Gertruda's Oath: A Child, a Promise, and a Heroic Escape During World War II (22 page)

“Where do you live?” asked the officer.

“On the other street.”

He walked her home. “Be careful,” he said. “There will be a lot of other searches like that. Take my advice. If you don’t want them to bother you, look for a safer place for you and the boy.”

She looked at him with tears in her eyes.

“Why?” her lips moved. “Why did you do that?”

He smiled.

“Maybe someday, if we meet again, I’ll tell you.”

“At least tell me your name,” she asked.

“Karl Rink,” he said, turned around, and went back to the patrol.

To save Michael, to get him away from the danger lurking for him at every moment, to guarantee that they would no longer be in danger
of surprise visits at night—those were now the most important tasks. Gertruda knew that their luck wouldn’t hold out for long if she didn’t take immediate action.

She concluded that the church could be their only refuge. Michael remembered the first day he went there with Gertruda. In a blend of fear and embarrassment, he followed her into the big hall of the Ostra Brama Church. The cement arches supporting the ceiling, the paintings of the crucified Jesus, and the gilded altar stirred mixed feelings in him. It didn’t take Gertruda long to make him understand why he had to go with her. He understood very well that, for the outside world, he was the son of a Christian mother, and the pretense he had to adopt was a pledge for his life.

Now he stroked Gertruda’s hand, let her lead him to one of the statues at the front of the church, and was terrified when he saw a group of German officers near them who were kneeling and praying. Gertruda looked at them with fake calm, also knelt, and pulled Michael down, too. He moved his lips as if he were praying, even though he didn’t know a single prayer.

The church was full of local residents and a group of German soldiers and officers who came to Sunday mass. The priest, Andras Gedovsky passed among the worshippers, nodding to people he knew. Michael looked at him with curiosity, examined his kind face and his white robe as he moved like an angel hovering toward the altar and sank down in prayer.

A young officer raised his eyes to Gertruda and Michael and looked at them with a long, strange look. He stood up and came to them. Michael turned pale.

“Is that your child?” asked the officer in German. He had light blue eyes and fair hair carefully combed. He carried a vizored hat
in his hand. His uniform was perfectly pressed and a gun was hanging on his leather belt.

“Yes, this is my child,” she replied in German.

“What’s your name, boy?” the officer asked in Polish.

“Michael,” he answered softly.

The officer stroked his hair.

Don’t make any unnecessary move, Michael ordered himself, don’t show any sign of fear.

“He looks so much like the child I left at home,” said the officer sadly to Gertruda.

“How old is your boy?” she asked, looking innocently at the officer.

“Six. And yours?”

“He’s also six.”

“You speak good German.” The officer complimented her. “Where are you from?”

“Poland. I learned German in school.”

“And your husband?”

“I’m a widow, sir.”

He pulled his wallet out of his pocket, took out some money, and gave it to Michael.

“Buy yourself a present,” he said.

Father Gedovsky mounted the pulpit and preached a sermon about the importance of helping your neighbor, quoting the appropriate passages from the New Testament. Afterward the children’s chorus, in white robes with gold embroidery, sang Sunday songs, passed among the rows, and spread clouds of incense.

After mass, the priest stood in the door of the church, smiling, shaking hands with the worshippers, and exchanging a few polite
words with everyone. Three German officers stood patiently in line to shake the priest’s hand, their eyes haughty, their uniforms gleaming, their shaved faces confident. The priest spoke German with them. “We enjoyed the prayers very much,” they told him. “It was like home.” They wished the priest good health and got into the jeep waiting for them at the curb.

Gertruda waited until everyone had gone and then went to the priest, who looked at her affectionately. Ever since Lydia’s death, Gertruda had come to church with Michael almost every Sunday.

“Father,” she murmured, “can I talk with you in private?”

The priest looked at her gently. “Of course, my child.”

She asked Michael to wait for her on a bench in the church, and let the priest lead her to his office. Once inside, the priest closed the door. His eyes looked at the woman’s face lined with distress and anxiety. Out the window, the day turned gray and long shadows crept into the room.

Gertruda wanted to speak, but tears choked her voice. Uncontrollable weeping racked her body. The priest put his warm hand on her shoulder.

“How can I help, my child?” His voice soothed her.

“I don’t know what to do, Father,” she said at last. “I don’t know who to turn to.”

He waited patiently for her to tell him her distress. Every single day, people like her poured out their bitterness to him. They related their pain for their partner or relative who had been arrested by the Nazis, all traces of them lost. Some complained about their economic situation. Most of the time, the priest had to make do with a few words of encouragement. He knew that wasn’t enough, but that was practically all the help he could give.

“It’s about my child,” said Gertruda.

“The sweet child with the blue eyes sitting there outside?”

“Yes.”

Fear of what she was to reveal in this room nailed her to the spot. Her body was shaking, but she knew she had to go on. The priest was the only person she could pour her heart out to, the only one she could trust.

She told him the truth and he looked at her with eyes opened wide in surprise.

“I didn’t realize that the child was a Jew,” he said.

Gertruda wiped her eyes.

“I’m afraid the Nazis will find out the truth and take him away from me,” she said. “I’d die if that happened.”

“Bring him to me,” he said.

She called Michael.

“Do you know who Jesus was?” asked the priest.

“The man everybody prays to,” replied the child. He remembered the prayers he had heard in church.

“And what is the Holy Trinity?”

Michael frowned and repeated what Gertruda had recited to him: “The Father … the Son … the Holy Spirit.”

The priest sprinkled holy water on him and said a prayer.

“From now on, you’re a Christian like all of us,” he said. “Tomorrow morning you’ll start attending the church school.”

A warm wave of happiness flooded Gertruda. That was more, much more than she had expected.

“But,” she stammered, “I don’t have money to pay.”

Father Andras Gedovsky smiled.

“I’m not worried,” he said. “God will reward me.”

The priest sat Michael on his lap and stroked his hair.

“You want to hear a story?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“In chapter two of the book of Daniel, there’s a story of a king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, who woke up one night in panic after a horrible dream. In his dream, the king saw a statue with a head of gold. A big stone suddenly smashed the statue into slivers. The king called the sages of Babylon and asked them to interpret his dream. None of them could. When the prophet Daniel learned of this, he came to the king and interpreted. The statue, he said, is your kingdom. The stone symbolizes the kingdom of Heaven that decided to smash your kingdom to dust.”

A slight smile hovered over the priest’s lips.

“You know what is the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar?” he asked.

Gertruda nodded. The comparison with the Nazis was obvious.

“I promise you,” said the priest, “that the end of the wicked will be as the end of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue.”

She left with Michael and hurried home. The child was saved, at least for the time being, and that was what was most important. She wasn’t worried about his Christian baptism. She was sure that, just as Michael was born a Jew, he would go back to being a Jew when the war was over.

On the morning Michael was about to enter the school of Ostra Brama Church, Gertruda dressed him in his best clothes, packed up his belongings in a small suitcase, and went with him to Father Gedovsky’s office, where they were greeted warmly.

“Leave the child here and go in peace,” he said. “Here he’ll be protected from every evil.”

Gertruda kissed Michael’s sad eyes.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll come visit you often.”

The priest went with Michael to the school building next to the church, showed him his bed in one of the dormitory rooms, and then put him in class. The children looked at him with curiosity and at recess they tried to size him up. He said what Gertruda had taught him to say: that his mother was the widow of a Polish officer and that he was her only son.

On his first night in the boarding school, Michael wept into his pillow, homesick for his adopted mother. The strange atmosphere he had wound up in, the isolation, and the fear that his real origin would be discovered weighed heavily on him. In the following days, it was hard for him to get used to the Christian holy scriptures, the prayers, and the harsh hand of the teachers, but he remembered what Gertruda had repeated to him before he left: “You’ve got to, Michael. The church is the only place where you can be safe. I promise you that as soon as the war is over, I’ll take you out of there.” She warned him not to get undressed, not to shower, and not to urinate with the other children so they wouldn’t discover that he was circumcised.

Despite the strict studies and the fear that accompanied Michael day and night, life in the boarding school was rather comfortable. There was enough food, he had his own bed, and Father Gedovsky kept an eye on him. The children in the boarding school were divided, as always, into better and worse. Some wanted to be his friend. Others looked for his weak points and teased him a lot. He was glad to make friends with children he was fond of, and avoided responding to the teasing from the others.

•   •   •

One of Michael’s classmates, Stephen, was eleven years old and from a Polish Catholic family who had become poor in the war. Father Gedovsky responded to the pleas of his parents and put him in the church boarding school so they would have one less mouth to feed. Stephen was an evil boy a troublemaker, tending to get caught up in lies. Michael shared with him the candy Gertruda brought him and thus won his friendship.

“Look at her. Doesn’t she look like a Jew?” Stephen whispered to Michael one day. He pointed at a girl who had come to the school two days before.

“Why do you think she’s a Jew?” asked Michael.

“Look at her eyes: black like Satan’s. She’s got a crooked Jewish nose and a twisted back. Only Jews can look like that.”

“Her name’s Marina. That’s not a Jewish name.” Michael tried to defend the girl. If she was a Jew, he knew, no one must suspect that, just as no one must know that he himself was a Jew. The rumor his friend was beginning to spread might be fateful for the girl, if indeed he was right about her origin.

“Nonsense,” laughed Stephen. “Didn’t you hear that Jews take names of Christians to disguise themselves?”

“I don’t believe she’s a Jew,” Michael persisted.

“I’ll tell my father. He knows a German officer. The Germans will come here and find out the truth in a few minutes.”

“What will they do to her?”

Stephen shrugged. “What they do to all the Jews,” and made a choking gesture.

Michael quickly snuck into Father Gedovsky’s office and told him about Stephen’s suspicions.

“Thank you for telling me,” said the priest.

“I didn’t know there were other Jewish children here,” said the boy.

“There are no Jewish children here.” The priest smiled mysteriously at him.

That same day, the classroom door opened in the middle of the lesson and Father Gedovsky stood in the door with a woman dressed simply. A big cross hung around her neck. “Marina’s mother wants to talk with her for a few minutes,” he said to the nun who was conducting the class. The little girl stood up in amazement. She had never seen that woman in her life, but she responded to the priest’s request to leave the class. “I know this isn’t your mother,” he told her. “But we have to do it. Somebody might suspect you’re a Jew and then you couldn’t go on hiding here. From now on, tell everyone who asks you that your mother’s name is Joanna, your father is dead, and you were born a Catholic. Clear?”

“Yes,” replied the girl with a grateful look.

From then on, Stephen didn’t talk about the girl’s Jewish origin anymore, and Michael refrained from asking the priest who the woman was who had pretended to be her mother.

Not until after the war did Gertruda reveal the secret: the woman was Father Gedovsky’s sister.

In the summer of 1942, when the pears ripened in the orchards of Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, only a few people believed that the members of the kibbutz would complete the harvest. Like everywhere else in Palestine, a profound fear of an impending disaster prevailed there, too. Information from the war front said that the German army was quickly advancing to the Land of Israel. Rommel, the legendary
general, burst eastward from Libya and was at the entrance to Alexandria.

The situation in the Land of Israel was terrifying. There was nowhere to run or hide, no safe refuge from the Germans. Members of the British government sent their families to Iraq and packed their bags, waiting for the order to withdraw. They feared it wouldn’t be possible to withstand the German army closing in on the country.

An emergency meeting of the members was called in Kfar Giladi. Seventeen-year-old Elisheva Rink also attended. Dozens of members of the kibbutz gathered in the dining hall to hear the grim prognosis of the Haganah members. The Land of Israel, they said, might soon be under German occupation.

One of the participants suggested setting up posts at the side of the main highways and greeting the Germans with gunfire, but no one took that suggestion seriously. In the weapons caches of Kfar Giladi, as in other hiding places in Palestine, there were very few weapons hidden from the British, and the few that did exist wouldn’t serve as any defense against a German army invasion. The great fear in the Land of Israel was, as in other countries the Germans occupied, that many settlements would be destroyed and burned down and thousands of people would be killed or sent to concentration camps. One of the Haganah members told about a plan called “Masada on the Carmel,” where they would concentrate all the Jews in the area of the Carmel, between Athlit and Beit Oren, to set up fortresses in the foothills of the mountains and dig caves there that could hold tens of thousands of people.