But none of that was left. Nothing but the untilled land and the bare walls of an empty house.
Everything looked neglected. Abandoned. I realized immediately that Papa and Mama had not returned. They would never have let the weeds grow so high. They would never have let the house become run down.
It was at that moment that we knew, Miriam and I, that we were all that were left of the Mozes family. Grandma and Grandpa Hersh—our mother’s primary reason for not escaping to Palestine—were also gone. There was nobody else.
Still holding hands, Miriam and I went inside. We were surprised when Mama’s dog Lily, a little red Dachshund, ran out to greet us, barking and wagging her tail. All this time and there she was! She seemed to recognize us, and when we reached out to pet her, she licked our hands. I guess Jewish dogs were not taken to concentration camps, only Jewish people.
The house was dirty—and empty. Everything had been looted. Furniture, curtains, dishes, linens, candlesticks—everything. I walked from room to room searching for any reminders, any remnants of the life I had once lived. I only found three crumpled photographs wadded up on the floor. I picked them up and saved them.
One picture showed my older sisters, Edit and Aliz, with three of our cousins. Another was of Edit, Aliz, Miriam, and me and our teachers back in 1942. The third photo was the last picture of my whole family, taken in the fall of 1943. In the black and white photo, Miriam and I were wearing our matching burgundy dresses. This was the only proof I had that once, not so long ago, I had a family. Miriam and I stayed for six or seven hours, roaming around the farm. The fruit trees were still there, and we ate some plums and apples, but villagers had picked most of the fruit. By mid-afternoon our cousin Shmilu showed up. Aunt Irena, our father’s youngest sister, had apparently sent word to him to come and get us. We later found out that she had traced us through the Red Cross. Miriam and I were among the last Jews to return to Transylvania, and Aunt Irena had continued to check lists to see if anyone from our family had survived. Thus she knew exactly when our train was due to arrive in Portz and had contacted Shmilu.
Shmilu was about twenty years old and had lived in a nearby village. He, too, had been imprisoned at Auschwitz and was the only one of his immediate family to survive. I told him the neighbors had stolen everything. “Yes,” he said, “I know.”
Shmilu had taken back a bed, a table, and a couple of chairs from the neighbors to fix up a room for himself in the summer kitchen of our farm. He was working the land and taking care of Lily. The dog wandered in and out, eating scraps around the farms.
We asked Shmilu questions about our parents. “I have not seen anyone from your family,” he told us. “I know only that your Aunt Irena survived and is waiting for you.” She had been sent to a concentration camp but had returned in May.
I did not feel comfortable in the house even though it was ours. I did not feel as though I belonged there any more. Miriam and I had no home, no parents, no sisters. But we still had each other.
We left with Cousin Shmilu. Villagers stood at their gates and silently watched us go. I was angry with them but said nothing. We boarded a train that would take Miriam and me to the big city of Cluj to join our aunt.
We would make a new life for ourselves somehow.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For the next five years, from 1945 to 1950, Miriam and I lived with Aunt Irena. She owned a large apartment house in Cluj.
Before the war, Miriam and I had always enjoyed visits to Aunt Irena’s home and her visits to see us. She and her husband traveled extensively, and she would tell us stories of vacations on the French Riviera and Monte Carlo. We loved to hear about and see her jewelry and furs. Her son was our favorite cousin.
But a year or two After our arrival in Cluj, we began to discover that freedom was not what we had thought it would be. Romania was now controlled by the communists. The communist party was the only political party and had complete power. The secret police force arrested anyone opposed to the government and took over people’s property and gave it to the peasants.
During the war, the Nazis had forced Aunt Irena to work in a bomb factory in Germany. Her husband and son had perished in the camps. When she returned to Cluj, she found that the communists had taken most of her possessions. However, the state let Aunt Irena keep her building because she was a war widow and a survivor of the concentration camps. She married a pharmacist who was also a survivor.
We all lived together, but we were not really a family. We knew our aunt cared about us because she was the only one of our relatives willing to take us in. But Aunt Irena never hugged or kissed us, or spoke kindly. Miriam and I hungered for affection and yearned for a loving mother.
Aunt Irena still had Persian rugs, a porcelain collection, and some designer clothes left from her prewar days. Th ese treasures reminded her of the good life she used to have and, strangely, seemed to mean more to her than we did.
Miriam and I felt out of place in that grand apartment. We were sloppy and messy. We were eleven-year-old kids who had returned from the barracks of Auschwitz. We did not belong in Auschwitz, but we did not entirely belong in this fancy apartment in Cluj, either.
Every night I had nightmares. I dreamed of rats the size of cats, dead bodies, and needles stuck into me. After we found out that the Nazis had made soap out of Jewish fat, I dreamed that soap bars spoke to me in the voices of my parents and sisters, asking me, “Why are you washing with us?”
I did not tell Miriam because I was afraid I would make her feel bad and give her nightmares, too. We both developed health problems and caught colds all the time. Painful sores covered our bodies. The sores grew as big as apples and formed scars. When Aunt Irena took us to the doctor, I was terrified—I remembered Dr. Mengele and his assistants in white coats. I had learned not to trust doctors so much.
When the Romanian doctor examined us he said, “Th ese children have what many war children are suffering from: malnutrition. There is nothing wrong with them that vitamins and a good diet cannot fix.”
At that time vitamins were not available and food was scarce. We stood in line for hours to get a loaf of bread. Our cousin Shmilu brought flour, potatoes, eggs, vegetables, and sunflower oil from the farm. Miriam and I craved that oil and drank it straight from the bottle! This worried Aunt Irena, but the doctor told her to let us drink it, that we seemed to be getting better.
One day as I was eating white bread on the veranda of the apartment, someone saw me and reported me to the secret police. That night the police came and raided the apartment and seized all our food. The next day my aunt built a fake cabinet that looked like a wall. You could only get in there by pushing a button. From then on, we hid our food in the cabinet.
One night the secret police picked up Aunt Irena’s husband without any explanation. He disappeared. We did not know whether he was alive or dead. When we walked outside, we always worried who was watching or listening. Someone might turn us in to the secret police.
Life in communist Romania became more and more difficult. The government controlled everything, including schools. On the first day of high school, Miriam and I wore our matching khaki dresses. We remembered going to school in Portz in our matching burgundy dresses. Now all the children made fun of us because of our clothes. We had only missed a year and a half and were not far behind in our studies. School, however, was harder for us because we spoke Hungarian, and classes were taught in Romanian.