Whenever those dreadful days resurface in my mind, my reverence for my mother is rekindled. The image I hold and cherish is not just of my own mother defending me, but one of a universal mother fulfilling the primal covenant to safeguard her child, no matter what the cost. From the moment of creation, a woman carries her children in her soul, as well as her womb, and would sacrifice herself willingly to ensure that life continues for them.
Hitler tried to eradicate the Jews by exterminating their children. So my mother was not just trying to preserve her own family by saving me. She fought for my survival as an act of defiance on behalf of her people. When faced with complete annihilation, just one child could offer the Jewish race a lifeline. As she sheltered in the graveyard next to St. Wenceslas Church, Mama could never have imagined that by the end of the Holocaust, 150 members of her family would have perished, and that the only person left to tell her story would be me.
Every day of my life, I honor her. I see my mother, Reizel, much like the Old Testament matriarch Rachel, who protected and wept for her children and became a universal icon of motherhood. As the symbolic mother of a nation, Rachel wept for the children of Israel when they were sent into exile; Mama’s tears that fell on me in the graveyard were as powerful as hers.
Back then, I was relieved that my mama was protecting me. That relief, I recall, along with the sounds of genocide. Greased gun bolts sliding rounds into chambers. Guttural insults and curses before murder was committed. And fading away in the distance, the rhythmic panting of a steam engine slowly heading north.
Why wasn’t I shot? At the time, I thought it was a miracle I survived the carnage. The shooting seemed to go on forever. I attempted to shut out the noise and willed the gunfire to cease. And then it did. The ringing slackened. That muffled sense of being deafened subsided. The silence was chilling. My ears took a while to acclimatize to the hush, although the churchyard wasn’t completely quiet. I heard moaning and weeping and people trying to suppress groans. I still couldn’t see anything, but I could sense agony rippling among the survivors.
After a moment, I felt my mother relax and she lifted herself up a little. I was no longer crushed.
“They’ve stopped shooting, Tola. You can stop feeling afraid”, Mama whispered. “They aren’t going to shoot anymore. They’ve killed enough people”.
How did she know that? But she was right. The massacre was over.
The pain of having been fixed in one position was now aggravated by hunger pangs. I could barely feel my legs when, eventually, we were ordered to stand up. I looked around and caught the faint, strangely metallic smell of blood. There were bodies everywhere. So many dead, locked in unnatural poses. Among them were children I recognized. But I do recall that Mama and I were in a daze as we were marched back under guard to the ghetto, in the blackness of mid-autumn, past even more corpses.
Not far away, my father witnessed the courage of my mother’s niece. Her name was Pesska Pinkusewicz. Pesska was allowed to stay behind in the ghetto because she was in possession of an authorized work permit. But she ran to a Gestapo soldier and told him that she wanted to stay with her parents and the rest of her family. My father wrote that the Gestapo soldier cautioned Pesska that her request meant “an ascent to heaven through the chimney”.
But Pesska ignored his warning and tearfully repeated her entreaty, despite knowing that the German was telling her the truth. My father must have been close by when the soldier opened the gate because he overheard the German shouting to Pesska, “Go, go, stupid goose”.
“Her tear-dimmed eyes are radiant”, writes my father. “She embraces her mother and father and cries out: ‘Let us be in heaven, but together!’”
That particular German was honest about the Jews’ fate, but those in charge of the ghetto engaged in subterfuge to make it easier to herd people onto the trains. Horse-drawn carts headed to the station loaded with baggage the deportees were told they could take with them — a measure designed to fool them into thinking they were bound for a work camp and to rob them of their belongings.
My father wrote next:
Among the marchers was Bracha, the baker, and in her arms, her daughter. She felt that her strength was failing and whispered something to the Jewish policeman escorting her (whom she knew from days past). He took the child from her and placed her on the cart.
Marching beside Bracha was Regina Pakin of the Stern family…
Regina was carrying her three-year-old daughter, Marilka. The little girl, too, knew the policeman and she said to him: “Put me on the cart as well. I’m so tired”. The policeman then put Marilka on the cart, but at once, a guard struck him on the head with his machine gun and blood gushed over his whole body.
I’m positive my father is talking about himself here, because I distinctly recall him coming back to our apartment covered in blood. He was lucky to escape with his life.
The German cocked his gun but at that moment was called away by another soldier. The policeman, with the last of his strength and with blood seeping over his clothes, continued to escort the cart to the station.
Thus did the Jews of Tomaszów march, none knowing to where, their hands grasping a family member, their eyes glaring hatefully at their murderers. They were surrounded by armed guards. The faces of their Polish townsmen were contented. And yet it seemed that they still did not believe the calamity that was about to befall them. Even those who were exhausted physically and mentally showed no sign of their anguish.
My father describes how, in a “blood orgy”, the Germans and Ukrainians forced up to 120 Jews into each cattle wagon. There was no water or any other provision for human needs:
When it appeared impossible to pack more Jews into a wagon, they were “assisted” with indescribable violence and cruelty by blows to the head of whips and rifle butts, until the last one had been crammed inside. The wagons were then bolted tight, and a soldier placed on the roof, his weapon at the ready lest anyone try to escape.
Such were the scenes of horror at Tomaszów station that day; families wrenched apart, children and parents searching frantically for one another. The Ukrainian butchers did not for a moment cease to belabor their victims. Nor did the Jewish policemen at the station escape their attention. They, too, were beaten mercilessly, rifle butts crushing their skulls, whereafter they were thrown into the wagons to share the final sufferings of their fellow Jews.
By the end of that day, about 8,000 more Jews had been placed in cattle cars and sent to their deaths. Hundreds more were slaughtered on the spot. Over the course of those three days, some 15,000 Jews were transported to the Treblinka gas chambers. The precise death toll has never been confirmed. Most records of that time simply state that hundreds were murdered during the liquidation of the Tomaszów Mazowiecki ghetto.
Sitting at home in New Jersey reading the Yizkor book brought occupied Poland back to life and my heart bled for my father, who consigned to memory everything he had witnessed. He recorded the last known words of Rabbi Gedaliahu Shochet, one of the most devout people in the ghetto. The rabbi was hiding his salt-and-pepper beard behind a scarf, for fear the Germans would unsheathe their bayonets and cut it off, along with the skin beneath it.
Rabbi Gedaliahu stood in the hospital courtyard and saw how the satanic Germans mercilessly thrust the ailing onto the trucks, while others fell from their bullets. And the Germans, their faces inflamed with alcohol, ran along the rows and beat the heads of their victims with their rifle butts. And the blood flowed and flowed.