1983, p.9
Where Butterflies Go, page 9
Our chance came when a group of four women came walking down the road from the other direction. As soon as they were close enough, I grabbed Esther and said a polite good-bye to the men, telling them they were mistaken about us. We were here to meet our friends, who were finally here.
I held my breath, wondering if the men would try to stop us from walking away, but instead they watched us go and remained silent while we joined the women. Esther offered the group a friendly hello, and they eyed us curiously but said nothing as they continued on their way with us trailing behind them.
“Those men were going to turn us in once we reached Kowali,” Esther whispered. “We can’t go into town. There must be soldiers there.”
I figured she was right, but the men still watched us from a distance, and the women seemed suspicious now, looking as if they wanted to run away from us.
One of them glanced at my arm. “You are injured.”
My arm throbbed painfully, and I knew it was becoming infected. If sepsis set in, I wouldn’t get much further.
“You can’t follow us into Kowali,” the woman who noticed my arm said. “They are checking papers at the gate, and the police will kill anyone who helps a Jew. Everyone knows that.”
Esther and I looked at each other, not knowing what to do now.
“You can walk that way to Huti.” She pointed. “It’s a small village, and they won’t ask you for papers. There is a doctor there too.”
“How far is it?” I asked.
The woman thought a moment. “Two days walking on this road.”
Esther and I exchanged another look as I wondered how we could possibly walk for two more days. Another one of the women took pity on us and handed me her basket.
“Take it. There is bread and fruit inside.” Then she turned and motioned for the others to walk away with her.
My arm ached all the way up to my shoulder. My feet were sore and bloody in the boots I wore, and now we had to walk for two days to a place that was as unlikely to help us as this place had been.
Esther’s gaze was as weary as mine as we stood side by side and looked down the road.
“At least we have each other,” she said. “I don’t think I could do this alone.”
My teeth clenched together tightly. It was those words that forced me to continue on. If that was her intention, it worked, although the same could be said for me. Without Esther, I would likely have sat down and given up.
With no other option, we walked in the direction of Huti, hoping to find help there. We walked all day and into the night. When we couldn’t go a step further, we made a bed out of fallen leaves, ate the contents of the basket, and slept for a few hours before sunrise. Then we rose and walked again.
There was no doubt my arm was infected, and my head hurt too. Esther let me lean on her as we walked, and I slipped in and out of awareness. I tripped and stumbled a few times, but Esther steadied me and urged me on.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed. Two nights and two days, Esther told me, but it felt longer when we finally saw the small village the woman told us about. It was late morning, and the streets were quiet when we walked in. There were no guards that we could see, no one checking papers.
We received odd looks from those who passed us, and soon a handful of children began to follow us, drawing unwanted attention. Esther diverted us into a small shop to escape the children, but when the woman inside saw us, she yelled for us to leave. Back out on the street, Esther approached a young woman and asked if she knew where the doctor lived.
The woman looked us over, silently biting her lip while she studied our bedraggled appearance. “Come with me and I will get the doctor for you,” she said all in a rush as she glanced over her shoulder nervously.
We probably shouldn’t have trusted her, but we had no choice other than to follow her. I couldn’t have gone much further.
The woman shooed the children away and brought us to a barn just off the road. After bringing us inside, she left and came back with cups of water.
“I think my sister would be interested in you,” she said. “She once tried to help a boy from the camp who escaped, but he was caught, and she was devastated. She would probably help you too. Should I ask her?”
I shook my head, but Esther quickly said, “Yes.”
The breathy sound of her voice told me she was as afraid to believe this woman as I was. When the woman left, I told Esther we were being foolish, but she said nothing in return. We had no choice but to wait, and we both knew it.
Soon, she came back with a man who said he was a doctor.
“How did this happen?” he asked me.
My gaze met the woman’s. Had she told him we were from the camp?
“A hunter mistook her for a deer,” the woman said, answering for me.
I didn’t know if the doctor believed her or not, but he cleaned my wound. The antiseptic he used stung, burning all the way through to the bone, but he managed to clear out the infection and stitch up the holes. He gave me some medicine and told me to change the bandage each day. I didn’t know how I would do that because we had to keep moving, but I held my tongue.
After the doctor left, the woman’s sister arrived and introduced herself as Lila. She was petite with dark hair and warm, sympathetic eyes.
“It’s good you got away. They destroyed the camp you were in,” she said. “All the prisoners are gone now.” There was a halting tone to her voice, as if she was afraid of how we would receive this news.
“We know,” Esther said as she took hold of my hand. I squeezed back, holding in the emotions that threatened to spill over.
Lila sat down on a stool in front of us. “I can help you get to Warsaw. You’ll be safe there.”
“There’s nothing for us in Warsaw,” I said. My stomach turned at the thought of going back there.
“Most of the Jews are gone. It’s true. But there are Poles in Warsaw willing to help Jews who are left. They can hide you until the war is over.”
I turned to Esther with a skeptical expression. The Poles had murdered my father and Avrom’s.
The woman sensed our distrust. “You will be all right. The Russians have begun to defeat the Germans. Hitler’s army is not indestructible.”
We didn’t know what to make of Lila and her optimism. We knew nothing of the war, other than what we’d experienced ourselves, and we didn’t know if she was telling us the truth. She could be our savior, or she could be sending us to our deaths. But at that moment, it hardly mattered, because she was our only hope.
Esther and I slept in the barn that night, and Lila left, promising to return in the morning. As I closed my eyes, all I could see was Tovah, flashes of a chocolate smile and whispers of her sweet voice. I pretended Avrom’s arms were wrapped around me as silent tears ran like rivers down my face.
If Lila had deceived us and we woke up to soldiers with guns pointed at us, I wouldn’t be scared or angry. I wouldn’t feel anything. I had run like the voice urged me to, but I had nothing to run toward. All I had was gone.
Great Neck, New York, 1948
Life has a predictable path for most people. You are born into a family. You go to school and experience your firsts. Your first friend. Your first crush. Your first perfect score on an exam. When you finish school, you meet someone and get married. You have children and grow older, watching your children experience the same firsts you did. You play with your grandchildren, and then you leave this world knowing the family you left behind will continue on. Generations will follow you to remember your family stories and carry on your traditions.
When the war ended, that predictable path was gone. Entire families were eradicated from the face of the earth. Their stories ended abruptly, and the generations meant to follow would never come. It wasn’t only the people who were gone—their history was gone too. Heirlooms were stolen. Synagogues were burned down. Traditions were erased.
When I came out of hiding after the war, I inquired about our family home, but the authorities dismissed me as petty and foolish. They would do nothing to help me get back the things I’d lost. I had my life. I should be grateful for that, they said.
The Poles who had taken our home, and murdered both my father and Avrom’s when we were forced into the ghetto, were not made to pay for their crimes or give anything back they had stolen. Poland also made it clear that any Polish Jews who survived the war were not welcome home again. Many other countries took the same stance, and the Allies, America and Britain, were forced to create “Displaced Persons Camps” in places like Germany and Austria. These were fenced-off zones that could be safe places for Jews who had no homes to go back to and no country that wanted them.
Rather than go to another camp, some Jews traveled to Palestine, but that only meant more years of war. After a resolution was passed to create the Jewish state of Israel, the surrounding Arab countries refused to recognize it and vowed to fight to get the land back.
I was done fighting, tired of being unwanted and unwelcome. I wanted to leave Europe and go to America where Zotia was. It seemed as if we should be together. My sister was the only family I had left.
That day in the ghetto, when we were sent to the line on the left and Leah and Heinrich were sent to the line on the right, they were only hours away from their deaths. Everyone in that line went to the gas chamber at a camp called Treblinka. I discovered this just after the war when the Red Cross came to Warsaw with food and medical supplies.
What I learned from them was staggering. The number of Jews the Nazis murdered was beyond comprehension. But somehow, I was still here, although not for any reason I could understand. A Red Cross nurse told me I was lucky. I supposed I was the luckiest unlucky person I knew.
Because of a strict quota system, I couldn’t enter the United States until the Displaced Persons Act was passed in 1948 by the American president, Harry Truman. It allowed those of us who no longer had a home in Europe to emigrate to America. If you already had relatives in America, you were given priority. Until then, I’d been living in a displaced persons camp in Germany. Both Esther and I traveled there together from Warsaw after the war. It was still a camp, but nothing like the ones run by the Nazis.
Many were angry to be there, angry that they had lost everything and were all alone. Others were numb, wandering around the camp like ghosts.
I was one of those ghosts, unable to process the horrors of the past few years, unable to think about my life after. For me, there was no after. After didn’t matter. I woke up each morning and went to sleep each night. Days passed, each one the same as the next, and soon they added up to years, colorless years that passed too slowly. I lived, but I had nothing to live for.
Esther was different. She wanted to put it all behind her and move on. She wanted to find happiness again, and a part of me resented her for that. Being happy diminished what she’d lost and all she’d gone through. How could she move on? Were those who died unimportant? Did their absence from the world make no difference to her? It was petty of me to feel that way, but I couldn’t help it.
When she met a man in the DP camp and they decided to go to Palestine together, I congratulated her. Esther deserved happiness. In my heart, I knew that. She’d lost a husband in the war and both her parents. She hadn’t lost a child, though, and I wondered if that made the difference. Was that why she was ready to embrace life again, while all I could do was endure it?
The only thing I looked forward to was leaving Europe and seeing Zotia again. The last time we saw each other, she was filled with animosity, but that didn’t matter now. Thank goodness she’d left when she did. Otherwise, she might be dead too.
When I finally received my visa to travel to America, a light sparked inside me. It was the only thing that penetrated the numbness. Zotia was a part of Mama and Papa, just like I was. Being with her would be like getting a small piece of my old life back.
When I stepped off the boat in New York that sunny afternoon, I assumed I would stay with Zotia and her family. My eyes filled with tears at the sight of her. She looked much the same, a little older and rounder, maybe, but there was no mistaking her. I ran across the dock and landed in her arms.
Seeing Zotia again shifted something inside me. I’d experienced sunny days since the war, but the warmth of the sun never touched me. I hadn’t felt much of anything for years, but that day I did. As we both wept and held each other tightly, I felt everything. I squeezed Zotia so hard, I was sure she couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t let go for the longest time. She was my connection to a past that hadn’t been completely extinguished, because we were both still here.
When I first stood in front of her, the pain in Zotia’s eyes was sharp, and I knew she was thinking of Papa, Mama, and Leah. Her pain made mine feel fresh and raw again. I was all that was left, and now that I was here, that fact was all too real to her.
Beside Zotia stood a heavyset man dressed in a dark blue suit. She introduced him as her husband, Eli. Behind him were two tall boys, teenagers with dark blond hair like their mother’s, my nephews, Jacob and Isaac.
Zotia might have lost one family, but she had another, and I was relieved to discover I felt only happiness for her, not jealousy or the pettiness I’d felt for Esther. I had my sister now, and two nephews. Papa and Mama would live on in them, and I would make sure they knew who their grandparents were, even though they would never meet them.
Zotia and her family lived in a two-story house an hour away from the seaport in a town called Great Neck. Her house was bigger than ours had been in Poland, and the style was very different and strange to me. The appliances were modern, and came in odd colors like mint green. They had a television in the parlor, big and rectangular shaped. I’d seen televisions in store windows, but it never occurred to me to buy one so I could watch movies shrunk down onto a tiny screen.
From the little I’d seen so far, I could tell that America was different from Europe. It was a happier place, more boisterous, with none of the scars Europe had yet to heal from. In America, the cities and neighborhoods were untouched by bombs, and the people seemed to want to move on rather than dwell on the past.
As we sat at dinner that night and the conversation began, I came to understand the situation I now found myself in. I couldn’t speak much English, but I’d been trying since I’d applied for my visa. When Eli spoke slowly, I was able to understand most of what he said, even though I didn’t like it much.
“Your whole family should have left Poland when you had the chance,” he said between bites of food. “My family’s been here since the nineteen-twenties. They saw the writing on the wall even then. But in the old country, most of you weren’t educated enough to see the situation for what it was. You thought you could stay in your own little villages and ignore all the hatred until it finally blew up in your faces.”
My fork dropped from my hand, clattering onto my plate. I stared hard at Zotia, but she kept her eyes averted.
“What’s that scar on your arm?” my nephew Jacob asked.
I glanced at Zotia and Eli, wondering if it was appropriate to tell him the truth, but Zotia wouldn’t meet my eyes. “It is a bullet wound,” I said slowly in halting English.
Everyone understood enough to stop eating and look up at me.
“Did you say a bullet wound?” Eli asked.
Zotia’s shocked gaze was on me now.
“Yes. I can tell you what happened, but maybe it is better if the boys are not here when I do,” I said to Zotia.
“And give us all nightmares? I don’t think that will be necessary,” Eli said. “It’s over now. Better to forget and get on with things, don’t you think?”
Forget? I winced at his words as he tucked back into his dinner, and the boys did the same. I didn’t like the gleam I saw in my nephew’s eyes when I answered his question, as if getting shot was somehow exciting to him.
Every time I glanced at Zotia, she stared down at her plate, avoiding my eyes. She knew as well as I did that her husband was not a man Papa would have approved of, and her boys were more under his influence than hers.
It was then that Eli mentioned the housing he’d arranged for me in Brooklyn through a Jewish organization that helped refugees. I wouldn’t be staying here with them, after all, and I wondered if Zotia had ever even considered it. Was I not welcome here? My heart sank as I pushed the rest of my food around on the plate.
“I’m sorry about Avrom and your daughter,” Zotia said quietly as she walked me to Eli’s car so he could drive me to my new home. Inside the house, Eli was putting on his coat and looking for his misplaced keys.
“Her name was Tovah,” I said.
She nodded. “Then I’m sorry about Tovah.”
“Do you want to know what happened to her? What happened to Papa and to Mama?”
Zotia blinked back the tears that flooded her eyes. “Eli thinks it’s best not to know the details.”
“Do you agree?”
“Maybe you can tell me another time,” she said.
I couldn’t hide my disappointment. As hard as it was to talk about all I’d lost in the war, it kept my memories of my family alive, only no one wanted to hear about it. Not in the DP camp, and not on the ship I took to come here.
But it was different with Zotia. It was important for her and her boys to understand who their family was and what had happened to them. They needed to know who Tovah was, and what the world was missing because she was no longer in it.
“Are you happy with Eli?” I asked.
Zotia seemed surprised by the question. “Were you happy with Avrom?”
“Yes, I was.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “I’m happy to still have my life, Meira, with my boys and my home. Eli was right. Mama and Papa should have seen what was coming and left while they could.”
My spine stiffened. “How could anyone have foreseen what would happen?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Even if Papa had known, he and Mama wouldn’t have left. It’s not easy to walk away from everything that’s familiar and start somewhere new. You have to be strong to do something like that.”
