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Some years ago — I can’t remember precisely when, but sometime in the past decade — I received a check in the post from the German government in Berlin. It was for two thousand dollars, and it was a reparation for my time as a Zwangsarbeiter—slave laborer. The figure was derisory. An insult. There isn’t a big enough check in the world to compensate for what I endured, or the sights I witnessed in the ghetto.

As a four-year-old, my horizons were limited to the Block and the Sammlungstelle. I was not aware of the changes that occurred in our society after the deportation. But my father saw everything. Thanks to his testimony, it seems obvious that our persecutors relaxed a little after their murderous exertions of late October and early November 1942. Food suddenly became more plentiful. For those who came into contact with Poles outside the barbed wire, it became possible to barter clothes or household goods for food.

It was then that I encountered eggs for the first time. Their taste and texture were a revelation. What a change a fried egg made from potato-skin soup. It was heaven. The yolk was my favorite part. For a treat, my mother would sometimes mix sugar with milk and an egg yolk, whipping up a mixture that was also an excellent balm for a sore throat. It’s known in Yiddish as gogl mogl. Italians have something similar called zabaglione. Eggs had a transformative power in that they made life immeasurably better and raised my morale. And I didn’t just savor the yolk as it rolled over my taste buds. I took pleasure from watching my mother preparing the egg, anticipating the wholesome flavor. After I had consumed the last morsel, I relished the lingering taste in my mouth and the glow of warmth in my stomach. Eggs elevated my appreciation of food. For a starving child, potato-skin soup was fuel to fight the process of the body devouring itself, but eggs represented love then — and they still do today. Because my mother prepared my eggs with love. And I felt it. When you are denied sustenance for such a long time, food assumes an almost spiritual significance.

Nowadays, I have a special relationship with food. It is sacred to me, and I never take it for granted. Eggs remain my go-to comfort food. If I’m feeling unhappy, I’ll treat myself to a fried egg, sunny-side up.

While having access to better food made a difference to our physical well-being in late 1942, psychological stresses remained oppressive in the extreme. It was still forbidden to leave the Block without authorization. As a deterrent, the Germans decreed that if anyone escaped, another inmate would be shot dead. In that climate, the 900 survivors of Tomaszów Mazowiecki discovered a new unity of purpose and recognized that solidarity was essential. Class and wealth barriers that previously separated us broke down and there was shared anger that we had been abandoned by the world. Many turned to alcohol to ease their pain. Some contemplated suicide but decided against it because our extinction was, according to my father, “the aim of the Nazi butchers”.

“Therefore”, my father writes, “despite all the suffering and lamentation, the wish of the murderers should not be fulfilled! No surrender, no bowing to their wishes! And maybe, maybe we will yet succeed in seeing our loved ones alive and our murderers dead!”

Was this wishful thinking or was it a real declaration of intent? Whatever the real meaning behind my father’s words, our community was clearly at the end of its tether and couldn’t take much more. “Morals, integrity, the sanctity of family life began to disintegrate”, Papa writes.

Lonely men sought the company of lonely women, and the women sought the company of the men. Shame and modesty disappeared. If life and the world were licentious, then long live licentiousness! Who knew what tomorrow would bring? While you live, live life to the full! After all, you did not know if you would be alive tomorrow!

By previous Jewish behavioral standards, it certainly appears that a cloud of immorality engulfed a significant number of ghetto inhabitants. But how could anyone be blamed for seeking a tender caress when our existence hung by the most delicate of threads?

Not everyone surrendered their old values, though. Religiously observant Jews refused to succumb to the outbreak of permissiveness. They didn’t want to shame their ancestors, as they saw it, and they clung to the hope that as there were so few Jews left who were productive workers, the Germans would leave the ghetto alone. And they did. Until the bells rang out the end of 1942 and welcomed in 1943.

Chapter Seven. Buried Alive

The small ghetto, Tomaszów Mazowiecki,
German-occupied Central Poland.
1943
Age 4

Germans and Poles celebrated the arrival of 1943 by getting rip-roaring drunk. And, at first glance, it seemed that we might indeed have a happy new year.

Pasted onto walls throughout the ghetto were large posters apparently offering hope of escape from captivity. What a change that made. Normally, posters were used to communicate new German rules and regulations, with a warning that summary execution was the punishment for disobedience. Now the Germans were dangling the prospect of paradise before the surviving Jews of Tomaszów Mazowiecki. The posters offered the chance to be transferred to the Holy Land. Anyone with relatives in Palestine who wished to participate was urged to register.

My father recalls that the news provoked an impassioned debate among the survivors. “Tempers flared and arguments broke out”, he writes.

Some thought it was yet another example of German deceit and cautioned against it. Others believed that the promise of settling in Palestine was entirely feasible, as part of a prisoner exchange being negotiated between the Germans and the British, who, at the time, were responsible for administering the Holy Land.

As so often happened in the ghetto, wishful thinking prevailed. Skeptical voices were shouted down and people began registering in droves. The demand increased when the Germans said that qualification for travel would be extended, not just to those with relatives in Palestine, but to those with friends and acquaintances there, too.

“After a day or two, the Germans announced that the list was full and so the Jews began to bribe them with jewels and gold and protektsia [protection money] if only they could be on the list”, writes my father in the Yizkor book. “The ‘fortunate ones,’ who were registered, at once began to pack, ready for the journey to Palestine”.

Somehow, my father managed to attach our names to the list. As a family, we were elated. For the first time in years, my parents exuded a real sense of optimism. At last, there was a chance to escape mass murder, humiliation and hunger, and move to a place that Mama and Papa regarded as Utopia. Palestine represented the pinnacle of their dreams. The melancholy air hanging over our room in the Block evaporated. I fed off my parents’ happiness. I didn’t know what Palestine was, or where — but I understood that it epitomized safety. When my parents were happy, I was happy. But the mood quickly flipped to one of despair and panic.

I am not too sure if my father was still a policeman at this stage. According to surviving Judenrat records, his last salary was paid before the deportations to Treblinka. But regardless of whether he was on the police payroll any longer, his intelligence-gathering skills remained as acute as ever. He detected that the Palestine Aktion was a German ruse. Those who had registered had been deceived. Instead, they were destined to be shipped to another labor camp or possibly worse. Our family and all the others were in imminent danger.