Chapter 1 First Journeys One day Father stopped singing. I can't remember if it was shortly before the end-the death and destruction of Jewish Mielec-or if it was even earlier. Father loved music. He sang to me, to himself, to anyone who would or would not listen. And while his songs were probably no longer as happy once the Germans came, he had continued to sing the Yiddish tunes of which he knew an astonishing number. "Zion, in the green fields," sang Father, "where lambs pasture . . ." At his death Father was fifty-one years old. Had he lived longer, I wonder how I would remember him. Would he still seem as joyful, a singer of songs only he seemed to know? I didn't hear of Father's death until much later, and at the time I had not learned how to mourn. I remember how Mielec ceased to exist. The day it started to disappear and the week that followed are as clear for me today as ever. Since that first day I live and relive the events, again and again, in dreams and in waking. As in a silent movie, scenes appear and fade away; faces emerge, are captured, and vanish; silent shapes trudge across an endless frozen landscape and I am an actor in the fearful drama, playing my part, one of the crowd. I can recall vistas and scenes of the town as it had been once. I see its unpaved broad and narrow streets, neatly laid out around the two cobblestoned markets, one large, the other small, both muddy in fall but sparkling with pure white snow in the wintry sun. From the window above Grandmother's store, I look down into Sandomierska Street, where something interesting always happens. It might be a wagon stuck in the mud, or a farmer driving his sleigh to market, unaware that the town urchins have tied their sleds to it and are hitching a ride. It might be the rebbe's hugely overweight wife sitting, in summer, in front of her house surrounded by her children of all ages and sizes, twelve of them, or fifteen. Cousin Esther and I play at guessing which is the youngest and which the oldest, or which two might be twins. But it is hard to tell any of them apart; they look so alike. Or it might be a father spanking his howling son for some misdeed. I like watching the street from above, especially the covered passageways that lead from the houses surrounding the Large Market to the street in back of it. From the apartments above they look like the mouths of dark tunnels from which people emerge and into which they disappear, disappear and emerge, are swallowed up and spat out. But soon I stand again in the marketplace, one of perhaps as many as eight thousand Jews, and together with them I am marched out of town along the hard, frozen road that cuts diagonally across the Large Market. How trustworthy is my memory? I ask myself today. Is that how the end of Mielec, a small town in western Poland, began? Of course, to a participant and to an observer the event remembered is only the fragment witnessed, never the whole event in all its complexity. After all, the actor in a play remembers only his part and not those of others; the blind Indian describes the elephant as the trunk that his hand touches; the Chinese philosopher's well frog thinks the round piece of sky above the well is the world. The story I am about to tell is only a fragment, yet I know that even if it is a small portion of history regained, other fragments of history will in turn be lost. Each winter, there were nights when the muddy streets froze and the marks left in the mud by the horses' hoofs and the peasants' wagons turned into uneven, stonelike indentations. Some days gray clouds enveloped the frozen landscape. Then it began to snow for days on end and beautiful ice flowers sprouted on the windowpanes. But this third winter of the war was different. Except for a few insignificant flurries at the beginning of winter, snow was not plentiful until later; the air was dry and cold, without even enough moisture for icicles to form along the roofs. The rhythm of the town's life continued that winter-Thursday market days, daily searches for food, Germans catching Jewish men for work, Jews being beaten and having their beards shaved-but beneath these regularized routines, as frightening as they were, there was also a particular tension, a disquiet, fueled by rumors of what the Germans planned to do next. I believe the rumors began in December 1941, and by the middle of January the facts were known: The Jews from Mielec were to be deported. At first a figure of two thousand was mentioned, then forty-five hundred. But there were surely more than forty-five hundred Jews in Mielec by 1941, after refugees had begun pouring in, deported from other areas by the Germans. So what was in store for the many thousands aside from those who were to be sent "east," to the Lublin district? We would soon find out-there would be selections and killings. Meanwhile, even though ever since the Germans had come Jews had been driven about like so many cattle from one town to another, had been locked into ghettos, dragged off to work camps, we knew this deportation would be different. Until then in no town had the entire Jewish population been deported. But that winter we were about to become pioneers in the experience of total deportation. Who could have known then (as I have learned since) that Mielec was singled out for this distinction by the newly created Operation Reinhard. When history came to be written, Mielec went on record as being the first Judenfrei town in the General Government of Poland. How the information of our impending deportation filtered down to us is somewhat of a mystery. The German order was apparently leaked in Lublin and traveled 150 miles westward, even though only the Germans had telephones, and it was soon common knowledge in Mielec. The Germans were not pleased. From a letter dated January 20, 1942: To the Authorities of the General Government, Cracow Re: Jewish Resettlement in the Districts Che¢mno and Hrubieszów Although it is clear that the head of the Jewish Aid Committee for the Lublin District already knew on January 18 of the letter that had arrived on January 17 which ordered the above resettlement of Jews, in checking with my aide, I can inform you that it seems impossible that he [the Jew] would have learned [of the letter's contents] from someone employed here. It is possible that the Jew in question overheard a telephone conversation from the hallway. . . Soon there were new rumors. The threatened deportation was to be postponed, or the order might be rescinded, provided the Jews delivered all gold, jewelry, furs, and other valuables to the Germans. Did the Judenrat, the Jewish Council, intend to bribe the Germans with necklaces and rings? Or was this the Germans' idea-having the Jews deliver their valuables voluntarily so that they did not have to search for them? Mother took out her jewelry box, that magic box she opened sometimes just for me, allowing me, under her watchful eye, to carefully handle the rings with their sparkling stones, and the heavy gold necklaces with their intricate patterns that caught the light when held just the right way. Most of all, I loved the strings of pearls, so cool and hard to the touch, yet suffused with an inner warmth. Now that our very existence was said to depend on it, Mother selected pieces to take to the Judenrat, but she decided to keep her dearest possession, Great-grandmother Blime's pearls, the ones that had adorned her turban when she was alive. The pearls, a few necklaces, a ring or two, Mother's Persian lamb and silver fox (the glass eyes looking as real as ever), and a few photographs were taken to Korpantowa, a Polish woman the family had known for many years, for safekeeping in case the bribe was ineffective. As Mother carried her jewelry to the Judenrat she believed, no doubt, with one half of her heart, that she was doing her part to save us and the Mielec Jews. The other half of her heart told her not to trust the Germans' (or the Judenrat's) promises. We began to pack. In every Jewish house people packed-bundles, suitcases, big bags, small ones, nothing too heavy, for we had also to carry food. Long discussions ensued about what to take, what to discard; bags were packed and repacked. Summer clothes were needed, for eventually summer would come, but winter clothes were bulky, leaving no room for lighter items. My backpack was small and Mother told me to wear several dresses, one over the other. She laid these out on a chair, telling me not to forget them-there might be confusion when we had to leave. At last we were ready. The bags were packed and stood neatly lined up in front of the attic door of the small room where I lived with my parents, my sister Lore, and Cousin Püppe. Now the room was even more crowded than usual, and someone was forever stumbling over the bags. Mother's final act in preparing for the journey was to sew some dollar bills (where and when she got them, I'll never know) into the hem of her checkered winter coat. They were crisp and new and Mother immediately worried that their rustling could be heard. And then we waited. We began a strange existence in which every activity, all daily work, revolved around the question of whether we would or would not be here tomorrow, or the day after. I was told to stay close to home; if the order to leave came, others would not have time to look for me. Overnight our home had lost its permanency; it had become a strange place, a mere way station. Familiar objects lost their warmth. Nerves were taut. We sniped at each other. Electricity was in the air, like before a storm. When I look back at those weeks when we waited, not with hope that we would be somehow saved, but resigned to the inevitability of having to leave the place we called home, I am amazed. How was it possible that we so readily resigned ourselves to this unreal situation? After all these years I still cannot understand how quickly we accepted losing control of our lives. We waited. I went to see my best friend, Toÿka, who lived with her mother and sister at the Small Market. The three of them were waiting too, seated around their table in the gray afternoon light, the lamp unlit, not uttering a word. They invited me to sit with them, and I was reminded of a wake Toÿka and I had read about. Afterward I walked through the nearly deserted streets to see my cousin Esther, finding things not much better there. Uncle Reuven was not at home; as a member of the Judenrat he was always at meetings during these days of waiting. Cousin Esther and her older sister, Malka, sat huddled next to the stove in the upstairs room. They too were silent. I may have asked Cousin Esther what she thought would happen, and she probably sneered at me in the condescending way she had, as if to say only fools would believe in miracles. I was twelve years old, and Cousin Esther was only two years older than I, yet since the Germans had come she seemed to have changed. She was no longer a child. Her mother, my aunt Feige, was in the store below, restlessly shifting the few meager stocks of food from one place to another. She no longer had much to sell; her stocks had dwindled since the war had started, and there was no point in even trying to get supplies if any day now everything would be left behind. Days went by and soon they lengthened into one week and then another. Tiny flames of hope were kindled and, cautiously at first, we resumed our daily routine. One by one, we took articles of clothing we could not do without out of the bags. Mother moved the bags to the attic. Gradually her customers reappeared, to have her type petitions for travel permits. Maybe in another few weeks, they said, the storm will blow over. It all happened so long ago that I cannot vouch for the extent of our information then, or how much hope, the handmaiden of illusion, influenced everyone's perceptions. Even so, there are some matters I know today that no one could have known then, not even Uncle Reuven, who as a Judenrat member was better informed than other people. I know now that the Mielec Aktion had merely been postponed. The deportation order was never rescinded, and the valuables delivered to the Judenrat had bought nothing for the Jews of Mielec but time, for waiting. I also know now that the Germans had already decided on our destination in January. We were to be sent to towns close to Belzyce, Che¢mno, and Sobibór, the death camps. All this I can read today in the documents. From a telegram dated January 21, 1942: To the Authorities of the General Government, Cracow Personally to Major Ragger Re: Evacuation of Jews from Mielec The telegram from 6 January concerning the resettlement of 2,000 Jews is superseded. New number is 4,500. Distribution planned as follows: 1,000 Radzyæ district; 500 Zamoÿç district; 1,500 Hru-bieszów district; 1,500 Che¢mno district. And I know today that Uncle Reuven was taken as much by surprise as we were when waiting came to an end on March 9. The German order was given by telephone on Saturday, March 7, at 1:30 p.m., no doubt after a hearty midday meal. I have retained the following memory of March 8: Heavy pounding boots are heard on the staircase. They approach our tiny, crowded room, the door flies open, and suddenly huge, gray-coated men seem to fill every inch of space in that little room; they seem to breathe all the air there is. We shrink from them into the corners. Their brutal red faces tower above us, among them that of the hated Rudi Zimmermann, an old family friend who was now a Volksdeutscher, a member of the Gestapo, and a killer. Neither they nor we utter a word; no words are needed, our lives are in their hands. But no, they did not come to kill. Zimmermann merely takes Mother's typewriter and they march out the door. We hear their boots pounding down the staircase. After a long, agonized silence, fear hovering in the airless room more palpably than ever, Mother whispers that she understands. Tomorrow we will be deported, she says, her face white as a sheet. They've taken the typewriter because petitions to travel are no longer needed. Excerpted from The Choice: Poland, 1939-1945 by Irene Eber All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
