In Modern Times

  2

"In Modern Times, Satan disguised himself as a Nazi: There is no difference.

But in spite of everything Satan could do, Jewish faith remained firm.

Rabbi Chaim Pearl
"Sacrifice of Abraham Reflected in Modern Record."
Intermountain Jewish News....September 13,1985

  3

SON: "If there is a god how could there be Nazis?"

MOTHER: "Tell him how come there were Nazis."

FATHER: "Tell him how come there were Nazis? I don't even understand how a can opener works."

HANNAH AND HER SISTERS
Woody Allen movie...1986

  4

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Numbers are dispassionate. They are also overwhelming, numbing at times. They rob us of our ability to comprehend the individual tragedies because we do not possess the capacity to absorb death, terror, the ultimate cruelty on a large scale, certainly not a a scale as unprecedented as the collective murders that have become known as the HOLOCAUST.

We have been working on this book for several years. It has gone through many changes, transformations and several formats. In one form it a lengthy historical dissertation, commentary and feeble explanations.¹ In all it filled twice the number of pages it took to directly tell Irving’s story.

All that is gone now–the story, we realized, must stand alone. It speaks for itself, just as the fact that when we met Irving was a stranger. He is now our brother.

  5

My name is Irving Shapiro.

I am a businessman from Gering, Nebraska. I have not always been one.

I was born Israel Szapiro in Miedzyrzec, Poland on April 15, 1923.

My parents were Hershel and Mala Szapiro.

Abraham was my brother.

Meyer Ruzal was my grandfather. He was one of the most important men in our community. He owned real estate in Warsaw and a big lumber business and the house in Miedzyrzec where we lived. The house had four apartments.

Our rooms were on the ground floor right next to my grandparent's. My mother's two sisters lived upstairs in the other two apartments with their families.

All of them died in the gas chambers of Treblinka and became ashes in the ovens, all except my brother, Abraham..

I do not know what happened to him. He was taken with me, on the day of the last transport, when Meidzyrzec was made "Judenrein", free of Jews, to Majdanek Concentration Camp. We were there together, for several weeks and then he was gone. I went to look for him one day and could not find him. The others in his barracks said he had been selected the night   6 before for a shipment. The Nazis were taking people away every day like that. Abraham went, I don't know where and I have never found a trace of him. Not a word, not a clue, nothing to prove he ever existed. I still search for him and will as long as I live, not because I have hope, but because I must.

THE INNOCENCE OF CHILDHOOD

It is hard to make comparisons between life as it was when I was a boy growing up in Miedzyrzec and life after the Nazis came and tried to destroy everything including us.

That childhood was a time of joy, of a happy home and a rich, full life. Dark clouds may have been hanging over our heads, death may have been close at hand, but we did not know it–and we, the children especially, dreamed as children do everywhere of a future filled with riches, achievement, adventure and success. We expected to take our place in the community, the Jewish world of our parent(a nd, at least for some of us, the bigger world we knew existed outside   7 Meidzyrzec.

Grandfather Ruzal owned a big lumber business. My father and my uncles worked for him. They were all men of standing in the Polish community and in the small besmedrish,² our neighborhood shul³ that was only a few doors from our house.

There was also wonderful old eighteenth century synagogue in Miedzyrzec, but it was a twenty minute walk from our house. That was grand in the spring, but was a long way on a cold winter morning or evening. So we went there only on special occasions, if someone invited us or they were having a famous rabbi my father wanted to hear.

That synagogue is vivid in my memory because it was always like a holiday when we went there. We dressed in our very best and my mother made sure everything about us was just right because we would be meeting 'strangers'.

The synagogue had huge wooden doors that led into a large lobby with a decorative mosaic floor that was always damp no matter what the season. I remember the dampness especially and the way my father would shake his head, because he believed like everyone else, that the dampness could give you rheumatism. For a long time now I have wondered if after the Nazis came and desecrated the synagogue, turning it into   8 a charnel house of murder and torture, using it a stable and then a place to put people from the ghetto who were dying of typhus, if my father thought about the dampness when he lay on that floor. When he caught the sickness he was put there to die with the othjers, but he survived only to die later in the gas chamber at Treblinka.⁴

It is hard for me to think about that synagogue. It is an ache in my heart. I can still see the ruin of that building and hear the screams of my neighbors who were tortured there by the Nazis. They tore holes in the roof, desecrated the ark, burned our Torahs and killed many, many Jews in the damp lobby. They turned our sacred building into a place of murder and torture and laughed at our tears.

I have been told that shattered building survived the war and was rebuilt. It is a synagogue again, but I wonder where are the Jews to worship in it? All the people I knew and grew up with have been scattered to the winds. Before the Nazis came Poland had almost four million⁵ Jewish citizens. Now, I am told, there are less than a few thousand scattered across the country. the rest became smoke and ashes in the crematoriums and those of us who survived did not have the heart to return to a place where the very air was poisoned by   9 hatred and death.

There are some Jews in Miedzyrzec today, a few hundred out of a community that once was more than eighteen thousand. In my mind I see the ones who went back as ghosts, returning, not to live, but because they could not find the energy or will to move on and try to come alive. They returned to the only thing they remembered even if nothing of what was in their minds and hearts remained.

. So much crowds together in my mind. The memories are like a kaliadescope, bits and pieces falling over each other, forming patterns all wanting to come out of me at once.

I was a happy, healthy, cheerful baby. I grew up in a loving, sheltered atmosphere, looked after by my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, by the neighbors and everyone in our community. All the members of the besmedrish were my family, just as my parents were to all the other children. Everyone knew everyone and all the children were taught to respect and obey their elders.

Our house on Lubelska Street was the center of my world.

It was definitely my mother's domain. Even though my last image of her is the agony of watching her being herded into a boxcar heading for the Treblinka death camp, I still   10 remember her as a robust, laughing, bustling woman.

My memories of her are all centered in the kitchen. I can see her now, cooking, baking, getting ready for shabbath, putting vegetables up in jars, boiling jelly and jam, wiping her hands on her apron, giving me a pinch and a pat, smiling her special smile and telling me stories. In my memory it seems like she was always telling me stories. That was her way to teach me about life.

Sometimes she got upset with me, but she could not stay angry because she was too full of life. I can see her waving her finger and warning me that I was “Going to get it" when my father got home because I had done something wrong, but I never worried. My father was no monster who beat his sons and mother could never stay angry with. We only had to be good for a little while and she would start smiling again and reward me with cookies and a glass of milk from the pitcher on the counter.

Our house was filled with the heady odor of the spices she kept hanging in the kitchen mingling with those coming from the pots and kettles that were always simmering on the stove, bubbling, sputtering, sending up little jets of steam and a hint of what we would have for supper.

  11

There were times in the camps when I lay in the filthy straw on the wooden plank I was forced to share with others, so hungry I did not think I could live until morning, or endure another day. Then the image of that kitchen would come into my mind and stay with me until I somehow found the courage, or the anger to force myself to go on.

When I think back to those days of childhood and remember all the joys I think mostly of my mother in the kitchen and I think of the food and the activity, but best of all I remember the stories she told while she worked.

My mother fired my imagination with tales about Jewish history, biblical heroes and the folklore of our people. David, Solomon, the Macabees. We climbed the Sinia i a with Moses, waited while he listened to the words of G-d and received the tablets with the Ten Commandments. We caught our breath and shuddered when he smashed them against the rocks.

She told us about the Bal Shem Tov and the other Rabbis who were revered by our people. As a result being Jewish was real to me from my earliest recollection and my Jewishness became a part of my being I cannot question anymore than I cann question sleeping or breathing.

Whenever mother went shopping I went along. When I was old   12 enough to go alone it became my job to go to the grocery store which was just a few doors down the street.

Mother would tell me what she needed, or, if it was too many items to remember she would write a list for me to give to the grocer.

Shopping for my mother was a real pleasure. It made me feel like a man to be trusted and the store was a wonderful place to explore.

It was filled with pungent odors of dried fish, meats, fruits and grains from all over the world. There were dozens of burlap sacks with the tops turned down to display what was inside. There were wooden crates with their tops off and strange writing on the sides. It was in the grocery that I got my first inkling that there was more to the world than our town, our neighborhood, but it was not an idea I was ready or willing to accept or deal with when I was still small.

It was enough for me to see the drawings and strange writings that gave me hints, to allow my imagination to wander just a little and then return to the warmth and love of my own home.

I did my exploring while the grocer put together my mother’s order, a half pound of this, a slice of that, just a   13 pinch of something special. Then I would wait while he wrapped everything in paper, added the amount owed put in the big ledger under our name on our page.

No one, but strangers, paid cash on the spot and there were few, if any strangers buying at our store. On collection day the grocer brought his ledger to the house, had a glass of tea and a visit, where mother caught up on all the neighborhood news, before settling the account. I never figured out which was more important, the visiting or the settling.

Those were the days before refrigeration so the grocer sold only dried foods that would keep. Perishable foods were brought to us daily by the peasant women who peddled door to door or from stalls in the open market.

Some vegetables we bought fresh, others we stored in the root cellar that was dug out below the house. To get there you had to go into the hallway and down through the trapdoor. Everybody in the house used that room. I loved to go there with my mother. It fascinated me because it was always cool winter and summer and everything was so neat and colorful. There was a sense of being in a place that was timeless, that was ^and would always be.

So many wonderful memories come back to me when I think   14 about that house on Luba^eska Street. Most are connected with food because my mother was in the kitchen so much and because, I think, it was those memo^ries that kept me going in the bad days in the camps and on the marches when I was starving.

We had no indoor plumbing. The outhouse was out in the backyard and for the night we kept a ceramic pot under the bed. Water for drinking, cooking and washing came from the town well. It was delivered by the man who brought it around in a tank mounted on a horse drawn cart. He carried it in buckets to the barrel that stood outside the kitchen door. When we needed water we brought it into the house by the pitcher or pail, depending on how we were going to use it.

Milk was delivered fresh each morning by a peasant woman who filled our jug from the large goatskin container she carried over her shoulder. It was raw milk and had to be boiled before we could drink any, but it was creamy and delicious after it cooled.

Eggs, cheese, vegetables, fruits and kosher meat my mother bought from the stalls in the open market. Going to the market was like a holiday when I was young. As soon as I saw my mother pick up the market basket I ran to get my   15 coat.

Most of our bread was baked at home along with cakes and cookies for all the holidays, but our Passover⁶ matzo and the braided chalahs for shabbath came from the neighborhood baker.

Because my grandfather's lumber business was big we were considered 'well off' and this showed in a lot of little ways in the style of our living. Most of the houses in town were heated by small stoves set in the middle of the room, but we had a huge stove set in a four-sided column of ceramic tile that picked up heat and sent it into all the rooms.

The tiles were shiny and covered with designs and patterns in many colors. They gave me a feeling of being rich and secure even when I was too young to know what that meant. I knew such chimneys of tile were never found in the homes of the poor.

I remember so many things about that tile chimney. In the winter, when my father came home from work at the sawmill he stood with his hands behind him and backed up as close as he could so he could soak up the heat while my mother told him about the day.

In those years parents worried about their children getting   16 scarlet fever and thought that you increased the chances of getting sick it if you stayed in the city during the summer.

That was one reason we always went away. Another was my father's arthritis. He thought the mineral bathes would cure, or at least ease the pain.

Usually my parents chose a place up in the mountains, or out in the country about a day’s journey from Miedzyrzec. Depending on what was available they would take a small cottage or a few rooms in a farmer’s house. The Polish farmers in our part of the country always built huge homes so they would have rooms to rent to city people in the summer.

Life in the country was a different for us and all the families who did as we did. For some reason all the mothers stuffed their children with food. Their summertime goal was to make each of their children gain ten pounds at least. It seemed to be a matter of honor.

Breakfast was at eight oclock. Herring, sour cream with fr^esh vegetables, fried eggs, tall glasses of rich country milk and heavy slices of bread thick with butter or cheese. Hardly able to walk we all went out to play, only to ^be called back in mid-morning for a snack, then lunch a nap and another snack before the evening meal.

  17

Everything about our summer lifestyle was relaxed. We took long walks in the woods to enjoy flowers, trees, the country grasses, birds and the other creatures that were not a part of our city life.

We were allowed to run around most of the time in old clothes. Our mothers did not concern themselves too much with housekeeping and making us look just right as they did in the city.

I went with my father, when he joined us on weekends, to the mineral springs and hot baths and enjoyed being with him, but not as much as I enjoyed having mother practically to myself all week.

Our rented rooms required little housekeeping. We usually shared the kitchen with the other families and that limited my mother’s time in front of the stove. Somehow, in the country, she managed to feed us twice as much, while spending less time in the kitchen and the time she saved was spent with me and Abraham.

So in the summers I also learned much about life from mother's stories and away from the ritual of the besmedrish I was able to think about what it meant to be Jewish and what I would be when I was a man.

  18

In the country our religious life was less formal. We went to services on Shabbath, Friday night and Saturday, but not in a shul. The services were held in the family room of the house and was only for us and the other families. ( We only said the required prayers when they were finished and no one stood around to talk and see if there was a stranger to bring home to share the meal.)

****************

It all seems like a wonderful dream when I look back on my early years, a happy experience that seemed so idyllic, even though I realize there were some bad times with the good. I was loved and loving. I was encouraged to think, feel, question, to know that I was going to be a pious Jew and that being one was a good thing.

Miedzyrzec was a fine place to live. The mostly Jewish population in the 1920's and early 1930's was just under twenty thousand. I was a Jew in a Jewish world, so insulated and loved, so protected in the community and the way of life   19 my parents created for me that I had no idea of the reality of the monsterous world that surrounded threatened us.

There I was, in the center of a volcano, so sheltered I never felt the heat. I was a victim before I knew there was danger.

Maybe that sounds foolish. It may seem logical to ask, "How could that be?" After all I certainly had heard all about pogroms. My father and grandfather told me stories of Jews being murdered by mobs, but thee people they spoke about seemed far away and from a different time. There was no way to connect what I was hearing with the civilized world of Miedzyrzec in the 1930's.

We also heard the stories that were coming out of Germany about this raving lunatic, Adolph Hitler and the horrible cruelties he was inflicting on the German Jews.

Our elders spoke about what was happening in Germany when they gathered in front of the besmedrish after services. Someone would say he had a letter from a cousin in Germany and he would shake his head while they spoke in whispers and told about atrocities that should have been shouted from the rooftops.

But what if they had? What could we, as a people, have done? After all we were all links in a chain forged by   20 centuries of faith and tradition. Such links from such a chain are hard to break when the threat is intangible and there is no easy escape.

We were not ostrichs hiding our heads in the sand, at least not exactly. There were discussions in our family in the early 1930's. I can remember them even though I was still very young. The men talked about the people who had emmigrated to America at the turn-of-the-century, how millions had made the journey before the quotas stopped them in 1924. The thinking was that if the danger became real America would drop the quotas and let us in once again.

The talk was endless, but in the end they always reached the same question, how do you pack up a life and move? We were people of substance. We were well off. We had roots and standing in the community. Some individuals did leave, but not in any great number. For most it was talk, talk in an endless circle.

**************

  21

I remember the prince who lived in Miedzyrzec. He lived in a castle right in the center of town that had been in his family for untold generations. It was not that large by the time I came along, but my grandfather told me it once had covered miles and miles. Wars, depressions and political changes had reduced the estate until all the prince owned was the castle in the center of Miedzyrzec, some timber land and a distillery for making vodka from the potatoes.

My grandfather bought most of the timber we used in the lumber business from the prince and they had a good, although strictly business, relationship.

I remember, late one night, there was a knocking at the gate. It woke the whole house. It was one of the prince's servants with a sack filled with jewelry that belonged to the prince's wife. The prince needed a loan, he said, and he had sent the jewelry as security.

My grandfather went to the safe in the big closet that almost filled his bedroom and took out the money. He refused to take the jewelry because grandfather was smart enough to realize that no matter what, it would be an affront to a man like the prince if he had to leave the jewelry and the loan would be paid back as a debt of honor if no collateral was   22 required.

So life went on in our community pretty much as usual even as the depression began to affect the world.

I still remember the sad day my grandmother became ill. I was worried so I kept asking questions until the rest of the family decided to send me to stay with other relatives.

When I was brought back to the house several days later my grandmother was gone.

The mystery of it all bothered me for a long time. I missed her, but life went on. I asked my mother where she was, but did not understand her answer. I noticed whenever I tried to make her tell me she started to cry, so I stopped asking even though it did not make sense to me. I guess that was one of my first real lessons in life.

It was not too long after grndmother died that my grandfather married a widow from Warsaw and brought her and her daughter to live with us on Lubelska Street.

My mother and her sisters did not like the woman who was suddenly trying to take their mother's place. They made their feelings so obvious that my grandfather took his new family and went to live in Warsaw. I was saddened because my grandfather had always treated me as if I was special.

  23

He felt a boy was never too young to learn the Gemorrah.⁷ When I was still small he started paying me three zlotys a week to spend my afternoons at the besmedrish⁸ studying.

I went faithfully, but not just for the money. I loved to study and enjoyed listening to the learned ones, still three zlotys was three zlotys.

When I was old enough it was enough so I could take a girl to the movies and buy her an ice cream and still have some money left.

Movies were the most popular attraction in Miedzyrzec for all ages. At first all the films were American made with Polish sub-titles. Then when the talkies came out the films had dubbed in Polish voices.

I lived a busy life. I played all kinds of sports with my friends. School was the center of my existence because it was so intertwined with my family, my home and the besmedrish. Our community was proud of many things, but revered biblical scholarship above all else and all us young people tried to learn because we wanted the respect of our elders. We wanted to make our parents proud and we wanted to know about being Jewish. Not that we questioned what we were, not that we doubted. We could not conceive of being   24 anything else, but we also knew there were all kinds of Jews, pious, not so pious, the ones in the big cities that our partents said were 'enlightened' and we knew what kind our parents wanted us to be.

And all the time the hate-mongers and madmen were were preparing to sieze control. Anti-Semites were working their way back into various government positions Hitler wrote Mein Kampf and began his take over of Germany and the reign of terror that led to the destruction of so many of our people.

But life at 65 LubalskiA Street went on. My grandfather was living in Warsaw with his new family and looked after his various business interests while my father and uncles were running the lumber business.

My father was a religious man. He wore his yarmulka⁹ , prayed three times a day, no matter what and observed all the holidays, even those considered minor. He brought Abraham and I up to be Jewish, but never insisted we wear yarmulkas, or made any other religious demands beyond those that were the accepted customs of the neighborhood such as observing the sabbath.

Perhaps he made none because he could not understand what   25 was happening to his world. Maybe that made him feel he was failing us and therefore he could not make demands. Like so many others he could have been questioning his values and practices as the storm clouds gathered. He must have been questioning his own faith even as he prayed and wanted Abraham and I to develop our own inner resources so that we might survive whatever lay ahead?

We never talked about such things.

I never asked him.

I will never know.

I went to school six days a week. The school was so close to our house I would wait until I heard the bell ring before taking my lunchbox and heading out the door.

Our classes started early in the morning, about a quarter after eight, and continued until two in the afternoon with only a short recess for lunch.

After regular school I went to religious classes at the besmedrish and twice a week I went back to regular school in the late afternoon to study language. That was how I learned to speak the German that probably saved my life.

  26

******SHABBATH******

Fridays school ended early so we could get ready for shabbat, the holy day that began at sundown. Our house, was always neat and clean. The furniture always had a high polish, but it was given a special going over for the weekly holiday. Mother would start as soon as everyone was out of the house.

I enjoyed the weekly ritual. The whole house had a festive air and it filled with the delicious, savory aroma of the chulent, in the big black iron pot, that was simmering on the stove from early morning.

To make the chulent mother started water, potatoes, a brisket, some kishka and her own mixture of special spices. She let it simmer all day until just before sundown. Then we carried the pot to the local bakery. There the edge between the lid and the pot was sealed with moistened black bread pressed along the edges to hold in all the flavors and it was put in the oven that was still hot from baking the chalah to keep warm until the next day.

In the late afternnon we all took our baths, one at a time, in the big wooden tub that mother filled with water heated on   27 the stove and then we dressed in our best. For us children that meant putting on a uniform just like the one we wore every day in school. The only difference being it was our newest uniform, the one we saved for special ocassions.

Just before dusk our family walked to the besmedrish. If the weather was good we left a little early so we could take our time and exchange greetings with friends.

Inside the besmedrish we separated. Abraham and I took our seats with father in the men's section, while mother joined the women in their section behind the curtain.

Everyone took their places early and while we waited the men discussed business and the latest news. If I go back to the time I was very small my memories are filled with their smiling faces and big laughs. As I grew older the smiles seemed to fade and the laughter was replaced with shaking heads and dread as they talked about the crazy anti-Semite who was taking over Germany. Then, as if on signal, someone would say that it couldn't be and they would cheer a little as they clutched at the explaination.

Somehow, at least in those early days, despite the reality of the situation, Hitler's rise to power, the stories of the atrocities that came out with every group of refugees, it was   28 all too bizarre for people to believe, except, perhaps, in their hearts. I often watched as all eyes turned toward someone who was telling about a letter received from a cousin, or in a soft voice repeating a story heard in the marketplace. The faces would turn somber and something would show in their eyes until someone else laughed a nervous laugh. Then someone else would try a feeble joke, the storyteller would become silent and everyone would turn to another topic.

They would all talk at once with a false heartiness and men tell each other that, after all, it has happened all through history, even in the most civilized countries, sometimes a criminal element manages to sieze control for a short time. There were always a few pogroms, murders and worse, but it never lasted. Civilized people soon regained control and put an end to the violence.

Who knows if they really believed what they were saying? What was happening in Germany was different than anything that had ever happened before. They knew that, but what could they do? If they admitted their fear the danger would move that much closer and have to be faced. then what would happen? They would have to take the next step, admit that for most part they were helpless, caught in a trap with no   29 escape. And what could they tell their children? They could tell us nothing. There was nothing to tell. Our parents could only pat our head to reassure us, smile sadly and knowingly at each other and make believe all would turn pass, even as the stories coming out of Germany grew more threatening and frightening by the day.

At sundown the service began. The married men wrapped

themselves in their prayer shawl (talis) and the chanting, echoing through the room taking us back five thousand years to the ancients who formed the first links in the unbroken chain and made us feel we would not be the last. We were doing what our people had done for centuries, for thousands of years.

(As each man approached the Torah, he touched the fringe of his talis to his lips and then to the sacred Torah as each read in turn and by so doing renewed his faith and found the strength to go on.)

Our besmedrish was small. We were just a neighborhood

congregation. We had no Rabbi, only a mahrooha, a learned man to see to it that everything was done according to law and custom.

  30

When services ended no one hurried to leave. Conversations started before the service were picked up where they left off and everybody shook hands with everyone else and wished them a "Happy Shabbath".

It was dark when we returned home to the supper that had been left warming on the stove which remained hot for hours after the fire was allowed to go out.

There was always a place at our table for one or two guests. It was an honor to share a shabbat meal with a stranger, a visiting relative, a businessman, a peddler or anyone else who was alone.

In the early days we wondered who father would invite to come home with after the service. What would the men talk about, politics, religion or business? Would our guest be a good storyteller? Would he tell jokes that would make us laugh? Would he have something in his pocket for us if we guessed right or show us a trick? The anticipation was one of the most exciting things about the shabbath.

But then, as the Nazi horrors increased, more and more of our guests were desparate German Jews fleeing for their lives, who came to us owning little more than the clothing on their backs. They were frightened, dejected people running,   31 often without knowing where, stopping just long enough to try and warn us about the catastrophe that was coming for us just as it had come for them.

We listened somberly, feeling their fear, sharing their dread, but what could we do?

In the morning we rose early and returned to the besmedrish to continue the shabbat service. It lasted until early in the afternoon and then the men gathered for the discussions that had been going on for so long they seemd to have no beginning and no end. Even when the ancient stories, the parables of the old Rabbis, the gossip from Warsaw, the latest edicts of the Polish parliment began to give way to a morbid preoccupation with the news from Germany, it was always told with a sense of resignation. We had to take the attitude that, "what will be will be". We had no choice other than to go about our business as best we could and trust in G-d.

We lingered in front of the besmedrish, as long as we could especially when the sun was warm and there was no wind. Even when it was chilly we often pulled our collars tight and stayed seeking the warmth and reassurance of being with friends who would share a common fate.

  32

Finally, we returned home for the big shabbat meal. Again, whenever possible, we brought home a guest. I don't know who went before, but as soon as I was old enough I ran to the bakery for the warm chulent which I brought home triumphantly to my waiting family. It was a big thing and they greeted me like a conquering hero.

I can still see us, when I close my eyes, Father at the head of the table saying a prayer, Abraham and I filling all our senses with the heady aroma while mother broke away the seal of black bread and ladelled the heavy, savory stew into our bowls. We ate it with huge chunks of the braided chalah until we could eat no more. Then we were ready for an afternoon nap.

How could I forget? Another time I ate what I think of as the best meal I ever had. I was starving after a forced march that killed more than half the prisoners who started out with us. I was certain I was going to die. The German guards were also hungry. They killed and roasted one of their dogs, but they were not as hungry as they thought. When the taste of the roasted dog sickened them they threw the meat away. I managed to retrieve a piece of it from the dirt of the field. It was more than a feast. Without those scraps I would not have   33 lived until morning.

*******COMING OF AGE*******

It was spring of 1938⁹ and I was about to graduate from high school.

It was a bad time to be a Jew living in Poland. It was a bad time to be a Jew living anywhere in Europe. The story of Ezekiel seemed to be coming true for too many of our people.

It had been written, "One third of you will die by plague or be consumed by famine among you, and one third will scatter to the wind, and I will unsheath a sword behind them."

It was also written, "Moreover I will send on you famine and wild beasts. And will bereave you of your children; plague and bloodshed also will pass through you, and I will bring the sword on you. I, the Lord, have spoken."

But along with the predictions of doom there was also hope, "Now I shall restore the fortunes of Jacob, and have mercy on the whole house of Israel: And I shall be jealous for my holy   34 name."

And their was promise, "Then they will know that I am the Lord their G-d because I made them go into exile among the nations, and then gathered them again to their own land; and I will leave none of them there any longer."

I read and thought about Ezekiel much that spring. I had to, I was picked to play the prophet in our graduation play.

It was a strange experience. The prophecies of Ezekiel were certainly threatening our people as we prepared for graduation. The famine and wild beasts, the plague and bloodshed were so close we could feel them, but we were helpless so we went about our business and made believe their was no threat.

What else could we do, we asked ourselves. We had a living to earn, school to attend, religious duties and a play to rehearse.

Why that particular play was chosen I will never know. It was either chance or a message from some unknown teacher, a doomed hero whose ashes later became part of the Polish countryside. I choose to think it was a message of hope and warning aimed at those of us who were still could not belive our fate was sealed.

  35

After the tryouts, when I was awarded the part, I thought of it as a great honor, especially after I learned we were going to do the part where Ezekiel restores the people of Isreal. It made me especially proud that we were doing the play in Hebrew, rather than Polish because I felt the ancient language would give the play more immediacy and more intensity. I liked the idea also because I knew my parents would be pleased with the choice. The lyric quality of the language would set the mood and enhance the performance.

The curtain rose. Students wearing white shrouds were piled in a heap in the center of the stage.They were the whithered bones of Israel.

I was standing off to one side in a long robe, a false flowing white beard covering my face.

Motionless, head bowed, I let the seconds tick away.

Finally, as the tension mounted, I slowly raised my head and began to sway. I took a shuffling step, then another and started to dance in a circle around the bones.

I raised my eyes to heaven, opened my arms wide and began to chant.

"The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by   36 the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; And it was full of bones."

The music became louder. The tempo increased. My voice rose and implored the dry, unmoving bones.

"So I prophisied as I was commanded; And as I prophisied there was a noise, and behold, a rattling and the bones came together, bone by bone."

The students piled in the center of the stage began to stir, but only with a hint of life and I began to dance around them in a frenzy.

"And I looked and beheld sinews were on them, and flesh grew, and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them."

Then, following the command of the Lord I said, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain that they come to life."

Suddenly the stage came alive. The heap of bones separated, became individuals, leaping, running, circling the stage in a joyous dance of life.

As I stood in the midst of the living house of Israel, I, Izrael Szapiro, playing the part of Ezekiel, rejoiced. Once again our nation was whole and alive, restored by the Lord, our G-d. We   37 had been tried and had survived. If the rumors were true we would soon be tried again and would, we believed at that moment, survive again. How could we believe otherwise? How could we know what lay ahead? How were we to know that this time our persecutors would not be satisfied until we were all dead, our bones reduced to ashes and the ashes scattered to the winds?

The curtain came down. Our parents, neighbors and friends applauded as we took our bows. For a short while we basked in the happiness of their approval. We were in the limelight in our own little world and, at least for the moment, could forget the dangers waiting outside and the fear that was becoming a part of our being.

*************REALITY*************

Thje university was out of the question, not because I did not have the grades, but because the nti-Semites were coming to power in Poland, as well as in Germany and it was almost impossible for a Jewish student to get accepted.

  38

There were quotas and restrictions. Even so, my parents decided I should apply and in the meantime work with my father, but only a short time after I graduated the lumber mill and factory were forced to close because of a lack of business. With the world in the grips of a depression, Europe in a turmoil and the Polish government taxing Jewish businesses out of proportion to their income or worth so they would be forced out of business, it all became too much.

With the business gone the true reality of our position became crystal clear. Like all our neighbors we began to talk seriously about leaving, but it was really only talk because there was no place we could go.

We had waited too long, until it was impossible to leave Poland legally. So many wanted to go and the quotas from countries willing to accept us were so small that it was not realistic to even think about and we would not have if we had known a viable alternative.

We spent endless hours talking about sneaking across the border to try to make our way to Palestine, but the trip was to strenuous and the dangers to great to seriously consider the idea. It would have meant breaking up the family. The older people could never survive the trip and we believed,   39 above all, that the family had to stick together. Pogroms had always united families, not torn them apart.

It was all too much. We talked and talked, made plans, settled on one and then another, then because a new rumor offered promise or hope, we talked in an endless circle and decided to wait to see what would happen and then we would start the cycle all over again.

We were caught in a trap with no way out, but could not admit it, not even to ourselves.

Our parents talked about sending Abraham to^and me to Israel, hoping we would find a way through the British blockade that stood between us and Palestine, but it was just another dream, We were both too young to go alone.

Things were not the way they had been in the old days, when, at the turn-of-the-century and before, the young, particularly those from the poorer families, went to America to work hard, make their fortune and then send for the rest of the family.

In 1938 to talk of leaving was to talk about escape, about leaving everything and everyone behind and going far away with no hope of ever seeing the family again was too much to even consider. Any alternative seemed better.

  40

When one of my uncles heard about a distillery in Australia that was for sale the family made an offer. When that deal fell through the uncles all tried hard to come up with something else, but nothing worked.

And all the time the flood of German refugees was increasing and their stories of Nazi brutality were becoming more and more graphic, more horrible and more convincing. We knew, whether we talked about it or not, just what would happen if the Nazis took over Poland.

Mother had relatives in Alliance, Nebraska urging her to try and get us out before it was too late, but she would not consider doing so until it was too late.

Finally mother and father had to face the awful truth. They could never leave, but they had to try and save Abraham and me.

On April 20,1939 mother wrote;

"Our Dear Cousins,

Your dear letter and also the money was just received and we thank you very, very much. We hope you all stay well and do well in your business. You asked if we would prefer to stay in Poland or come to the United States to be with you. Certainly we know the situation and what is happening here at this time. We are sure you are more informed about everything than we are....It would be a great help if we could send our boys to America. The two of us would be happy and would be ble to get by. It would give us peace of mind knowing our   41 children have a future...Especially our son, Isreal. He is an abl, healthy youngster. He is capable of doing anything. We would like you to write in detail about everything. We cannot describe our happiness when we received the letter from you and the financial help.

Best Wishes for health and happiness,

your cousins,

Mala And Hershel Szapiro

Our Children send their regards. Much love to you and your family.”

I did not understand at the time how much courage it took for mother to write those words. I did not realize it was her last and only hope. I was too busy with everyday matters to give it thought.

With my father and uncles no longer in business and no longer working our money was going fast, too fast in such an uncertain world. If we thought about the future we realized all we had to look forward to was the same fate as the poor German Jews. Every day there were some of them passing through on their way east, trying to put as much space between themselves and the Nazis as possible. They were a beaten people, bewildered, after being forced to watch helplessly while businesses, that for some had been in their family for hundreds of years suddenly taken from them.

They heard the terror creating sound of boots on the steps at night and their way of life was gone, usually along with some loved ones. When they closed their eyes their minds   42 filled with visions of the innocent being dragged from their beds in the dreaded midnight raids by the Gestapo. All had relatives who had been swallowed up by the concentration camps. All had seen their rabbis beaten by mobs, had watched as beards were cut off and all who had been there during the three day reign of terror known as the "Nights of Broken Glass" were like people trying to shake themselves awake during a horrible dream.

They stopped in our town just long enough to warn us. They told their stories compulsively, in an attempt to regain a shred of the humanity they felt they had lost and then the fear gripped them and they quickly headed east, toward what they thought was sanctuary in Russia. The Russians may not be friends of the Jews, they told us, but anything was better than the Nazis and they knew, better than we did, that Poland was doomed. Ours was a nation hanging by a thread of borrowed time and soon would become a hell on earth for Jews, the same as Germany had become.

Still there was little we could do, butwait for an answer from Nebraska, make believe everything would work out and pray.

Pray we did while we tried to live as normally as possible. Much of our daily life continued to be centered around the   43 besmedrish and the learned discussions that never stopped. Why? Because they filled up time, kept our minds active and off our troubles for a little while and, by providing a link with the past, gave us a bit of hope for a future. How could we deny that despite the trials and tribulations of the past, slavery in Egypt, the Masada suicides, the destruction of the Temples, Judi^ea had survived and grown stronger nd more meaningful in adversity? In our dread of the future that remained nameless we had to turn to the past for hope and solace. There was no other choice.

We continued to bring home strangers after shabbath service, usually one of the pathetic refugees, to share what were becoming meager meals.

As money ran low it was becoming harder and harder for my mother to feed us as she had, but still we shared because that was the ancient way and it helped us retain our dignity and the feeling that we still controlled our lives.

This despite the accounts of horror we were forced to digest with our meals. Abraham and I listening with a kind of morbid fascination and mother with pleading looks toward my father that he answered with a shrug and tear filled eyes. They thought we did not notice, but we did and made believe

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