In the bitterness of the Urals, Savta always sought sweetness

“S

how us what you have in your hands —  and now! Your one-way ticket to Siberia is being processed as we speak!”

Every time my grandmother told me this story, I was terrified. I also had to suppress a giggle, because Savta was so formidable that I could never imagine anyone intimidating her. In my mind’s eye, she must have stood tall and looked at her apprehenders with impatience and disdain.

During the deep winter of 1943, on a frosty day in a small village in the Ural Mountains — the natural divide between Europe and Asia, and not so far from Siberia — my grandmother, Chana, was caught in the act of exchanging bread for chocolate.

Within moments, she was handcuffed and dragged into a drab building, which she supposed was some kind of police station. She was thrown into a windowless room and locked in.

“I have a baby at home!” she yelled. “Let me out!”

Savta watched as the warden marched away, his heels clicking through the gloomy hallway. The room was bare aside from a stool. It looked like a temporary holding area, which was encouraging; it meant she hadn’t been sentenced yet. Perhaps she could still plead her case. She needed to get home as soon as possible because her two-year-old son Mendel was there by himself.

On the Run

Locked in that dingy room, my grandmother must have felt so alone. It had been years since she’d last seen her husband, my Saba, who had been recruited (forced?) into the Red Army as a slave laborer to mine coal in the Ural Mountains. (Saba later shared that although the work was backbreaking, he was grateful for one thing: They gave the workers yellow insulated jumpsuits that were warm and comfortable.)

Savta knew few people in this remote forest village because she had grown up in Warsaw, Poland, where all her family and most of her friends had remained.

Right before the Germans invaded Poland, in 1939, Savta had married Alter Greenfas from Falenica, a suburb of Warsaw. She sewed for herself a gorgeous lilac dress, her favorite color, which she wore to her engagement party and sheva brachos. Savta was the bechorah of her family, and Alter the bechor of his, and the younger siblings revered the new couple.

All too soon, however, they were on the run. “Chana,” Alter begged her, “we’re young and we have a future ahead.  We must escape Poland.” Her resolve (did she ever even agree?!) broke when they reached the border near Bialystok. “Alter!” she cried, “I’m returning to my mother!”