Oh, To Be “Rid of Unnecessary mouths to Feed” – A Triple Miracle.

One by one they removed their clothes; one by one they were shot into a pit. Esther’s family was murdered this way. Sam’s siblings and their families were murdered this way.  Thousands of Jews were murdered this way, outside of Slonim, on August 20,1941.

It is a miracle to survive one massacre – but three – that is beyond a miracle.

Esther survived the August Slonim massacre because she was in the hospital.  Her boyfriend Moishe Kwiatek escaped the Nazis by hiding.  They stayed in Slonim for another six or seven months getting enough money to buy a horse and buggy to take them home – to Stoczek.

We don’t know much about these months after the August massacre except that Esther and Moishe handled on the black market to make enough money to buy a horse and buggy in March of 1942.  I learned more about this vague time from the entry into a “situation report” recorded by Gebietskommissar Gerhard Erren, dated January 25, 1942.[1]

Remarkably, it seems that Esther and Moishe avoided another massacre of Slonim’s Jews on November 13, 1941.

Gebietskommissar Erren was in charge when the second big killing of Slonim Jews took place on November 13, 1941.  This “action” murdered an additional 18,000 Slonim Jews and “rid me of unnecessary mouths to feed,” Gebietskommissar Erren wrote.

After this purge of “useless eaters”, the report indicates that there were 7,000 Jews left in Slonim.  Esther and Moishe were two of the 7,000.  I have no idea how Esther and Moishe evaded the November round up.  Perhaps they were labeled “skilled workers” and exempt.  “Skilled workers” were kept alive to keep the economy of Slonim going.  “The best of the skilled workers among the Jews,” Gebietskommissar Erren wrote, “will be made to pass their skills on to intelligent apprentices in my craft colleges, so that Jews will finally be dispensable in the skilled craft and trade sector and can be eliminated.” (178-79)

When Gebietskommissar Erren began his rule of Slonim, he had to do some repair work to make it “livable” for the Germans who now occupied it as rulers.  He had his work cut out for him:

“Operating on the premise that my colleagues need the highest standard of overall living conditions in order to maintain peak performance I saw to it from day one that each of our men not only has decent accommodation and enough to eat but that his whole lifestyle embodies German culture and the prestige appropriate to it.  Our accommodation is such that members of all the German services, including Sonderfuhrer and police, eat together but in separate dining-rooms. Standards of conduct are adhered to, with the result that even people with little upbringing soon learn manners which command the respect of the local serving staff towards the German master race.” (Id.)

The “master race” did a great job of making life as comfortable as possible for themselves and as miserable as possible for the Jews.  It is a wonder that Esther and Moishe got out of Slonim in March of 1942.  It must have been so hard!  My heart breaks thinking about the impossible life they led day in and day out under Nazi rule.

They arrived back in Stoczek by Passover of 1942 – back to Moishe’s family, who were all still alive and their soda factory was still churning out bottles of bubbly water.  They lived under no delusion that life would be simple or smooth.  It was not.  In June of 1942, the Nazis came to town and took 135 men away – to Treblinka (including Sam).  Then they came back in September, shooting hundreds into pits at the Stoczek Jewish cemetery and taking the rest of the Jews to Treblinka.  Esther and Moishe – for the third time – evaded the massacre – hiding in the attic of the Kwiatek home.  From this massacre, they ran to the forest, to the Stys family – onto the next horrible chapter of their lives.

What are the chances of evading mass shootings and deportations three times between August of 1942 and September of 1943? So slim.  But yet, it happened.  Moishe did not survive the war, but Esther did and for that I am eternally grateful.

[1] Willi Dressen, Ernst Klee and Volker Riess, ed. “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders.

Judenjagd – Jew Hunts in the Polish Forests

[picture – Polish forest where Sam and Esther hid]

 

Dirty, hungry, thirsty, tired, lice-covered, cold, hot, scared.

This was the life of a Jew hiding in the Polish forest during the Holocaust.  Esther hid like this for two years and Sam, after his escape from Treblinka, joined her for the second of the two years.  They lived in barns, utility buildings on the Stys family property and a pit they dug in the ground, just outside of Stoczek.  Their survival is remarkable.

I just read a book by Christopher Browning about “ordinary” German men who were drafted into Battalion 101.  It opened my eyes even wider to the miracle of Sam and Esther’s survival in hiding.  In Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, Mr. Browning discusses the work of this Battalion during the war.  One of the Battalion’s jobs was to search the forest for hidden Jews.  Though Battalion 101 was doing their “work” in the Lublin district of Poland, his descriptions paint a picture that extends out to all such searches. He quotes George Leffler, one of the members of the German Battalion:

“We were told that there were many Jews hiding in the forest.  We therefore searched through the woods in a skirmish line but could find nothing, because the Jews were obviously well hidden.  We combed the woods a second time.   Only then could we discover individual chimney pipes sticking out of the earth. We discovered that Jews had hidden themselves in underground bunkers here.  They were hauled out, with resistance in only one bunker.  Some of the comrades climbed down into this bunker and hauled the Jews out.  The Jews were then shot on the spot . . . the Jews had to lie face down on the ground and were killed by a neck shot. . .. Some fifty Jews were shot, including men and women of all ages, because entire families had hidden themselves there.”  (124)

The search and kill missions became routine for the men of Battalion 101.  The members called such forest forays – Judenjagd or “Jew Hunt.” (123)  Most often the Germans were tipped off by a local Polish resident.  The residents were eager to help, as they received a reward for each Jew found and the chance to keep the dead Jews’ clothing.[1]  When such information was received, a routine patrol would follow the Pole to the forest hiding place.  Locating the opening, the Germans threw grenades into the bunker.  Anyone who survived the initial blast was forced out and then shot in the neck, lying face down.  (126)

There were Jew Hunts in the forest where Sam and Esther were hiding.  On our trip to Poland we learned the name of one such Polish “Jew Hunter” hunting the forests outside of Stoczek – Andrzecjczuk.  In one of the many shocking moments of the trip, Shlomo saw Andrzecjczuk’s grave in the Stoczek cemetery when we visited the righteous Stys family graves.  He snapped a picture and has spent the past year processing the information.

Browning explains that a significant number of Polish Jews lost their lives because of “Jew Hunts.”  He describes these hunts as a “tenacious, remorseless, ongoing campaign in which the ‘hunters’ tracked down and killed their ‘prey’ in direct and personal confrontation.  It was not a passing phase but an existential condition of constant readiness and intention to kill every last Jew who could be found.” (132)

The pit that Sam and Esther dug and lived in for most of a year (August 1943 until liberation by the Red Army in the summer of 1944) did not have a chimney pipe to give it away and was well camouflaged with brush they pulled over the top with a rope- pulley system.  Neither Andrzecjczuk nor any other enterprising Pole found their hiding place.  The Nazis did not kill these Jews.  For this miracle (among the many), I am grateful.

[1] See Hayes, Peter, Why: Explaining the Holocaust at 251.

AMULETS, EVIL EYE AND THE MAZHINKA

What medicines, precautions, and other means are employed in order to have clever children?  

Do you know of the custom to seat the bride on a kneading trough, a noodle board with a pillow, etc.? Does this custom still exist today? 

These are just two of the 2087 questions put together by Shloyme Zanvil Rapoport, more commonly known as An-sky, in 1912.  He wrote these questions to gather ethnographic data of the Jews living in the Pale of Settlement – the area between the Black and Baltic Seas.   At the beginning of the 20^th century, the Pale of Settlement was home to five million Jews and was dripping with Jewish folk culture and traditions.

From 1912 to 1914, An-sky took a team of “musicologists, photographers, and fieldworkers” and traveled to over 60 towns to collect data.   An-sky and his team put together a questionnaire and called it “The Jewish Ethnographic Program.”

In his book, The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement, Nathaniel Deutsch explains how An-sky believed that his ethnographic research would be immediately relevant to both Jews and Non-Jews:

“Non-Jews would learn that Jews were a legitimate people – not an atavistic survival or a parasitic economic class – possessing a rich folk culture that was both uniquely Jewish and deeply embedded within the local environment.  Jews, especially the growing ranks of the assimilated, would gain a deeper knowledge and appreciation of their own folk traditions and, just as important, would now be able to redeploy these traditions as the raw material for a wide range of new and, as An-sky envisioned it, authentically Jewish cultural creations, including museum exhibitions, theatrical performances, musical compositions, fine art, and literature.  The result, An-sky hoped, would be a veritable renaissance of Jewish culture, one deeply rooted in tradition yet cutting edge in sensibility.” (11-12)

The encyclopedic questionnaire was published in 1914 in Saint Petersburg.  Unfortunately, due to the outbreak of WWI, the questionnaire was never distributed. (14)   We non-Yiddish speakers are blessed to have Mr. Deutsch’s careful translation of the questions.  He lists them by number in his book and includes notes detailing his extensive research.  These questions provide a glimpse into the life of Eastern European Jewry that, thirty years later, was destroyed by the Holocaust.

The Jewish Ethnographic Program was divided into five main sections:  (1) the Child; (2) from the Kheyder to the Wedding; (3) the Wedding; (4) Family Life; and (5) Death.  Below I list some of my favorite questions and provide some of the notations that Mr. Deutsch includes.

Put on your seat belt and enjoy the ride:

17. What medicines, precautions, and other means are employed in order to have clever children? (110)
18. Is it a common belief that in most cases the children will resemble the mother’s brother? (Id.)
19. Is it a common belief that the appearance and resemblance of children depends on what the mother sees during the time that she is leaving the mikve [ritual bath, here taken by women after menstruation] and during her pregnancy? Therefore, a pregnant woman should not look at impure animals and fowl, on crippled, ugly, sinful, or evil people, or at ugly pictures? (Id.)
20. What protective amulets, charms, and precautions are there to protect a woman from the Evil Eye? (111)
21. Is it a custom for all the students from the kheyder [lit. a room, more broadly a religious elementary school . . .] in town or for students from just one kheyder to come over and to recite the verses beginning “Hear o Israel [see above, no. 95]? (125)
22. Note to 125:  “Students from the kheyder that was nearest the newborn would visit. . . .  On the seventh day of life, the behelfer (teacher’s assistant) would lead the kheyder children after learning to the house of the woman who had given birth and there would recite the Shema with them. . . .  Morris Goldstein informed the author that boys from the town beys yesomim (orphanage) would come to recite the Shema a day before the bris.  . . .  [In another account – ] When a boy was born, the melamed would write out a Shir Hamayles.  The behelfer (also belfer), or teacher’s assistant, would then lead the students to the house of the woman who had given birth. The behelfer would attach the Shir Hamayles to the cradle rope and then lead the students in the Shema.  Upon leaving, . . . the local Jewish midwife, would reach into her apron full of nuts and candies and give some to each boy, declaring ‘God grant that you should be fruitful and multiply.’” (125-26)

277. What do people say when a child sneezes?

Note on 277: “a lebn ssu dir (life to you); zolstu zayn gezunt (may you be healthy) and the most popular – tsu gezunt (to your health) Jewish sources operate on the principle that “sneezing carries the danger of breathing out the soul.” (140)

278. What do people say when a child yawns? (Id.)

Note to 278: “[Y]awning could be a sign of the Evil Eye and therefore required protective measures, such as incantations and spitting.”  (Id.)

279. What do people say when a child farts? (Id.)
280. What do people say when a child coughs? (Id.)
281. Do people smear the alefbeys tablet with honey so that the child will lick it? What is the reason for this?
282. Is the kheyder located in the melamed’s home or in another house?

Note on 389: “Typically the kheder was held in a room in the home of the melamed.  . . . ‘Only in about 20 percent of the schools investigated was a separate room specially provided in the house of the teacher.  In the remaining 80 percent the schoolroom was the living room of the teacher’s family, which was at the same time the sleeping room, the kitchen, etc.’” (153)

606. How do young scholars amuse themselves during the nights of Khanike [Hanukah] and nitl [Christmas]?

Note on 606: “Jews were encouraged to play games on Hanukkah.  For some Ashkenazi Jews, especially within Hasidic communities, Christmas Eve, known as nitl, was the only time during the year when Torah study was discouraged or even prohibited. The name nitl almost certainly derives from the phrase Natale Dominus though alternative folk etymologies also exist. Rather than learning Torah, Jews who followed this custom would typically play cards or other games. . . . However, Misnagdim did not accept this practice and continued to learn as on any other day.  (169)

607. Do they play kvitlekh [special Jewish playing cards] cards?

Note on 607: “Jews did not use popular playing cards because of the crosses and other Christian symbols found on them. Instead, there were special, handmade Yiddish cards called Lamed-alefniks or kvitlekh.  The cards were decorated with Hebrew letters (standing for numbers), common objects – such as teapots, feathers, and sometimes portraits of biblical heroes.” (170)

863. What do the rebetsins teach girls besides reading and writing Hebrew letters?

Note on 863: “In the girl’s khyeder, the rebetsin would teach the girls how to pray, read and write Yiddish, count, and write out an address in Russian.   The text books were the siddur, the tkhine, Tsene-rene and Nakhlas tsvi.”  (187)

938. Do you know of cases or stories from the past in which a match was made between children before they were born? (195)
939. What trades are generally considered vulgar, and what are their degrees? Which of them is considered more vulgar than the others?

Note on 1000:  “The water carrier, the vaser-treyger, was one step above the beggar.”  Indeed, the water carrier appears as the lowly laborer, par excellence, in many accounts of Jewish life in Eastern Europe.” (201)

1119. Is it still a custom to dance before the khupe [a canopy under which the marriage must take place] on a broom? Who dances, and what do people say at it?  The reason for it?

Note for 1119: “At the wedding of the last child in a family to be married, the mother of the bride would dance with a broom.  This dance, known as a mazhinka, signified the sweeping out of the household of marriageable children.” (114)

1600. Are there men and women in your community who can conjure away an Evil Eye? Who are they in general (religious school teachers, female bathhouse attendants)?

Note on 1600: “Exorcists and folk healers existed in every Jewish community of the Pale of Settlement.”

1707. Is it a custom to turn over or to cover the mirrors? What is the reason for this?

Note on 1707: “People cover mirrors with a cloth, so that they will not see the image of the Angel of Death with a knife in his hand, and it remains hanging like this for the entire shive week.” (271)

1909. Do people place forked wooden twigs [gepelekh] between the fingers of the corpse? What is the reason for this?

Note on 1909: “[T]o this very day [1882] among Polish Jews the dead are provided for their long subterranean journey [through underground tunnels following Resurrection, . . . ] with little wooden forks, with which at the sound of the great trumpet, they to dig and burrow their way from where they happen to be buried till they arrive in the Land of Palestine.” (291)

2034. Do you know any stories in which the soul of a dead person that cannot find rest becomes a dybbuk [lit. ‘something attached’, a malevolent spirit that attached itself to a living person] and enters a living person?

Note on 2034:  “The term dibbuk comes from a Hebrew root meaning ‘to cleave,’ and it refers to the malevolent soul of a dead person who inhabits or cleaves to the living person.  Dibbuk is the mirror image of the phenomenon known as ibbur, or ‘impregnation’ in Kabbalistic sources in which a righteous soul temporarily inhabits the body of a living person in order to help the latter perform a commandment or to perform a commandment that it was unable to perform itself in a previous incarnation.” (305-06)

Amazing right?   An-sky took the information he gained during his study and wrote about it. One of his works is the play The Dibbuk.   The play was made into a movie – in Yiddish with English subtitles.   You can rent it on amazon prime.

Shlomo and I watched it and loved it!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030092/

 

GUEST BLOGGER – SHLOMO GOLDBERG The Blood Cries Out from the Earth.

Dear Reader:   My husband, Shlomo Goldberg, wrote a beautiful piece relating a verse in the book of Genesis to his parents.   I hope you find it as meaningful as I do. 

This picture  shows Shlomo standing by the sign on the way out of the farming village – Bagatele, Poland – where his father, Sam, was born and lived until 1939. 

This year I was struck by the verse:

הֵן֩ גֵּרַ֨שְׁתָּ אֹתִ֜י הַיּ֗וֹם מֵעַל֙ פְּנֵ֣י הָֽאֲדָמָ֔ה וּמִפָּנֶ֖יךָ אֶסָּתֵ֑ר וְהָיִ֜יתִי נָ֤ע וָנָד֙ בָּאָ֔רֶץ וְהָיָ֥ה כָל־מֹצְאִ֖י יַֽהַרְגֵֽנִי׃

Since You have banished me this day from the soil, and I must hide from Your presence and become a restless wanderer on earth—anyone who meets me may kill me!

It describes the panic that Cain felt after he was charged with the murder of  his brother.   It also struck me as what my father must have felt when he escaped form the Treblinka death camp.  I notice that the word Esther, my mother’s name, is in the verse.  It means hide.  It was my mother, Esther, who arranged for a hiding place for my father when he was running and “anyone he met could kill him.”  The verse is amazing.  One could even say that the troubles, the persecution, the need to hide, were the result of banishments: disenfranchisement from Poland, and, more remotely, exile from the Promised land, long ago.

But how does this situation work with Divine justice?  Cain had killed his brother.  His exile was standard punishment for unpremeditated murder.  Since there was no precedent, he did not know what would happen when he struck the lethal blow. But Cain had done something in his rage that deserved punishment.   What had my father, and all those who escaped with him, done? Part of the reason for the exile was that the blood of  Hevel cried out from the ground.  How much blood was crying out when my father was running?  But what could he have done? Was the only acceptable solution to die with his brothers and sisters?

When blood cries from the earth, no one is safe, anyone who meets you might kill you, it is a danger of exile.  Finding the right shelter is the Divine intervention