| Real Life |

Sacrifice

By Rayzel Reich | July 26, 2017

This was a viper, slowly slithering, evil, horror, mouth suddenly gaping, fangs exposed. The mouth of hell. The human mind found it hard to grasp

I’m sitting at the familiar wooden table in the warm kitchen, late at night. Zeida sits at the head of the table, I at his side. Zeida’s eyes glow with life and memory. The radiator puffs coziness. I take a sip of tea, and pull my chair closer. We are deep into the past.

“There was a woman,” Zeida says, “who killed her child.”

I stare at Zeida over the top of my glasses. I have no questions; I wait to hear. Anything is possible in the mouth of hell.

Zeida strokes his beard and leans back. “There was a little girl, a beautiful little girl, named Estushe… Esther….”

That night, I dreamed I had a baby girl. I wanted nothing more than to hold her, but I could not find her. I searched and searched, the pit in my stomach swallowing me with black terror. I needed her. Where was she?

I woke up, panting with horror. It took a while to realize it was a dream. And even then, my mind continued.

Someone had given her away. I went to find her. She didn’t know me, didn’t want me.

Lying there, curled up in bed, my life ended. Frozen in an explosion of tears.

It’s a dream, stop it, it’s a dream. Stop.

But all I could do was think of Estushe.

Dark curls, bright brown eyes looking everywhere, deep dimples that laughed in the sunshine.

She sits in her carriage, holding on with chubby fists, right here in front of me. Yes, I know Estushe.

Her name is Esther.

Eshtushe, Mirel cooed, twisting the delightful nickname around her palate like a soft cinnamon roll, sweet and light and rich and oozing with pure deliciousness.

The baby gurgled and giggled, lighting up the dim room with her bright eyes.

Nothing is too good for Estushe. You see that fancy carriage that she sits in? It’s no wonder that Mirel pushes it with such pride. You see those brass fittings, the quality of the workmanship? It cost 200 zlotys. A small fortune.

Lazer and Mirel had planned that carriage. After long years of waiting, could there be any joy greater then splurging for this beautiful child? They had sent away to Germany, had this special stroller imported.

“Only the best for our Estushe,” Mirel had beamed. Lazer grinned back, a soft peace ballooning in his belly. They were almost giddy, like children. Estushe gurgled. Ah, the joy of life… they had not known this before.

You see Mirel there, pushing the carriage down the street? I know it’s hard to take your eyes off her beaming face. But look down at Estushe, down past her sparkling brown eyes and dimples. You see how she is dressed? You see the bright colors, the ruffles sewn with care? You see how clean and starched her little dress is, without the benefit of a washer or dryer?

“Only the best for our Estushe,” Mirel says, beaming, gladly paying the dressmaker. On wash day, she carefully oversees Anna the maid, making sure the tiny clothes are fit for a princess.

Look at them, strolling through the street, laughing and talking to each other in a language only they understand. They walk through a picture book, golden-touched by the sun.

That’s Estushe. That’s Mirel and Estushe. Joy. Pure joy.

Froyim

We had planned carefully before the second akzion. We knew the end was coming.

The plan was to hide in an underground bunker, with about 50 other people.

Death crept in. My parents and sisters hid.

And yet Friday night, my brother and I stayed home, with the candles and the warmth and the chicken soup and our Zeida, loath to leave the circle of life for the universe of death that waited outside. It took a return trip by my older sister Utchu, screaming at us to get out, to finally make us move.

We left the light. We left life. We left Zeida. My sister and brother made it to the bunker. I got caught. By the mercy of G-d and a miracle, I managed to get to Dr. Mikolajko, the kind Pole I worked for. I was safe, for the moment. My family hid, dark underground, with 50 Jews, among them Estushe and her mother.

The slaughter was over. Our friends and neighbors had disappeared forever, into the black hole of the east. I slipped back into the ghetto, mingling with those who had been allowed by the Germans to stay alive as workers, and all those who had been in hiding in their own little holes.

We heard stories, all the stories, of horrors that made your skin prickle and the hair on your arms stand on end. This was a viper, slowly slithering, evil, horror, mouth suddenly gaping, fangs exposed.

The mouth of hell. The human mind found it hard to grasp.

Mirel held her hand over the child’s mouth. She felt the fear vibrate through her little body.

Sshhhhhh! Zei shtill! Terror gripped her body. Please, please, my darling, please, just for this moment, be quiet, be quiet, I have nowhere to spirit you away…

She hugged the child with her left arm, desperately pumping every ounce of comfort her heart contained into the tiny heart that beat like her own.

It wasn’t enough. Six-year-old Estushe was scared.

She cried and cried.

Mirel’s eyes darted wildly around the room. Fifty people. Fifty people, on the edge of death, staring at her, knowing the Germans were close, knowing that if the child cried, they would die.

Perspiration poured over her. No breath. No time to think.

Harder, harder, her hand pushed against the child’s mouth.

Zeida’s eyes meet mine. He smiles, a backward reaction to the hard bitterness that has lived for so long.

“She smothered the child to death,” he says.

I gasp. My hand goes up over my mouth.

“Yep,” Zeida says, “that’s what happened….”

The knowledge sits in me, growling squeamishly, on the long drive home. How… how had she lost her mind… how… how…

“…. the hands of merciful women cooked their children…”

I berate myself: Why should I expect this churban to be better than that one? The ultimate horror. The hands of a loving mother, choking her child to death.

The Verrazano looms, proudly shining through the dark night. The highway slides smoothly away.

That is a Holocaust. A holocaust destroys the soul from the inside out.

And yet. I cannot make sense of it. I cannot. It turns inside me, mixing with the growl of the engine and the smoothly spinning tires.

Froyim

Our quest for life growled inside us. Plans, plans, plans. The Mikolajkos wanted to save me, but it was too dangerous to hide my whole family. The Gestapo headquarters was next door.

The doctor and his wife arranged for an old couple at the outskirts of town to hide most of our family. Dr. Mikalajko and I dug an underground bunker in their yard. My brother snuck in and joined me. A miserable existence, cold water and rats creeping around us, and nothing but searing blackness to fill our minds.

When the Gestapo next door requisitioned the garage, we had to leave to join our family. Shadowing the doctor in a dance of death, ducking into doorways when patrols approached, we swallowed the heartbeat in our throats. We parted from him at the edge of town, walking through village roads with only his wife’s crude map to guide us in the dark night.

We couldn’t find them, but they found us. My sister Utchu opened the door of a house, whispered, “They are here!” and rushed out to us.

In from the cold, up the dark stairs, into the frigid blackness of the attic.

They were all there. Father, Mother, my sisters and brother-in-law, my cousin by marriage, my aunt, my cousin Alta, and her three-year-old son Leibish.

Alta and Leibish had been the most recent arrivals. They had hidden in my family’s bunker as long as possible, and then survived for days buried in a blizzard, before finding their way to our safe house.

Amid the hugs and tears, a small voice asked, “What are those?”

It took me a minute to realize that he meant my brother and I. After all those months in the blind dank pit, I did not think of my appearance. Our hair was long and matted, skin black with dirt, clothes in tatters. We were wild beasts of the forest, intent only on our quest for life.

Someone quietly answered his question. These were cousins. Humans.

The days passed. I had time, plenty of time. I set about slowly making friends with Leibish. He was good; too good, I thought, for a three-year-old. We had no heat, little food and water, and only lice for entertainment. There was a pail for sanitary purposes.

But Leibish did not cry, kvetch, or complain.

I hunkered down next to the little boy, sitting in the dim light.

“Why don’t you ever cry, Leibish?” I asked. “It’s cold, the lice bite… usually, children cry.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “I don’t cry.”

I raised my eyebrows. Children grew up quickly, but that was too quickly.

“Why not?”

He looked up at me, eyes simple and clear. “I saw what they did to Estushe.

“A boy was holding me by the mouth. Mamme said, ‘If you kill him, I will kill you.’ The boy said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take my hand away a little and let him breathe.’ ”

Alta murmured from nearby, “And if I had not said that, he would have killed him.”

“But he let me breathe, since I didn’t cry,” Leibish explained.

“I saw what happened to Estushe. So I didn’t cry.”

He looked up at me, young and pure and ancient. “I saw what happened to Estushe. I don’t cry.”

The heat blows in the silence. I swallow and shift my elbow on the wood kitchen table.

Zeida’s eyes gleam.

“And then she killed herself.”

I look up sharply.

“The mother,” Zeida explains, leaning back in his chair. “The akzion ended. She came out of the bunker. She had poison; she took it.”

He answers the question in my face. “Many people carried poison with them. In case the worst happened; rather than be tortured, defiled, humiliated.”

She ended her life. My lips part. To live through all that hell… and then…?

Zeida nods. “She came out, it was all she could think about. She couldn’t take it. Imagine, thinking about it, constantly. She couldn’t handle what she had done.”

My stomach shrinks inside me, crying with the tortured question. Why… if it was all for agony and death, why had she done it in that moment of terror? Why? Why? It made no sense.

Zeida continues. “She said—”

I look back up, across the Splenda packets and empty coffee cups.

“I didn’t do it for myself. I did it for 50 Jews who would have died.”

Zeida smiles, a slight smile, and I see many things living inside him.

“The child would have cried, the Germans would have found them, they would have all died.

“You can’t lose your head… there were those who did, and caused everyone to die. You can’t lose your head, even in the terror.

“But she couldn’t take it. So she took her own life.”

It roils inside me on the way home.

Murderer. Woman in anguish. Terror. Lost her head.

Heroine. Savior. The ultimate test.

Her child. Her own child. It’s wrong, it’s terribly wrong.

What is right? Is there anything right when a world goes mad?

Pink ceramic tiles stare up between my loafers. I’m standing with my back against the kitchen sink, talking to my brother. We speak of pain, of G-d, of the human condition.

“People say,” I push in, “that a person can handle whatever they get. But it’s not true.”

There’s a pause. “Look at the Holocaust,” he says. “People went through the worst human suffering imaginable. And look at all the people who came through and remained strong. Like Baba and Zeida.”

“Yes,” I say. “And then—”

He finishes before I have the chance. “I know. There were all the broken souls.”

All the broken souls. Those who could not move on. Those who were lost, who wandered.

It comes out in a rush.

“There was a woman who killed her daughter. They were hiding in a bunker with 50 people, and the child was crying. She smothered her to death.”

I breathe. “And then she committed suicide. She said, ‘I didn’t do it for myself. I did it for 50 people.’ ”

I stare straight ahead, past the pink ceramic.

A deep intake of breath. And then my brother starts tsk-tsking, over and over again, breathing loudly, tsking his tongue, repeating it over and over—

“What strength… what strength…” tsk-tsk, deep breath, deep breath, “what strength… what strength… what strength.”

He says it, over and over, over and over, unable to get over the pain, unable to get over the strength. Slowly it shifts into focus, turning everything inside me, until the world is whole, cracked with pain, yet spinning, up up and down down.

I think of Chana.

Master of the universe, Avraham gave one son to you… I have given You seven

I think of Estashe’s mother. There was no idol and no ring.

Who sacrificed more?

What is right? What is wrong?

When all is swirling hell and up is down and down is up and the world is fiery inferno choking out blinding grey fog—

Who knows? Who knows? Who knows, G-d in Heaven.

Have I done what’s right… or have I murdered my daughter?

The dust has settled, inferno quieted, grass grows and sun shines.

This world is a false one yet.

Black and white slide so easily into murky grey.

What is right? What is wrong?