Читать книгу Noike: A Memoir of Leon Ginsburg - Suzanne Ginsburg - Страница 9

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SKULL AND CROSSBONES

Maciejow, Poland. September 1941

“Aufmachen, Yakob,” the German soldiers shouted as they stood on the front stoop and banged their fists on the door. It was a cool night in late September, three months into the German occupation.

“Yakob” referred to Yakob Ginzburg, Noike’s paternal grandfather, a deeply religious man who wore peyos (sidelocks) and attended synagogue twice a day. Noike’s family had fled to his house when they saw the Einsatzgruppen motorcade enter town two days earlier. The Einsatzgruppen, a division of the SS, was a mobile death squad that came on motorcycles followed by trucks covered in thick, black canvas. Their last visit to Maciejow had been to kill the 400 young men and boys behind German headquarters.

News spread that the next aktion, as these roundups were called, would be less discriminating. Although the very old and those under sixteen years of age were still safe, women between sixteen and sixty were now vulnerable. Escaping from town was no longer an option, for the roads were heavily guarded and Jews were not permitted to own wagons, bicycles, or cars, or travel via public transportation. Maciejow’s remaining Jews had no choice but to hide.

“Aufmachen, Yakob,” the soldiers shouted again.

The soldiers began shining flashlights into Yakob’s bedroom. Streams of light panned back and forth across the ceiling, searching for hidden trap doors. Noike recognized the soldiers’ voices from earlier in the evening: young Ukrainian girls from across the street had been socializing with them and laughing at their jokes. Noike looked over at his brother Herschel, who was awake but too scared to move. Herschel was quite tall for his age and feared he would be mistaken for a boy of sixteen. Yakob was also awake but he was in poor health and unable to get out of bed. Noike realized that he was the only one who could speak on behalf of his family.

When Noike opened the door he saw two giant SS officers standing in front of the house; they glared down at the little boy in his pajamas. These men weren’t ordinary SS officers, Noike realized: only the uniforms of senior officers were decorated in a confetti of badges, stripes, and medals. They wore the Totenkopf death squad mark—a skull and crossbones embossed in silver—on the front of their caps. The division was initially formed from concentration camp guards and men from an SS unit that fought the Polish Army back in 1939.

“Where are your sisters?” the first one barked in German.

Noike had never spoken to a German soldier, but the Germanic roots of the Yiddish language helped many Jews make the transition when necessary. “Sisters” implied the women of the household. Someone must have told the officers that his sister, mother, aunts, and grandmother had not been rounded up. The Germans relied on the locals to provide this information, offering money and extra rations—a few cigarettes, a liter of vodka, a kilo of sugar—in return.

“They took them away,” Noike responded in Yiddish, acting as if he was on the verge of tears. “Maybe you can tell me where they took them?” If he told the truth, they would all die; if he lied, he might save them all.

The soldiers pushed past him and entered the front room. Noike insisted that there were only three people in the house: his sick grandfather, his “younger” brother, and himself. Unconvinced, the soldiers began searching all of the rooms in the house, poking underneath beds and throwing open armoires but finding nothing.

“The basement—where is it?” the first soldier demanded, scanning for its entrance.

Noike led them to the cellar door located in the narrow hallway that connected the front room and the master bedroom. The first soldier pulled the door open; the second one drew his gun. Cool air rose from the cellar wall, sending a chill through Noike and making the little hairs on his arms and legs stand on end. The first soldier moved his flashlight’s beam along the perimeter of the cellar walls, illuminating stores of butter, baskets of eggs, and sacks of potatoes. Nothing else was revealed.

“Show us the attic,” the soldier demanded.

Noike pointed to the drop ladder in the hallway ceiling.

“Is anybody up there?” the soldier asked.

“No,” Noike said, trying to hold the soldier’s gaze.

The soldier pulled his pistol out of its holster and cocked the gun. He pointed it at the center of Noike’s forehead and then pressed it firmly against his skin. The gun looked like a cannon to him; the long, cold, metal barrel was numbing.

“If somebody is up there, you’re kaput,” he warned him. “Are you sure nobody is up there?” he asked again.

“Yes, sir,” Noike replied. “Nobody is up there.”

The soldier with the flashlight pulled the attic door open, unfolded the ladder, and climbed up to search the attic.

Noike held his breath. His mother, sister, aunts, and grandmother were hiding in the second attic above the kitchen, which was accessible via a concealed trapdoor in the kitchen ceiling. The women had also taken steps to mask their age and beauty. Tears had streamed down Blima’s face when her mother cut off her long, blonde hair a few days earlier. Pesel understood Blima’s grief: as a teenager in Maciejow during the First World War, she was harassed by German soldiers when she walked through town. She never imagined that her daughter would have the same experience; she never imagined that she would find herself, at the age of thirty-six, covering her hair in a babushka and impersonating an old woman.

“Did you find somebody?” The soldier, still pressing his gun against Noike’s forehead, called up to the attic with impatience.

“Nisht,” the other replied, climbing back down the ladder.

The two soldiers conversed in rapid German, too fast for Noike to understand, then barked their next order: “Take us to the garden.” The Ukrainian girls must have given the soldiers some clues since few homes had gardens large enough to provide cover for one person, let alone five. Although the gun had been pulled away from from Noike’s forehead, he could still feel the cold metal.

Noike led them to the back door that opened onto the garden. Walking through the house he thought of his family—his “sisters”—crouched above them. If someone coughed, sneezed, or shifted, the officers would hear them and it would be over for everyone. The soldiers walked into the vast garden, which was brimming over with lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, and even tobacco. Noike shut the door behind them as it started to rain.

Noike pressed his ear against the door and listened as the soldiers weaved through the rows of vegetables, stomping on the lettuce and other vegetables in their path. After a brief silence he heard them leave the garden, walk along the side of the house, then head towards the street in the front of the house, off to raid another Jewish family. Their footsteps grew quieter; then at last there was silence.

Although he could breathe again, Noike’s teeth were chattering like a machine gun. Herschel helped him back into bed and held him until he fell asleep.

ABOUT A WEEK LATER WORD SPREAD THAT THE RAIDS were officially over and the Einsatzgruppen had moved on to another town. The aktion had been a success from the German perspective: 1,500 Jews had been killed—a full third of the local Jewish population. Those who survived the raids emerged from their hiding places in cellars, barns, attics, fields, and the woods. They found the streets scattered with bits and pieces of fabric, torn from their family, friends, and neighbors as they tried to escape from their attackers.

When Noike and his family returned home, a longtime neighbor was waiting near the front door with a small bundle. Pesel looked down at the bundle and immediately understood: it was the crocheted shawl that had belonged to her mother, Beila, who had worn it nearly every day.

Beila had refused to leave the house when the rest of the family went into hiding; she had grown senile in recent years and would not listen to reason. “Nobody is going to force me to run from my home,” she had said repeatedly, shaking her head. Her shawl was found near the sidewalk, amid the other personal effects that littered the street, their owners long gone. Beila had raised her family in that house; she was the first one killed.

Noike had never experienced the death of someone close to him, let alone lost someone in such a brutal fashion. He could not comprehend why the Germans would kill someone as harmless as his grandmother. He imagined the Germans dragging her away and wished he could have been there to protect her, as he did his “sisters.” He pictured himself standing in the doorway, steadfastly convincing the soldiers that no one was in the house except for him.

Pesel changed into black clothing and covered the mirrors according to Jewish tradition. She gathered her children to say the mourner’s kaddish, a prayer honoring the dead, and thought of her mother’s good deeds, praying that no one else would meet the same fate. Kaddishes were being said all over town; most women no longer had sons, husbands, or uncles. Hundreds of women had also been murdered, leaving many small children wandering the streets and nearby fields without parents. The Judenrat collected furniture and other household items from the abandoned houses and created an orphanage. Adult survivors took turns helping to feed, bathe, and comfort the little ones.

WINTER CAME AND LIFE WENT BACK TO NORMAL, although to the Jews of Maciejow, “normal” became a relative term. One afternoon soon after the first snow, Noike was heading to a neighbor’s house when he noticed an old rebbe, a teacher of Hebrew and the Bible, walking on the edge of the road. A group of German soldiers pulled up in a horse-drawn sleigh, the customary way to travel in winter. One soldier dismounted the sleigh and pushed the old man into the snow, causing his hat to tumble to the ground. Then the soldier made him pick it up, fill it with snow, and put it back on his head. All of the soldiers laughed as the snow dripped down his face, into his shirt collar. After taunting him a little more, the soldier got back on the sled and they drove away.

Many ethnic Ukrainians were quick to take full advantage of their neighbors’ weakened positions. For years Herschel had begged his mother for skis. Knowing she could not afford them, he started putting aside his own money and somehow managed to save enough to buy them that winter. The skis were made of cheap wood and fitted with leather ankle straps; no special shoes were required. On one of his first outings, a ski trip with friends, he returned home empty-handed.

“Where are your skis?” Noike asked, trailing Hershel as he stormed off to their bedroom. He had hoped Herschel might loan them to him one day.

“Now Jews can’t have skis!” Herschel fumed as he paced the room.

He had been skiing with a group of Jewish boys on the outskirts of town when a couple of Ukrainian farm boys came upon them. “Jews aren’t allowed to own skis,” one of the boys had said. “Give them to us or we’ll call the Gestapo,” another leered, knowing the Gestapo would punish even young Jews for the smallest violations.

Noike felt sorry for his brother; Herschel had wanted those skis so badly.

Later that winter German soldiers came to their house, this time demanding that his mother hand over all of her fur coats. Their countrymen were fighting in the harsh Russian winter and freezing to death; trains filled with wounded and frostbitten German soldiers had been passing through Maciejow in recent weeks. Noike watched with anger as his mother went to the hallway closet and returned with a dusty box containing her late husband’s fur coats; she had kept all of them. She kept almost all of his things for years after he died, until the Germans came and started taking everything away.