I Shall Live (16 page)

The trip took about an hour and a half. Father's asthma made it difficult for him to breathe under the hay. But we were filled with hope; so far we had come through. Finally the wagon stopped. The Pole climbed down and told us to get out. We could see Hrubieszów in the distance. The Pole told Father and me to stay and hide among some tomato plants growing in the field around us. He would take Felek and Sam to town, and later someone would come to get us. They left us and, shivering from the cold, we lay down on the ground among the plants, which didn't provide much of a cover. Time passed, and no one came. We had to be especially careful not to be seen here, not even by other Jews, for everyone knew us in Hrubieszów, and now we were escapees from the Russian side. We were illegal even here.

The sun rose slowly. There were some clouds in the sky. We saw from a distance a bunch of Polish boys, teenagers. One of them spotted us. I recognized him; I had gone to public school with him. He had a red face, like the tomatoes around us, with a lot of pimples. I had never liked him. He was a rough kid, one of the town riffraff.

He looked at me for a moment, then said, “You are Orenstein.” We must have looked terrible after weeks of hiding. “Please don't tell anyone you saw us,” I said. “Stay here, don't move,” he replied. Then he and his friends went away, heading back toward town.

I didn't trust the kid; I knew we were in danger. But we couldn't go into town by ourselves. The house we had lived in wasn't in the ghetto, and we didn't know where our family lived now. We decided to wait.

Later I learned that my suspicions had been well founded. The Polish boy had gone straight to Fred's office and told him he had
seen us hiding in the fields. It was obvious that he was asking for money. Fred thought quickly. Felek and Sam were already in a safe place, but there apparently had been a mixup about retrieving Father and me and getting us there too. Fred needed time to send someone to fetch us.

One of the local Gestapo, Hans Wagner, was a patient of Fred's. Germans, and especially Gestapo, were not supposed to use Jewish doctors, but Wagner had a special problem: he had become temporarily impotent. He had no faith in the Polish doctors, but he knew Fred had had a practice in Warsaw, and he believed that of all the local doctors, Fred was best qualified to treat him.

To gain time, Fred told the boy that he would be glad to give him some money, and to please wait for him in the office while he went out to get it. He then warned the boy to be very careful in his absence, because a member of the Gestapo was coming for a treatment and was due soon. When the boy heard the word “Gestapo” he turned pale, excused himself, and disappeared. Fred never heard from him again.

Meanwhile, Father and I, growing hungry and thirsty, were still waiting in the tomato field. I had always had an aversion to tomatoes; Mother never succeeded in getting me to taste one. They reminded me of blood. Out there in the field I was willing to give them another chance. Father ate a few, and held one out to me. “They're good. Here, try one, you need to eat something.” I bit into it; it wasn't bad. I then ate two or three. Then and there I overcame my aversion to tomatoes.

Finally a young man, a Jew, appeared. “Are you the Orensteins?” he asked, and told us to follow him. Soon we were in the poor Jewish section, the Wannes, where the Germans had set up the Hrubieszów ghetto. He led us to a house, and up into the attic. It belonged to the parents of a nurse Fred knew, named Fela, and
Fred had made arrangements with her for us to stay there. Sam and Felek were already there, and we all embraced. We had made it. It was October 1, 1942.

Fela soon came up to the attic, introduced herself, and greeted us warmly. Fred, Mother, and Hanka would be coming to see us soon, she told us. We could scarcely contain ourselves in our excitement.

When they came, I was shocked at the sight of Mother. It had been only three years since I had seen her, but she had aged fifteen years; she looked like an old woman. Hanka was almost sixteen. A child when I left, she had grown into a beautiful young girl. We did nothing but weep, kiss, and hug each other for a long, long time. At last the family was together once again. Then each had to tell the others of his experiences, what he'd gone through since we had separated—all the incredible events.

Mother had brought dinner for us. She was the best cook in the world; we hadn't tasted food like that since before the war: gefilte fish, chicken soup with
kneydlakh
, beef and potatoes, and a delicious cake. We enjoyed a feast that almost made it all seem worth it.

Evening came, and with it the curfew. Fred, Mother, and Hanka had to leave, but first I wanted to know what was happening on the Russian front. There had been heavy fighting in Stalingrad, they told us, but the Russians seemed to be holding. I asked them, next time they came, to bring a newspaper and some books. After they left we lay down on the cots they had set up for us. What luxury, after a full month of being hunted like animals! We knew it was only temporary, that an action in Hrubieszów was inevitable, and that we had almost no chance of surviving the war, but for the moment we were all together, we had plenty of food and warm shelter, and we were thankful for the respite.

When Fred came the next day, he brought a German newspaper and a couple of books, one of them a Polish translation of
Gone with the
Wind.
I had never heard of it. It was almost a thousand pages long, but the last twenty pages were missing. I always liked to read anything about America, and hoped it would be interesting, but first, of course, I studied the newspaper. There was indeed heavy fighting in Stalingrad. The Germans had penetrated very deep into the heartland of Russia, but it was nevertheless obvious that the momentum of the war had swung from total German superiority to what looked like their last desperate attempt to win the war. Winter was coming soon, too, and that was what the Germans on the Russian front dreaded most.

The first two weeks of October were like a holiday. We were still in hiding, but the loft was large, the cots were comfortable, Fred, Hanka, or Mother came to see us every day, and Mother cooked all kinds of delicious dishes for us. For fear of informers, of course, they had to be careful not to be seen. For the four of us, the most important thing was knowing that for the moment we were not being hunted. All through September, beginning with our escape from under the machine guns on the first day of the action, we had been in continuous and constant danger. Every footstep, every rustle of the leaves could mean a murderous search party. It felt like heaven to be relatively safe and to have the rest of the family so nearby, to be loved and pampered once again.

Mother and Hanka told us about their life under the Germans: how, when Hanka had to work outdoors in the cold, an hour's walk from their quarters, Mother would bring her a thermos of hot soup and tea every day, although she had varicose veins and it was hard for her to walk. They recounted their adventures in the Warsaw ghetto and described all their lucky escapes. We in turn told of our adventures under the Soviets and the Germans.

I found
Gone with the Wind
fascinating, and was able to immerse myself totally in the story of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. Although my sympathies were with the North and its struggle to
abolish slavery, I greatly admired the gallantry and bravery of the South. My brothers all made fun of me. “How can you get so involved in a book at a time like this?” I had no good answer. It could have been pure escapism, or perhaps my insatiable curiosity always to be learning about new things and places. My knowledge of America at that time was largely confined to Zane Grey's Wild West tales and American history books.
Gone with the Wind
presented a rich panorama of life during the Civil War and I reveled in it, despite our circumstances.

But it was impossible to ignore for long the awareness that a heavy cloud was hanging over us, spoiling the joy of our reunion; tears of happiness were mingled with tears of fear and frustration. All the signs pointed toward a final extermination action against the Jews of Hrubieszów in the very near future. Eyewitnesses who had managed to escape from death trains or execution pits confirmed that in town after town a total liquidation of Polish Jewry was well under way. There seemed to be no way out.

There were three possible avenues of escape, none offering much chance of success. Some Jews who didn't look stereotypically Jewish succeeded in blending in with the Poles, but they were very few; perhaps one in a thousand could pull it off. Poles were very quick to recognize Jews, the necessary false identity papers were not easy to obtain, family ties restrained those individuals who might have been able to “pass” on their own, and since only Jews were circumcised, any male could be found out immediately if he was suspected. “Drop your pants” were the words most dreaded by Jewish men who had succeeded in establishing themselves as Poles. Probably no more than ten or fifteen Jews from Hrubieszów survived the war as Poles, and most of them were women.

Or one could try to find a trustworthy Polish family willing to risk their lives to hide Jews. There were some who did it for money,
others out of friendship, still others simply from compassion, but their number was very small. I doubt whether more than ten Jews from Hrubieszów survived by hiding out in Polish homes.

The third possibility of escape was by taking refuge in the forest or joining the partisans. But the severity of the Polish winter, the difficulty of getting food, and the hostility of the vast majority of Ukrainians and Poles (including the partisans, who fought the Germans with single-minded intensity but in most cases refused to accept Jews into their ranks)—all these considerations made this route very chancy. Perhaps fifteen or twenty Jews from Hrubieszów survived the war in the forest. As far as my family was concerned, there was almost nothing we could do.

The news from the front, however, was encouraging. The Russians were fighting for every building left standing in Stalingrad, almost brick by brick, and it seemed that the German summer offensive of 1942 had come to a standstill. The Russians had turned the German advance into a retreat in the first winter of the war, and we were full of hope and the expectation of similar good news during the second winter. But time was running out for us.

On October 18, the dreaded news came. The Gestapo ordered the Judenrat to have all the Jews in Hrubieszów assemble in the central square of the town at nine in the morning of October 20. They were to be “resettled” in an unspecified labor camp. Each person was permitted to bring with him a small bundle of belongings and food. Those who did not show up would be shot. Although we had all expected this, the actual summons came like a hammer blow. This time there were to be no exceptions; no Jews were to remain in Hrubieszów. Like all other towns of Poland, it was to be made completely
Judenrein.

What few options we had held out little or no hope. The train was a direct trip to the gas chamber. Hiding was very difficult, because
even if the search parties didn't find us, how long could we stay in a skrytka without food and water? Father approached a few of his Polish acquaintances in search of a hiding place for us, but to no avail.

Then, unexpectedly, a woman came with a message from a Polish army colonel whom Fred had met during the war through the president of the Polish Landowners Association in Hrubieszów. A liberal and a good man, he had been a friend of Father's before the war. During the summer he had fallen ill and consulted Fred, who diagnosed advanced cancer of the lung.

When the colonel heard of the impending action, he sent his housekeeper, who was also his mistress, to offer Fred a hiding place in his house. Fred knew that the colonel would not be willing to hide all seven of us, but perhaps one more might be acceptable, so he took a chance and asked Hanka to join him.

On the evening of October 19, the two of them said farewell to the rest of the family. We were all in tears, knowing that we would probably never see each other again. Then Mother joined Father, Felek, Sam, and me in the skrytka in the attic of the house in which we were hiding out. The countdown for the hunt had begun.

Early on the morning of October 20, our landlord and his entire family joined us. There were ten of them, including a three-month-old granddaughter. We had about a two-week supply of food and water. Through the little opening in the attic wall, we could see groups of Jews carrying bundles going toward the center of town. It was heartbreaking to watch them. They walked with no visible emotion other than sadness and resignation. Families kept together, mothers and fathers with their bundles on their backs or shoulders holding babies in their arms, or walking hand in hand with the older children.

Most of them knew they were going to be killed, but there was no more fight left in them. They were the descendants of many generations of Jews who had been brought up to obey orders, to do what
the “authorities” told them to do, and so they obeyed these authorities now, even when the orders were to go to their own deaths. The
Sonderkommando
, who had come to town to supervise the action, and the local Gestapo and their henchmen were busy directing the Jews toward the train station, where they were loaded into waiting cattle cars.

That day about three thousand Jews were shipped to the gas chambers of Sobibór. About three thousand others remained in town, hiding in skrytkas as we did, or simply staying in their houses. The rest of the prewar Hrubieszów Jewish population had either escaped to the Russian side in 1939, had been killed in the preliminary partial actions before this main extermination action, or were scattered through the nearby fields and forests.

We spent a restless night, during which the feeling of being a hunted animal came back to me in full force. Early the next morning, October 21, an all-out house-to-house hunt began. I was able to observe through the opening in the wall what was taking place in a small section of the street directly below us.