At school we were the only Jews. Other students called us names despite what we had been through. Anti-Semitic people in Cluj spread rumors that at night a Jewish vampire stalked Christian girls and sucked their blood. Miriam and I went to an orphanage for our evening meal since there wasn’t enough food at Aunt Irena’s. As we walked home, I kept thinking, How will this vampire know I am Jewish and not attack me?
But it was not just the Jews who were being persecuted. Conditions were terrible for everyone. Eventually, Miriam and I went to a Jewish Zionist organization to learn about Palestine, but the government later shut the organization down.
Sometimes we received packages from our aunt in the United States. Once she sent some fabric, and Aunt Irena took us to the seamstress and had three sets of matching dresses made for Miriam and me. Our favorite was blue with little polka dots. We loved wearing matching dresses to attract attention and fool the boys. Our American aunt also sent coats, but they were adult styles and did not fit.
One day in 1948, when we were fourteen, the government announced that the store would have new coats for sale. Miriam and I stood in line all night waiting for the store to open at ten o’clock in the morning. But twelve thousand people showed up—for two hundred coats! When the doors opened and people rushed in, a saleslady who was a friend of our aunt’s recognized us. She threw us two coats and shoved us under a counter. Later on we paid for them and walked out with matching rust-colored coats, the color of autumn leaves. We wore those coats when we sailed to Israel much later.
Palestine became the state of Israel in 1948. I began to think it would be a privilege to live in a place where my father had dreamed of living. The last time we had seen Papa, he had made us promise that if we survived, we would go to Palestine.
Miriam and I exchanged letters with Uncle Aaron, our Papa’s brother, who lived in Haifa, and we sent him a picture of us. Uncle Aaron offered to help us resettle and ease our suffering. We wrote him and asked if there was chocolate in Israel. He replied, telling us that we could eat all the chocolate we wanted and all the oranges we wanted, too. He would take care of us. We thought Israel sounded like paradise!
Aunt Irena said she had received news that her son was alive and living in Israel. She wanted to emigrate, too. We all applied for exit visas, and our aunt’s was granted easily. It took Miriam and me two years to obtain ours. The government did not want to let young people leave Romania because they needed the youth to rebuild the war-ravaged country.
Nevertheless we started preparing for our trip. The rules changed daily about what we could take. We packed one year before we left and lived surrounded by boxes filled with things we wanted to bring. In order to leave the country, Miriam and I had to sign over our remaining property. We still owned two acres of farmland and the house in Portz. The communists had already claimed most of the farm to divide among the peasants. We wanted to leave so badly, we signed it over.
Two months before we left Romania, Aunt Irena’s husband was released from prison and given a visa. He did not say a word to us girls about what had happened to him. We were just glad he had been freed.
Finally in June 1950, when we were about to leave, the government informed us that all we could take with us was only what we could wear. The day we left, Aunt Irena made us put on three dresses underneath our matching coats. I carefully wrapped the creased photos of my family in paper and brought them with me.
We took a train to Constanza, a city on the coast of the Black Sea. Pushing and shoving, we lined up to board the ship. Miriam and I were squashed. I could hardly breathe. But we tightly clutched each other’s hands so that we would not be separated. There were three thousand people on a ship built to hold only a thousand. We waited for twenty-four hours before we set sail.
As we pulled away from shore, I knew there was nothing left for Miriam and me in Romania. During the past five years I had continued to hope that our sisters or parents might come back. The Jewish organizations working with the Red Cross had posted lists of people returning. I had checked the lists at the orphanage where we ate dinner every night, but there was no sign of any member of my family. Miriam and I were sixteen years old. We needed to move on.
It was a long, tiring trip. For days and days, we saw no land but it was exciting to be on the open sea. The endless stretch of water and sky, with fresh air and the wind sifting through our hair, smelled of freedom and promise. Hand in hand, Miriam and I watched dolphins jumping in and out of the ocean.
Early one morning our ship approached Haifa. As the boat docked we stood on the deck and watched the sun rise over Mount Carmel, Israel. It was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen. The land of freedom. Most of the passengers on the ship were Holocaust survivors like us. Everybody burst into the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah.” We were crying and singing with joy.
As we disembarked at the port, we searched for a person looking for us. Uncle Aaron finally spotted us, yelling our names and waving his arms so we would be sure to see him. We hugged and he kissed us. We cried in his arms. It had been so long since my sister and I had received any real love from anyone besides each other.
My twin sister and I, in our matching rust-colored coats and layers of matching dresses, felt at last that we had come home.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When we arrived in Haifa with Uncle Aaron, we learned that Aunt Irena’s son was not there after all. She had made up the story to get a visa. Miriam and I were sad to realize that our favorite cousin was actually gone forever. We spent the afternoon with Uncle Aaron and his family. It was agreed that Miriam and I would go to one of the Youth Aliyah Villages that had been set up by the Israeli government. The villages were located on huge farms where young people like us planted and harvested crops and tended the animals. The food we produced helped feed the new nation of Israel.
At our village we worked half the day, and went to school half the day. My jobs were to pick tomatoes and peanuts and milk cows.
Miriam and I were at the village with about three hundred other teenagers from many different countries. Not all of the youth were Holocaust survivors like us. Some kids lived at the village while their parents trained for jobs. We were all put into groups upon arrival and would become friends. Each dormitory had a housemother, but we would take care of our own rooms. For the first time since leaving Auschwitz, I would sleep without having nightmares. I would no longer have to worry about our physical safety or survival. There was no anti-Semitism, and we would be allowed, indeed encouraged to celebrate our Jewish heritage. Our hurts and suffering would slowly begin to heal in those youth villages.
Although we all arrived speaking a variety of languages, we were taught a common language: Hebrew. I learned a few words the very first night Miriam and I spent at the village. It was a Friday. That night and every Friday night all the kids gathered in a huge dining room to welcome the Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath. There were candles and wine on the tables. We all wore white shirts. Two girls were assigned to Miriam and me as “big sisters” and made us feel at home.
After prayers, everyone started singing and dancing the hora. But I did not know how. “Can I do this dance?” I wondered. My big sister took my hand, Miriam’s big sister grasped hers, as everyone joined hands and formed a circle. We danced to the right. I did not know the steps but I followed along. With arms raised high we danced together, boys and girls, all of us singing “Hava Nagila.” Laughing, we danced round and round, faster and faster. I danced the hora and was filled with joy. Miriam and I were finally part of a new, large, welcoming family.