 |
 |
 |
|||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
|
|
My father had obtained a false doctor’s certificate saying that he wasn’t well enough to travel so we were sure no one would force us to. We were happy to be alive and away from the fighting. I was enjoying school. I made a friend, Yetta Lieberman whose father owned all the movie theatres in Rovno. Another friend, Zosia Ratinoff, was from Warsaw. At night we used to go downtown. We’d walk the streets, eating sunflower seeds. It was freilach. You make a lot of friends when you’re that age. There are a lot of people who don’t have the kind of happy childhood memories I have. Take my second husband, Sam Elsner, for example. When he was fourteen, he was already working. He had to learn a trade and get a job. His family hadn’t gone hungry but they had a much harder time of it than my family did. I was pampered. Today children are more grown-up, I think, than I was at that age. My step-granddaughter, Brooke, for example, reads the paper and keeps up with what’s going on in the world. It’s a different time now. When I was a child, I was a child. I didn’t have to grow up so fast. I knew something was going on, of course; after all, here I was standing in line for bread in Rovno. But still, I was happy. After three months, the officials sent us a document informing us that we had to be ready at a certain time to be transported to Russia. I’m not sure why we had to leave. Perhaps they simply made a mistake. They came with cars to take us to the train station and my father showed them the doctor’s certificate saying he couldn’t travel. They went away and we assumed that meant we could stay. My mother washed some clothes and had wrung them out to put on the line the next morning. But in the middle of the night, a truck came for us and we were told we had to go. My mother quickly packed everything, wet things included. The Russians had been registering people as to whether they preferred to stay in Russian-controlled territory or wanted to go back to the part of Poland that was in German hands. My aunt and uncle had registered to go back; they were very wealthy and they had left everything behind when the war began. We would never have considered going back to German-controlled Poland. The Russians took us to a train station where a long freight train stood waiting. We saw flickering candles from inside the cars and could hear voices, but the cars were already occupied. Each time my father banged on a door to see if there was room, a voice from inside told us that the car was full. Then my father banged on a door and heard a familiar voice saying that the car was full; it was Adam Meisner, an old friend of his from Kalisz. My father called out, “Mach sich nicht meshugga, Adam. Effen di tir.” (“Don’t make yourself crazy, Adam. Open the door.”) The door opened and although the car was full, inside were several families my parents knew. They made room for the four of us. That’s how our long journey deep into Russia began. It was winter, either late 1939 or early 1940, and there was already lots of snow on the ground. The trip seemed to go on forever. Occasionally, the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. People would be standing by the tracks, selling frozen milk and bread (or at least something that resembled bread). There were lines for hot water. We would get off the train and go to the washroom in front of everyone. There was no shame, no nothing; we just turned around and did what we had to. Sometimes we bought a few potatoes, we’d take some water and cook some soup on the little stove in the middle of the car. Along the way a freight car would be dropped off here or there, and then the train would continue. Finally, our car was dropped off. When we opened the door and saw where we were, we started crying. We saw a desert of snow all around us and far away, we could see the flickering of lights. They put us in trucks and drove us to a building where the lights were. In front of it a little band was playing a march and they took us into a large room. They invited us to sit down and then opened a curtain. Behind it was a room full of people clapping; there were speeches to welcome us. Then they took us to the bania, the bath house, which was a wonderful treat because we’d been travelling so long without having a chance to wash up.
|
||
|
|
|
