off to another corner and searched for friends.

There was little to do in the basement: moving around too much would create noise; talking too much would create noise. Most people huddled in small groups, whispering to each other, eventually nodding off in the darkness as nighttime approached. Pesel started humming as she stroked Noike’s back. As a young girl she sang with the local Yiddish theater group; it was there that she met her husband Kalman, a talented violinist and actor who died less than two years after Noike was born. She stopped performing many years ago but she still sang around her family. That evening, she sang a familiar lullaby to young Noike:

Pretty like the moon

Bright like the stars

From Heaven you were

Sent to me as a present.

Noike leaned against his mother and imagined lying in his bed at home, nestled under a thick layer of goose down bedding. Soothed by the lullaby, he was starting to fall asleep when he heard Blima talking to his mother.

“We’re going to hide in the Pearlman’s attic for the rest of the night,” Blima whispered, motioning to a group of teenagers gathering near the entrance to the hiding place. “We’ll head to the woods before sunrise—some of the boys have built a bunker.” Many of the teenagers who had escaped to the woods during the previous raids had managed to survive. In the forests they could occasionally breathe fresh air and would have somewhere to run if discovered.

“Blimele, I don’t think it’s such a good idea,” Pesel said, shaking her head. “We should all stay together.”

Pesel eventually resigned herself to Blima’s decision. Children were no longer children in those days; the fight for survival forced them to think and act like adults. Noike reached his arms out to embrace his sister. She bent down and placed a kiss on his forehead as he hugged her legs, which were covered in layers of wool stockings and long underwear. He watched intently as she crossed the room then disappeared down the passageway.

GUNSHOTS SHATTERED THE EARLY MORNING SILENCE. Some people in the basement had been sleeping but most had stayed awake all night, unable to rest knowing that the aktion was imminent. Women grabbed their children and hurried into the darkest corners of the basement, barricading themselves behind boxes and wooden crates. Herschel and the other teenage boys ran towards the original entrance, taking turns to peek through the cracks and provide updates for the group. “They shot Esther!” one of the boys announced.

Esther and her elderly mother owned a small corner store that sold candy, ice cream, and soda; her father was killed in one of the earlier aktions. When the police had tried to drag Esther’s mother out of their home that morning Esther stood in their way, hysterically crying and begging the officers to leave them alone. The police ordered Esther to step aside and quiet down. As she fell to her knees one of them pulled out his gun and shot Esther, right in front of her mother.

THE GERMANS HAD ASSEMBLED THE POLICE FORCE a short time after the occupation. Young men were typically recruited from neighboring farming villages with large Ukrainian nationalist populations and trained by the SS. Many of them had criminal records and had done time in Polish prisons; others were poor peasants desperate for work. Because the force was composed of ethnic Ukrainians and backed by Ukrainian leaders, they were often referred to as the “Ukrainian police.” At first they helped enforce the curfew, later on they passed out the armbands; in the end they dragged women and children from their homes.

Ukrainian police continued to go house to house, pushing people out into the street and then taking them to the big synagogue, Beis Medrush, where they were forced to line up and kneel on the cobblestones as the German officers collected their valuables. After they had captured about seventy-five people, they would march them from Beis Medrush to the lime mines on the edge of town. As the Jews approached the mines they immediately understood their fate. Einsatzgruppen shooters were standing behind bushes near the mass grave, which was filled with the victims that came before them. The Jews were forced to stand in front of the grave and undress as they heard their neighbors slowly dying in the earth below. Some would try to escape, others would yell obscenities at their murderers; most would kiss their loved ones goodbye and pray for a quick death. The murderers left the graves uncovered until their work was done, almost two weeks later.

Decades after the war, Noike met a teenage boy who had survived the graves: Rubin Grosser. Rubin thought he was dead when the bullet struck his head, but the wound was superficial. He remained motionless in the grave as they continued to shoot his family, friends, and neighbors. When the Einsatzgruppen left the site that evening he started to crawl out of the grave, pushing through the mountain of dead bodies. He was about to run off when he heard moans coming from a boy beside him, Leibel Naimark. Naked and bloody, the two of them ran to a farmer who had offered to help when word first spread of the aktion. The farmer and his wife nursed the boys back to health and sheltered them until it was safe to leave. Rubin and Leibel were among the very few to survive the graves; the earth was said to be shaking for four weeks.

EVERYONE IN GITEL’S BASEMENT REMAINED SILENT as the raids continued, except for one little girl who couldn’t stop crying. Each time she wailed, the others in the basement would look towards the mother. “Please do something,” their eyes begged. The others were sympathetic—many were mothers themselves—but they also feared for their own lives. When the girl finally settled down and fell asleep, the mother slipped out of the basement and put her in the house next door.

At some point the little girl woke up, or the Ukrainian police came into the house and woke her up; no one knows exactly how it happened. The police brought her outside and asked: “Where’s your mother?” She immediately ran to the outhouse and wept, “Momma, Momma.” The police opened the outhouse door and checked inside, but found nothing.

The police started to walk away but the little girl refused to move. Clinging to the edge of the outhouse door she continued to cry: “Momma, Momma.” The police went back to the outhouse, poked around the seat, and then finally nudged the toilet aside, revealing the entrance to the hiding place. One of them stuck his rifle inside the hole and yelled in Ukrainian: “Vilezai! Come out!”

With no place to run, the women and children started filing out of the basement. Noike and his mother were on the far side of the room, a safe distance from the police who continued to shout, “Vilezai, Vilezai!” Pesel scanned the room for Herschel but it was difficult to see in the darkness, or to shout over the weeping women and children. They had stood to follow the others when Pesel noticed a section of wall that was loosely boarded.

“Noikele, quick, get inside,” she said, pulling a board off the wall.

He crawled inside and stepped as far back as he could.

“Hold this in place and don’t move until it’s safe,” she instructed him, handing him the board with the nails pointed in his direction.

Noike grabbed the nails, held them tightly, not moving a limb.

Pesel hid under some bedding; everyone else had left by now.

Through the cracks in the wood, Noike saw three Ukrainian police wearing their signature black uniforms with the word Militzia printed on the back enter the hiding place and begin looking for valuables and any remaining Jews. As two of them hunted for valuables, a third walked around the room, thrusting his bayonet into possible hiding places. Every few minutes a match would strike, illuminating the darkest corners of the basement. In the faint light Noike saw the officer with the bayonet, a young man not more than twenty, approach the place where his mother was hiding. The man raised the bayonet over his shoulder and sank it into the pile of bedding. “No, no,” Pesel cried, pierced by the bayonet, “I’m coming out!”

Noike froze; he was afraid to breathe.

He watched the police officer grab his mother by the arm and lead her out of the hiding place. He wanted to do something—to shout, to attack, to run—but his mouth, arms, and legs obeyed his mother’s last words: Don’t move until it’s safe. Don’t move until it’s safe. Don’t move until it’s safe. Her figure grew smaller and smaller as they neared the outhouse entrance.

And then she was gone.

The two other officers continued to search the basement, kicking over empty boxes and crates, opening any packages left behind. One of the men stopped a few inches away from Noike and paused to light a cigarette. He was so close that Noike could smell the phosphorous from the match, the first puff of cigarette smoke. The man slid the matchbook back inside his pocket and walked away.

When they finally left Noike slowly let out his breath.

He remained frozen with fear behind the wall, listening for sounds of the police. Sometime later another man came down into the hiding place wearing a dark, threadbare suit. Noike stood still, unsure whether it was safe to come out. As he squinted through the cracks in the wood he recognized the man as Moishe Burshtein, the head of the Judenrat. He had been a community leader before the war, organizing fundraisers for the poor and celebrations during the Jewish holidays. The German authorities forced him into the Judenrat role, threatening him and his family with death if he did not cooperate. With the raids almost complete, they no longer had any use for him.

Noike stepped away from the wall and slowly walked over to Mr. Burshtein. “I’m looking for galoshes,” Mr. Burshtein said, his forehead damp with sweat. “I’m going to the woods tonight—it’s muddy there.” He seemed disoriented, as if he had just awoken from a deep sleep. Noike was also in a dream-like state, his mind and body following a script unknown to him. The hiding place, the police with the bayonet, his mother’s capture—none of it seemed real.

“Moishe, where are you going now?” Noike grabbed at the man’s sleeve. He had no plan, nowhere to go.

“Next door,” Mr. Burshtein said, nodding towards the other house. “They might have some galoshes in the attic.”

Noike followed him into the open-air attic, which was littered with bits and pieces of old furniture. They were moving an old trunk when they heard a noise near the foot of the ladder. Mr. Burshtein glanced down, meeting the eyes of a Ukrainian police officer who was pointing a rifle directly at him.

“Get down here!” the policeman ordered. “Is anyone else up there?”

“Nobody, just me,” Mr. Burshtein’s voice quivered.

Unsatisfied, the policeman called over another officer to guard Mr. Burshtein while he searched the attic.

Noike crawled into the far corner of the attic, into the small space where the slant of the roof met the floor. Terrified of capture, he pressed his body against the attic wall, disappearing into its dark shadows. As he lay there, he heard the policeman climbing the ladder, a brief pause, then the sound of his descent.

“The Jew was telling the truth,” he said to the other officer. They hauled Mr. Burshtein off to the synagogue, never to be seen again.

Noike knew the attic would not be safe for very long. He remembered another hiding place his mother had mentioned: the rebbe’s house, only a few doors down. The rebbe’s daughter, Malka, owned a popular ready-to-wear clothing store.

Noike descended the ladder and looked down the street. He was met by a religious silence: all of the homes had been Jewish; all of them had been raided. Pressing his body against the white picket fence, he sidled past one, two, three houses, until he reached the rebbe’s house. He walked inside and surveyed the main room: it had already been ransacked by the locals so most of the furniture was missing; unwanted items were discarded on the floor.

“Malka,” he began to call quietly, “Malka.”

No answer.

Again, he called, “Malka, Malka.”

No answer.

He started to leave the house when he heard someone say, “Shhh . . .”

He turned around and saw a board raised in the wall, under a table in the corner of the room. As he neared the opening, two hands reached out and dragged him inside.

He fainted.