over the last few days—1939, 1940, 1941,” I said, starting to wonder if I had gone too fast, if the interviews had taken a toll.
He went into his office and closed the door.
Aside from the “little boy” stories, my father rarely spoke to anyone about his wartime experiences. He started to open up around the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war, when he learned about an international conference for children who had spent the Holocaust in hiding. The organizers had expected a few hundred attendees but almost two thousand people gathered together and broke their silence. Around the same time, many educators, reporters, and filmmakers were reaching out to survivors, wanting to document their stories for future generations. My father was reluctant at first but soon agreed to a number of private interviews and eventually public talks.
Our interviews would be different, I soon learned.
He shaped most of the agenda that first day, providing me with background on his town and summarizing relevant historical events. But in the days that followed, I started to probe, hoping to lead him down new paths. While he was recounting about the story of hiding at his paternal grandfather’s house I realized that I was missing a piece of information: “Was your maternal grandmother hiding in another house?” I asked.
“I never told anyone this, but . . .” he glanced at me and then at the floor, thinking back. Suddenly he brought his hands up to cover his face.
I stood up to try and comfort him but he remained stiff, his arms pressed close to his body. He had always been a slight man but he suddenly looked frail, fragile, somehow more human. “Should we stop?” I asked. My hands shook as I reached to turn off the video camera.
“No, I want to continue,” he said. Then he described the details of her death: the stubbornness, the raids, the shawl found in the street.
The writer in me felt that I had made a breakthrough; the daughter in me felt tremendous guilt. Was my quest for knowledge at the expense of his suffering? I did not want to cause him pain, or force him to relive the most tragic moments of his life, but it did not seem possible to avoid it. And this was just the beginning of the war. Would I even be able to keep it together when the story got even worse? I, too, had not slept well the previous night, thinking about how I had upset my father. But a sense of responsibility urged me to continue.
When he resurfaced that afternoon I suggested that we spend the rest of the day relaxing at the community pool, a short drive from the house. Taking a break and slowing things down seemed like the only choice. As I read my book I looked over at my father, who was sleeping peacefully as the sun beat down on his face, his arms, his legs. He wasn’t wearing any sunglasses or sunblock; he had refused to let anything get between him and the sun over the years.
“You know, we don’t have to write the book,” I said when he woke up. Although I was committed to pressing ahead, I felt I should give him an out.
“No, I’m fine,” he insisted. “I was just feeling tired today.”
“Well, you can change your mind anytime,” I said, still worried about him.
Back in San Francisco a few days later I reviewed our interviews, as well as the essays my father wrote in a writing workshop for Holocaust survivors. Piecing the old and new together, I started emailing him rough drafts. Initially they resembled a book of MadLibs: the pages were dotted with empty spaces for details on people, places, and events. Writing the stories, I thought, might be easier than face-to-face interviews, easier for both of us. Maybe looking at me—the daughter named after one of his loved ones—forced him to acknowledge what had happened in a way he had never allowed himself.
Eager to fully immerse myself in the project, I started renting Holocaust documentaries. The films would sit on my dining table for one week, then another. After writing about the Holocaust all day, I dreaded watching the videos at night; it was too painful to be confronted with real, live voices detailing events similar to the ones playing over and over in my head. Eventually I would send the videos back and rent comedies and love stories instead.
I bought pink tulips for my apartment; I started taking yoga.
Lying on my back in the savasana yoga pose (the “corpse” pose) our instructor gently urged the class to free our minds of all thoughts from the day, to focus on our breathing. As I tried to clear my mind, I found myself drawn to the very images I was trying to forget for those five minutes: the rebbe reaching his long, bony hand out to the German soldier; the old man forced to burn the holy books; my great grandmother being taken away by the SS. My instructor’s voice roused me from the morbid pose: “Open your eyes and turn to your right side.”
A few weeks after my return from Florida I started finding large envelopes crammed into my mailbox, sent by my father via U.S. Priority Mail. The first package contained photos of his town, a sketch depicting one of his escape routes, and stories about life before the war. “Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, was one of the most festive days for the Jews of Maciejow,” my father wrote. “Weeks before the holiday, my mother would take us to the tailor to get fitted for our new clothes: tweed suits for my brother and I, a printed dress for my sister.” When the holiday finally arrived, his family would attend synagogue together and wish for gezunt and parnusse, health and good fortune. My father would race home after the services, eager to read the holiday cards delivered by the postman and taste his favorite holiday foods—gelfite fish and chicken soup. All of these traditions came to an end under the German occupation.
6
THE BASEMENT
Maciejow Poland. September 1942
The town synagogues were still shuttered when Rosh Hashanah arrived the following September, but most Jews continued to pray in secret, inside their homes. Noike and his brother were invited to one of these clandestine gatherings, this one held at a neighbor’s house down the road. They quietly entered through the back door, closely guarded by two teenaged boys from their school. “Shana Tova,” the young guards whispered as they ushered the boys into the house.
At least thirty worshippers were crammed into the tiny living room. They leaned against archways, squatted on the floor, and sat on the occasional chair. In the center of the room a group of older men wearing prayer shawls were huddled around the Torah, swaying from side to side as they sang. The prayers were the same ones they read every year but the atmosphere had never been so tense. Posters all over town had warned Jews about large gatherings: “More than three Jews found in assembly are to be shot instantly.” But forgoing prayer was not an option for these religious Jews: Rosh Hashanah was judgment day, the time when God would decide who should live and who should die.
One of the men leading the prayers, Itzchak Shochat, was dressed in a kittel, a white robe worn on religious occasions such as this one. Itzchak had a beautiful, long white beard, soft as cotton. He belonged to the same synagogue as Noike’s family, the Trysker Synagogue, and sat in the same section as Noike’s grandfather. “Noikele, come here,” Itzchak would say after the Shabbat services, “such a sheina punem.” Squatting down, he would reach out and pinch Noike’s cheeks until they turned pink. It hurt but Noike liked his attention.
As they were softly chanting the holiday prayers, one of the boys on watch ran into the living room and announced that two SS officers were heading towards the house. Itzchak grabbed the Torah,
