7 Cilka’s Story—Listening to History

When The Tattooist of Auschwitz was published, I began to receive letters from all over the world. People wrote, telling me how much they loved Lale and Gita’s story, but many of them also asked the question: “What happened to Cilka?” People wanted to know and I wanted to tell them. I needed to keep my promise to Lale to write Cilka Klein’s story—the novel that became Cilka’s Journey.

I had done my research: I had spoken to survivors who knew Cilka in Birkenau and I had also engaged a professional researcher in Moscow to find all the documents and information she could about Vorkuta Gulag, the “corrective labor camp” Cilka was sent to at the end of the war. What I didn’t have were details of Cilka’s life in Slovakia, both before Auschwitz and after her release from Siberia. I had Lale’s own testimony and my friendship with him to inform my story of his and Gita’s lives; I only had other people’s recollections about Cilka. I wanted to get to know her better. I wanted to find out where she was from, to walk where she would have walked. I needed to listen to her history firsthand.

I had visited Slovakia on several occasions. My wonderful researchers—no, friends—from Lale’s hometown of Krompachy had arranged people for me to meet, places to visit, documents to look at in my search to learn all I could about the girl called Cilka. Stopping off in London, I was joined by my publisher, Margaret, and together, we flew into Kosice.

Picked up by the mayor of Krompachy’s driver, Peter, we were driven to the town hall at Krompachy to be met by the mayor, deputy mayor, and the two women who had been acting on my behalf, trying to uncover details of Cilka. Anna, Krompachy’s historian, a woman well into her seventies, but with the agility and enthusiasm of someone much younger, greeted me with a warm embrace. We had first met in Auschwitz over a year earlier. She and twenty-five others from Lale’s hometown traveled there when they heard I was to attend the March of the Living, but that’s another story. With Anna was Lenka, her daughter-in-law, a beautiful young woman who had lived in Ireland for fifteen years. Listening to her speak both English and Slovakian with the most beautiful Irish accent was a delight.

In the mayor’s office, Margaret was introduced to Slivovitz. I had met the plum brandy before, we were old friends now—and I both feared and looked forward to being reacquainted. The first sip, as always, seared my throat, took my breath away, but tasted so much better as the shot was then swallowed the way it was meant to be—in one gulp! Coffee and cake were also on offer and countered some of the effects of the alcohol. We all went for a walk around the town, stopping off at the Holocaust memorial we had jointly pledged to fund. From there it was on to a local restaurant, where Margaret was introduced to Slovakian cuisine.

Our friend Slivovitz had accompanied us to eat.

Driven back to Kosice that night, I fell asleep easily.

The next morning, we were picked up by Peter, Anna, and Lenka. We knew the name of the town where Cilka was born: Sabinov. We also knew the name of the town where she and her family were taken from on their fateful journey to Auschwitz: Bardejov.

Lenka had done an amazing job in gaining access to documents relating to Cilka’s birth details. From Holocaust databases, we had found an entry for her and we were certain we had identified her father and a sister. Only by seeing her birth record could we be certain of her family connections, though.

At the town hall in Sabinov, we left Peter to park the car, and Lenka, Anna, Margaret, and I ventured in. Down this corridor, up another, around several corners, we eventually knocked on the door of the bureaucrat designated to show us Cilka’s birth record. She sat behind a large desk, two chairs on the other side. In front of her was a large bound ledger with a beautiful aged leather cover. Lenka and I sat down in the two seats as she turned the book around to show us the entry we sought. The first thing that struck me was the large sheets of white paper covering up the entries above and below Cilka’s. I accepted the need for privacy of the others whose names appeared on the page—their privacy was complete with me, as I could not read a word of Slovakian.

Anna and Margaret leaned over our shoulders as Lenka read out the details and I looked on in wonder. My request to bring out my mobile phone and take a picture was quickly rebuffed. Lenka read out the details while Anna wrote them down—we had been given permission to do this:

17th March 1926

Cecilia [Cilka is a diminutive for Cecilia]

Girl

Father Mikulas Klein—Jew—28 years

Mother Fani Blech—Jew—22 years

Beautiful copperplate handwriting recorded the intimate details of Cilka’s birth. Immediately, we recognized her father’s name as being the person in the databases we had found. Now we learned her mother’s name was Fani. Both their dates of birth were recorded, and her father’s nationality was listed as Hungarian. At the far end of the record something had been written in another hand, another pen—this we ignored initially as we took in the information before us.

With Lenka translating, we told the bureaucrat about Cilka and the book I was writing. Initially, she had been rather frosty, but then she started asking questions, becoming engaged in the story of Cilka. When she asked us if we would like to see if she could find the record of Cilka’s parents’ marriage, a chorus of “Yes, please” resounded in the room. She only had to go to the cupboard on a far wall to look for the book of marriages that would have the records around the time we presumed Mikulas and Fani had married.

As she turned to the cupboards behind her, I quickly moved the white pieces of paper covering the other entries aside. Back and forward, I flicked pages, scanning each one, looking to see if any other birth record had anything added to the original entry as Cilka’s had. But I saw none. I asked Lenka to read out the additional entry and was glad I was sitting down when she did so: the notation recorded that Cecilia Klein had presented to this office in Sabinov in 1958 a document from the government in Bratislava declaring her to be a citizen of the State of Czechoslovakia.

Up until this moment I had been bothered by a discrepancy we had identified in the databases recording survivors and victims of the Holocaust. Cilka had been listed as “Murdered in Auschwitz,” something which I knew from Lale was not true. She had survived both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Vorkuta Gulag and had returned and lived the rest of her life in Kosice, Slovakia. Cilka and Gita stayed in touch after they moved to Australia and Gita had visited Cilka on more than one occasion when she made a trip back to Slovakia with their son, Gary. But here was actual written proof that she had survived. Cilka had made the effort to come to the town where she was born and have her birth record amended. Why would she have done this, we wondered. Perhaps it was because she needed to prove her identity in order to either get a job or get married—we know she did both.

“I’ve found it!” the bureaucrat said and she lifted another large book onto the desk, turning it around for us to look at. This time she was relaxed, not bothering to cover up other names, sharing in our excitement.

What we read was this: on June 10, 1919, Mikulas Klein married Cecilia Blech—Cecilia, not Fani, who was listed as Cilka’s mother. Then the ever-diligent Margaret made a comment regarding the date of their marriage and the date of Cilka’s birth: there was a seven-year gap. While today, you wouldn’t question a couple not starting a family for seven years after their marriage, it seemed unusual for the early twentieth century. She asked the bureaucrat if we could look back through the birth records to see if we could find any other children born to Mikulas and Fani.

On August 23, 1924, Magdalena had been born to the couple. Mikulas had proudly signed the book registering his newborn daughter. We continued to turn the pages. On December 28, 1921, Olga was born to Mikulas, but here, the mother’s name was given as Cecilia. This was the first time Mikulas had proudly registered his firstborn daughter.

While excited to learn that Cilka had two older sisters, we were perplexed as to why the name Cecilia was registered as the mother of Olga, but it was switched to Fani for Magdalena and Cilka. We went back and looked at Cilka’s record and there we saw it was not Mikulas who had registered her, but her grandmother, Roza Weisz. We subsequently learned that Mikulas’s first wife, Cecilia, died four months after giving birth to Olga. He then married Cecilia’s sister Fani, the mother of Magdalena and Cilka—this would have been a regular occurrence in those times. We can only wonder why Cilka’s grandmother registered her birth, but she gave this grandchild the name of her dead daughter.

The pieces of the jigsaw were fitting together.

Next stop, Bardejov, where we knew the family had moved at some point after Cilka’s birth and from where we knew they boarded a train bound for Auschwitz. “It’s just an hour away,” Lenka told Margaret and me when we asked how long it would take to get there. The eastern Slovakian towns of Krompachy, Sabinov, Bardejov, and Vranov—all towns I am now familiar with—are only an hour away from Kosice and an hour away from each other.

Once again, Lenka had worked her magic and the education authorities in Bardejov had agreed we could see Cilka’s last two years’ school records. Again, we entered and encountered a suspicious bureaucrat clutching a large journal. Our identifications were requested, shown, taken away, and I presume copied. Only then was the book put down and opened for us to see.

Once again, a bureaucrat got caught up in the story of Cilka and before we knew it, she was looking through the book to find the school reports of Magdalena and Olga. Tentatively, I asked if I could photograph the reports and this time I was given permission. Margaret and I reached for our phones and clicked away. Lenka and Anna translated the reports. We learned so much: a bright girl, Cilka excelled at gymnastics and mathematics. Their religion was noted—Israelites. Mikulas’s occupation was given as driver and handyman.

Leaving the building, back out into the heat and bright sunshine, we only had to walk a few hundred meters down the same street to stand outside the home Cilka and her family lived in—until the day they didn’t.

As we walked toward the address, the street was empty, probably because it was extremely hot, and no sane person should have been outside. As we approached the house, we could hear music coming from a radio of some kind, accompanied by voices singing along.

I deliberately chose to approach the house from the opposite side of the street, wanting to take in the building in its entirety: see its roof, the outline of the windows and doors. From the other side of the road I was able to see the singers—two workmen replacing timber in the house next to Cilka’s. Anna whispered that they were singing a Ukrainian folk song. She reminded us we were not far from the Ukrainian border and that people in Bardejov would speak that language along with Hungarian and possibly Polish. Once again, I was embarrassed at my lack of languages. I so admired my multilingual companions. I also finally understood how Cilka would have managed in Vorkuta—she would have had a good working knowledge of Russian.

I took in Cilka’s house, a soft pastel-green cottage with white-framed windows and door, proudly maintained, opening directly onto the cobbled street. Above the front door two dormer windows provided the eyes for the occupants to look down on the street. I wondered if one of these had been Cilka’s bedroom. Along from the front door double wooden doors were set back from the street. These would have led to the courtyard behind the house.

I touched the door leading into the house. A new door, it would not have been the door Cilka and her family opened to enter the sanctuary that was home to them. Did they hold out hope that one day they would return?

I think Cilka did.

The walk to the synagogue was energy-sapping in the heat with no shade en route. We were met by a member of the Bardejov Jewish Preservation Committee. He would be showing us the old and new (1950s) synagogue. As we walked toward the small, simple new building, we heard beautiful, haunting music coming from within. We walked inside, up to the doors leading into the prayer room, then stopped at the entrance, frozen as the music wrapped itself around us and we gazed upon a choir of some twenty young boys and girls with an accompanying quartet, singing with the purest voices that reverberated off the walls and landed deep within my chest.

Instinctively, both Margaret and I reached out to each other, our hands meeting, our eyes fixed on the vision in front of us. I felt the tears slowly roll down my cheeks. When the song was finished, I watched as Margaret wiped tears from her eyes. Lenka and Anna embraced us as the emotion of what we had stumbled on took effect. They were singing a Slovakian love song, Anna told us.

We stayed to hear one more song, ignored by the musicians. Our guide was wanting to move us on and so we followed him upstairs to a small gallery area. Here, we were shown photographs, paintings done by small children—the only remnants of a Jewish community in Bardejov prior to 1942.

Outside, we took the ten or so steps that connected us to the old synagogue. I was expecting to find it dark inside but on opening the door, we were greeted by blinding light. Part of the roof was missing, and the summer sun shone down into the ruins. Part of the floor was also missing, the dirt visible below the broken boards that remained. Pushed into one corner stood a few remaining pews. We looked up to the balcony where Cilka, her mother, and her sisters would have sat while her father prayed below. A shattered building marking shattered lives, yet it still held the spiritual power once offered to many.

There was one more place to visit. Behind a locked gate we entered a garden with green grass, colorful flowers, and a marble wall. We walked along the wall looking for the names we hoped we wouldn’t find, but we did. Here were listed the names of the Jewish people from Bardejov who did not survive the Holocaust. Here, we found the names of Cilka, her two sisters, and her father. Like the Holocaust databases we have searched, Cilka is listed as not having survived. There was no record of her mother and we have been unable to ascertain what became of her. Lale told me Cilka was the only member of her immediate family to survive the Holocaust, that her father was sent to the gas chamber immediately on arriving at Auschwitz and her sisters and mother died later. Other testimonies I have read and listened to about Cilka confirm this.

As we were driven by Peter the one hour back to our hotel in Kosice, Margaret and I said very little. We were each lost in thought as we processed all we had learned, all we had seen. I struggled to separate my elation at having discovered something of Cilka’s early life from my overwhelming sense of grief for the lives lost and the pain and trauma endured by so many for so long. I had stood outside a beautiful home, but its beauty was tarnished by knowing what had happened to its rightful owners.

There was one last thing to do on that trip before it was time to fly back to Australia. I had been asked by the owner of a bookstore in Kosice if I could talk to some locals one afternoon in his store. I said yes and over fifty people turned up and squeezed into the lovely interior. The translator struggled at times, so people in the audience began to help him and it became one big, loud conversation.

I was talking about Lale’s story; Cilka’s was still a work in progress. As I ended my talk, I told them I was in Kosice researching my next book, Cilka’s Journey. An elderly man sitting midway in the crowd put his hand up and asked, “Is it about Cecilia Kovacova?” (He used her married name.) I pounced on him, said yes, it was, and did he know her? He told me he was her neighbor and that he would like to speak to me about her.

We sat on stools—Michael, Margaret, the translator, and me. Michael, a tiny, stooped gentleman with fierce blue eyes burning with life, sat down with me. He told me about living in the same apartment building as Cilka for many decades; how they were the only Jewish people in the building. He told me how he and Cilka acknowledged each other as fellow survivors, but in secret—the Holocaust was not to be discussed under Communism. He wanted us to hear his story: he was a hidden child, surviving the Holocaust by being passed from family to family in the nearby Tatra Mountains. He and Cilka had talked about visiting Israel together, but neither of them ever did. It was an enormous privilege to meet him and hear his story.

I use the words “I am so humbled” often. That’s because I am truly humbled to have been able to tell the stories I have, to have met and spoken with so many people around the world. I hope I have honored Cilka in telling her story, as I promised Lale I would. I am humbled to have had that privilege.