Clara's War (30 page)

The orchard at the back of the house was ripening with apples as if they already had no memory of the war. But I had no time to waste gazing at their beauty. When I got to Zygush's house, there was an old
babushka
tending her garden. I asked for Zygush and she told me he had a job watching some cows for a local farmer. She pointed to the far fields at the back of their house. A job? He was eight. And he didn't tell any of us. Not me, not Mama, not Papa. I ran through the field and saw Zygush about 400 metres away. He had his shirt off and already his tiny
body was walnut brown. He had a switch in his hands, with which he made figure eights in the air. When he heard me screaming his name, he turned and waved, happy to see me. He wore a proud smile. When I got to him, before he ever said a word, my arm and hand jerked away from my body and I slapped him across the face. I was as stunned as he was. But I couldn't stop hitting him. I was crying with relief and rage and it took several minutes for me to realize what I was doing. I had never struck anyone before and I couldn't stop hitting him. And Zygush, the boy who never cried, was crying now. Zygush didn't fight back and his weeping stopped me. I couldn't stop crying and I embraced him. I was forgiven as soon as his brown arms moved round my neck.

‘Are you out of your mind? Do you want to get yourself killed? We were worried sick! Never. Never, do you understand me, leave the house without me!' I was horrified at what I had done and held him. ‘I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We couldn't find you. We were so scared.'

‘I thought you'd be proud of me. We'll have milk. And butter and cheese,' was all he said. I was proud of him. Here in this field, there was no sign there ever was a war. The cows were content and the fields and hillsides had their usual high summer carpet of ripening rye, wheat and corn. These were the fields I'd look out upon from Paradise Hill, which from here, lost in the haze of a summer sky, looked like less of a hill than usual. Zygush didn't have to say it, but he was now the man in his family and he was doing what a man does. Taking care of his loved ones. I wanted to tell him that he was just a child and I wanted him to stay a child. But after losing Uchka and Hersch and enduring the bunker, at eight years old he was not a child any more. I stayed with him in the field until the end of the day and we drove the cows home to their barn.
Zygush collected his pail of milk and proudly carried it back to our house.

 

The next weeks were spent, as with all the other survivors, engaged in two tasks. Regaining our strength. And trying to locate family members. We never went anywhere alone, so all three families made a pilgrimage to the cemetery to see if we could locate where Mania and our other relatives were buried. We passed the synagogue and looked in. There was nothing but fire-scarred and blackened brick, broken windows, old hay and garbage. At the cemetery, even though there was nothing there but a few cows grazing, just knowing Mania was buried somewhere made it hallowed ground. We also kept asking after Tilzer and Schitling, the boys who betrayed her. We asked dozens and dozens of people, but they had probably fled with the Germans and the other
Volksdeutsche
. We knew it was futile, but we kept asking.

We gained our strength just from the process of living, doing the small things that we had come to miss. Walking around the house. Speaking in a normal voice. Cooking our food. We wrote several letters to Rosa, but hadn't heard back yet. Dudio. Rosa. Manek. Babcia. They were all we had left.

And Mama was becoming Salka the Cossack again. She was sending me with soup to the hospital for Mr Taffet and the other survivors. Eastern Europe in those days was filled with exiles, wandering from town to town looking for loved ones, hoping to find even one family member who had survived, or just trying to go home to see if there was anything left of their lives. Chances are there would be nothing and no one there. But I understood why they came. It was all they had left and the only place they had to go. They came through Zolkiew exhausted and starving. And, somehow, Mama had gained a reputation. If
you came to Zolkiew, go to the Schwarzes where there would be a meal and a bed. We kept a mattress in the front room for the travellers, who were all afflicted with lice. She renamed our front room the louse suite. And she was also mother now to Zygush and Zosia, which was formidable because Zygush was something of his old self and you still needed a whip and a chair to take care of him. Zosia, still as silent as a memory, turned brown in the sun and clung to me and Mama, hardly ever letting us out of her sight and, more often than not, holding a hand or a bunch of skirt.

The Russian authorities came to my father and the other men and asked them to take over their factories again. It was a godsend for my father. But even though he was busy with a thriving business, the spark that had come to Mama's eyes never returned to Papa's.

It was summer and even though there was a war, the fields were filled with ripening grain that the farmers brought in on their carts. Papa offered Beck a job, but Beck declined. He was exhausted and was happy to be taken care of, as he had taken care of us. Now that Papa, Mr Melman and Mr Patrontasch were making money, they made sure the Becks didn't have to lift a finger. But they didn't know where Ala was. They didn't know if she was alive or dead. The war was still being fought in western Poland and there was no mail or any way to find Ala. There were close calls we relived that had become almost legend, but in Beck's retelling there was a light missing from his eyes. The person he wanted to share these war stories with was lost. Whenever we made a little money we always gave some to Beck and he always said the same thing, ‘This is for Ala. This is for Ala.'

Since the very first day of our liberation, convoy after convoy had been going through Zolkiew to the front. Every night they bivouacked in the town plaza. Sometimes there would be
several thousand soldiers setting up their tents and their cooking fires. The Russians were always crazy for music.

Of course, we and everybody else in town had to inspect the troops, who looked more like boy scouts than soldiers. Most nights, the different battalions organized singing competitions around huge bonfires. Each company had their own group and on a summer evening they were all practising ballads, folk songs, love songs, dirges, work songs, army songs, songs from Borodin and Shostakovich, and as chaotic as this might sound, the songs and voices wrapped themselves around each other in one harmonic choir. This was our entertainment. Around dusk, we'd walk down to the plaza and wander through the troops. I knew some of the songs and sang along from time to time, which brought us large smiles from these boys who were far away from home, many for the first time. I had never sung in front of strangers before and this was the first time I realized I had a pretty voice. In the evenings, the damage from the war faded into shadows and the castle, the colonnades and the church spires were as beautiful and consoling as ever.

The fountain of the Virgin Mary had been repaired and the children of the Ukrainians splashed and played, laughing and screaming with delight. There were no Jewish children left to play and all the Polish children had fled with their families. I was singing along with some of the soldiers and I noticed a girl from my classroom. Nina was a little older than me, sweet and very serious. Everybody knew that her father was a colonel and the ranking officer in Zolkiew. Consequently she was fawned over like a Russian princess by any adult who knew who her father was. But she didn't care. We never said much to each other at gymnasium, but I considered her a schoolfriend, although I never saw her outside the classroom. I didn't know
what moved her, but she came up to me and we started talking to each other and became real friends that day.

 

The Russian army was running the town in a laissez-faire way. There was no central authority. Just troops coming and going. But they were all so kind to us. I never gave a thought to the NKVD, the Russian secret police. We were free to reconstruct our lives.

I was looking forward to starting school in just a week's time at the beginning of September. I learned the NKVD had returned when Comrade Dupak stopped by to see if we were still alive. He, too, looked happy to see us. I didn't know his title, but from the look of his car and the way he was dressed, he had done well in the war and was very high up in the NKVD. He greeted us warmly and gave my father a present. A bicycle.

The next day, in the quiet early morning hours, a car drove up to the house where the Becks were living, just up the street from ours. I was still asleep. We all were. It was the NKVD, and before any of us had awoken on that summer morning, they had been arrested and taken to the jail in town, to be held until they were transported to Lvov for questioning. The news of their arrest swept up and down the street as fast as the fire. The NKVD had found several rifles in the house. Beck and Julia, who everyone in town by now knew were the heroes who had saved 18 of us, were German spies. They were left behind by the Nazis to commit acts of sabotage. They were starting an underground
Volksdeutsche
partisan group. All these ideas were insane. Except for the guns that Beck insisted he keep after our liberation.

Papa had begged Beck to get rid of them. The authorities were clear. Anyone caught with a gun was guilty of treason. The idea that the Becks were going to be shot as traitors or sent to
Siberia, after all they had sacrificed for us, was the final, most bitter irony of the war. We were determined to get the Becks out, no matter what it cost. Papa and Mr Melman went to Lvov almost every day, telling our story to the army, to the NKVD, to the civilian administration. They spent all their money on bribes. But it was hopeless. The Becks were
Volksdeutsche
. They were criminals. And they were sent to a concentration camp to await their trial. We woke up every morning worrying about the Becks, looking for answers, looking for anyone who might help. We went to bed every night having failed them. I prayed for them as I had prayed in the bunker for Mania, Uchka and the children. Even after we had been liberated I felt safer, happier, more secure, more trusting, more optimistic with Beck and his wily, laughing blue eyes and unrepentant confidence just a few doors up the street. Week after week went by and we still hadn't any hope of success. I started school, which I had been looking forward to with so much enthusiasm. But it meant nothing if the Becks weren't free.

September 1944

I
was sitting on a bench in the park by the river. Behind me the castle walls were intact and I could see the windows of my classroom. The grass was overgrown and the park littered. Up ahead, above the train station and the orchard, Paradise Hill still looked down upon the town, unchanged and uncaring. I didn't think I could ever go up there again without Mania and Uchka. I was across the street from Nina's house. It was the largest house on Railroad Street and it was always taken by the ranking officer of the last three occupations. It had a large garden filled with pink peonies behind a wrought-iron fence. Now that it was autumn, the peonies and other flowers had died, and the garden, filled with dried brown stalks, needed to be cleaned out and prepared for winter. This is the house from which the German officer's wife had foreseen Jewish revenge as our family and friends were led to the train station. I couldn't stop weeping about the Becks. They had been taken to the Brigitka jail in Lvov before being shipped off to a nearby concentration camp.

Papa learned that the Becks were scheduled to be tried for treason and sent to Siberia. Once they were in Siberia, there would be no hope for them. Even if they survived the journey,
all they would receive as a reward for their years of courage and generosity would be a short hard life in a labour camp.

Nina must have seen me weeping from her balcony and had come down to where I was sitting in the park. She asked why I was crying. I didn't know where to begin. I had never talked about the Becks and the bunker to anyone but my family, who knew and felt everything I did. When we talked about the bunker, there was no need for tears because so many had already been spent inside. I didn't want to reveal what we had gone through to a stranger, I couldn't possibly. It would be too painful.

But as I spoke to Nina, the words poured out in spasms, choked out between sobs and halted breath. Mania. Uchka. The children. And the countless times, like the fallen leaves at my feet, that the Becks had saved us and almost lost their own lives. And how Papa and Mr Melman had made trip after trip to Lvov, sometimes almost every day, begging, bribing and pleading for the Becks' lives with anyone they hoped might help them. They had no success and we were free and safe.

Nina sat next to me without speaking. She was sensitive enough to know that there were no words of consolation that would serve as a balm. After a long time, she broke the silence.

‘Clara, please, what I'm about to tell you, you cannot tell anybody. My father would kill me and they might kill him.'

‘Of course.'

‘You know that the trial will mean nothing. Last night, the new party secretary had dinner at our house. He seemed like a very nice man. You should take your diaries to him. You have to hand them over personally. You have to do exactly as I tell you. He likes pretty girls. Wear your best dress. Maybe, he'll read your diary.'

I ran home to tell Mama and Papa what Nina had said. I decided to take Lola with me, because even though her hair was
white, she was still quite beautiful. And I also decided to bring Zygush and Zosia. I knew they could make the hardest heart cry. Lola made new dresses for me, Zosia and herself overnight. When we got up in the morning, I washed my hair and Mama combed and brushed it as she hadn't done since before we went into the bunker. She did the same with Zosia. Once I was dressed, I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked as if I had never been in the bunker. I had gained back all the weight I had lost and my skin was still brown from being outside for hours and hours almost every day since we were liberated. Zosia's hair shone and her face had the rosy complexion of the porcelain figurines in Mrs Melman's china closet.

Lola walked in carrying flowers and smiled. ‘How do I look?' She had found some lipstick and rouge. Any man would have been proud to have her on his arm. I tied up the four copybooks of my diary in brown paper and twine, kissed my parents and off we went, hand in hand, to the party secretary's office. It was across the street from the opera house and had been built in the construction spree of Emperor Franz Josef in the optimistic style he adored. The building, like the train station and the colonnaded plaza, almost smiled, they were so inviting. There were soldiers, young, some only a year or two older than me, guarding the walkway and they stopped us as soon as we went in the gate. It was clear they had their orders. No one was to be allowed in.

I told them the papers were only for the party secretary's eyes and that he needed to see them right away. One of the soldiers volunteered to take them in.

‘You can shoot me if you want to. But I have to see him!'

They looked at me and then at the four of us, deciding what to do. I knew they weren't going to shoot us.

‘Please, a man and his wife are about to be killed. They
saved our lives'–I gestured to the four of us–‘and 14 other people's as well. They're heroes.' The tears had already started and the soldiers, I could see, were looking at Lola and the children.

‘I'll take you in.'

Nina had been right so far and I prayed that the secretary would be as kind as the soldiers. I felt that this was the most important moment in my life. And somehow I had to find the words to convince this man to override the massive bureaucracy of Soviet justice. When I was led into the secretary's office, I was frightened, frightened not so much of the secretary and what he might do to me, but of failing Beck and Julia. The room was a study panelled in dark wood and the secretary sat behind a massive desk, nursing a cigar. Nina was right. He did seem like a nice man and, to my surprise, I didn't feel intimidated by the most powerful man I had probably ever met in my life.

‘So what's so important it's worth getting shot for?'

I told him about the Becks and the bunker and how many times he had saved us and how he had risked his life for us. I also told him that the Becks had many opportunities to leave, but stayed because they had promised never to abandon us. I showed him the package and told him it was all documented in the diary. I offered it to him and he put it down on his desk.

‘You know the Becks are spies. He was caught with a gun.'

‘Please, don't believe me. Just read the diary. It's all in there. Everything.'

I was in tears now. So were Lola and Zosia. Zygush was stoic as always, but he had the grave expression of an old man.

‘When we went into the bunker, my mother told me I had to write, to keep a record of what happened to us in case we were killed. What the Becks did to save us, I couldn't have made up. He knew what would happen if the Germans arrested him. He
knew it and still he stayed. Please. Don't believe me. Please read the diary.'

The secretary looked at the twine-covered package on his desk.

‘I'll read your diary,' he said. ‘I promise.'

He thanked us for coming and asked his adjutant to make sure the children were given a cookie on the way out.

 

There was hope. The secretary didn't tell us if or when he would make up his mind. There was nothing to do now but wait. Papa and Melman still went to Lvov every day to try and find someone who could help the Becks. They knew it was futile. They knew their money was being stolen. But they had to do something. We could not lose the Becks. A few days later one of the young soldiers who guarded the secretary's office returned the diary. The books had been rewrapped in brown paper and twine. There was no accompanying letter or message of any kind. He told us he was simply ordered to deliver the package.

If the secretary was going to help the Becks, he would have written. I couldn't comprehend how he could not be moved by the Becks' courage or how he could believe that Beck was a spy. But that was the only conclusion left. After all that we had gone through, what right did I have to expect a happy ending with the Becks? Why should the world make any sense? Why should courage and generosity, loyalty and selflessness be rewarded? The world had changed and those qualities were so rare, it seemed, that anyone exhibiting them could not be trusted. The joy I had felt at our liberation slipped away like a lost memory. I knew I had to live because that was what Mania would have wanted. But how to live in a world that would destroy the Becks, who were living saints, as noble and courageous as any, was
something I could not face or understand. All I wanted was for the Becks to come home.

A few evenings later, I was reading when there was a knock. I looked out the window. Beck and Julia were standing on our steps, waiting to be let in, smiling, looking like hell. Exhausted. Thin. Pale.

‘Mama, it's them!' Everyone knew who ‘them' meant. There was only one them. I ran to the door and opened it. I couldn't believe it. Beck's look said: ‘What's the fuss all about?' I hugged him and Julia and Mama was screaming for me to get the men. She led the Becks inside as I ran across the street to the factory, screaming, ‘They're here. They're here!' By the time I got there, Papa, Melman and Patrontasch had heard our cries of joy and were already running home from the factory. Within minutes, the news of their arrival had spread up and down the street and our house filled with the 16 of us, the few of Becks' friends who hadn't left town and many of the other survivors he had helped. Food and vodka appeared out of nowhere and the first true celebration since the day we walked out of that bunker began. The Becks were overwhelmed and wanted to kiss and hug and touch every one of us.

As I watched the outpouring of love and gratitude, I knew that we would be bound to the Becks forever. The Becks, the Schwarzes, the Melmans, the Patrontasches had been united by a marriage under God that no man could ever put asunder. Whatever future awaited our families, we would be as intertwined as any vines that clung to the tree that supported them. Our tree had been the Becks. Julia was smiling now without any embarrassment over her teeth. Beck found me a few minutes later and took me aside. ‘Clarutchka, they told me about the diary. I guess you said some nice things about me after all.'