I DECIDED TO GO home and started walking through the square toward Kościuszko Street. When I was a child, Jews owned most of the stores in the square. We were shopkeepers. When the Nazis invaded, they took the stores away from us and gave most of them to Gentiles. Now, as I walked through the market square, many of those stores were shuttered.
“I continued down the residential streets and noticed that many of the houses were vacant as well. It felt like Chrzanów had been ravaged. I guess it had. Sixteen thousand Jews had been killed or transported out of Chrzanów. More than half the population was gone. The Nazis who had confiscated our homes, like Colonel Müller, were also gone.
“I stood in front of my house wondering if I wanted to go inside. The way the Müllers had changed my house had upset me so much when I was bringing the reports to the colonel. I didn’t want to walk in and see Else’s ghost sitting on the couch, her nose in the air, my mother’s bracelet on her arm. I wanted to remember my home the way it was when I lived there.
“Nevertheless, I walked up to the door. It occurred to me that the last time I stood here I was begging the colonel to save the babies. So long ago. Something urged me to just open the door and go inside. If the house were vacant, could I move in? Could I live here again?
“I tried the door, but it was locked. I knocked. No one answered. I walked around to the back door and it was locked as well. I looked for a window to open, but it was winter and they were shut. I peered in through the living room windows and was about to leave when the front door opened and a man said, ‘What are you doing here?’
“‘I should ask what you are doing here. This is my house.’
“‘To hell with you. I bought it, I paid good money for it, now get out of here.’
“‘Who did you pay money to? No one had the right to sell my house to you. This house belongs to my father, Captain Scheinman.’
“The man stormed belligerently into the yard. ‘Yeah, well, it’s mine now. Jews forfeited their property. That was the German law. Since we were part of Germany, it was all legal. I bought it, so it’s mine. Now leave or I’ll get my gun.’
“I stood my ground. ‘You don’t have a gun, the Nazis took all the guns. Jewish forfeiture was an illegal act. And I don’t believe you paid anybody. You’re a squatter.’
“‘Look, lady, whoever you are, my family is now living in this house. My wife and my three kids. And we’re not moving. I’m not giving it to you. Since you’re obviously Jewish, why do you want to be here? There are no Jews in Chrzanów anymore.’
“‘Well, there’s at least one now.’
“He just shook his head. ‘Just go away. I’m not moving, and no Polish authority will force me to move.’ He went back into the house and locked the door. He was probably right. What was I going to do?
“Closer to the square there were several empty houses. I was cold and I entered one to sit down and eat my lunch. The house was furnished but abandoned. I surmised that some SS officer or ranking German soldier had been living in the house when the Russians approached and left in a hurry. I had just criticized a man for being a squatter in my house, but that’s what I was about to do, except if the real owner showed up, I would have gladly returned the house to him. Unfortunately, very few Chrzanów Jews lived to come back. That was the sad truth.
“I unwrapped some of the sausage Alicja had packed for me and drank some of my milk. Then I headed back to the square to see if any of my friends had returned. In front of the bakery, I saw Frank Wolczinski, a Catholic classmate who I knew from my short tenure in the public high school. He told me that a few Jewish residents were starting to straggle back and that Eva Fishman had returned. She was two years older, and a friend from the Kraków Gymnasium. Frank offered to buy me a beer and we went into the bar.
“He asked me to tell him where I had been for the last four years and I just shook my head. ‘I don’t think I could and you don’t want to know.’
“He nodded. ‘I heard some things. I hoped that they weren’t true. Listen, some of the younger crowd gathers at the Kryjówka Bar each night after ten. Will you join me tonight? I’ll buy?’ It was an offer I gladly accepted.
“I asked him if he’d heard anything about David or any more of the Jewish students. He shook his head. Only Eva. He gave me her address and told me he’d see me later at the Kryjówka.
“I tracked Eva down later that afternoon. I had always known her as a stocky girl, but she’d lost a lot of weight and her dress hung on her like she was a wire hanger. We briefly shared our experiences. She had been at a Gross-Rosen sub-camp as well, an underground camp in northern Poland that made munitions. She saw a few Chrzanów people there, but then she said that most everyone had been tortured and killed, and she broke into tears. She didn’t know anything about David. I stayed a little while longer and went back to my new home.
“February came, and while it was quiet in Chrzanów, the war wasn’t over by any means. We’d see and hear planes flying over Chrzanów every day. The Nazis were gone from our area, but they were hunkering down in Germany, hoping for the development of Hitler’s super-weapon. Blasts from Russian bombs continued west of us. Russian troops would come through Chrzanów on their way into Germany. Sometimes they were cordial, but we encountered plenty of boisterous, rude and even brutal Russian soldiers.
“The Russians didn’t give a damn if we were Jewish or Christian, they would just occupy the town for a few days, bully their way around and continue on their military advance into Germany. On the one hand, you could get angry at the belligerent way they made their presence known, but on the other hand, they were our liberators. Still, reports of sexual abuse circulated among the women and we knew not to go out alone, only in groups.
“I tried to look for a job, but there wasn’t anything available in Chrzanów. I was frugal with my food and my money, so for the time being, I was okay. Through March and into April, stragglers would return from the camps, the lucky ones, with stories that no one wanted to tell and no one wanted to hear. Bit by bit, the Jewish population increased, but only minimally.
“Sometime in late April, I was invited to a wedding. Sarah Sternberg was getting married to a man she met in the Płaszów camp outside of Kraków. His ears had been boxed, and for all intents and purposes, he was deaf. The ceremony and reception were held at one of the Chrzanów synagogues. During the occupation, the Nazis had used the synagogue as an arms depot. Although battered and defaced, the synagogue was being restored and the hundred or so Jews that had returned to Chrzanów were trying to reconstruct a Jewish community.
“A rabbi came in from Kraków and the families had built a chuppah, which they had decorated with early spring flowers. Our little community gathered for what was to be the first Jewish ceremony since the Nazi occupation. It felt good to openly celebrate such a positive, affirming event. I went with a group of girls and was standing with a glass of wine when someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Hey, spunky one.’
“I spun around and there he was. David Woodward. I couldn’t believe it and I threw my arms around him and cried like a baby.”
“Did you say Woodward?”
“Of course. Didn’t you know? I married David.”
Catherine was shocked and dropped her pen. “No, you never said your husband’s name was David. Believe me, I’d have picked up on that. The business—it was called D. Morris Woodward Investments.”
“Right. David Morris Woodward. David called the business D. Morris Woodward because he liked the way it sounded, and Morris was also his father’s name.”
Catherine shook her head. “I never would have thought. You are so full of surprises.”
Lena smiled mischievously. “Oh, you have no idea. David and I reconnected at Sarah Sternberg’s wedding. He had lost a lot of weight, like the rest of us, and there were wrinkles on his face that hadn’t been there before. His left arm was a little misshapen from a beating he received. As with many of us, he had scars that were visible and scars that were not.
“The years had taken away some of his boyish exuberance, but not his spirit. Or his smile. His eyes were as blue and as kind as ever. He stood there in a dark blue sport coat with an open collar shirt and gray slacks, neatly pressed. And I was just as entranced as I had ever been. Maybe more so.
“‘You made it,’ he said. ‘I always knew you would.’
“‘Oh, my God, I’ve asked everyone about you. Everywhere I went. Colonel Müller said you were transferred to Gross-Rosen, and when I was sent there, I thought I’d join up with you, but I was immediately shipped out to Parschnitz. I worked in the textile factory and I figured you might be there too, but I never saw you and no one had heard of you. Were you in Czechoslovakia?’
“David shook his head. ‘I was in the Neusalz sub-camp in western Poland, running a textile mill. I had hoped they would send you there, but Neusalz was a terrible place.’
“‘Let’s not talk about the camps. Only the future.’
“He looked at me and I could see water in his eyes and he said, ‘All these months, all these years, I dreamed we’d meet again and we would talk about our future.’ With that, David put his arm around me, raised his glass and his voice and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I invite you to another wedding. In one month, in this synagogue, God willing, Lena Scheinman and I will be married.’
“I was floored. People were clapping and cheering. I looked at David and said, ‘You didn’t ask me to marry you and I didn’t say yes.’
“‘Will you marry me, Lena Scheinman?’
“‘Oh, yes!’
“The wedding was planned for Sunday, May 13, 1945. In the interim, on May seventh, Germany surrendered and the war was officially over.”
“That’s such a coincidence,” Catherine said. “That’s my due date. May thirteenth.”
“It’s getting close now, isn’t it?”
Catherine smiled and nodded. “He’s an active little guy. So, you married David on May thirteenth?”
“There were celebrations in Chrzanów all through the month of May, including the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. David Woodward. All the survivors, those who had made it back to Chrzanów, attended. Alicja came from Kobiór. It was a lovely May night and our wedding was outside under the stars. For us on that night, the Holocaust had never existed.
“We settled into the little house that I had occupied and tried, with the others, to rejuvenate our Jewish community. But it was not to be. The sad fact was that the Chrzanów Jews had been slaughtered. Eliminated. Those few that had survived and returned found the town unrecognizable. What was left of a once-vibrant Chrzanów was now a handful of townsfolk, battered and bruised by the war. Chrzanów’s economy had been decimated. The Russians were now in command and taking over the town. Administrators had been appointed. Poland would be Communist.”
Catherine closed her notebook. “Enough for today, Lena. Can we pick up next week?”
“Catherine, I’d like you to come to my apartment next Tuesday. There’s something I’d like you to see.”