Two Rings (11 page)

“Don't marry this man. Don't leave Radom. You want to give him a ring; give him. But don't leave Radom with him.”

Was he thinking of my safety? Was he suspicious of the proposed exchange? Later, after the war, I was in touch with his sister, and she told me that her mother was always talking about me, saying that I would be a good match for her son the goldsmith. But I had no knowledge of this then, and it wouldn't have made any difference to me, anyway. I was interested only in Heniek, and I was marrying him despite the idea of escaping to Argentina, not because of it.

People in the barracks seemed to want me not to go as well. They wanted to take my place; one woman offered me a fortune if I would give up my place in the exchange to her (I told her to ask Heniek; it wasn't up to me whom he would take). And they wondered why Heniek had picked
me
. What was so special about me that among all the women working at the factory—there were nearly five hundred of us—Heniek had asked me to go with him?

What could I say? I didn't know myself what he saw in me. There were women in the barracks who were more educated
than I, who came from wealthier homes. I had been the smarkata, and yet Heniek had chosen me, me among all the others. Perhaps because I was young? He was twenty-eight at the time. He told me once that a friend joked with him that he was robbing the cradle in marrying me, that I was too young to know anything, and he joked back that his friend shouldn't worry—he would raise me right. So maybe my youth was appealing to him, just as his worldly maturity appealed to me. Whatever it was, I was gladdened by his choice, proud even, if I can say it, that among all the women wanting him, Heniek wanted me.

Heniek and I were married several days later in Mima and Feter's single room on Szwarlikowska Street. My father was there, but it was Feter who said the blessings. We shared a sip of something, though I don't know what, and Heniek broke a glass. We had no documents to sign. We had no
ketubah
, and we had, of course, no marriage license from the state.

This is what even now I struggle to make sense of: How did we think this was going to work? Heniek did not have the same last name as his brother-in-law; I never had any document to share a name with Heniek. I was Mania Drezner before I got married and I was Mania Drezner after. So how did we think we could be convincingly claimed as part of Heniek's brother-in-law's family? I don't understand this. Something doesn't make sense here in the story of my own life; there's a blank space in my history, and I have no way to fill it in and no one to ask.

Nonetheless, we were married. Heniek gave me a simple gold band, and I gave him the ring I had gotten made for him with his initials engraved on top.

I have the rings still. Both rings, tied together with a thin length of thread.

Sometime later, we had a picture taken. Try as I might—and it bothers me that there are things that stay hidden in me somewhere, inaccessible to my searching, whereas others I remember with a readiness that amazes me—I cannot recall where or when or how we got this picture taken. But I have it even now, along with the rings. It's black and white, of course, and we look—I need to say this—we look happy, almost eager. Our temples are touching, my face slightly lower than his, and we're both looking straight at the camera. I am smiling slightly, even a little impishly. I remember I didn't like how my hair looked in the picture—it's done up in a way, as if supported by curlers, and I still think I don't look good in it. It's printed on flimsy paper; all the edges are frayed, and there are jagged creases down the middle because of the way it was kept when I was at Auschwitz. But it's a lovely picture, nonetheless.

All through my life, during the many decades that followed, I have kept this picture with me. Years after the war, Jack mounted it on a little rectangle of cardboard to give it some substance. How sweet this was of Jack, how selfless, to preserve a picture of me with another man. But I put the picture away: It stays in an old envelope on a shelf in the back of my closet hidden behind my clothes. Wherever I have lived—in Germany after the war, in various apartments and houses in New York after we came to America—I have kept this picture, secretly close to my heart, but tucked away.

Our evening was over. We had to return to the factory—Heniek to his duties in the police, I to my work in the kitchen. We would be leaving shortly for Argentina.

Soon thereafter, we got word: The “exchange” had taken place. Seventeen people, all related in a single family—Heniek's sister and brother-in-law, the girl Henia Friedman, all those who were designated for the exchange with Germans living in Argentina—were gathered together in the ghetto and taken to the central square, presumably for transport. But then, instead of being loaded onto trucks, they were lined up and shot. We heard that one member of the family escaped: Heniek's nephew, Amek Bleiweis, somehow knowing not to trust the reality of the exchange, lowered himself into the dugout of a communal latrine and hid in human excrement until the massacre was over. He said the stench stayed on him for weeks. Heniek and I eluded the slaughter, but for no reason other than that we were not living in or visiting the ghetto when it happened.

This was the maniacal logic of the war. I couldn't understand it then, and it's certainly no clearer to me now, why the Germans thought it necessary to concoct this ruse. The Germans were killing us routinely and without cause. My brother was shot because he had a limp. Chava had been murdered because she was running in fear. Rafalowitz and Weinberg and the man the German officer killed at the factory on Yom Kippur: The Germans didn't need a reason; they killed because they killed. So why did they need a story about people going to Argentina in order to kill them? Was the story to worsen the pain? To deliver people to death only after giving them the hope of life?

And why had we been spared? This is a different sort of question, I know. But it was a question that haunted me. I had visited the ghetto just a day or two before the killing. I could
have been there. I could have been killed. For no reason at all, Heniek and I were simply elsewhere when the killing occurred. So we were alive.

At least then. At least at that point.

Heniek and I were married in idea, really, more than in actuality. We couldn't live together, of course, and we barely had time alone. Heniek had a room in one of the barracks—a wooden bed, a thin mattress, a standing lamp without a shade. I don't know whether the room was his or if he somehow got permission to use someone else's for an hour or two at a time. We didn't go there much; it was against the rules, and I had to walk back to my barracks in the dark on my own. And there was always fear, always the threat of getting caught.

Heniek was twelve years older than I; he knew how to handle himself in the world, he had experience of women, and he had a good deal of power over the Jews in his charge. I was young and vulnerable and innocent of absolutely everything. I gave myself to Heniek, and he could have done with me whatever he pleased. But what pleased Heniek was to be a gentleman. Heniek loved me with patience and with tenderness, and he guided me gently with his kisses to find my deepest pleasure.

In the end, we were married for only a short time. Perhaps just a few months, though truly, I don't know. I don't myself know when exactly we got married, and there is no legal record of the date. Perhaps we were married in the summer of 1943; perhaps it was the fall. I cannot say how
long Heniek Greenspan was my husband; I know only that it was not long enough.

In the winter of 1943–1944, the area of the barracks on Skolzna Street became a
Konzentrationslager
, a concentration camp. A few months earlier, in November 1943, the Radom ghetto was finally emptied and my aunt and uncle came to the factory with their son, Moishele. He was still too young to work, but they tried as best they could to make him look older, and he managed to survive almost another year, until we were sent to Auschwitz.