Journeys with My Mother (4 page)

Every time I listen to that tape, I am reminded that my daughter Annette was with us in my small study, sitting on the floor. I hear myself begging Annette, who is confused about the wars and the places, not to interrupt, always thinking that without her questions my mother's voice would tell me more. Yet it always remains as recorded: too short.

Evidently my maternal grandparents were not stuck in their ways. They took the radical step of sending Tosia and Ola to a progressive, secular school where teaching was in Polish. The
gymnasium
of Fryda Mirlas in Nalewki Street was one of the best private Jewish high schools.

The twenties were years of expansive dreams and great expectations, and the
gymnasium
offered a well-rounded education. What could not be covered by the curriculum was offered in the after-hours lectures and discussions. The school's philosophy, rooted in Romantic and Positivist ideals, aspired to nurture emancipated, independent human beings, encouraged to work for the benefit of society. Its motto was
Seek the bright flames of truth, seek the new undiscovered path
.

I find a few pages on the internet and learn that the students published a school newspaper, called
Flames
. The girls' contributions were written with panache: amusing, critical and irreverent. I believe my mother took the school's motto to heart. She certainly wanted to follow new, undiscovered paths.

One of the school photos shows a handful of teachers with a group of students on a summer excursion to Vilnius. The girls, dressed in pleated navy skirts and white sailors' tops, their white berets askew, some smiling and others just squinting, look towards the camera as if divining the future. Unlike them, I know what is to follow. How could they have guessed that the war was less than three months away and that only very few, if any, would live beyond their youth?

Later, in the ghetto, Fryda Mirlas continued to run the school illegally until her deportation.

It has been said that even in Oświęcim
³
she asked her students to recite ‘Kochanowski's Laments', a much-loved 16th-century threnody, for the loss of the poet's four-yearold daughter. In the camp, it became a requiem for them all.

In 1527, in response to a petition from Warsaw inhabitants, the lawmakers granted the right of the city to enjoy the privilege
de non tolerandis Judaeis
. It prohibited Jews from so much as entering the city, except on market days, let alone to live there.

This changed with the Tsarist edict in 1862, and the number of Jews in the city kept increasing. By the time my grandparents made their way to Warsaw, the Jewish community there had become the largest in Europe.

The Jewish area in Warsaw – large, crowded, diverse – formed a city within a city, and Nalewki Street was its main artery. There were hundreds of little businesses, on top of and next to each other. It seemed that one could buy anything humanity had ever produced, local or imported, only much cheaper than anywhere else. There was nothing that could not be made or mended: clothes, shoes, an old iron or a twisted bicycle. The workshops were small, dark and dusty – the smallest could accommodate only one person – yet people lived and worked in them and customers had to negotiate from the doorstep. Their signboards, in Yiddish, Polish, occasionally Hebrew, even Russian, competed for attention while street hawkers sold everything imaginable, from lemonade and bagels to shoelaces and daily papers. This chaotic abundance – the smell of herrings, dill cucumbers, pickled cabbage wrapped in paper and sold straight from the barrel – gave Nalewki a bazaar-like feel. Everybody had to make a living and everybody was looking for a bargain.

All of this is now gone, as is most of the pre-war city. Also gone is the great variety of characters, which is why my mother liked telling me how interesting, how beguiling, street life was.

Nalewki, Pańska, Towarowa and Smocza streets were like the extension of her home. Beyond, there was another Warsaw. The closest of many parks was Krasinski's, further away was Saski and Łazienki (the Royal Baths) which, years later, became my playground. Though smaller than ever in its long history, Dolina Szwajcarska, the Swiss Valley, can still be found if one knows where to look. Before the war it was one of those exquisite parks of intimate bowers, yet spacious enough to hold street theatre, open-air concerts, cafés and beer gardens and, in winter, the most elegant ice-skating rink in Warsaw.

Walking along the streets cost nothing and Ola loved looking at the refined buildings and shops displaying the latest Parisian fashion or their skilful imitations. In early spring, on every corner country women sold tiny bunches of violets, sprigs of mimosa and lilies of the valley. When the season moved towards summer, the robust scent of lilac took over. Some of the city's attractions weren't so accessible to a not-so-well-paid midwife, but Ola was impatient to see everything, the cabarets as well as plays and films. Apart from the prohibitive cost, there was another obstacle: she looked too young to be admitted. She went to some lengths to look older; with high-heeled shoes, her lips red, a large hat slightly askew keeping her face partly obscured, she would lean on her companion's arm. More often than not, someone challenged her. Then, flushed with embarrassment, she had to explain herself.

Whether it was because of the area in which she grew up, her schooling, or her first job at the Jewish Philanthropic Hospital, Ola was familiar with the dark side of reality. Nothing, it seemed, could alleviate poverty or prevent illnesses borne out of malnutrition and terrible living conditions. In the thirties many people died of tuberculosis or simply of hunger.

When Hersz fell ill, the family was living in another apartment on Nowolipki Street. The throat cancer advanced fast, swallowing was painful and he had to be fed through a tube leading directly to his stomach. It was Brana or one of the girls who would tip watery food into a little funnel. He suffered without complaint. Sometimes, when the smell of freshly cooked food drifted from the kitchen, he asked for some, chewing it slowly before spitting it out.

He could no longer work. The workshop, an outbuilding in the courtyard, was neglected. The Depression and the boycott of Jewish traders took their toll and fewer people bought his printed scarves. The housekeeper had to be dismissed and Brana divided her time between running the household and the business.

By then, the three oldest sisters, Ewa, Tosia and Ola, were already independent. Ola worked at the Charitable Jewish Obstetric Hospital at the corner of Pańska and Żelazna streets. The shifts were long, the pay paltry.

During a time of massive unemployment, Ola thought herself lucky when one of the doctors suggested work in a private hospital. She took it on without abandoning her first job. In the new one, she was often called to attend to women convalescing from childbirth, nursing their newborns. They were rich women prepared to pay good money for home visits.

I wish today were not as bright and hot, so I could more easily imagine the coolness and the smell of water on the day my parents met as their boat moved along the Vistula. Ola was eighteen, her short, wavy hair parted in the middle, which seemed to be in vogue; she liked looking fashionable.

I have a photo from this, or perhaps another, summer excursion. She is dressed in white, smiling and radiant; it was the smile that made her truly beautiful. Leaning against the rail, she looks with envy at a group of young men, their arms on each other's shoulders, dancing the
hora
. Had she been less shy, she would have joined them. The outing was organised by
Promień
, a left-oriented club of the Zionist youth group Hashomer Hatzair. Every political party worth its salt had its own club, a library, amateur theatre group and sporting activities. These clubs were very popular with secular Jewish youth. My brother and I owe much to this liberating social phenomenon. How else would my parents have met?

Initially, Ola was not particularly attracted to the slim, dark-haired, blue-eyed man who paid her so much attention. Władek, who had just returned from six years in Palestine, was twenty-three, well read in leftist literature and passionate about social change. She found him impressive but not at all irresistible. At first they met at club functions and afterwards he insisted on walking her home. The idea of walking next to him, let alone arm in arm, was excruciating. So worried was she about being seen with a young man that she walked very fast, pretending they were not together. For his part, Władek tried to stay close to her. A comic and inauspicious beginning.

The story given to me appears incomplete because, in due course, it was Ola who kissed Władek first. ‘I was always a good girl,' my mother would say, hinting in a roundabout way that she wished I were more amenable.

‘You were?' I would say, feigning surprise, suppressing glee. I knew that when it came to compliance, Ola's actions were contrary to the advice she gave me.

When Ola decided to live with the man she loved, my grandparents were understandably alarmed. They'd hoped for someone altogether unlike Władek, someone with an established social position capable of supporting a future family. Worse still: Ola and Władek rejected the whole idea of marriage as a superfluous gesture to bourgeois convention. It was a matter of principle, as if a sanctified marriage would somehow diminish their love, causing everything they stood for to collapse. A religious ceremony in particular – civil marriages did not exist in Warsaw – was beyond the pale.

Brana and Hersz, however, were not so easily defeated. They had their own principles and did everything possible to impose their will. They prepared a surprise wedding. The stratagem, however, failed abysmally. When the prospective newlyweds found out that in place of a regular family dinner, they were about to be wed under the
chuppa,
⁴
they turned and left, not to be seen for a long time. So it happened that my mother, a dutiful and loving daughter, left her parental home to live in sin with my father, an unemployed communist. I can well imagine my grandparents' despair. The censure of the tightly knit Jewish community traumatised them. They felt betrayed, even dishonoured, tormented by lack of filial loyalty, astonished by Ola's intransigence, her inability to make a gesture, if only for their sake.

Ola carried her parents' pain and her own guilt for the rest of her life. As she began to look back, she regretted her decision. If not for the war, it would have been just like any other family conflict. No one knew then how it would end, I tried to comfort her, but she was inconsolable.

The war did happen and my mother felt guilty for surviving it.

‘Don't cry,' says my mother, standing at my shoulder as I write.

3

Back to the Past: Grodzisk

To speak the names of the dead is to make them live again.

—Egyptian proverb

I lost my grandparents twice. They were killed before I could get to know them and I felt their absence deeply. Then, to make matters worse, for years my parents never mentioned them in recollections and anecdotes. Their own wounds were still raw. It was easier to avoid the topic.