“YOU WERE FREE,” CATHERINE said. “After all those years of enslavement, you were free.”
“Yes, I was. But freedom is a relative term. The SS had left and I stayed behind, but I was in a barn, in a prison uniform, with wooden shoes. I hadn’t eaten in a day. I wasn’t sure where I was or where I could go. I had no money, no family, and I was scared to death of the German army and the Russian army.
“But, as you say, I was free. I stood up, brushed the hay off my body and took stock of my surroundings. I called out, ‘Anyone here? Chaya?’ But there was no answer.”
“Can I stop you for a moment?” Catherine said. “Have you spoken with Chaya since that day in the barn?”
Lena shook her head.
“How about Muriel?”
“No, I’m afraid not. After the war, as I’m about to tell you, things became chaotic. All of Europe was in shambles. Millions of people were wandering around with no place to go. There was no way of contacting anyone. By the time things settled down, it was several years later. I was in Chicago. I don’t know where Muriel and Chaya went.”
“But I understand there’s a database. You contributed testimony to the Yad Vashem database, didn’t you?”
Lena nodded. “Certainly. I gave them a video statement. They have all my information on file.”
“Isn’t it reasonable to assume that Muriel and Chaya, if they survived, would have done the same, or that others might have provided Yad Vashem with information about them?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I’m a little surprised. Why didn’t you look up Muriel and Chaya? And what about David?”
Lena shrugged. “Life became too complicated and I just wanted to move on. I didn’t want to think about the Holocaust anymore. I wanted to put it all behind me.”
“I hate to be so lawyery, but that’s not entirely true. You voluntarily sat for a video statement with Yad Vashem after the Holocaust. You’ve been very active in survivor organizations for years. You were a leader in the protest against the Neo-Nazis’ plan to march in Skokie, Illinois, in 1978, holding a placard on the street. You didn’t exactly move on.”
“How did you know about Skokie?”
“Liam. He’s pretty damn good at what he does.”
Lena sat for a moment biting on her bottom lip. “Well, the answer is I didn’t search for Muriel or Chaya.”
“What about David?”
“That’s a different story. May I just proceed with my narrative now?”
Catherine picked up her notepad. “Of course. Please do.”
“Everyone had left. I peeked out of the door of the barn. There wasn’t a soul in sight. I saw a farmhouse a few hundred yards away, but I’d been there and done that with a woman that turned me in. I wasn’t about to trust some stranger again and end up in a Nazi truck. I knew what direction the march had gone—west, into Czechoslovakia, running away from the Russians, who were coming from the east. I knew where Oświęcim was on the map. It was almost due east, and from there Chrzanów was only thirteen miles northeast. I knew I would have to circle around Auschwitz, going straight north from where I was and then east. I didn’t want to take a chance on going anywhere near Auschwitz again, so I headed north.
“The road was empty. I saw no pedestrians or wagons, which was understandable because I was in the middle of a battle zone and no civilian in his right mind would be out and about. Rapid bursts of machine gun fire filled the air to the west. I was pretty sure the next town, Kobiór, was about three miles due north, but that’s not where the road went. It went west toward the Nazis. Standing between Kobiór and me was a thick forest. There were no trails and the snow was fresh, but I had no choice. I would go north through the woods.
“I was exhausted, famished and thirsty. I tried to melt the snow in my hands and drink it, but it was too cold and the snow was too dry. In many places the snow was knee deep and, underneath my smock and coat, my legs were bare. My lower extremities were frozen.
“I talked to myself in the third person. ‘Keep moving, Lena. You can do it. One step after the next. Keep moving, Lena. Take another step. One more step. You’re a survivor.’ Encouraging words, but in truth, I didn’t have much left.
“Finally, I exited the forest and when I did, I ran smack into the Soviet brigade. I came around a tree and found myself staring straight into the barrel of a cannon on a Russian T-25 tank. My legs wobbled and I passed out.
“The next thing I knew I was lying in a booth in a Kobiór coffee shop. A Russian soldier and a woman in a bakery apron were standing over me. An olive-green Russian jeep with a white star on its hood was sitting by the curb. The woman tried to offer me a cup of hot tea.
“‘Are you okay, honey?’
“‘How did I get here?’
“The Russian soldier raised his hand. I sat up, took a sip of tea and a bite of cookie. Oh my God, a cookie. My taste buds didn’t know what to think. How long had it been?
“‘You were in the camp? The very large one to the south?’ the soldier asked. I nodded. ‘You’re very brave,’ he said, and he kissed me on the forehead. ‘My troops have now taken the camp and freed a few thousand of your people. It was just the same as we saw at Majdanek.’ He shook his head. ‘Where will you go now?’
“I shrugged. ‘Chrzanów, I guess. That’s my home. Are there any Nazis still there?’
“He shook his head and smiled. ‘There are no more Nazis in Poland. They ran like rats.’
“‘Thank you for bringing me here. I don’t think I could have taken another step.’ I started to get up. ‘I better be going now.’
“The shop owner looked at my body of skin and bones, shook her head and wagged her finger. ‘You sit right here. Let me get you some food and dry clothes.’
“I didn’t know how to respond. For four years I struggled, I fought just to subsist through the meanest of human conditions, under the boot of the most sadistic, savage monsters the earth had ever known. No one cared whether I lived or died. Actually, they hoped I would die. And now a total stranger was insisting that I accept her caring offer to give me nourishment and warm clothes. I couldn’t hold it together. I fell apart.
“I didn’t know who to hug first. It had been such a long time. The soldier—his name was Yuri—said he had to leave; he had a war to fight. He was proud to have helped me. The bakery shop owner—her name was Alicja—brought me hot pierogies and steamed vegetables. She told me she had a room over the shop. I could stay there as long as I wanted. How do you repay such kindness? She didn’t want anything. She was repaid by the opportunity to do good. She didn’t care if I was Jewish. I was a human in need.
“In the little apartment upstairs there was a bathtub. I hadn’t had a bath for four years. Alicja filled the tub with hot water and laid out a sweater, a long wool skirt, boots and warm socks. That night I slept on a feather bed for the first time since the Nazis broke into my home and seized my family. You can’t imagine what that felt like. When I woke up the next morning, it took a while for me to realize that I hadn’t died and gone to heaven.
“I dressed and walked down the stairs into the bakery, where Alicja dished up a hot breakfast. My stomach had shrunk, so I couldn’t eat much. But it was delicious. Afterward, I took a cup of coffee and walked outside to look at the market square. The sun was shining and reflecting off the freshly fallen snow. The world was so bright, I had to squint. The air was fresh and smelled so clean. There were no chimneys, no Germans, no roll calls, no marches. No SS with rifles. People strolled through the snow with their children, going anywhere they pleased, without fear.
“I stayed with Alicja and accepted her generous care. Finally, on the sixth day at breakfast, when I had regained some of my strength, I said, ‘I have to get back to my home. I am forever grateful to you, but I need to know if anyone survived.’ Maybe some of my friends had returned. Maybe David had returned. God, I longed to see David. Alicja arranged for her neighbor to take me back to Chrzanów. She gave me a warm coat and a duffel that she filled with rolls, fruit, sausages and a bottle of milk. I promised to come back and visit.
“Alicja’s friend dropped me at the Chrzanów town square and I looked around trying to assimilate the present. I wasn’t wearing an armband, I had no papers and I wasn’t subject to arrest. So different from the last time I stood in that spot, when there was a megaphone shouting commands and there were lines forming to march groups to the railroad tracks and we were holding our babies. The Nazis were gone, as was more than half of my town. But I was free and I had returned.
“A few of the shops had reopened, but the square was quiet. I don’t know how to explain it to you, but as I stood there looking at my town, now free of Germans, I didn’t see the memories of my childhood, of the happy, bustling village I knew. I didn’t see my classmates heading home from school. I didn’t see my friends and myself running through the square, or eating ice cream in the summertime. I didn’t see my parents, or Milosz, or Karolina or any of the things I remembered from my childhood. The square only held visions of SS officers sitting in cafes and bars, laughing and drinking, while Jews with their heads down quietly tried to slip by without abuse. My mind saw German officers stopping and bullying elderly men. I saw me, pushing a cartload of coats.
“I walked slowly northeast to where the ghetto once stood. The Shop was an empty shell. Most of the ghetto buildings had been torn down or bulldozed, presumably when the Nazis cleared it out in the spring of 1943. I returned to the building where Yossi had his basement apartment. Half of the building had been obliterated, most likely by a tank, and it lay open like a gaping wound. What remained was mostly rubble—bricks and twisted metal—but I was able to pull some bricks away, find the entrance and walk down the stairs to the furnace room. There, still sitting on the floor, were the two drawers we used for baby cribs. Soft wool blankets still lined the drawers. I sat on the mat that had been my bed and cried until I had no more tears.
“I rose from the mat and reached behind the furnace. There, where I had hidden it in the dark corner in 1943, was Milosz’s shoe. I kissed it and put it in my duffel. I still had my piece of Milosz. When I reached into the bag, I saw that Alicja had not only given me food and extra clothes, she had generously given me money. Taking stock of where I was and what had happened, I wondered why I was chosen to be the lucky one. The only survivor. I certainly did not feel worthy.
“It was still late in January, but the day was sunny and relatively warm, and I set out to see what was left of Chrzanów. As you might expect, my steps led me directly to 1403 Kościuszko, my parents’ house.”
Gladys poked her head in the conference room door, interrupted Lena and said, “Cat, your other is here.”
Catherine glanced over at Lena and said, “Gladys refuses to call him my significant other or my husband. He’s just my other. Gladys and Liam are engaged in eternal banter. Send him back, Gladys.”
Liam walked into the room, kissed his wife, shook Lena’s hand and said, “I just stopped by on my way to the airport. I wanted to tell you I have a line on Siegfried Schultz. The Nazi army records list his address in Scharmassing, Germany.”
“That was the town,” Lena said. “I can’t remember the street, but the paper we pinned on the babies gave Siegfried’s mother’s address in Scharmassing.”
“Dorfstrasse is the name of the street. It’s about sixty miles north of the Munich airport.”
“Are you going there?”
Liam nodded. “I’m going there after I go to Jerusalem. I don’t expect to meet up with Siegfried, but if those babies made their way into Germany, I might be able to find out something.”
Lena shook her head. “No wonder Ben raved about you two.”
“One more thing,” Liam said. “The babies were tossed into the wheat fields on the way from Chrzanów to Gross-Rosen, correct?”
Lena nodded.
“And as I remember the story, the train was moving slowly, right?”
Lena nodded again. “Very slowly. We had just pulled out of a side track and were starting up again.”
“Can you estimate how far you’d gone on your journey from Chrzanów to Gross-Rosen?”
Lena shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Think hard, Lena. Had you gone halfway?”
“Yes, more than halfway. We had gone a day and a night, we had that confrontation with the woman, Karolina sat and stared into space for quite a while and then we dressed the babies. Maybe two-thirds of the way.”
“Okay. Good work. I’ll see you guys in a few days.” Liam left and closed the door.
“Do you think he’ll find them?” Lena said excitedly.
“He’s really good at what he does. Nobody better.”