The End of Days (25 page)

Read The End of Days Online

Authors: Helen Sendyk

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #History, #Holocaust, #test

BOOK: The End of Days
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Page 156
it felt good to have someone around from the same town. They had so many people and places in common.
Upon seeing the two strangers, Aharon's mother-in-law immediately opened with a litany of complaints. "What did you bring me here? Two more mouths to feed? Where am I supposed to put them? There is hardly room for you here,
shlimazel
[one plagued by bad luck]. Who asked you to do
mitzvos
[good deeds] and bring strangers into the house? Do you think these are normal times?"
She didn't throw them out, though. Reluctantly, she allowed them a corner to sleep in. Now that they had a roof over their heads, they kept on searching for their family and inquiring about the transports from Chrzanow. Every day they frequented the Jewish community council house to discover what information was available.
There was a transit camp in Sosnowiec where deportees were brought from the neighboring towns to be reselected. Vrumek, risking his life, snooped around the camp. He noticed two distraught girls running away. He followed them and discovered that they were escapees from the transit camp. From them he learned about a transport of girls from his hometown that had arrived in the transit camp on the day of the Chrzanow selection. They knew of another girl from Chrzanow who had escaped. Pursuing this lead, Vrumek found her and learned that Nachcia and I had come through the transit camp. This is how he gathered that Nachcia and I had been sent to a concentration camp. Vrumek and Sholek now knew that their family had been abducted straight from the attic hiding place with only the clothes on their backs in this bone-chilling winter. With all of their own problems, the brothers considered ways to send us some clothes and food.
Vrumek and Sholek were guests in a stranger's crowded apartment. They possessed no money or food and only one change of clothes for themselves. Still, Vrumek felt he was free, while we were not. His goals were to find out where we were and how to get some food and clothing to us. It was an enormous task, and being a stranger in the city hampered his movements. People were constantly being deported, and ac-
 
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tions against the Jews in Sosnowiec went on. With the resourceful Sholek at his side, Vrumek scavenged the apartments of people who had been deported. In one of the abandoned apartments, they found enough women's clothes to warrant a package. With hearts aching that they could not enclose any food, they brought the package to the post office and mailed it to the concentration camp of Langenbielau, addressed to Nachcia Stapler. While they doubted whether their sisters would ever receive it, the mere thought that it might reach some family members was heartening.
Some more dispossessed relatives moved into their host's apartment. Since Aharon had claimed Vrumek as his friend and was willing to share his cot with him, Vrumek stayed on; Sholek, though, had to leave.
In the brothers' desperate search for a place, they tried an aunt's brother-in-law who lived in Bendzin, the next city. Sholek succeeded in winning a roof over his head there, while Vrumek went back to Sosnowiec. For a whole week Vrumek was out of touch with Sholek, but Sholek was able to assure him that he was with friendly people in a house with a good hiding place.
Where Vrumek was staying the household was able to hide in a spare room with a wardrobe concealing the door, much like the setup in Aunt Esther's Chrzanow apartment. With all the women and children in the family, however, Vrumek felt very unsafe in that hiding place. Throughout his stay he searched for a place where the cry of a child or the nose of a German shepherd would not cost him his life.
Vrumek dug a hole in the backyard outhouse, deep in the ground below the waste receptacle. He meticulously covered the hole with a board that had soil and growing weeds on it. He told no one about this new hiding place. Soon the SS staged a major action, and the Jews scurried for their bunkers.
"Where are you going?" Aharon asked.
"I have a better hiding place," Vrumek answered. "Stick with me, Aharon, we have a better chance to survive by ourselves. We are young. We can make it. We will live."
 
Page 158
Aharon was tempted to leave the family, but his mother-inlaw scolded him for listening to a young hothead.
"You are a married man, Aharon. You should have more sense. This is a good hiding place. Where is he going to schlepp you? Out in the open, where the Germans will smell you out with their dogs? Leave him alone. Let him go where he wants. You come with us. You are my son-in-law. You better listen to me, an older and wiser person, not to this youngster."
But Schlanger was not convinced; his impulse told him to go with Vrumek. They lowered themselves into the hole. In the grave-size bunker they could only crouch close beside each other. Vrumek carefully dragged the board over them from the inside, first making sure that enough earth covered it. As they crouched together in that tomb in the cold moist earth, they heard the Germans come into the house. Everyone was flushed out amid the all too familiar shouting and screaming. The barking dogs and the shrill cries of the women and children sent streams of cold sweat down their backs. The hours went on and the night fell. Some shooting was heard and then it was quiet, but the living corpses didn't dare move from their grave.
The next day the Germans came again, searching with a pack of barking dogs. Once again the two men in the hole heard the Germans chase some people out, throwing them into the trucks amid screams and weeping. Their muscles became stiff and their bodies ached. Minutes turned into hours, and once more night fell. They still did not dare move.
Vrumek meekly whispered to Aharon, "Try to wriggle your toes and fingers; flex your muscles to exercise them. We cannot afford to become paralyzed."
"What is the use?" Aharon retorted. "We will never get out alive anyway. I should have stayed with my mother-in-law. What are our lives worth anyway, with everybody gone?"
"No, Aharon, we must live. They will never find us here," Vrumek said enthusiastically. "Out there it is all over. Here we still have a chance. We still have our freedom. Just keep exercising those muscles like I tell you. When we get out of here, you will thank me."
 
Page 159
Numb and weakened by hunger, they often slept. They were awakened occasionally by shouts and loud announcements from the Germans' bullhorns: "All you Jews in hiding, come out. You will not be punished. You will be relocated together with all the others. You will be given work and the opportunity to earn your food. Here you will die in your bunkers and holes. Come out. Save yourselves. This is your last chance. Come out now, and we will not punish you. If you stay hidden, we will flush you out with gas."
All day long the bullhorns blasted proclamations, promises, threats, and more promises. Day and night blurred together for the hunted pair in their hole.
The sound of the Germans would fade away in the distance and then again come close, their heavy boots marching. Suddenly, they felt someone approaching, heading right for them. They thought this was it. They heard the door of the outhouse open and someone come inside. They could hear him relieve himself in the receptacle that was just above them. Only when the German finished and left were they able to breathe again. The outhouse odors that kept the dogs from smelling them out also kept their meager air supply stagnant and rancid. Their lungs craved air, their stomachs food, and their muscles space. It was the fourth day since they had entered their tiny underground bunker. This brutal ransacking of the Jewish ghetto outdid all the previous raids, and the lengthy action prolonged the misery of these two stubborn Jews who would not surrender.
The Fisher family of Bendzin saw in Sholek a link to their lost Chrzanow family. Crowded into their own ghetto apartment, the Fishers found room in their hearts and home for one more person. Sholek slept on the floor in a corner. All day long he hunted for food, which he generously shared. There were two other strangers in the Fisher household, two sisters who had also escaped from Chrzanow. Posing as Gentiles, which was much more easily accomplished by females, the two sisters had managed to reach the city of Bendzin and find refuge in the Fisher household. Sholek wished his older brother Vru-
 
Page 160
mek were with him, as they had a safe bunker in the basement, where a foolproof double wall had been built.
Only two weeks after Sholek's arrival at the Fisher household, there was a Nazi raid. They hastily abandoned the apartment and scrambled into the basement. While they were already somewhat accustomed to the wretched life of hunted people, the raids always caught them unprepared. In the dark, windowless bunker, where air seeped through crevices created in the brick wall, they sat huddled together waiting for the action to be over. Muffled sounds reached them from the outside, so they knew the raid was still in progress. Losing count of the hours, degraded by their lack of toilet facilities, they sustained their dignity and courage with talk of life after the war.
Sholek, the youngest member of the crowd, suffered most from hunger and dizziness, but the fiercest agony was the lack of water. With his mouth too dry to wet his lips, Sholek voiced his intention of going out. It had been three days now that they'd been entombed in the bunker, unable to know what was going on outside. The nights were quiet now, although the days still offered the muffled sounds of shouts and shooting. The Fishers tried to convince Sholek to stay put. The two sisters cried and begged him to hold out. But Sholek felt his body becoming weak, dying a slow death of starvation and thirst. It was against his nature to let death come this way, to succumb without resistance, without a fight.
"Maybe I have a chance," he said. "Maybe I will be lucky. I am young. They will take me to a concentration camp. I will survive. Here I will perish for sure. Another day or so, and we will all be dead."
Sholek was also worried about Vrumek. Maybe they would meet again in a concentration camp. He wanted to try. He wanted to live.
On the fourth day of their incarceration in the dark basement bunker, Sholek removed the secret entranceway bricks and crawled out. With all his remaining strength he meticulously sealed the exit behind him. He put his hands high over his head to show any soldiers that he was surrendering. In the
 
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basement the hushed group listened attentively. Instead of the usual muffled sound of gunfire came a distinct, loud bang from close range. Brave, young Sholek met his vile enemy eye to eye but was given no chance. His last thoughts would never be known.
 
Page 162
Chapter 15
Like corpses emerging from a grave, Aharon and Vrumek painfully dragged themselves from beneath the outhouse. They had passed much of the time in an unconscious state close to death. They struggled to regain the use of their minds and bodies.
Vrumek was twenty-one years old when, on the seventh day, he emerged alive from that hole in Sosnowiec. His stomach had never been as empty as it was then, his mind never so disoriented. His companion, Aharon, an older man, was hardly any support, but still Vrumek was happy to have the company. Their caps low on their foreheads to shade their hollow eyes and unshaven faces, they began to walk.
''Where are we going?" Aharon asked.
 
Page 163
"Back to Chrzanow," was the response. Vrumek felt it was the only place in which they had a chance to survive. It was where he grew up: maybe someone who knew him would help. Afraid to walk through Sosnowiec, they made their way on side roads and through fields. When they could, they stole fruit from trees and dug vegetables from the ground. It felt so good to have something in their mouths that even raw vegetables were delicacies. Before nightfall they were on the outskirts of Chrzanow. Aharon was ready to collapse; they had to find a place to sleep, to hide. In the woods near Chrzanow they found an old tree with a hollow trunk. There was room enough to accommodate them both.
They gathered branches to cover themselves and slept there through the night. In the morning they decided to go into town, but they badly needed a shave first. They could not afford to look like refugees. Not daring to show their faces in neighborhoods where they might be recognized, they went to the Planty, where the Jews had been chased out long ago. There was now a new barber on the Planty, a
Volksdeutsch
, a Pole who sympathized with the Germans. Such a man was an agent for the Nazis, supplying information on dissidents for extra food and supplies. Vrumek decided that this fellow would be their barber. If asked questions, they would pretend to be out-of-towners working in Chrzanow.
Silently suffering from fear and stomach cramps, they sat patiently at the barber's, listening to his chatter and to the news on the radio.
"The last Jewish pigs have been cleared out from Sosnowiec and Bendzin," the announcer crowed, "making these regions
Judenrein
as well."
Now the pair knew they had absolutely nowhere to turn and that no one but the Almighty could help them.
But Vrumek was far from ready to give up, They bought some bread and a bottle of black coffee, which they stuck in their pocket in the manner of Polish workers. At night they went back into the woods; by day they hung around the train yard and searched for food in the fields and the forest. On one of their excursions into town Vrumek suddenly met a fellow

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