Letter from my Father Read online

  I watched carefully everything that was happening around me. Although I joined in some activities of the other children I did not seem to feel anything. It is as if my happiness had left for another place. It did not belong in my new life.

  Sabina and Yaakov lived on the first floor of a three-storey grey apartment building close to the centre of the city. Inside our apartment were places where Yaakov hid whenever visitors came. One hiding place was a curtained-off space between the window and the broom cupboard, where he sometimes had to stand for hours without making a sound. At other times he would lie under the bed. We knew we had to make a noise if he coughed or sneezed. The woman in the flat next door was one person of whom we had to be very wary. She was a Nazi informer, who snooped to see if there were any Jews hiding in the building and then told the SS about them. There was much whispered talk between Sabina and Yaakov about the risks of having her as a neighbour. There was always danger for me and Yaakov because if we were found we could be killed.

  The neighbour thought I was Sabina’s child, though I did not call her Mummy. I did not call her anything. One day the neighbour came to see us. She was smiling. She told us that she had discovered a Jewish family hiding in the ground floor flat and had informed the SS. When the men arrived, we all stood on the first floor landing outside our flat to watch a woman and her husband and children being dragged away. I noted that their hair was dark and that they looked terrified.

  When I left the apartment or visited Sabina’s mother in the country, I behaved like a good Catholic girl. Poland was full of images of Christ, shown in tiny statues or in paintings. I knelt before them, crossed myself and said prayers to Jesus.

  Sometimes as I looked down from our apartment window, I would see groups of weak, ragged people, pale like ghosts being marched and pushed along the street by ferocious guards. I knew that they too were Jewish. But I couldn’t show my distress.

  One day Yaakov was sent a valuable watch that had belonged to Cousin Simcha. He gave it to me.

  I was hungry most of the time. Sabina offered me speck cut into little cubes. I wouldn’t eat this disgusting flavoured ham. It made me sick to look at it. Pig meat was forbidden to Jews. She also gave us bread and butter. Her two little boys, both younger than me, got more than I. They liked to eat the soft middle of the bread, leaving the crusts to me. I would have liked more but dared not ask. From time to time, when Sabina and the boys were out, Yaakov would cut slices off a loaf of black bread, rub them with garlic, fry them in chicken fat and then let me feast on them. This was truly yummy food. At these special times, Yaakov also taught me the Aleph Bet, just as my father used to do. That seemed so long ago.

  The right side of my jaw became swollen. I was taken to hospital to have what they called the growth removed. The hospital was outside town. I was left in a room with other children. The people in the hospital had no knives and forks, no soap nor toothpaste to give us. The other children’s parents brought them spoons and knives and forks and soap but I had no one to bring me things. When the watery soup arrived in a little tin bowl, I had to slurp it directly from the bowl as best I could. I was full of envy when their parents visited.

  There was no one to hear how I felt. Sabina and Yaakov were busy with their boys. I felt like crying and crying but kept everything inside.

  But there were good times too. In summer I went to Sabina’s mother’s farm in a tiny Polish village. She lived in a whitewashed house with a thatched roof with a stork’s nest on top. They told me that storks bring babies, so I was proud of our stork. The floors of the house were beaten black soil and the furniture was home-made wooden benches set along the wall and wooden tables. We slept on layers of fresh straw laid over bench-like beds. They were soft to sleep on and I loved the smell of the straw.

  Most of my time at the farm was spent outdoors. I liked to run through the unfenced fields and forests. The sun shone and surrounded by trees and flower-strewn meadows, I felt happy and light. It was as if I had put down for a little while the very heavy parcel which I carried inside me.

  I was still very careful to fit in with what the grown-ups around demanded. Each evening I knelt before the carved wooden statue of Jesus attached to the wall and said my prayers, just as I had been shown.

  The little farm provided most of the food Sabina’s mother and her family needed. Here I could eat well. We had milk from the cows, vegetables and fruit and flowers from the gardens, and meat from the chickens and geese. I was allowed to help. I picked vegetables and flowers. I scattered grain for the geese and helped milk the cows by pulling hard on their udders, making sure the milk spurted into the bucket. I liked doing this though I was scared of being kicked by the cow.

  Back in Tarnopol, I sometimes thought about my mother and father and what it would be like when they came and picked me up after the War. Then one day a man I did not know but who may have been a relative, came to Tarnopol. He told Sabina and Yaakov and me news that I heard but didn’t really understand. He said that both my parents were dead. Dead. Both Mother and Father. How could that be? All he knew, he said, was that they had been killed and that he was to come and tell us.

  Sabina and Yaakov wondered how it could have happened. Did they run away from the Ghetto and try to hide in the forests? I ran to find my very favourite toy, the little white ball I had brought with me. But I could not find it. Where could it be? Now I had nothing from my home. I could not talk and neither could I cry.

  I knew that I might get into trouble and make them angry if I cried. It was better, safer to stay silent. But now what would happen to me? Who would care for me? My parents had promised to come and fetch me after the War but now they could never come. It was so frightening. I was still a little girl. If there was nobody to hold and take care of me, I might stop being alive.

  I tried not to think about it and went on playing, being an extra-good girl so that they would still want to look after me. I understood that when I fell, I had to get up by myself.

  Time passed and new things were happening. Tarnopol was being bombed by the Russians. Often in the evenings we heard the piercing sound of the siren and all the people in our block went down to the shelter in the cellar to wait for the All Clear. One person did not come. It was still not safe for Yaakov. He stayed upstairs alone. I hated leaving him there.

  As the bombing raids became more frequent, there were changes in how people behaved. The grown-ups in the cellar were more excited and talked more. They spoke of how the Nazis were being forced back and the Russians were coming closer. One night the bombing was so heavy Yaakov came down to join us in the cellar. As he entered Sabina quietly said: This is my husband. Nobody made any comment.

  It seemed the time for talk had ended. A bomb hit the building. The ceiling above us collapsed and the walls of the cellar cracked. Bricks and wood fell all around and on top of us until we were half-buried in the rubble. But soon we realised we were alive and that no one had been hurt.

  Then the panic started. Who will find us? Is there enough air for all of us? For how long? This went on all night. At dawn we heard voices, people above digging, calling out and digging some more. Finally a few Russian soldiers managed to make an opening and found us sitting huddled together. Daylight streamed in. How wonderful!

  Russian soldiers, very young, approached. They ordered us to stand in a row. They went right up close to our neighbour, the Nazi informer, and took her away. Then one of them approached Sabina and pointed a gun at her head. Hadn’t she been a friendly neighbour to the Nazi informer? Sabina grabbed me and pushed me in front of her, showing me off. This is the Jewish child whose life I had saved by sheltering her all through the War. How could I be a friend of a Nazi?

  The soldier moved on. I watched both him and Sabina, feeling both puzzled and proud. Suddenly it seemed that it was all right to be Jewish. Adults often behaved in odd ways. We clambered out of the rubble and into the open. We looked around and found that the buildings next to ours had also been bombed. Every
where were ruins. Broken pieces of walls framing arches and rectangular spaces which until yesterday had been windows and doors now exposed chairs and beds and burnt curtains. Underfoot was shattered glass. But the Nazis had gone. We had been liberated.

  The next few weeks were full of wonder. At six years old I felt that there was less danger in my world. I was beginning to understand that now it was safer to be Jewish. Tarnopol was in ruins but I didn’t mind. They made a fantastic playground, with so many good places for climbing and cubby houses and playing hide-and-seek. The days were getting warmer. With another little girl, I ran in and out, up and down among the blocks of stones wondering what they had looked like before the bombing.

  I knew that Stasia was not my real name and that the name my parents had given me was Jewish. But, strangely, I had forgotten it. The other little girl and I would sit on top of a pile of stones trying out different names to discover which one sounded familiar. Was I Rachel or Ilona or Danka? No, I didn’t recognise any of these. They were not me. I tried so hard to remember, even at night before I fell asleep. But I just could not remember who I really was.

  My Father’s Letter

  21 Kislev, 5703 (30 November, 1942)

  Our dear relatives in America,

  We would need the pen of Job if we attempted to describe a small portion of the bitterness and sorrow of our lives. It seems to me that it is not within the power of a human being to describe to anybody or to himself what we are feeling and this is neither the place nor the time to elaborate on that matter. On the 19th of July, 1942 my father, my teacher and Rabbi, Yitzchak Menachem (Mendel) the son of Shulem of Schachne (a man without peers) passed away, ‘may I be the atonement of his resting’. I doubt if any of the family of my aunt Chaya Weiner from Lamowtza is among the living and it is possible that my daughter and myself are the sole surviving children of my grandfather Solomon of Podkamien. It is my fervent hope that God, may he be blessed, will help us to go forth from slavery to freedom. However, I must be realistic and I see that we are standing on the verge of destruction. I am compelled to hide my precious infant branch, my little daughter, may she live, until the storm passes. It is difficult for me to describe the sorrow and the pain that gnaw at my heart when I see that my bright little daughter cannot understand why she is being taken away from the arms of her parents.

  It is my strong hope that I and my wife will yet be privileged to bring her up but it is possible that in time you my uncles Moses, Aaron, Solomon and Meier, and my aunts, Mandele, Rosele and Rochel will be the saviours and redeemers of my bloodline and the sole surviving relatives of my child on the side of the Braun family. And then you will take my daughter from the gentile family to whom I have given her and bring her up as a daughter of Israel, loyal to her Torah and to her people, and she should know that it is my desire that she build her life in the land of Israel, because who as well as we know that we live on the edge of a volcano in all the lands of exile. My daughter was born on the seventh of Adar, 5698, in Rzeszow, and her name is Ester Hadasa Kahane.

  And I hope that my daughter be privileged, in the same way as were my forefathers the grand Rabbi (Yehuda Loewy Maharal) of Prague and his forebears until the time of King David, to survive the evil decrees and be witness to the raising of the lot of Israel. Please, I also ask you to take an interest in the gentile family who took it upon themselves to conceal my daughter. As I said, I have a strong hope that my wife and I will raise our daughter ourselves and will be privileged to see you with happy hearts. In July of last year we had news from my aunt Chaya and my father sent her a sum of money. From that time we have not heard from her. I am finishing my letter and I and my daughter wish you peace and everything good. My daughter has a sign of recognition: her ears are not of equal size. Your nephew

  Szulem Shachne Kahane

  PS Rosh Chodesh, Sivan, 5703 (4 June, 1943)

  Now it is known to me that my aunts Rebecca and Chaya and all her family were undoubtedly killed on the 24th August, 1942. With reference to my daughter, I again repeat my plea as above and just as I participate in the grief of my community, so may God permit us to see the redemption and comfort of the whole community of Israel.

  Greetings

  Szulem

  Note: This is an English translation of my father’s letter. The original, written in modern Hebrew on what are now two fragile, yellowed pages of thin paper held together with sticky tape, is deposited at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. It was posted to my father’s family in Pittsburgh in the United States, and was forwarded to me decades later. A copy of the original follows.

  III

  Who will take care of me?

  No longer did Sabina need to hide little Ester. She and Yaakov took me back to Zbaraz, where they were told that the only survivors of the extensive Kahane and Braun families were the Einlegers, Gita and Welo. I was taken to their house but they were not there. Since Sabina and Yaakov needed to get home, they left me with a woman who lived with my relatives. She was busy at her sewing machine. She took little notice of me and went on working. I felt very alone. To make myself feel better, I picked up and sorted the scraps of material scattered on the floor beneath her machine.

  When the Einlegers finally returned, Gita recognised me as the child of her cousin Szulem, whom she had loved. From then on, she and Welo started taking care of me. I felt awkward. I knew I did not really belong to them. They were not my mother and father. I called them Ciocia and Wujek, Aunty and Uncle in Polish. At first they thought they would send me to a home for Jewish orphans, children without parents. Aunty and Uncle were poor and were both working to make ends meet, so this was a sensible idea. But I did not want to go there. For the first time in many years, I cried and cried and they, out of kindness, decided to keep me with them.

  So now I had found a new home where I rediscovered my real name, Ester.

  I was not in good shape. I was covered from head to toe with sores and scabs. My scalp was alive with lice. I had to have my head shaved to fight the lice and allow my sores to heal. They did, slowly, but the lice were stubborn. My head was shaved twice more.

  Everyone said that I was wild. I ran round the nearby market-place with a little handkerchief tied around my head. I loved the busy market-place. I admired the glistening pats of butter wrapped in lettuce leaves, the live chickens and roosters, the fat colourful vegetables and fruit. The peasants behind the stalls seemed kind. One large Ukrainian woman noticed that my front tooth was loose. While I stood very still, she took a long piece of string, wrapped it around the tooth, yanked it out and handed it to me. My gums bled a bit but I was secretly pleased. Losing baby teeth meant I was becoming more grown-up.

  Aunty and Uncle’s place consisted of two rooms and a tiny kitchen. The main room, in which I also slept, had old brown furniture: a table, some chairs, a sideboard and my narrow bed. One day when I was on my own, I found a razor blade and used it to trim the edges of all the furniture. I did it very carefully and systematically, with no thought of the terrible damage I was doing to the few pieces of furniture that my new family owned. When they came home, Aunty scolded me but Uncle stayed calm, simply speaking firmly to me about how damaging furniture was forbidden. He did not seem to think that what I had done made me bad or mad.

  My uncle was so patient with me. He tried to teach me to read and do sums. I was a very slow learner, with little facility in repeating the sounds he gave me. He just said: The child needs time. Repeat after me: T and O makes TO. I did what I was told. T and A makes TA. I repeated TA. After a while he would ask So what are T and O? But I would already have forgotten. We would start all over again. Then we repeated it. Never did Uncle lose his gentle tone. He seemed to have so much faith in me.

  He would lay out matches that he had collected to show me how two matches and two more added up to four. I seemed to learn better when dealing with familiar things I could see. It was the sound combinations that were just too hard to remember.

  It delighted me that my new Uncle wa
s kind to me. I came to trust him. I trusted people easily and believed what I was told. I told the truth and thought that everyone else did too. One summer day I went with Aunty to the farm near Zbaraz that had belonged to her mother and father. It was overgrown but full of cherry trees with leaves that shimmered in the sunlight. Aunty was in a good mood. She climbed up a tree laden with cherries and picked some and threw them down for me to put in a bucket. I ran around gathering the cherries as we talked.

  But then everything changed again. My uncle became sick. He had a stone in his kidney and had to go to the big city of Lvov to be examined. Aunty went with him and they needed to be away for several weeks. I stayed with my uncle’s sisters, Aunty Erna and Aunty Susia. Once they had left, I quite liked this new arrangement. I did not miss Aunty and Uncle at all.

  My new aunties lived in a big house beside the River Gniezna. They made a living by baking bread-rolls and selling them on the black market. They baked in their own kitchen and then sold the rolls to anyone who wanted them, rather than working in a government-controlled bakery. The aunties’ bread-rolls were fresh and fragrant and popular so they brought in extra money. The house was always full of the wonderful smell of baking.

  Aunty Erna and Aunty Susia were better off than Gita and Welo. Their house had rooms with big windows through which the sun streamed. I had my own room but spent most of my time outdoors, playing by the river. They were kind to me and I was allowed to play almost all the time. They did not fuss over my learning. I liked wandering along the river and skipping through the grass without anyone disturbing me.

  I would throw stones into the water and watch the ripples spreading in ever-widening circles, each time a little differently, but then dying away. I found this soothing and did it for hours. One day as I was running along the river, the red ribbon from my hair fell into the water. I reached over to get it, overbalanced and fell in.