Thirty

 

THE PERMEATING CHOKING odor of burned rubber, singed hair, and overcooked meat; the thunderous booms and whizzing of bombs; and the sadistic nearing and waning staccato from automatic gunfire . . .

“The synagogue is burning,” a man yelled, running down the street. Fire spread to other houses. I heard shouting and screaming.

We turned on the radio. The announcer said that the aggressive Nazi army had attacked the peaceful Soviet Union. The “peaceful” Soviets would retaliate.

Drora came home early from work and said that there was an onrush of people streaming into the provisions warehouse. Everyone was looting, even the Jews.

In the occasional silence of the following day, we heard the roar of airplanes in close formations. At first we thought they were Russians coming to our rescue. Then we heard they were Germans. Russian trucks and tanks clogged the streets. People climbed in open trucks. Panic swept our retreating occupier.

Tremendous explosions. Our house shook. I looked out the window at balls of fire. This is what had happened during the German invasion of 1939. Surely, the Russians would save us again. We blacked out the curtains as we had done almost two years ago and sat by the kerosene lamp all night. The streets were empty. I peered outside from beneath covered window panes; occasionally I saw beady eye pinpricks in my mirrored light and sharpened my incisors by gnawing at the skin around my lips. I had become exactly what the newspapers portrayed of my race, a harrowed burrowing rodent.

The next day, German planes flew again. Small Russian armored cars left the city. From our window, we saw German motorcycles. Each had a sidecar with another soldier holding a machine gun. Before long more Germans arrived in trucks and smaller vehicles, followed by heavy tanks and cannons on tractors.

Was it my house or my body that was in a constant state of vibration?

We couldn’t believe that the mighty Soviet Union had gone down so easily.

 

Some of our neighbors reclaimed their houses from the Soviets. The shuffling and reshuffling of households occurred overnight. I had a moment of happiness daydreaming of running freely in our home.

“We have to get out of here,” Drora said the following afternoon. She had been at a friend’s house, someone she wouldn’t identify. Another of her many mysterious contacts.

“Where should we go?” Rivke asked.

“To Khane’s,” my mother said. “I have to get to my parents.”

We huddled together and tried to move as a group. Germans poured down the streets. On the next street, we saw Jewish men plucked out of the crowds and shot before us. There was a communal roar at the first one and then murmurs of “Oy Gotenyu!”

Clinging and clutching, we managed to get to my aunt Khane’s; and they were gathering dishes, linens, towels, and wrapping them in sheets.

“What are you doing?” Perl shouted. “Are you going somewhere?”

“We have to bring belongings to the center of town. It was an order from the Germans. We heard it on a loudspeaker,” Khane said. “Papa understood the German immediately.”

“God will help us,” my grandfather chanted like a prayer. “He will provide.”

“No, Papa,” my mother said. “We will provide, provide all our life’s blood to the Germans. It’s not enough that we sacrificed already to the Germans and then to the Russians.”

“This can’t last long,” my grandmother said. “God willing.”

My grandfather had been to the synagogue. As it was burning, a group of rabbis watched, praying. They said that the German commandant had asked to meet them, but they were afraid that they wouldn’t be strong enough so they sent a delegation of important men. When the men returned, they reported that the Germans ordered every Jewish man and woman, from sixteen to sixty (females until fifty-five) to report for work, which was, they understood, to be hard labor.

“We have to be careful,” my grandfather said.

This got me really scared. My grandfather was a man of the mind, not action. For action, he relied on God. He often said, “Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht,” meaning, “Man plans and God laughs.”

“What?” I asked.

“Well . . .”

“Tell us! We children have a right to know,” I said, amazed that I could speak to my grandfather this way.

“You’re right, Esfir,” he said, with a tone of defeat. “I heard the Germans rounded up a hundred and seventy leading people,” he said. “They took them to a nearby village, made them stand silently. Some were ordered to get shovels and dig their own graves. Some tried to escape but were caught and torn apart by dogs.”

“Got in himl!” Grandma Elke cried.

“They not only burned the synagogue, but the Jewish hospital and a rabbi’s house.”

“Got in himl!” my grandmother said again. On this day, those were the only words she could speak.

“The whole place is on fire,” my grandfather said.

“Oh no,” Perl said.

“And this is definitely not for the ears of the young, so go busy yourselves for a while.”

This time I didn’t protest. My sisters and I went into my grandparents’ downstairs bedroom with my cousins, but we listened by the door to the living room.

“They threw Jews in the fire alive.”

Drora ordered us away from the door so we couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation. She was allowed to go back. Then she returned and reported to us. She said that they were considering what to do. Perl thought we should try and get back to Brest. My grandfather said he had heard it was much worse there. Brest had been the first military target of the Germans. In a blitzkrieg, German Panzer troops annihilated the Soviets. Those tanks! Five hours after the Germans encircled the Fortress, they entered the city of Brest.

How did my grandfather know this? I hadn’t given him enough credit for having informed sources, as well as a respected voice in matters other than religious.

The adults listed every relative and friend they had outside Kobrin. Maybe they could go to my grandfather’s sister-in-law in Visoke. (His brother Hymie died shortly after we had visited.) Or hide in the countryside at another relative’s farm. But since the Soviet invasion, no one could be certain where these people were or if their homes still existed.

Then we heard that the roads were being bombarded from the air. It was becoming clear that no matter what path we chose, it would be difficult, if not impossible. In any case, my grandfather said we should pack our valuables and set aside our most practical clothes for wearing layers under our winter coats—and be ready at any time. He didn’t have to tell us this. We were already packed and ready to go.

 

When we got home, our Russian tenants were gone, leaving nothing behind.

For the next few days, we stayed home with our emergency “kits” close by. I took out a notebook and flipped though it until I found the folded-up letter I had recently stuck inside.

At the Brest train station, when I last saw Ida, she had been heading to meet Russian soldiers who were taking her toward Volchin. Perl and I hadn’t wanted to leave Ida at their mercy, but Ida had been adamant and, as always, it was impossible to argue with her when she set her mind to something. Perl had said to me during those long hours on the train that she felt terribly guilty about allowing Ida to go off the way she had. She felt responsible for all the girls’ safety. I shared Perl’s concerns, and even her guilt, but realized that we had no better options to offer Ida at the time.

We never believed those soldiers would help her, but they did.

A few weeks before the German invasion, one of the Russian soldiers came to our house. My mother was sure this was the end for us. At first, she wouldn’t open the door. The solider shouted, “Please, I have news from Ida, Ida Midler.” At the mention of Ida’s name, my mother opened the door partly even though there was a good chance that this was a ruse. I was standing behind her and peeked from the side. He had a broad and guileless smile, strawberry-blond hair, and gold-flecked brown eyes. There were streaks of dirt following the lines on his forehead.

“Are you Esfir?” he said. He was so much taller, all he had to do was lean over my mother.

I nodded.

“I have a letter here from your friend Ida.”

“You know her?”

“Yes, we met in Brest. She’s a wonderful girl.”

“What do you know about her?” I walked away from my mother, not caring if there was any danger. News of Ida was worth any punishment.

“She traveled with my comrades and me in our truck. She stayed inside with the boxes of ammunition. It was dangerous. We got her to Visoke. She walked home from there.”

I was getting suspicious. “How do you know that she reached her home?”

“Because I saw her again. There was a platoon sent to oversee the Bug River and on the way back, we stopped in Volchin.”

I gathered that this had not been a scheduled stop.

“Volchin is a small town,” he said. “We found her soon. She is well. I told her I was being sent to Kobrin, and she wrote a note and gave it to me with your address.”

That was enough information to make me trust this handsome man. Ida would never have given my address to anyone who would harm me.

I took the paper and my mother insisted on giving the solider bread and fruit. He refused, but no one, not even a soldier, could argue with my mother when she was determined. So much like Ida.

The soldier ate and left quickly. I said my good-bye and thanked him and ran up to my room to read the letter, my breath ahead of my feet. I had left my journals with Mr. Kozak, who promised to keep them safe. Otherwise, if I had one then, I would have pasted the letter inside. It said:

 

My dear, dear Esfir,

I hope my friend Aleksandr finds you and your family well. I so long to see your beautiful face and share our thoughts and writings as we did so many wonderful times together. We are working hard. My parents send their best regards as I do to you and your family, especially to Aunt Perl. I miss you.

Ida Midler

 

I realized that Ida couldn’t reveal much. It was dangerous for her and for Aleksandr. Who was this soldier to her? Could she have forgotten Mendel? I rejected this thought, believing that Aleksandr may have been charmed by Ida, but he was just a trusted friend to her.

Why she had signed the letter with her last name, I still wonder. As if there would ever be another Ida for me!

Perl and I had been so relieved; and when she heard that Ida had singled her out for special regards, she was almost speechless, a state I rarely saw her in. Maybe quiet, sad, but never without a word if prompted. Having no children of her own, Ida calling her “Aunt Perl” was a warm embrace from afar.

During those dark early days of the German invasion, I read Ida’s letter at least twice a day. Now I was so panicked that the Nazis would storm through our house and take my belongings that I ripped it into pieces and stuck each piece between stones in my cellar’s walls, planning someday to put the pieces back like a jigsaw puzzle. But it didn’t matter because I knew it by heart.