[Cz-L] Czernowitz in 1944

My wife Tosia Szechter Schneider's book "Someone Must Survive to Tell the
World" has been published recently by the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation
of Canada. It is the memoir of a young Jewish girl in Poland who somehow
managed to survive the Shoah, but lost her entire family. The book is
available at Amazon.com.
Shortly after their liberation by the Red Army at the Lisowce Labor Camp,
the few survivors made their way to Czernowitz. Following are excerpts from
the book in which sixteen years old Tosia relates her impressions of
Czernowitz, a city only fifty miles from her home town of Horodenka, but
which appeared to be on a different planet.



...... I returned to Tluste where my friends were. Every day
was a struggle for survival because of the scarcity of food.
We heard that across the border in Romania conditions
were much better. A few of us hit the road again and
hitched a ride with some Russian army trucks to Romania.
At that time, the war was still on and there were no borders
between the former Polish territory and the Romanian
province of Bucovina. After the war, all these territories
were incorporated in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. We
arrived outside Czernowitz, the provincial capital, hungry
and exhausted, only to find out that the city had been
closed to refugees. We waited till nightfall and with the
help of a guide waded across the Pruth River and entered
the city of Czernowitz. Someone led us to an empty apartment
where, totally exhausted, we lay down on the floor
and fell asleep.
When I woke up the next morning, a bright sun was
shining through the window. I looked out and could not
believe my eyes: what I saw was a beautiful city, seemingly
untouched by war. Streetcars were running, and women
with make-up and wearing neat dresses and high heels
were walking in the street. I did not know that a world like
that still existed. I was only thirty or forty miles from the
towns we had left, but it seemed that I found myself on an
entirely different planet.
We went down, stood bewildered at a street corner and
were immediately surrounded by some of the townspeople.
Apparently, we were one of the first groups to have
come from across the border. In our wooden shoes and
dirty rags we must have been a bizarre sight. Many Jews in
Czernowitz had relatives in Poland and they were eager to
know from what cities we had come and what we knew
about their loved ones. Sadly, they soon learned that we
did not bring good news.
It turned out that one of the men in the group of local
people was a cousin of my mother’s and he took me home
with him. His wife was rather startled by my appearance.
Aunt Etelka, as I came to call her, proceeded to burn my
filthy clothes and scrubbed me from head to toe. How can
I describe the incredible pleasure of that first bath? To be
able to finally wash away the accumulated dirt and grime
of the past years and to look forward to a clean bed without
the constant torture of lice!
I used to dream in the camp of sleeping just one more
time in a clean bed and not feel hungry before I died. As it
developed, sleep did not come easy because nightmares
troubled me almost nightly.
......As news spread in the apartment house that someone
had come from the camps across the border, neighbors
began arriving and asked questions. Most people in
Czernowitz spoke German, not my favorite language, and
when I tried to tell them as best I could what had happened
in Poland, few understood and even fewer believed me.
One woman looked at me and said: "it could not have been
so bad there, considering how well she looks". In spite of
my severe malnutrition, she mistook my oval face and high
cheekbones for someone well nourished. I did not tell
many stories after that.
The first few days in Czernowitz were quite overwhelming.
My aunt spoke only German and it was hard
getting used to hearing German, the language of the murderers,
all around me. My uncle spoke some Polish and this
helped.
......after years of terror and starvation, I slowly began to regain my
health. The
wounds on my legs and arms healed, my gums stopped
bleeding, but I was still continuously hungry, no matter
how much I ate. Food was still scarce, so I had to be careful
not to eat more than my share.
......When schools reopened in September, I was enrolled in
a Russian school. I was very conscious of the fact that I had
lost many years of schooling and now needed to catch up,
yet everything we studied seemed trivial and not relevant
to my life. How could I concentrate on poetry and literature
after the events of the recent past? Nothing made
sense. I obviously did not know, at the time, what Theodor
Adorno was to say later: "...writing poetry after Auschwitz
is barbaric…"
I wound up in a class with students of my own age.
Though I had lost three years of schooling, I could keep up
with them scholastically because it was easier for me to
understand Russian, a Slavic language related to my native
Polish. Many other students had not attended school regularly
during the war, and they were also trying to catch up.
Even though I was the same age as they were, I felt much
older, as if I had already lived many lives. I could not find a
common language with these young people, I never spoke
of my past, and they never asked me about it.
......One day, I was walking in the city when a Russian
policeman stopped me and asked me for my papers. Since I
had none, I wound up at the police station. There, I was
brought before an official sitting behind a big desk. He also
asked me for my papers, the whereabouts of my parents,
my place of origin, etc. I was then told that I was not
allowed to live in this city and was placed under arrest.
I was furious and let go with some nasty curses, telling
him: "I have survived the German camps and I shall also
survive you bastards".
In the meantime, some neighbors told my aunt that
they had seen me being led to the police station. My aunt
did not speak Russian, but a neighbor who had some
knowledge of the language volunteered to go with her to
the police station to my rescue. The neighbor started pleading
with the officer to let me go. In her poor Russian she
referred to me as a baby. The Russian officer started to
laugh and said: "if a baby like this falls on your foot, it
could break your toe". I laughed as well, since I understood
the joke. Anyway, the ice was broken and he let me go,
admonishing me not to have such a big mouth in the
future.
......I learned later that the police were rounding up
orphaned children who were then shipped off to the
Donbas coalmines. The word "prostitutes" was written in
big letters on the cattle cars carrying those poor people.
   ......On May 8, 1945, VE-Day, the most brutal war in Europe
was over. As the news reached us, spontaneous celebrations
broke out all over town. Loudspeakers blared patriotic
speeches and martial music. There was dancing in the
streets and, obviously, the Russian soldiers who suffered
enormous casualties in this war were the happiest.
......After the war ended there was an exchange of populations
between Poland and the USSR. Polish citizens were
allowed to emigrate to Poland and my uncle saw this as an
opportunity to leave the Soviet Union and we were all
allowed to leave. The Soviet army did liberate us from
Hitler, but we had no desire to live under the communist
regime, hoping to emigrate to Palestine, the United States,
or Canada.
I stopped going to school and spent my days on the
city's open market hawking the family’s possessions. It
seemed that all the Jews of Czernowitz were at that market,
trying to sell as many of their household goods as they
could, before leaving the city. Most Jews and Poles tried to
leave, some going to Romania, some to Poland or other
countries in the West. We stood for hours outside the emigration office,
waiting
to hear our names called and then learn about the date
of our departure.
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Received on 2008-01-31 22:50:02