Born Survivors (6 page)

‘Everything will be fine, my Golden One!’ Tibor promised his wife moments before the wagon doors were thrown open with a tremendous bang. Shuffling forwards to the brink of they knew not what, he cried, ‘Stay positive, Piroška! Think only of beautiful things!’

2

Rachel

Rachel Abramczyk

‘Guten Morgen hübsche Dame, sind sie schwanger?
’ (Good morning pretty lady, are you pregnant?)

Rachel Friedman had been asked a similar question in the autumn of 1944, as Mengele gave her the special smirk he seemed to reserve for the shaved, naked women paraded before him like mannequins at Auschwitz II-Birkenau
.

Rachel didn’t know what to say or where to look, so she kept her eyes lowered and her chin to her chest. Surrounding her were hundreds of other women in the same predicament, all of whom had been commanded to stand for hours on the open parade ground. Like them, she was mortified to be seen undressed in front of so many strangers. At twenty-five, she was suddenly grateful that her husband Monik hadn’t been transported with her from their ghetto in occupied Poland and couldn’t witness her humiliation
.

Along with Priska Löwenbeinová – one of the thousands of women who shared her fate – Rachel had only a few seconds to choose how to respond to the high-ranking Nazi who would indicate with a casual movement of his hand if she was to live or die. She wasn’t even one hundred per cent certain that she was pregnant with Monik’s child – and if she was it could only be a matter of weeks. Nor did she have any idea what it might mean to admit that she was
.

She’d heard a few horrible stories of what went on in some of the Nazi camps but she couldn’t bring herself to believe them. And no matter how preposterous those rumours became, there’d been no mention of Dr Mengele, of the fate of pregnant women in his care, or of his brutal medical experiments on children – especially twins. That was to emerge later
.

The only thing Rachel knew as she watched the impeccably groomed doctor personally examine scores of female prisoners was that his smile never quite reached his eyes. In fact, his whole demeanour was that of a diligent farmer closely scrutinising his livestock as he unashamedly appraised the physique of a blushing teenager, or roughly manhandled the breasts of a woman in her prime
.

With his highly polished boots and crisp uniform, he bore all the hallmarks of a man who thrived on discipline and routine. While some of the fat-necked Nazis lolling around the perimeter of the muddy roll-call area appeared to be drunk or worse, Mengele didn’t seem to need to deaden his senses. On the contrary, he seemed to enjoy his work, sometimes whistling as he strode up and down the rows of inmates, breaking off only to dispense orders to prisoners wearing what looked like striped pyjamas
.

Any women who were visibly pregnant or given away by telltale drops of milk were hauled off by these stony-faced men. The women weren’t stony-faced, though. The look of fear in their eyes as they huddled together was enough to convince Rachel of her answer
.

When Mengele asked her his question and then impatiently flipped his glove left and right, she cupped a hand protectively over each breast and said quietly, ‘
Nie.’

Mengele never laid a finger on the pregnant woman standing before him. As he moved on to his next victim, he didn’t even give Rachel Friedman a backward glance
.

Rachel grew up as part of a large, ‘happy and beautiful’ family in which the children played, laughed and sang together, and for whom life should have been long and sweet.

She was named Rachel Abramczyk but called Ruze or ‘Rushka’ for much of her later life. The eldest of nine children, she was born one month after the end of the First World War on New Year’s Eve, 1918, in Pabianice near Łódź – Poland’s second-largest city.

Pabianice was one of the oldest settlements in the country and among its most prosperous, with a long history of manufacturing textiles. Even so, it was still relatively rural and there were only two cars in town, one of which belonged to the local doctor. Jews in this part of Eastern Europe had experienced prejudice since Prussian rule but by the 1930s they had assimilated much more and now comprised approximately sixteen per cent of the population. Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, who stood out in their black robes and hats, were persecuted far more than non-religious families like the Abramczyks, who described themselves as ‘culturally Jewish’ or as ‘reformed’ Jews long before the reformation movement officially started.

Although they spoke Yiddish at home and celebrated Shabbat
and other holy days with kosher food and candles, they rarely went to the synagogue and the children weren’t raised to think of themselves as being especially observant – although they did attend a Jewish school.

Rachel’s father Shaiah was a textile engineer in a company owned by his parents-in-law, one of the few industries open to someone of their faith. The family had their own looms and employed mostly relatives making tapestries and fabrics for curtains and soft furnishings. They lived well enough, thanks to the parents of his wife Fajga, and had a large third-floor apartment with two balconies and a large back garden.

Shaiah Abramczyk, who was forty-eight when his first child was born, was unusually well educated and considered himself an intellectual. Largely self-taught, he was a voracious reader who immersed himself in classic books on history, literature and the arts. He pushed his children to focus on their studies and encouraged them to become fluent in German, which was widely considered to be the language of cultured people.

Rachel respected her father and inherited his hunger for learning. A diligent student, she and her siblings walked a kilometre every day to and from school, come rain or shine. They studied from 8 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. but were then free to read or play.

As was often the custom then, her mother Fajga was a very young bride for her much older husband and was only nineteen when she gave birth to Rachel. She remained almost permanently pregnant throughout her eldest daughter’s childhood. Although she adored her children, she was sometimes resentful of her husband’s eagerness to improve his mind and openly expressed the wish to friends and family that he might consider more effective birth control.

A kind and gentle woman who was proud of her life and often told her children, ‘Our home is our castle,’ Fajga decorated their apartment with an eclectic mix of art, fine china and ornaments, and always fresh flowers for
Pesach
(Passover). Whenever friends or
relatives came to call, they were impressed at how tidy the Abramczyks’ home was and how well the children behaved. Much of that good conduct was down to Rachel, as her timid mother was no disciplinarian. As soon as she was old enough to hold a baby, Rachel effectively became the secondary maternal figure, helping with the cooking and chores as well as taking care of her younger siblings.

She prepared lunch when they came in from school and then she sent them out to play. The family had outside help once in a while but the eldest daughters did most of the work. Sala, the next in line and three years younger than Rachel, recalled, ‘One of us was always holding one of the little ones or doing the washing the old-fashioned way, with washboards.’ Their younger sisters Ester and Bala were recruited too, as soon as they were old enough. Their brothers Bernard, known as ‘Berek’, and her younger brother Moniek did what they could but the smallest children, Dorcka – known as ‘Dora’ – and her twin brother Heniek, born in 1931, plus their baby sister Anička – known as ‘Maniusia’ – born in 1933, were too little.

Rachel felt the pressure of her responsibilities. ‘We were all very good kids and we didn’t fight like other children,’ she said, although she was the one her mother asked to make sure her younger siblings behaved themselves and did their chores. It was a disciplinary role she maintained throughout her life. Perhaps because of all her duties, Rachel was a skinny girl and sometimes spoken of as ‘the weakling’ of the family. Sala, vivacious and pretty, who sang and danced in local theatrical groups, said, ‘Rachel always needed more feeding up than the rest of us.’

Largely financed by Fajga’s well-connected parents, the family ate well, enjoying
pierogi
dumplings and meat dishes such as duck with apples or chicken with plums. Mealtimes were always a highlight and the mouth-watering memories of the food on their table would sustain Rachel and her family through the worst times of the war.

The four eldest sisters were popular amongst their peers.
Educated, well dressed and bilingual, they had a wide circle of friends of all creeds. Sala was considered such a beauty that she had her portrait painted by the art teacher at their school. ‘It was a great honour but then I was always her favourite,’ she recalled.

Although the family business was thriving and their home a modern and happy one, the Abramczyk way of life was constantly felt to be under threat as Jews in Poland experienced widespread prejudice, with often only their own community court or local rabbis to complain to. This concerned many and, amongst the younger generation especially, there was talk of leaving to start a new life somewhere without the constant threat of harassment. Zionism, founded in the nineteenth century, had enjoyed a surge in popularity across Eastern Europe during the 1930s. Its idealistic notions of setting up a way of life free from discrimination in the ‘Land of Israel’ – considered to be the Jewish homeland – held increasing appeal to those who felt largely powerless.

The older and more observant Jews dreamed of going to Palestine to die somewhere ‘closer to God’ – the ultimate status symbol. Some, like Rachel’s father, preferred Azerbaijan, where Jews had been promised sanctuary. Their younger counterparts had little use for religion and just wanted to settle somewhere they could raise children safely, in a land where everyone could be equal.

Ever since she was sixteen years old, Rachel had been a member of the Jewish National Fund to raise money for land in Palestine. She too fantasised about moving there one day and living a life doing good works. Having spent her teenage years as little more than a nanny, Rachel privately made the decision to marry a wealthy man as soon as she could. By the time she left high school, she had done just that. His name was Moshe Fried man, also known as Morris or ‘Monik’, a good-looking young man born on 15 May 1916, who – with his widowed mother Ita and two older brothers David and Avner – owned a textile factory so large that it employed Gentiles, which was highly unusual.

It was Monik’s indomitable mother Ita, born in Hungary, who had kept the factory going after the death of her husband Shimon from tuberculosis, a disease that almost killed her too and badly affected her health. In spite of that, she became the ‘boss of all she owned’. A devoted mother who worshipped her three sons, Ita was determined to improve the business so that her sons would have something worth inheriting.

Rachel’s husband Monik Friedman

Monik and Rachel married in March 1937, just after Rachel finished secondary school. Having filled out since her childhood she made an attractive bride. Her new husband was only twenty-one and Rachel, at eighteen, became a submissive, traditional Jewish wife. At the time of her wedding, her long-suffering mother Fajga still had six-year-old twins at home as well as four-year-old Maniusia. She must have missed Rachel sorely.

Monik Friedman shared his bride’s interest in Zionism, and the couple had joined a youth organisation named Gordonia (after the
progressive Zionist A.D. Gordon) that promoted allegiance to the kibbutz way of life and the revival of Hebrew. In keeping with these beliefs, they’d asked for a simple wedding. Monik’s influential mother expected her sons to live appropriately to their wealth, however, so her youngest son and his wife had an enviable lifestyle in the new home they moved to in Łódź. The post-war inflation that had ruined millions of lives across Europe had little effect on those savvy enough to invest in fabrics or gold.