The End of Days (26 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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student from his old school. He knew the goy to be an intense anti-Semite, so he quickly tried to disappear, but the Pole followed Vrumek and grabbed hold of him.
"What are you doing here, Stapler?"
Unable to get away, Vrumek tried to lead him further out of town so that he could kill him with his bare hands, if it became necessary. Vrumek kept talking to the Pole about making him rich. Vrumek whispered that he would pay an exorbitant price for documents that would identify him as Polish and told his schoolmate that he would meet him at the same spot the next day to consummate the deal. Thanks to the Almighty and to the anti-Semitic notion that even the most desperate-looking Jew has access to great riches, the Pole fell for the ruse and let Vrumek go with a promise on his lips and a gleam in his eye. Vrumek knew that the goy was planning to take the money and then turn them in.
They had escaped the immediate danger, but they knew that when Vrumek was unable to pay him, the disappointed Pole would surely alert the authorities about the existence of two renegade Jews. They stayed in the woods most of the time, and survival got that much harder. They still used the same barber, but they could not risk going to a public bath, where their Jewishness would be immediately discovered. They had to bathe in a nearby brook, even though the water was very cold in late October.
The pair had been in the woods for almost two months when they chanced upon an abandoned, burnt-out house. They sealed the entrance with bricks and made their home in the basement. They would occasionally go into town to a small restaurant to buy some bread or hot soup, risking their lives. An old lady there would sometimes sell them some black coffee, but their money was running low, and danger loomed everywhere. One evening the lady told them not to come around anymore. They couldn't figure out how she'd discovered they were Jewish, but they were grateful that she didn't bring the Germans after them.
They went back to the woods, desperately trying to think of a way to survive. With hunger and fear tearing at them, they
 
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were lying quietly in their shelter when they suddenly heard footsteps. The steps were so quiet they never had a chance to escape. They felt trapped when the intruder entered the basement and lit a match. They couldn't see the person, but suddenly they heard a voice.
"
Yidn?
Jews? I am also a Jew."
The stranger had instantly realized that they were Jews in hiding. After the initial scare, they fell upon each other with hugs of shared suffering. The man had a young boy with him, his son. In whispers they recounted their awful story and were astonished to hear of Vrumek and Aharon's prolonged survival in the woods. The father and son had been thrown out from the home of a Gentile, who had hidden them for as long as they had money to offer. The man told Vrumek and Aharon to try to get out of Poland, to head for Czechoslovakia and then Hungary. As long as they were not interned in a concentration camp they must try to move beyond the German advance.
That night they once again heard footsteps, but this was the heavy tread of German jackboots. Vrumek and Abaton jumped out of the shelter and ran away into the thick forest. They could not see whether the man and his child tried to run too; all they knew was that they could not come back to that hiding place again. The Germans had tracked them there. They never got the name of the man who so briefly stayed with them, but to them he was a godsend, like Elijah the Prophet. He opened their eyes to their goalto run westward to freedom. They presumed the man and his son were caught, because they heard the Germans yelling and their dogs barking. Once again the two fugitives started off on a journey to the unknown.
It was almost the end of November, and quite cold. Summoning their reserves of strength and willpower, they walked all night and slept during the day, hidden in fields, abandoned buildings, or deep within haystacks. They dug up potatoes and ate them raw, but sometimes they had to settle for bits of grass or garbage. Occasionally they stopped in small-town railroad stations to consult a train map; this was their only way of making sure that they were heading in the right direction.
 
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When they encountered freedom fighters or partisans they asked if they could join. Invariably, a Polish anti-Semite among them would suspect the two fugitives of being Jews and would not let them share the partisan cause, nor their bread. With no money or weapons to offer them, Vrumek and Abaton would be chased away by the partisan bands.
They pushed on, their isolation weakening their spirits as their hunger weakened their bodies. Eventually they reached the small town of Zwardon on the Czechoslovakian border. The town was teeming with Germans, making the chances of escape across the border quite slim. Again they turned to the fields, lying low, hugging the frozen earth and observing the movements of the border patrol. The night was dreary; a cold rain soaked them to the bone. The two units of the patrol were moving a couple of hundred yards in each direction. When the soldiers were at a fairly safe distance, Vrumek and Aharon made their move. Crouching low to the ground, they ran to the border fence and crawled under the barbed wire. Catching their breath, they waited for it to be safe to get up off the ground and ran on as fast as they could, to get away from the troopinfested border. They were one country away from Hungary and freedom and already had hopes that the Czechs would be less hostile to them than the Poles had been.
By the time the sky was graying with dawn, they were approaching a town. Now they were faced with a new predicament: they did not have any Czech money, did not speak Czech, and did not even know how to look Czech. Luckily they could understand some of the language, as Polish and Czech are both Slavic. They risked going into a train station, and tried to buy tickets by pronouncing only the name of the town they wanted to get to. Vrumek pulled out his largest bill, but the conductor asked him a question that he did not understand. Vrumek pulled out other banknotes, but this made the conductor angry. A crowd began to gather, and the two refugees had to slip away before they attracted the attention of a German official.
There was no forest in which to hide. There was no place to stay, and so the only alternative was to move on toward Hun-
 
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gary, which was not occupied by the Germans. They traveled on back roads, occasionally getting a lift on a farmer's wagon. Soon they reached a riverwith a bridge full of Germans. The water was deep and icy cold. For hours they searched for a way to cross the river.
Eventually they found a place where the river was narrow and there were some large rocks and trees on the banks to help them negotiate the crossing. They were moving from branch to branch when suddenly the old tree limb Vrumek was climbing on cracked and he plummeted down into the freezing stream. With the last ounce of his strength he grabbed on to a rock to avoid being carried away with the ferocious current. Aharon helped a hurt and wet Vrumek up on the other side of the river.
They were now in Hungary. But the pair of fugitives were too exhausted to celebrate outwitting the Nazis. Not knowing the Hungarian language, having no food, no local money, no place to stay, and no documents of any sort meant that they remained illegal refugees. They were subject to arrest and perhaps deportation. Vrumek managed to change some money, get some food, and get them a train ride to Budapest, where they could seek out the Jewish community.
While the local Jews helped them with food, clothing, and offers of extended shelter, they did not heed Vrumek's warning that they should all pick up and flee, to get as far away as possible from the rolling Nazi death machine while they still could. Vrumek did not plan to stay any longer than necessary to prepare himself for further travel. He did not pay attention to the Hungarian Jews' assurances of safety. His intuition and bitter experiences told him not to be lulled by the fact that the Germans were not yet there.
He managed to get some funds through the good hearts of the Jewish community and the Mizrachi organization, which he had belonged to at home. Vrumek and Aharon smuggled themselves into Rumania just before the Germans occupied Hungary. Vrumek winced at the thought of his recent benefactors being subject to the dreadfully familiar routine of Nazi decrees leading up to selections and deportations. He aggressively tried to arouse the Jewish community in Rumania to the
 
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peril that faced them. He warned his skeptical brethren of the doom that he foresaw for all of Europe's Jews. Tolerant of the exaggerating alarmist in their midst, the Rumanian Jews tried to convince the pair to settle down.
Vrumek and Aharon were almost seduced by the relative paradise of prewar Rumania. Commerce between Gentile and Jew was still commonplace. Food was readily available. For the two homeless refugees, freedom from daily terror and hunger was intoxicating indeed. They were warmly welcomed by the Jewish community, given endless hospitality, and offered an abundance of food. But having spent so many months scratching for survival like animals, fiercely battling a savage enemy, their survival instincts were too sharply honed to be overcome by all the sudden ease.
Tormented with concern for their families, they felt they could not betray them by enjoying any respite. Rather than fill their shrunken stomachs and lose their haunted memories, they were eager to move on. Still fearful of the Nazi danger to their own lives, they strove to continue on their way to freedom. From the Mizrachi organization they learned that a small, illegal vessel would be carrying two hundred people from Rumania to Palestine. They pleaded and fought to be included on that boat.
In the four months they had spent in Rumania, they met refugees who by the mercy of the Gentiles survived their escape from the ghettos. Most of these Gentile benefactors kept up their hospitality only as long as the Jews' money held out. Some of these Jews who survived the final deportations managed to escape Poland and eventually reach freedom in Rumania. A group of these Polish Jewish survivors banded together to grieve and to hope.
Despite Aharon's constant objections, Vrumek successfully worked to obtain permission for them to be among the two hundred passengers on the illegal boat out of Rumania. This small freighter, packed to capacity, was hired by the Mizrachi at great cost and risk. Most of the passengers were Rumanian Jews, traditional Zionists struggling to get to Palestine, the Promised Land. They paid enormous amounts of money to
 
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assure a place for themselves and their families. Lacking the money, Vrumek worked hard for the organization to secure a place for himself and Aharon. Wishing he had Sholek at his side and some news of his scattered family, he boarded the vessel to start another journey into the unknown.
Packed like herrings in a barrel, the two hundred men, women, and children set out to leave the massive Jewish graveyard that Europe had become. It was the winter of 1944. The high waves of the stormy Black Sea tossed the small freighter about. Seasick people vomited; children cried; the religious prayed. There were rumors of underwater mines placed by the Germans. There were dark nights when the freighter was suddenly lit up by the searchlights of gigantic battleships. They sometimes had to hide in treacherous, uncharted waters. They had to fear both Germans and other cooperating authorities who might discover the Jewish refugees and sink them, as they had already done to another boat, the
Patria
.
Sick and shivering, they finally reached the port city of Ankara, Turkey, where a delegation from a Jewish agency awaited them. They distributed some oranges, which were relished by the grateful passengers. The exotic taste of oranges was a symbol of Palestine, a sweet taste of hope and freedom. From Ankara they were transported by train to Lebanon, where they were challenged by the British authorities. They spent days in a bureaucratic purgatory before permission was granted for them to travel on to British Palestine.
Vrumek knew no one in Haifa that he could count on for any help. Now that they had finally reached freedom and security, Aharon and Vrumek parted ways, each one trying to find his own place in the pioneer Jewish settlement of Palestine. Vrumek was lonely, afraid for his family and tormented by nightmares. But there was no time to brood. Here he was alive and well and free. Even though penniless, homeless, and emotionally exhausted, he was able to start life again. He contacted people from his hometown of Chrzanow through organizations like the Mizrachi, and he was able to get a job and a place to stay. With the help of the Neichofs, who were also from

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