Who is watching over me in this silence that I feel? Someone is, or else I wouldn’t feel this peace. I am so clean and newly born. I am unencumbered. I am so free and straight. My hair is ash blonde, and my dresses are new and well-fitting. I deserve the respect I get at school. I feel I am privileged. I have nothing to worry about. My parents have paid off the teacher, and she will never bother me. She picks on other children and punishes them with the strike of a ruler across their small knuckles, but I have been released from this dilemma, and I can just sit here and observe. She passes me over, in a diplomatic fashion, showing neither good nor bad feelings toward me. My safe place has been prepared for me, and I can be left in peace. I wear my cross always, and I am a Catholic girl. My mother takes me to church every Sunday, and I call her “auntie.” I don’t think I call my father anything.
It is the summer of 1945, and it is so nice to feel safe and owe allegiance to no one. Only the church has my allegiance. Because I have the church, Jesus, Mary, and many saints, I need no other involvements.
How peaceful it is to be uninvolved, and the involvement I have requires only my faith. Nothing is demanded of me, and I am filled with gratitude for the compassion and understanding my parents offer me.
I feel a unique form of self-respect as if I were a green shoot just sprouted from the ground. I walk in my new identity, but this time in a free world. I want to be left in peace with my devotion. No one is trespassing on it, and I feel that respect is being shown to me. This is an oasis in my life. I am surrounded by the hum of the world, whose existence I prefer not to understand. I am here within myself, where everything makes sense and shelters me. “Dear Jesus and Mary, take care of me and show me the way for only in you, I find my peace.”
***
My schooling in Katowice was cut short as I was overcome by illness again. I lay in bed weak from fever. “Typhoid fever,” the doctor pronounced. I had many books, but could only glance through them when the fever subsided. Other times I played with a small box filled with toothpicks. I would align the toothpicks around the box and a panorama of beings came alive. Sometimes, as I lay back propped up by my pillow, I would see these beings move and engage in activities. I was observing a tiny village with minuscule people doing farm chores, walking and conversing. I was sure it was magic, and I watched them until my eyes closed in feverish slumber.
I lay in bed for a long time, perhaps two weeks. After the typhoid fever passed, there were two more illnesses that befell me. One was mumps, and I recall looking at myself in the mirror and seeing my face all round and bloated. After the mumps, I had chicken pox. These ailments came in quick succession, and I was in bed for almost a month. I don’t recall much medication or doctor visits. Most likely, there was not much medication available because stores were not yet stocked and most factories were out of commission. We had to rely on good nutrition, rest, and attentive care for my recuperation. All of these I received, and I recovered from all these illnesses and became well and strong again.
My father was busy making money on the black market. We never lacked for food. My aunt Hela lived with us. Somehow she had survived the war. She was 26 years old and pretty. Her crowning glory was her hair, light brown with blonde highlights, naturally wavy with a wonderful sheen. She had light eyes and small regular features. If she were to walk on the streets of Poland during the war, no one would suspect her appearance. She had been Nunio’s wife, my mother’s only brother who disappeared from the Przemysl ghetto, and whom we never saw again. My father felt very protective toward her, and she clung to us like a lost child.
Hela was remiss in paying attention to the necessities of life—as for instance the time my mother left her in charge of dinner. My mother had to leave the large, one-room apartment that we shared and instructed her to take good care that the meal did not burn. Hela got distracted attending to her carefully managed clothes and her appearance, and the meal did burn. In her anxiety over my mother’s reaction, she kept the door of the apartment open so she could hear my mother’s footsteps climbing the stone staircase to the third floor. When she heard my mother coming, she ran to the handrail of the curved stairwell, shouting down to her, “It has already burned.” This way, she hoped to forestall my mother’s annoyance by allowing her time to deal with this news over the next three floors. I heard my mother tell this story to her friends and to us, sometimes using the phrase, “It has already burned,” as a humorous quote.
We had been in Katowice for about five months when my mother told me we would be leaving for Berlin. My parents and Hela packed all of our belongings, and that night we got into the back of a large truck where we sat on high, narrow benches firmly attached to the walls of the truck. It was dark, and heavy barrels rolled around the floor and made a racket, the noise escalating with the bumps and holes of the war-torn roads. We kept our feet on top of the bench to avoid being hit by the barrels, and the rolling racket made it difficult to hear ourselves talk. We rode in that painfully uncomfortable position for several hours. At one point, we stopped, and I realized that there were several other people with us. Someone got out, and some goods were given to the guards at the station. I heard some mention of liquor.
About two hours later, we stopped for the night at an inn. I was so tired I could hardly walk. The innkeeper opened the door. My father gave him money. In a matter of minutes, five children, ages three to ten, emerged from the bedroom and a large bed was made available to us. I lay down, my eyes half closed with fatigue when I realized I was lying on a sheet wet with urine. My revulsion attempted to fight off the sleep, but it did not succeed.
In the morning, my parents woke me and told me it was time to eat breakfast and get back on the truck. The memory of that repulsive bed was palpable, and for many years afterward, a feeling of nausea would overcome me at the smell of urine.
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