EVENTS JULY 27, 1942. ENTRY DITTO. FROM RACHEL APT. Rachel says her blood froze. She stood at the open window, watching. She had just been thinking, as she had washed and put away the pans from the noonday broth, how lucky little David was to be in this sheltered place, the Rukner Home. Games, lessons, handicrafts, story-telling, lullabies. Animal pictures, hobbyhorses, blocks. It was an atmosphere of healthy, normal, growing children, and the only sadnesses were the tear-spattering, transitory squalls of the very young. Here, so far as Rachel had been able to see, there was not even a whisper of the events in the rest of the ghetto…unless, perhaps, on the long walks they took each morning….
She says she had been pleased with little David’s behavior. He is one of the biggest children, yet he is never a bully. He has, in fact, taken some of the younger ones under his wing—a big-eared sprite, Nechemiah, who seems incapable of doing anything for himself; Benjamin, a boy who under other circumstances would have been awfully fat, who even here is soft-textured, clumsy, and the goat of many a tease; and Gershon, thin and hard as a nail, for which he is nicknamed. These three follow David everywhere, worship him, slave for him; and he in turn protects them. These children, and others, have apparently given their hearts to Rachel, and have taken hers in exchange. Rachel proudly reports to me that “Colonel” Rukner, the benign and tireless superintendent, has told her that the children, especially the smaller boys, have never accepted a “mother” so immediately and so warmly. As she had dried the pans, this afternoon, Rachel had sung happily:
Play me a non-Aryan dance:
A waltz non-Aryan,
Non-barbarian…
and once she had whirled across the kitchen floor with a saucepan, as if dancing with it. She had stacked away the last tin bowls on the high shelf in the pantry, standing on tiptoe to do it; had untied her apron and hung it on its hook on the back of the kitchen door; had smoothed her uniform; and had walked out, happy and expectant, to help with the supervision of afternoon games. The children would be up from their naps by this time, she had decided, and out in the decorated courtyard. She had walked through the refectory to the library and there—at the first window giving out onto the courtyard—she had seen it:
The children were in the sunny part of the courtyard; none of the other four “mothers” was with them, for some reason. At one end, against the wall, stood David, looking imperious, chesty, military; he held a short stick in his right hand and tapped it, in the manner of an impatient officer with a riding crop, against the side of his leg. His three followers were ranged, most of the time, beside him. Soft Benjamin, pulling at a nonexistent beard and grotesquely dignified, was apparently playing the part of a Jewish official. All the other children were in a line up the middle of the courtyard, facing David, and gathered into mock-tearful groups, moving slowly forward. From time to time Nechemiah and Gershon the Nail ran down the line, slapping and viciously shoving the docile children there. David, with an unutterably cruel and delighted face, was shouting:
—— Right…left…left…right….Send that bunch to the Umschlagplatz, Nechemiah….Get me some more Jews!…Left…left…right….
Rachel ran through the library, into the hall, and outdoors. She cried:
—— Children! Children!
The “selection” dissolved and the children crowded around Rachel. David hung back. Those nearest Rachel shouted to her about their new game. They had learned it from a new boy, Zwi, whose mother and father had been resettled just two days before. A little girl, Aneta, barely four years old, waited gravely to get Rachel’s ear, then said, with tremendous pride—as if nothing finer could happen to anyone:
—— Dovidl chose me for the Umschagpatz!
Rachel, pulling as many of the squirming children as her arms could encompass to her aching breast: —— My darlings, my darlings!
But the children were not keyed to tragic feelings. They pushed away from Rachel. Gershon the Nail shouted:
—— Dovidl! Dovidl! Let’s play that again. That was fun!
EVENTS AUGUST 3, 1942. ENTRY DITTO. FROM STEFAN MAZUR. It was not altogether by chance that Stefan got the warning to Rachel. Stefan and his companions in the Jewish police station on Ogrodowa Street spend their time waiting for assignments in what they call the Ready Room. This is a large room on the second floor of the station, and it combines the features of office and lounge. There are coat hooks along two walls, with the initials of policemen burnt with a poker into small wooden signs a Dove the hooks: here the men hang their “uniforms”—belts, hats, truncheons—while they are off duty. Benches are pushed against all four walls. There are some large filing cases and a desk for the duty policeman in one corner. In the center of the room, a round table covered with green cloth is surrounded by a number of ancient, crackly, inappropriate rattan-and-reed chairs.
Now, the convenience of this Ready Room is that it is next to the office of the district commandant, and the convenience of the district commandant is that he has enough voice for three men. As orders are telephoned to him usually a day in advance, and as he has the habit of shouting them back for confirmation, it is often possible for Stefan and his companions to learn ahead of time what has to be done. The young policemen lounging and joking in the Ready Room have a habit of keeping one ear tuned to the commandant’s shouts.
Thus it was that Stefan, while waiting to be sent out on a call this morning, heard the commandant use in passing a word that sounded like Rukner. Stefan was not certain of this, as a friend of his named Vilshinsky was at the time telling a story; it was an insubstantial clue, but it was enough for Stefan. A quarter of an hour later, he was sent out with a man named Fakel on call. He persuaded Fakel to go around by way of Krochmalna Street, and he ran into the Rukner Home, found Rachel, and hastily whispered to her all that he knew — that he thought he had heard the commandant say a word that sounded like Rukner in a telephone conversation at headquarters; he had no idea what it meant if that was what he had heard. [FROM RACHEL APT.] This was enough for Rachel, too. She took David up to his dormitory, changed him from his uniform to his own clothes, out of his locker—they were too small for him; his wrists and ankles were partly covered sticks—then went for her own street dress, and, speaking only to one of the other mothers (she lied: she said that Froi Mazur was dying), she took David out of the orphanage and to the apartment on Nowolipie Street.
[FROM STEFAN MAZUR.] At four o’clock this afternoon, Stefan learned that he had heard correctly the word pronounced by his district commandant. Along with his entire Company, he was assigned under the command of an S.D. detachment to go to Krochmalna Street and the Rukner Home. Stefan, in the so-called “inner patrol,” was present when the senior Sicherheitsdienst officer told “Colonel” Rukner to prepare the children for evacuation. Rukner, without abandoning for a moment his benign expression, went out in the courtyard, clapped his hands, and said to the children, who at his signal had quickly formed a quiet circle around him:
—— I have good news for you. We are going on a picnic. Go at once to your dormitories, put on clean uniforms, and come back here in fifteen minutes.
The crowd of children went off squealing and laughing.
At the end of the fifteen minutes, Stefan was ordered to help search the buildings. On a stairway he met a mother bringing down the last few children. Grabbing her sleeve, he asked in a hasty whisper:
—— Rachel Apt?
—— Gone, praise God. She took her brother.
Stefan ran on up the stairs. In the dormitories he found perfect order—the beds made, lockers neat, toys stacked away on shelves. He made a thorough search; no one was hidden; he descended to the courtyard. There he saw that the children were formed into ranks. They wore clean grey uniforms, and new cloth shoes with wooden soles; the girls had crisp, white aprons. “Colonel” Rukner was wearing his bare Polish medical corps uniform; his tunic was freshly laundered, his trousers were stuffed into brightly polished knee-boots; he wore a legionnaire’s Maciejówka cap.
When the search was completed, the senior German officer nodded to Rukner.
Rukner: —— Now, my pioneers! Let us march smartly! Ready! Forward!
And as the ranks started up, with an out-of-step clipper-clopper noise of the wooden soles on the cobbles, the “Colonel” began a song, which the bigger boys, at the head of the procession, took up lustily. One of the boys was carrying a violin in a felt case. The “mothers,” whose Ausweise had been honored, waved goodbye to the children from the doorway. The children, who thought they would see the “mothers” that evening as usual, scarcely bothered to wave back. The Jewish police walked alongside the children’s parade in an escorting cordon.
The procession had quite a long way to go: from the “small ghetto” across the Chlodna Street bridge and the entire length of the “large ghetto.” The “Colonel” picked up a big-eyed little girl who was having trouble keeping up, and carried her in his arms. The parade was going along Gensia, toward Zamenhofa, when a man whom Stefan recognized as a Judenrat messenger came running up to the Sicherheitsdienst group, at the head of the column, and handed them a message. The march was halted. The senior officer took a note from the envelope the messenger had given him, and read it. Then he turned to “Colonel” Rukner and said:
—— At the request of Engineer Grossman of the Judenrat, you are personally excused from the deportation. We will take the children from here.
Rukner: —— Oh, no. Where my children go, I also go. (He turned, not permitting argument.) Come, children. Ready! March!
As Stefan walked along, not far from the “Colonel,” he heard one of the older boys, a big-eared, funny-faced child, speak up to Rukner:
—— Tate-niu, little father! Where’s Dovidl?
—— He couldn’t come, Nechemiah.
—— That’s too bad. He would have had a good time with us today, wouldn’t he, Tate-niu?
—— Yes, Nechemiah, but we can’t all have the luck, you know.
EVENTS AUGUST 4, 1942. ENTRY DITTO. FROM RACHEL APT. Berson suggested to Rachel that she try Fein and the Wall Men. She did. This was the interview, as she describes it:
At first Fein spent some time talking about the Wall Men. She says he is boyishly proud of the group.
—— Here. (Reaching into a drawer for a little canvas-backed booklet, and holding it up.) Here is the tidiest job we have done yet. Uruguayan passport for a gentleman who is—shall we say?—weary of his Polish citizenship. See! Absolutely genuine article, properly authenticated, can be investigated with the Uruguayan authorities perfectly safely. (Fein riffled through the pages of the passport, and he had the air of a proud craftsman displaying his work, a watchmaker pointing out the precision of an instrument he has just made.) Our friend will turn up one of these years as a distinguished citizen of Montevideo….(The flipping pages came to rest for a moment at the photograph of the prospective traveler.) Doesn’t he look like a Latin-American gentleman? (Fein smiled ironically.) Especially suitable for Sephardic Jews….
It was Benlevi. The “Latin American” staring out with the stately boredom of a pontiff was old Benlevi. The booklet lay open at the photograph only a second or two, but in that time Rachel recalled, with renewed mortification, her brief talk (if it could have been called that) with Benlevi, when she had been trying to organize the secret school in the Sienna Street courtyard; and she also remembered again the evening when she had taken courage from the flashing eyes of Froi Mazur to rebuke the famous old man. That had been the first time she had ever spoken out a conviction boldly. She tells me she thought: How far I have come since then! They think in Hashomer that I’m some kind of orator. And it all started when this pompous old pre-Uruguayan had said, so contemptuously, Foolish girl! Well, she could look him straight in the eye now.
Fein: —— Of course, in order to assume the duties and prerogatives of Uruguayan citizenship, it will be necessary for our friend here (Fein tapped the closed passport on the knuckles of his left hand.) to intern himself with all the neutral foreigners in the Pawiak, and then….One can only guess. He is on his own. But at least he has an authentic document.
Authentic document. Rachel says she was reminded that she is moving about the streets these days, in the hours before and after the daily resettlement action, on nothing but an Ausweis from the liquidated Rukner Home. But, she says, she feels quite safe. She feels that Hashomer will shelter her; the “family” will protect her. And—possibly this is where her sense of security is really grounded—she will do all she can for them.
Fein acknowledged at last that preliminaries were over. (Rachel says he evidently enjoys to the utmost play-acting as a grand businessman.)
—— You said you had some proposition to discuss.
Rachel, speaking now in a direct and concise way [NOTE. N.L. Possibly she enjoys doing business herself; for I have noticed before that she is her father’s daughter, though she may think she is not.]: —— Yes. I want to insure my younger brother, David—he’s nine years old—I want to make sure that he will not be resettled. How do we know where these resettled people are being taken? I’d like to get David to the Aryan side, if that is possible. My father is there, but I don’t know where he is living now, and I have an idea it might be best not to put the boy with him in any case. They might endanger each other. My father looks Aryan [NOTE. N.L. How carelessly we fall into using the Nazis’ phrases!], but David is unmistakably Semitic. I think my father would be afraid to risk his life by living with such a giveaway. And so what I wanted to ask you is: can you find a hiding place for a very Jewish little boy who isn’t ready to take care of himself?
Fein: —— That I don’t know. That is a problem our organization has so far not dealt with. I’ll have to talk with the others—and I’ll let you know. But I think we’ll find a way. You see (Fein’s expression was almost a gloat.), what we like best is new problems!
And Rachel says she thought: Well, if this entertains Fein and his friends, that’s all right—so long as the task is done.