The Daughter of Auschwitz. My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope

Chapter Sixteen. The Welcome

After leaving Birkenau, we had about 130 miles to travel by bus and train. We walked to the station in the nearest town, Oświęcim (that’s Polish for Auschwitz). People averted their eyes and gave us sideways glances as we passed by. They knew where we had come from. They knew what had been taking place on the other side of the barbed-wire fence. Just like us, they had smelled it.

After taking a series of crowded trains and buses, we arrived in Tomaszów Mazowiecki around dusk. We’d been away for almost two years. We weren’t really sure where to go. Mama didn’t know what to expect. Like a homing pigeon, she’d been drawn back to Tomaszów Mazowiecki. But where was home? My grandparents’ place? The big ghetto? The small ghetto?

Tomaszów was now occupied by Russian soldiers and some of the town had been damaged in fighting between the Germans and the Red Army. Mama had trouble finding her bearings. Then she recognized a woman she’d known before the war. Someone who’d been a friend. Mama picked up the pace to greet her. But when the woman approached, she hissed, “What are you doing back here? I thought Hitler killed you all”.

That was our welcome back to Tomaszów Mazowiecki.

Mama did not reply. She squeezed my hand. We crossed the street and walked away quickly. I was really shocked. I wanted to ask why the woman was so angry at us. But I knew Mama was upset and so I kept quiet.

We continued wandering aimlessly as the cold and darkness deepened, until Mama found a cellar with a door ajar. It smelled warm and clean, and we were too tired to go any farther. We had nowhere else to go. The cellar was used as storage for potatoes. We sat down on a pile of clean, folded burlap sacks and ate the remaining provisions we’d brought with us, until we fell asleep, exhausted.

When I awoke the next morning, Mama was already up and busy.

“Tola, we’re going to stay here for a while, until we find our family”, she said.

Mama had come to an arrangement with the owner of the house, who gave us blankets and boxes to use as tables. The cellar had an earthen floor. It was rudimentary, but it offered shelter from the elements. I quickly learned how to sprinkle water on the floor to keep the dust down. I’m not sure how Mama provided for us, but we didn’t go hungry.

Every day she took me for a long walk, pointing out the buildings where her family had lived before the war. Most of the apartments were now occupied by strangers and we never went inside. Mama was hurt by the reality that homes that had embraced her before the war were now off-limits.

One building where Mama had once lived with her siblings was now in ruins. We sat on the rubble as she told me all about her life at home before the war and before she met Papa. She was trying to make me appreciate that I was part of a big, loving family with a proud, distinguished history. Every day she bought me a jam doughnut and reconstructed the Pinkusewicz family tree. She told me about the festivals and holidays they had enjoyed and the many songs that were sung around the Sabbath table of her very observant family. By talking about them, she was trying to keep the flickering candle of hope alive. Yet there was a quiet desperation in her voice. The stories she was compelled to recount mostly served to accentuate her loneliness.

“Hopefully, some of them will return soon, and then you’ll meet your family”. Mama mouthed the words, although I’m not sure she believed what she was saying.

Together with the Red Cross, the now tiny Jewish community established a center where they registered all survivors returning to Tomaszów Mazowiecki and provided them with supplies and other assistance. Just 200 returned. Every morning Mama checked the list in the hope that some of her relatives might be alive. Every day she came back home shaking her head. As hope ebbed away, we stopped our daily walks, although Mama scrutinized the list every morning. As time passed, she became more and more despondent.

Mama wanted me to go to first grade at the local Polish school. But she gave up trying to persuade me. If she dared mention the word, I ran out of the cellar and disappeared.

However, the grim mood changed dramatically for the better when my father’s three sisters suddenly appeared in Tomaszów Mazowiecki. They had not been named on the Red Cross list, and everyone was surprised to see them. I was especially happy to be reacquainted with my wonderful aunt Helen, the widow of my uncle James. Like Mama and me, Helen and her sisters, Ita and Elka, were all tattooed. They had spent several months in other parts of Auschwitz, where they had worked as slave laborers for private German companies. As the Russians closed in, they were forced to join the Death March to Germany. Somehow, despite the cold and the violence, they’d all survived, found each other and decided to return to the town they regarded as home.

Mama’s spirits soared. The sisters’ arrival provided proof that some of Papa’s family had defied death. But where was he?

Aunt Ita was a gifted tailor, and she set about working immediately. The five of us moved into a tiny two-bedroom apartment. Ita created a workshop in the sitting room. She soon had a full order book, especially from Russian soldiers. Mama and my aunts helped as well. Although we were forced to share beds, nobody complained.

However, Mama’s elation at my aunts’ return was short-lived. Her despair returned and intensified as she acknowledged her own family wasn’t coming back. She slept more and ate less. By nature a quiet woman, Mama retreated deeper inside herself. My aunts exchanged worried looks as they cared for her, and I was left free to roam. I was adventurous and enjoyed pushing the boundaries. I wandered the streets of Tomaszów Mazowiecki, following the Russian army as they marched, sometimes in time with a band. I was enchanted by the music and the spectacle. I got lost several times following their parades, until my aunts managed to find me.

The Russians in Tomaszów Mazowiecki were as ill-disciplined off duty as those in Birkenau. They were frequently drunk and convinced of their entitlement to force themselves on women who took their fancy. Aunt Elka was the oldest of the sisters and very pretty. The Russians were always banging on our door.

If that wasn’t bad enough, our Polish neighbors were almost as hostile as the Germans had been. There was no sympathy for the ordeal we had endured.

“Why have you come back? Why aren’t you dead? You should be!” were some of the insults repeatedly hurled in our direction.

Weary of the Russians, the anti-Semitism, the provincial attitudes of Tomaszów Mazowiecki and our cramped living conditions, Aunt Helen decided to move forty miles away to Lodz, Poland’s third-biggest city. She was now in her mid-twenties. Helen had been a widow most of her adult life, and there were more prospects in Lodz, which had a bigger Jewish community.

We escorted Helen to Tomaszów Mazowiecki station, from where the majority of the town’s Jews had been transported to Treblinka. As the train departed for Lodz, she poked her head through a window, smiled, waved and blew me a kiss. Although they understood Helen’s desire to leave, her sisters and Mama were worried because Poland was awash with stories of attacks on Jews returning from the camps. The worst took place in July 1946 in a town called Kielce, a hundred miles northeast of Auschwitz. Polish troops, police and civilians attacked a gathering of Jewish refugees, killing forty-two and injuring forty. It was the worst pogrom after the Second World War. After everything the Jews had suffered, the attack provoked international outrage and completely undermined our sense of security.

I was around seven years old at the time. As a distraction from the harshness of daily life in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Mama introduced me to music and dance. She took me to the cinema to see Shirley Temple in the comedy Bright Eyes. I was enthralled by her rendition of “On the Good Ship Lollipop”. The film was dubbed in Polish, and years later, I was surprised to discover that Shirley Temple wasn’t Polish.

We also went to see The Red Shoes, one of the finest films of the age. It is an adaptation of a Hans Christian Andersen fable about a girl who could not stop dancing. The dancing and music mesmerized me and I can still picture it vividly in my mind. But the cinema only offered Mama a brief respite from her melancholy thoughts.

Then, one day, at last there was some uplifting news. Mama’s obsessive survey of the survivors’ noticeboard paid off. She found Papa’s name. He was coming home from Dachau. Papa had discovered where we were living from a list that was compiled and shared by a group of teenagers traveling from town to town, trying to find lost relatives.

The day of his return was bittersweet. There was a gentle knock. Mama opened the door and screamed with joy. She threw her arms around Papa, and they held each other. Then he lifted me up and hugged me. All three of us stood in the doorway clutching each other and weeping with happiness. Ita and Elka joined in the embrace.

But then Papa broke away and limped into the sitting room. He opened a newspaper to a page dominated by the photograph of a murder victim lying on the floor of the shop where she worked.

“Look what I found on the train”, Papa sobbed.

I could barely make out what he was saying.

Mama and the sisters took a closer look at the newspaper. The victim was my beloved aunt Helen. She had been shot by a marauding gang of anti-Semitic Poles.

Besides being traumatized, Papa wasn’t in great shape. He had been shot in the leg by an SS officer in Dachau and needed to recuperate.

My parents and aunts began discussing whether it was time to leave the country. We were intimidated by the Russians and the all-pervasive anti-Semitism. But Mama refused. She was afraid that if her family came back and she wasn’t there, she would never find them again.

As for me, Papa’s return meant I could no longer avoid going to school. My days as a vagabond on the street were now over. I was seven and a half and Papa insisted I begin my formal education.

The first day was an utter disappointment. The teacher put me at the back of the class and I had no idea what was going on.

“I don’t understand why those children sit at those little desks doing something with a pencil on a piece of paper”, I told Mama. “It’s a complete waste of time”.

But my parents were resolute and took me back the next day. Once again, I was marooned at the back of the class trying to comprehend what was happening. In the middle of a lesson, all the children were told to go to the chapel. I didn’t have a clue what that meant and was left alone. I decided to head home. As I walked away, I felt something hit my back. I turned around and saw some of my fellow pupils throwing stones at me.

“You dirty Jew”, they screamed. “Why are you alive? You are just a dirty Jew”.

I pleaded with Mama and Papa not to send me back, but they insisted. So I stole some money from my mother’s bag and bought a crucifix on a chain. The next day, I proudly wore the cross around my neck for all to see. The children started laughing at me.

“You aren’t Christian”.

“You don’t belong here”.

“You are a dirty Jew. You killed Christ”.

I cried all the way home and kept asking myself how I could have killed Christ. I didn’t even know him.

I told Mama what had happened.

“I want to be a Christian. I don’t want to be a Jew anymore”.

Mama was furious and smacked me hard.

“How dare you say that! After everything we’ve been through. We’ve made it and survived. You should be proud of being Jewish. Never forget that”.

Although Mama had survived physically, she was struggling psychologically. A hundred and fifty relatives had disappeared. They weren’t coming back. Her depression was so severe, we couldn’t even get her out of bed. She stopped eating altogether and wouldn’t wake up. Papa decided we had no alternative but to leave — to try to save Mama’s mind and possibly even her life.

One day I was told to dress with everything I owned. As Poland’s borders were officially closed, Papa had to pay a smuggler to get us out. Aunt Ita stayed behind with her new boyfriend, Adam, who had just been discharged from the Russian army. But Aunt Elka and her fiancé, Monyak, joined us.

Of all the ironies, we headed into what I thought was enemy territory. Under cover of darkness, we crossed the border into Germany. Our destination? Berlin.

Once we had crossed the border, Mama turned to me and said, “We will no longer be speaking Polish. It’s a very unwelcoming country”.

And so I began to learn Yiddish.

We vowed never to return to Tomaszów Mazowiecki.

Today, nearly eighty years after the war, the town doesn’t have a Jewish community.