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

Chapter Nineteen. Transition

Brooklyn was a significant upgrade on Astoria. The borough had a substantial Jewish population as well as over 1.5 million people from other immigrant backgrounds. To me, as a teenager, impatient to formulate a new, meaningful life, 1950s cosmopolitan Brooklyn was hugely exciting, vibrating with the energy of 2 million strangers committed to achieving their version of the American Dream. It was impossible not to be infected by their enthusiasm. New York’s most populous borough was, for me, a potential springboard to create a new existence and leave the traumas of war behind.

Our new apartment in east New York was basic, but for the first time in my life, I had my own room, and it became my sanctuary. I could close the door behind me whenever I got tired, shut out the city, lie on my narrow bed and, without interruption, read to my heart’s content. My small window opened onto a dark alley populated by battalions of feral cats. During steamy, airless New York summers, my consumption of literature and poetry was accompanied by a soundtrack of feline fighting and flirting and tomcats doing what tomcats like to do.

After years of deprivation, books provided me with a passport to explore the world in my imagination. I was especially grateful to the English teachers who instilled in me a love of poetry and drama. I gravitated toward poets whose wordscapes painted images of journeys full of discovery and adventure. Walt Whitman, America’s great writer, was my favorite.

In Leaves of Grass, Whitman offered an escape from my urban existence with his reflections on the vastness of my new homeland’s landscape.

I embraced English poets as well, visualizing William Wordsworth gazing at a field of daffodils. In my mind, I sailed with Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

I was a pupil at Brooklyn’s Thomas Jefferson High, which had a reputation as one of the most illustrious in the New York school system, producing a string of distinguished alumni, especially in the arts. Imparting knowledge was just one of the goals of Jefferson’s teachers. Collectively, they were committed to turning their multiracial immigrant pupils into high-achieving American citizens. I joined the Justice Club, which provided my first experience of democratic process. Guilt was determined by proof, not prejudice.

Despite its credentials for educational excellence, Jefferson had a dark side, in that many students were intimidated by gangs roaming its corridors. Brooklyn was a melting pot and each gang was made up of clusters of boys from the same ethnic group. Once in a while, the police were called in to confiscate a weapon.

I, however, was impervious to the undercurrent of violence. Is this what they call dangerous? I wondered. They have no idea what real danger is.

Once, on the way to school, a tough kid blocked my way just outside the gates. I stood rock steady, staring him down. The bell rang with its injunction to head to class. Glaring intensely into each other’s eyes, we both held our ground, each challenging the other to flinch first. Summoning all the menace in his possession, the bully inched ever closer. When he realized I would not be intimidated, he turned away and never bothered me again.

During those school years, I made some lifelong friendships, but mainly outside of Jefferson High. Most of my new friends were European Holocaust survivors. To our American peers, we were all greenhorns, but our diverse experiences during the war bound us together and more than compensated for us being outsiders. We were mature and responsible beyond our years. Our survival instincts were finely honed, as was our commitment to protecting our traumatized parents.

Among our number were those who had hidden from the Nazis in the forests of Central Europe, foraging in the wild and supplementing nature’s bounty by “liberating” foodstuffs from local farmers. Others had been concealed by their Gentile neighbors after shelling out small fortunes for the privilege and then worrying about their fates when the money ran out. Not everyone had been pushed to the limits of endurance by the Germans, however. Some had suffered at Russian hands, spending most of the war years as forced laborers in Siberia’s frozen tundras.

Our personal histories were recounted casually, as if hardship was routine. Occasionally, stories were punctuated by heroic vignettes of stealing food, evading the enemy and helping the partisans. We were united by a sense of pride in overcoming adversity and shared a determination to integrate into a wonderful society that opened its arms to us when so many nations had pulled up the drawbridge. We also felt as though we had to protect each other from America’s dominant culture until we were each ready to enter. The American kids didn’t accept us. We spoke with accents, our clothes weren’t stylish and few of us participated in school sports because many had to work to help their parents financially.

Nevertheless, we also had a lot of fun. For many of us, this was the first time in our lives we could actually exhibit our youthful exuberance freely. We spent some afternoons on the beaches of Coney Island and Rye, a coastal town in upstate New York, and evenings at gatherings. In spite of our emotional baggage, many romances and marriages resulted.

But acceptance into the greater American culture took time. To that end, I began calling myself Toby. It was American, short, unassuming and easy to remember. I shed my name Tola with pleasure this time, and with it, I hoped, my painful wartime memories.

We spoke what the dictionary defines as Yinglish — English with Yiddish phrases intertwined. Most of us didn’t expect to go to college because we needed to support our parents. I was an exception, as Papa managed to scrape together a living. I hoped I could advance to higher education because Brooklyn College was free. I just had to find a way to pay for course books. Money at home was so tight; we never ate out in even the cheapest restaurants and buying snacks from street vendors was the height of luxury.

But almost everything in my life paled in significance compared to Maier Friedman, the first boy I met in Hebrew school. He lived about twenty blocks away from us and I frequently dragged one of my best friends there, just so I could look at the light in his closed window.

“But you see him every Sunday”, she protested.

“That’s nothing”, I told her. “I need to see him every day”.

“But you don’t”, she countered. “His window isn’t open”.

“Yes”, I replied. “But I can imagine him behind it”.

Maier constantly occupied my thoughts. Family history repeated itself: I joined a Zionist group just to be close to him, twenty years after my mother had done the same thing so she could get to know my father.

The group was called Habonim, a cultural youth movement committed to social justice and Zionism, the creation and protection of an Israeli state. Its meetings were platforms for powerful debates about egalitarianism, politics and human rights. Whenever he spoke, Maier was mesmerizing and charismatic — a brilliant analyst of core issues. His self-assurance and knowledge were magnetic and attracted me to him on all levels — physically, emotionally and intellectually.

While I was still a sophomore, Maier graduated from Stuyvesant High School, one of the top-ranking institutions in the country with its emphasis on math and science. From there, it was a natural progression for Maier to enroll at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art — a free private university that attracted the best candidates in the country. At the same time, he was accepted to Mensa, the high IQ society. Our feelings for each other deepened, yet somehow neither of us expressed them. I hoped to marry him and live on a kibbutz in Israel, although I kept my dreams to myself.

My optimism was not reflected at home, where life was a constant financial struggle. Papa had started a small tailoring workshop. Sewing bespoke garments for both men and women was far from lucrative, and he worked very long hours. Papa’s absence and my outside interests exacerbated Mama’s loneliness and depression. She was no longer able to work because of her deteriorating health. Her continuing debilitating headaches, caused by the beating in Auschwitz, confined her to home. She no longer immersed herself in the English-speaking world in which she was living, and her language skills faltered.

Occasionally, glimpses of Mama’s former self flickered to life. On a rare trip to the cinema, she mentioned to Papa how much she admired a coat worn by one of the actresses. Papa re-created it entirely from memory and presented it to her a few weeks later. She loved the coat and reserved it for special occasions. However, the vitality of Brooklyn failed to penetrate Mama’s consciousness. Four thousand miles from Birkenau, the Holocaust remained omnipresent. It hadn’t retreated with liberation.

Little by little, my intelligent, courageous, beautiful mama deteriorated before my eyes. My love for her was boundless, but my need to belong to my new world was equally strong. I was constantly conflicted. When I was home, I wanted to be out, and when I was with my friends, I knew I was needed at home.

Ultimately, my adoration and concern for Mama triumphed over my own needs. I stopped going out after school and came home directly. Mama was always waiting with a glass of milk and a jam doughnut. We would sit at the table in our small, windowless kitchen, and Mama would hum the Sabbath songs that she used to sing with her family. She wanted me to commit them to memory. Mama talked in great detail about members of the Pinkusewicz family who were no longer with us. Stories that began as happy reminiscences always ended with the horrific conclusion that her family had been massacred and that she was the sole survivor. Mama’s guilt was overwhelming.

Being subjected to a constant barrage of gloom was unbearable. I zoned out, put up a defensive screen and nodded in the right places. I heard her, but I didn’t listen. Some of the stories struck a chord and remain with me. But the names didn’t stick. Memories of a whole generation were lost because of my insensitivity. Back then, I had no idea just how precious that time was. I would give anything now to turn back the clock, to hear the stories and names again, so I could at least light a memorial candle for them and keep their memory alive.

Similarly, the festive spirit of most Jewish holidays always disintegrated into painful memories. Before the war, these feasts were large family gatherings; now there were only three of us at the table. While Mama appreciated our survival, her belief in God was shaken to the core. She constantly questioned why her entire family of observant Jews had been slaughtered.

“If there is a God”, she would say, “He is utterly unjust and doesn’t deserve to be worshipped”.

Nevertheless, she maintained Jewish traditions, keeping kosher and lighting candles on the Sabbath. Doing so kept her close to her family, if not to her religion. In preparation for holidays and Fridays, I would accompany Mama to an open market. We would come home with a freshly butchered chicken or a live carp that Mama then hit over the head before making gefilte fish, a traditional Sabbath delicacy. But I could see that the light in her eyes had dimmed.

At the age of forty, Mama was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctors caught it early, and her spirits rose after she apparently recovered and entered remission. She began to read in Polish again and found the energy to socialize once more, spending time with my papa’s sisters. Aunt Ita and Uncle Adam had moved from Israel to Brooklyn with their two children, Pearl and Ben, and we were frequent visitors to Aunt Elka, Uncle Monyak and their son, Marty, in Upper Manhattan.

For a time, Mama’s mood improved even more, which, to my relief, allowed me to concentrate on my own activities. But after graduating from Jefferson High, my plans to get a college degree ran into opposition from both parents.

“Get married. I want to see you safe before I die”, Mama said.

Papa took her side, but I insisted. So I went ahead and registered to study psychology at Brooklyn College. There, I began by studying the individual psyche through the works of Freud, Jung and Carl Rogers, an innovative American psychologist who was a pioneer of client-centered therapy.

I was more fascinated, however, by the field of group psychology. Trigant Burrow, an influential psychoanalyst, who pioneered group therapy, caught my attention. I also pored over the work of German-born Kurt Lewin, recognized today as the founder of modern social psychology. A German soldier wounded in the First World War, and later a professor at the University of Iowa, Lewin proposed that behavior is shaped by the interaction of individual traits and the environment.

I wanted to understand how an entire nation could be brainwashed and led by an individual who was clearly deranged. The Holocaust was never far from my mind.

One psychiatrist whose work I was introduced to at that time was Viktor Frankl, who, like me and my parents, survived the Shoah. Later in life, when I became a therapist, I studied his survival theories in greater depth. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl proposes that one has the choice to behave morally even under the direst circumstances and one can find spiritual meaning by helping others:

“Every day, every hour offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom”.

Those words resonate with me whenever I think of how my parents behaved throughout the war.