Letters to Rose Page 8

  Authorities sent me to cut peat in the marshland around Pionki, work that was hard for a much stronger man, much less a young girl. I had to stand in a hole full of water and cut out square pieces of peat. The quantity to be cut was more than I could do in a day. After cutting out the squares, I heaped the blocks up in pyramids for drying. I worked alone, not permitted to ask for help.

  Our supervisor was a beast of a man, walking around the whole day with a whip in his hand. He often lashed me with his whip because I couldn’t work as rapidly as he determined I should. I resolved to hide and not to go to this work again. I hid in the basement of our building. The police looked for me. They knew I had to be there. They tried to break the door open, but, thank Heaven, they didn’t succeed. My heart nearly burst in anticipation of being shot.

  The police didn’t find me that day, but the next day my punishment came. The malicious police sent me to the ammunition factory at Pionki to replace someone who had bribed the police out of work. This job was the worst of the worst. Standing amid the furnaces at the ammunition plant was akin to visiting Hell itself—the fires, sweltering heat, and enormous kettles of molten lead were almost physically unbearable.

  Two of us worked together. We had heavy leather straps harnessed to us that went on the underside of the kettle for hauling from the furnace area to the cooling station. The sweat ran down our bodies. It burned holes in our clothes. As if the labor itself weren’t punishment enough, our supervisors beat us, especially when we tried to take a bath. They whipped us unmercifully on our naked flesh. The turf cutting was horrible, but two of us transporting hot kettles of molten lead all day was truly indescribable.

  I don’t know how I stood all this. The reminder of my brother and my sister helped a lot to ease my pain and to get over the worst. I recall that I kept on living more for their sakes than for my own.

  One day, everything had to be cleaned up. We workers also had to appear clean and neat. Some big shot German came to inspect the facility and the workers. Although I was not allowed to move from my place, I left the ranks, ran to the German official, and told him that I had worked at Kromolowski, that I was suddenly sent here, that I had a younger sister in the ghetto who didn’t have anybody to be with.

  Somehow, my words seemed to move him, and he ordered the police to send me back to the ghetto. I did not realize at the time how brave I was. Everybody fell into a seething rage against me, as if I had committed a crime. But my sister was happy and so was I. The Jewish police were especially angry with me. They would have to replace me. I went back to the ghetto, yes, but two days later a new evacuation took place, and I was the first one whom they packed away.

  Dear Rose,

  Your story has given me hope that I’ve never had before, albeit a very selfish hope. I’m not proud of the decisions and actions I made in middle school. I was a bully, a name-caller, and thought I was God’s gift to mankind. I took outgoing, nice people and made them a shadow of their former selves. I took shy kids who just wanted a friend and made their lives miserable. I thought it was funny. I never hurt them physically, but that’s not the only kind of bullying there is. While they never said it directly, I’m positive I was the cause of some kids moving away. It got so bad that even the friends I had surrounded myself with in elementary school and those I thought the world of couldn’t stand to be around me.

  But my arrogant self never noticed this until it was almost too late. Then I realized at the beginning of the 8th grade that I had but one friend left, and he told it to me straight. I was a horrible person and I should be ashamed of myself for everything I had ever done, and that’s when I really LOOKED. Everything I had done came crashing down on me at once. If the crushing feeling of guilt and isolation was any measure, I could only begin to imagine what all the kids I had bullied must’ve felt.

  Although I’ve made up with a lot of my friends and made new ones, and I like to think I’ve changed to be a better person, I’ll never be able to forgive myself. The fact that you were able to forgive the Germans for everything they had done to you, your family, and your people, simply amazes me. Though the Germans may have been acting under orders and threat of death, no such burden was put on me. Though I find it to be incredibly selfish to seek forgiveness and to finally put my conscience at ease, I want to find the people I’ve bullied and apologize.

  You’ve given me the selfish hope that when I meet the people I’ve bullied, they may actually forgive me. Your story brought all of this back to the forefront of my mind (which isn’t a bad thing!). With everything going on in my life, graduating, first job, first apartment, and college, I was beginning to forget. But I never want to forget. It would be akin to ignoring everything that happened. With this newfound hope, I can look at a better tomorrow for myself, and maybe I’m on the road to being able to look at myself without feeling sad or disappointed.

  So I thank you, Rose, from the bottom of my heart. May you have blessed days, every day.

  With love and thanks,

  John Pardaen

  Dear Rose,

  Your haunting stories humanized the Holocaust. In text, we can only comprehend the devastation and horror to a certain extent. But your personal experience and connection opened a new perspective and emphasized the terror the victims experienced. As you spoke, I audio-recorded your stories to share one day with my children so they, too, can hear the voice of bravery and hope. My wish is for my children to feel the emotions I felt hearing your word, to have the epiphany of how much life can change so instantly, and to remind them to cherish the ones we love. As I left after meeting you, I walked out with love and compassion, an enlightened glow, and the urge to spread love and kindness. For that, I thank you.

  With all respect,

  Maddie Holder

  Dear Rose,

  It’s an honor to meet a survivor of the Holocaust, and yet depressing. How could someone survive that horrific event, and live with that burden? But you did. You have shown tremendous courage and strength to fight through your pain and live to speak about it. You’ve been broken down and had the strength to build yourself up from the bottom. You truly are a warrior! For you to go through such a tragedy and then speak to younger generations is impressive. I’m grateful that you were capable of opening up your life to the world by sharing your experience. You have shown us that life is hard, and, no matter what you’ve gone through, you just have to keep going. You have inspired us all.

  Personally, your visit meant the world to me. Your message gave me a sense of purpose and hope. As I listened to you, every word you spoke was precious to me. I felt as if I knew you. How I wish I did. But how could I? I had watery eyes. I wish the Holocaust never happened. I wish you never had to go through that.

  I am proud to say that I will pass on your story, so that you and your message will live on. How I wish it were all so simple to explain. Rose, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for choosing to go forward so I can better understand my purpose and what I’m fighting for, and why.

  Love,

  Deiondra Eldridge

  Chapter Nine:

  Return to Pionki

  The Nazis weren’t satisfied with the liquidations of Glinice and Walowa. Operation Reinhardt’s mission was to rid Poland of all Jews. Yes, they needed laborers in factories and fields, but workers were easily replaced and the “vermin” Jew had to be eradicated. Three thousand residents of the Little Ghetto, the remnants of Walowa, did not escape aktions after August of ’42. The abominations are too numerous to recount, but a few examples should suffice to prove the point.

  On December 3, ‘42 at 5:00 am, in the Little Ghetto, once again, the SS and their usual collaborators drove people into the streets, beating them as they ran to line up. A selection occurred. Eight hundred marched about twenty-four miles in a blizzard to Szydlowiec, Ukrainians clubbing people who couldn’t keep up the pace or who fell down along the march.

>   The group from Radom joined 6,000 other selected Jews from surrounding communities. They assembled at the town’s old cemetery. A second selection began. Nazis instantly killed children and old people. They singled out young, relatively healthy men and women for transfer to work, and transported the majority to Treblinka.

  Other aktions transpired, but one of the saddest was under the guise of liberation during Purim in the spring of ’43. A number of educated Jews deemed valuable were supposed to be exchanged with neutral powers. People fought to make the list; some sneaked into the gathered group, dressed in their best with their families in tow. They said their goodbyes and boarded trucks.

  It soon became apparent that the trucks were not headed to the railroad station but to Szydlowiec, followed by a number of SS and murderous Ukrainians in trucks. The trucks stopped near some fields. Guards ordered Jews to get out and undress. Local Polish police were there to herd them into open graves where Ukrainians threw in hand grenades and shot anyone not torn to bits by the explosions. One hundred and fifty men, women, and children, who dared to hope freedom was at hand, were savagely murdered.

  On November 8, 1943, the Little Ghetto experienced the final coup de grace. Germans forced all inhabitants to go on a two-hour march to the Szkolna St. barracks. The weather was cold; marchers suffered from exhaustion and lack of sustenance. As they entered the gate of the camp, guards stripped all possessions from them, their pitiful bundles split wide open and ransacked. Ukrainian guards then locked women and children in a barrack until such time as the guards transferred them to a known execution site in Radom, Biala St., where an estimated two hundred perished. The next day, more trucks arrived with other Radom farmed-out laborers. Guards lined them up in a ditch and shot them all.

  Following these aktions, the Germans destroyed all Little Ghetto buildings, selling the salvaged materials, equipment, and machines to the Poles, and sending the proceeds back to Germany for the Winter Relief Fund. By sending money and goods back to Germany to help families whose men were serving the Reich, the regular Wehrmacht soldiers felt buoyed by the Nazis, and citizens were more supportive of the war. In addition to destroying camp evidence, a Sonderkommando crew of sixty was brought in to dig up the remains of mass burials, cremate the bodies, and spread the ashes in surrounding fields. Naturally, this top secret task was kept secret; the SS had the entire Sonderkommando crew executed.24

  • • •

  Roundup of Polish Jews for deportation

  Photo Credit: Courtesy of Yad Vashem. Archival signature 1605/1572.

  Reentering Hell

  It was a wonderful spring day. The trees were bursting into new green with blossoms. The morning air was strong and fresh. I was the first one on a truck headed to an unknown fate. Standing in the truck, I thought how I was again to be separated from my sister and brother. Jurek had been returned from Szkolna briefly. I felt that I had to get down off the truck to see them once more, perhaps for the last time. I begged the Jewish police to permit me to say goodbye to my loved ones, both of whom were waiting in other lines for their destiny. But the man did not listen to me, so I pushed my way through the throng of people standing on the truck and jumped down, knowing I could be shot. I simply had to see my siblings; they were all I had left.

  I only managed to see Helen, my sister’s friend. I begged her, “Please, please take care of my sister.”

  “I promise you that I will,” Helen responded.

  After leaving Helen, a calm overcame me. I knew in my heart that it was not the last time I was going to see my sister. For some reason, I felt so sure that I would see her again that I was somehow relieved of my worry. I pushed back onto the truck. My light-hearted mood descended into despair, however, when we arrived at our destination. I had been brought back to Hell, the place I had begged to leave behind: Pionki.

  The ammunition factory stood in a dense pine forest, and its beauty made me temporarily forget the bitterness of our impending fate. My heart, which promptly clammed up with a hard ring of resignation, had moments earlier been opened to this beautiful forest. I had felt light and nearly cheerful as I heard people chattering and laughing at death, joking as only despair jokes. Listening, I could no longer share their mirth. I had been in this dreadful place before. Was I perhaps, in spite of my sixteen years, already much older than the others? My experiences with liquidation, beatings, and numerous forced labor jobs had certainly aged me, and Pionki had been among the worst of those encounters.

  I looked about, and in the distance I saw many small houses, and all of them had spires. It looked like multiple churches. I wondered if they belonged to some extremely old town. Then, suddenly, came the shouts of our greatest enemies, the Ukrainians. They ordered us to get down from the truck and form files, men and women in separate lines.

  Mechanically, the lines closed, and I still see the vivid images of the walking dead before my eyes, already accustomed to seeing so much suffering. In a daze, I approached my fate with indifference. I tried to force myself to refocus, but everything seemed to reel around me as if in a dream.

  The Ukrainians shouted: “You must give up all your valuables. Anyone found hiding jewelry, money, anything of value, will be shot!”

  Confused the women didn’t know what to do with their jewels. I remembered that I had a twenty-pound note, English money that my parents had given me the last time we saw one another. I resolved not to give it away, so I rolled it quickly and stuffed it into the tube of my toothpaste. I had decided that, if it were found, I would say that those things did not belong to me.

  We were examined from 11:00 pm to 7:00 am-—searched, checked all over. Then they sent us to a bath, and, while we cleaned ourselves, guards checked our clothes again. How lucky I was to have taken the tube of paste with me!

  With the first rays of the morning sun shining on all these dreadful scenes, we finally arrived at our barracks, which were really sheds or former stables. In them there were no beds, no mattresses, nothing. Those who had money, of course, could buy a bed, but I had only my twenty-pound bill, and I was afraid to take it out lest it should be stolen. Although I had already suffered want and danger, it was in Pionki that I really learned what misery meant.

  We had not slept a whole night before being immediately assigned to different jobs. The young children did not go to work. We older laborers were destined to load the ammunition into the wagons. We considered loading a relatively good job although it was pretty hard. The good thing about the job was being in the open air, and, as soon as we had finished loading, we were free. During free time, we had an opportunity to meet the Polish civil workers, who always smuggled different things to the working place so that we could buy from them on the black market.

  My assignment was some of the most strenuous work I had done up to now. The ammunition was extremely heavy, up to two hundred pounds, and only two of us were allowed to lift it together. When exiting the factory with our load, we had to pass through a narrow door that was flanked by Ukrainian soldiers.

  If someone attracted their attention by appearing too large, they suspected him or her of being filled with smuggled goods. If caught, not only were the criminals punished and the goods taken away; we were subject to retribution as well. Sometimes, people were hanged. The whole camp had to be present at such an execution and stand for hours gazing at the corpse. The Germans wanted there to be no doubt of the consequences of our insubordinate actions.

  Purpose Restored

  In my heart, I felt a void. I had been accustomed to being with my sister and brother, to always having someone for whom to care and someone who cared for me. Now there was not anybody to whom I belonged or for whom I would willingly continue my life. A strange uneasiness, never known before, filled my heart. I experienced, for the first time, being absolutely alone.

  The yearning to belong to someone made me recall my parents and my dear, dear siblings. I began to cry. I crie
d endlessly, calling out, “Mother, Mother, where are you?” I didn’t care about being seen. I didn’t know who was around me, but, all at once, I realized that I was given a bed to sleep on, and my desperate crying stopped.

  Next to my bed I saw what looked like a little girl. I realized that it was not a small child but a very sick woman lying next to me. I thought G-d had led me to that bed so that I could give some relief to this woman, to ease her sufferings with a shimmer of hope. That woman opened me to a new sense of purpose. She gave me a reason to carry on. I had a chance to help a suffering human being.

  Her name was Yetta Haftarczyk. Every day, she expected me by her bedside at some point. Soon, Yetta began getting better, slowly gathering life force. I brought her some food stuffs, and she prepared something to eat for the two of us. I had given purpose to her life as well. Like me, Yetta had lost her parents, as well as a husband and a child. Her story was like that of many, but being with her taught me what it means to be brave.

  Had it not been for Yetta, I might have put an end to my life. She was so helpless; she needed me. I tried to pull myself together in order to take care of her. It was a very difficult time. Yetta tried to soothe me, to make my bitterness vanish. She was too weak to do all the work allotted to her, and she was often punished and forced to work forty-eight hours without interruption.

  On such days, in spite of the danger, I sneaked into the factory to take her some food. Food, I thought, might help, even though I could not offer her the rest and sleep she so desperately needed. She never complained about anything; she took things as they came.