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The war ended in May. Gitta, my mother and I were excited and talked about what we might do next. Our plan was to return home — to Poland. We had no electricity in our storefront. All three of us slept on a single mattress on the floor because it was cooler there at that time of year. Beside the mattress we had a little table and on it my mother kept a kerosene lamp by which she would read. One night she must have fallen asleep with the lamp still burning and accidentally knocked it over. The lamp didn’t have a cover and the mattress caught fire. Nothing much happened to me; I just had some minor burns on my knees. Both my sister’s hands were badly burned and she had to be hospitalized. My mother, however, who was just skin and bones, had third degree burns all over her body. They took her to the hospital and put her under a tent where she lay naked, no gauze, no nothing, because her flesh was just raw meat. Three days after she was admitted, my mother died at the age of forty-nine. It was July 13, 1945, two months after the end of the war. I was nineteen and my sister was twenty-three. We were now orphans. I was in the middle of my final exams when my mother died. Even though I didn’t finish them, I got my diploma anyway because I was a good student. Since my sister was still in hospital when my mother died, I had to arrange the funeral. My boss gave me some white linen with which to make my mother’s burial shroud, her tachrichim. A religious family we knew told me how to sew it and that it is a mitzvah to make a burial shroud with your own hands. The family helped with other details. When my aunt and her family came to the cemetery, my sister, who had just got out of hospital, screamed that they shouldn’t be allowed near the grave. They waited until everybody had left and when I turned around in the horse and buggy we were in, I saw them approach the grave. While we were sitting shiva, the door opened and my aunt came in carrying a bowl of strawberries. My sister said, “Take it away!” My aunt refused. Again my sister said, “Take it away!” and again my aunt refused. So my sister handed me the bowl and told me to throw the strawberries out. I did. I washed the bowl and handed it back to my aunt. After my mother died, friends stayed with us so we wouldn’t be alone. They got together and collected money for us. (Later, one of them told us my aunt had wanted to contribute too. The friends had said, “If you want to help them, do so on your own.”) But when our friends came to us with an envelope of money, my sister, who was very proud, wouldn’t accept it. She said we had everything we needed. I urged her to take it, that we could pay the money back later. But Gitta said no. “If someone asks if you’re hungry,” she reminded me, “tell them we have everything we need.” Today, I wouldn’t be any different if it were just for me. But if it were for my children or my grandchildren, I think I’d take it. For them. After the funeral, Gitta and I found a little room with two beds. We couldn’t bring ourselves to go back to the storefront. I slept with Gitta in one bed (our suitcases were under it) and we took in another woman to share the expenses. There was a tiny table in the room between the beds and that was essentially it. Our new home. I was the balabusta, the cook. I would get up at five o’clock and put whatever we had in a pot; I would stick it in the Russian oven and it would stay there all day. That way there would be a few potatoes or something to eat when we came home from work. Gitta used to wash the few items of clothing we had, wash the floor, and help the owners cut wood for the stove. We were very badly off. We had friends who worked for the Polish Patriots Organization who wanted to help us and began arranging things for going back to Poland. I did some volunteer work for them: I typed lists of who was leaving, on what train, in what compartment, and so on. They didn’t pay me; they just gave me soap and other things I could sell for a little extra money. They wanted to help us in any way they could and they knew how proud we were.
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