Gertruda's Oath: A Child, a Promise, and a Heroic Escape During World War II (28 page)

Her face flushed with anger and offense. “That’s not acceptable,” she said.

The man softened his voice. “I can understand how close you are to the child. You deserve full appreciation for your sacrifice, but you must accept that your role is in fact over.”

She pierced him with her eyes.

“My role will be over when Michael doesn’t want me to be with him,” she declared.

“He’s a little boy. He doesn’t really understand what happened to him.”

“That’s exactly why I have to stay with him.”

“Sorry,” he said. “With all the sorrow I feel for you, we have no choice, madam. I suggest you prepare to part from the child. It will be for your good and his.”

“It won’t be for his good,” she protested. “Michael will go only with me. I won’t leave him.”

“Our decision is final,” stated the man. “We can’t allow ourselves to put someone on the ship who isn’t Jewish.”

“My decision is also final,” she said. She stood up and left the room with her head high.

Gertruda stumbled back to her hut in the camp, collapsed on her bed, and buried her face in the pillow. Her body shook with weeping and Michael looked at her in amazement. In all the years they had been together, with all the hardships they had faced, she had almost never shed a tear. She always made every effort to radiate confidence and force, to strengthen the boy with the sense that she was a solid pillar of support for him. Now something had broken inside her.

Michael stroked her back until she stopped crying and turned her face to him. He asked what had happened and she told him.

“They’re bad people,” he said angrily.

“They’re not bad, Michael. They just don’t understand that I promised your mother never to leave you.”

“I’ll go talk to them.” His firm resolve confirmed something Gertruda had been seeing in him for a long time: despite his young age, he was no longer a child. The war had given him wisdom and an adult perspective. It had taught him to be hard, to overcome difficulties, never to give in.

Gertruda lovingly kissed his forehead.

“They won’t listen to you, Michael. We’ll have to think of a more effective way to change their decision.”

She remembered that a group of journalists was supposed to visit the camp that week to hear the hard stories of the homeless Holocaust survivors. The camp residents were told about the journalists’ visit in advance and were asked to emphasize in their conversations with the correspondents their strong desire to immigrate to the Land of Israel, their only homeland. Gertruda’s name was on the list of those the journalists wanted to interview.

•   •   •

On the morning of the visit of the media representatives, Gertruda knocked on the door of the office.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “have you changed your decision about me?”

“Unfortunately, no” was the reply.

“Can I appeal?”

“No.” The members of the administration were impatient and waited for her to leave, but she stood still.

“The journalists will come today,” she said quietly. “You can imagine what will happen when they find out you won’t let a Catholic woman take a Jewish child—who she risked her life to save—to the Land of Israel, as she promised his mother on her deathbed.”

All faces turned to her with an expression of displeasure.

“We ask you not to tell that to the journalists,” said one of them.

“And I ask you to reconsider your decision.”

They writhed uneasily in their chairs.

“This is blackmail,” they said angrily.

“Right,” she answered coolly.

“Fine,” said the director of the camp. “We’ll bring your case up for a decision by Aliyah Bet. They’re responsible for carrying out this smuggling of displaced persons and what they determine has to be accepted by you and by us.”

“Bring it up with whomever you like,” said Gertruda. “But take into account that there is only one decision I will accept. Tell your superiors I won’t accept any decision that goes against the good of Michael.”

“We’ll tell them your position,” they promised. “Meanwhile, don’t talk with the journalists about this.”

As if there weren’t enough obstacles preventing the sailing, Gertruda Babilinska’s personal case came to disturb those in charge of the operation. On the day of the long series of meetings on how to defend the ship against British attacks, the Aliyah Bet leadership in Paris had to discuss a question that, on the face of it, appeared quite peripheral: whether to let the Catholic nanny of a Jewish child sail to the Land of Israel with him.

One of the organizers of the operation, Mordechai Rozman, a short, thin, high-strung young man, brought up the question with his four colleagues. They tried to postpone the discussion, but he persisted on the pretext that the woman was promised the subject would be discussed in this meeting. Rozman laid out the chain of events. Most participants in the meeting argued that top priority on the ship had to be given to Jews, and so Michael would have to sail alone.

Rozman thought otherwise. He argued forcefully for letting Gertruda go.

“Everyone who saves one soul,” he quoted, “it’s as if he saved the whole world. We can’t be so strict and insensitive. That woman gave up her life so the child would live. There’s no greater sacrifice than that. She deserves to sail with him.”

He told them of a case he had heard about in the camp of a barren woman in Auschwitz who saved an orphan infant and was now going with him to the Land of Israel where she would raise him as her son.

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

“She’s a Jew and Babilinska isn’t” was the answer he received.

He couldn’t change their minds.

“If we offer her money to return home to Poland, will that help?” they asked him.

“No chance,” said Rozman.

“We can put her on another ship in a few months,” said one of those present. “It won’t hurt them to wait a little.”

“You know very well,” replied Rozman, “that we have no idea when there will be another ship. After all the suffering they’ve gone through, that woman and child want to and need to live in Palestine.”

“Maybe they should try to convince the child first?”

“They already talked with him. He won’t give in either. He says she’s like his mother.”

Rozman still could not change most of their minds.

Finally, he said: “Gertruda Babilinska will be listed as one of the most outstanding figures among the Righteous Gentiles. We have no moral right to leave her behind. This entire discussion gives me an uneasy feeling.”

“She threatened to complain to the press about us,” said somebody, and Rozman responded: “She seems to be a very firm woman. If the war didn’t break her, we won’t either. She did everything to save the child in the war, and she’ll do everything not to part from him. She’ll tell the press, organize demonstrations. It will be very unpleasant for us.”

The members of Aliyah Bet continued deliberating for a long time. They didn’t want to change their minds, but they had to. Fear of Gertruda’s public protests tipped the scales in her favor.

Rozman personally told her of the decision.

She wasn’t surprised. She was sure there was no other way.

The announcement to prepare for the journey that day spread like wildfire through the camp in the morning. Cheers of joy were heard in the huts and people hugged one another.

At nightfall, a long convoy of trucks entered the camp, some of them taken without permission from British army garages and others rented from various moving companies. The residents of the camp were packed in them and the convoy set out. At the French border the convoy was asked the purpose of the trip, transit documents were checked, and, after a generous gift of cigarettes to the border guards, the trucks were allowed to continue to the camp near Marseille, where all illegal immigrants were given Colombian visas and told to tell anyone who asked them as they boarded the ship that they were Jewish refugees immigrating to Colombia. The visas had been procured by Aliyah Bet from the Colombian consulate in Marseille for fifty dollars each and the promise that none of the visa holders would come to Colombia.

After a few days of nerve-racking delay, the passengers were taken to the port of Sette near Marseille, where the ship was waiting for them. When they got there, port officials were still gathered in the captain’s cabin on the ship, filling their bellies with abundant delicacies: sausages and champagne, chocolate and fine wines, which they hadn’t tasted throughout the war. Afterward, satiated and weary, the officials stood at the bottom of the gangplank, hastily checked the Colombian documents, and let the bearers board. Quite a few members of the French government suspected the ship was about to sail to the Land of Israel, but they preferred to turn a blind eye and had no legal cause to interfere: the passengers had Colombian documents and the ship had permission to sail from
the Honduran government. The British also knew they had no cause to exert pressure on the French government to delay the departure, but they didn’t sit idly by. As the survivors were boarding the
President Warfield
, a British patrol plane circled above photographing them and sending the pictures to British intelligence headquarters.

On the afternoon of July 11, 1947, the port administration gave official permission to sail. The Honduran flag—five blue stars on a white background—flew at the top of the mast and thousands of passengers began to pray, pleading with the Creator to bring them safely to their destination.

When all were on board and anxiously waiting to move, the breakdowns on the ship began. Ike ordered the motors turned on and the ropes connecting the ship to the dock cut, but he learned to his dismay that the propeller was entangled in the cut ropes. Bill Bernstein, Ike’s first mate, dove under the ship and released the propeller. At long last, they believed, the
President Warfield
was on its way, but the problems continued. Before it was able to leave the bay, the ship got stuck on a sandbank. Sweaty and nervous, Ike decided not to call for help. He ordered the motors turned on full and breathed a sigh of relief when the ship moved successfully.

The passengers were thrilled when, at long last, they saw the expanse of blue water and the white wake behind the ship. The
President Warfield
sailed fast. The monotonous roar of the motors signaled that the engine room was working properly. Ike opened a bottle of wine, poured everyone in the pilot’s cabin a glass, and made a toast.

The good mood spread through the ship. The passengers on deck started singing the national anthem, “Ha-Tikvah.”

“Why are they so happy?” asked Bill Bernstein, and pointed west, where the British destroyer, the
Mermaid
, was clinging to the wake of the
President Warfield
. The
Mermaid
was one of the fleet of
destroyers that was supposed to prevent the illegal immigrant ship from reaching the shores of Palestine.

Thousands of displaced persons, old and young, children and pregnant women, looked at the British destroyer following them and prayed to Heaven for deliverance. Even the greatest optimists among them now understood that the journey wouldn’t be easy.

A group of men climbed up to the top deck and hung a gigantic sign with the new name of the ship in Hebrew and English:
HAGANAH SHIP EXODUS, 1947.
The Honduran flag gave way to the blue-and-white flag of the Jewish nation. A sense of historic mission was in the air.

The first Sabbath on the deck of the ship revived old and painful memories for Gertruda. She remembered the Sabbath eve in the grand dining room of the house on Ujazdowska Avenue, Lydia’s insistence that she join them, even though she wasn’t Jewish. Gertruda knew all the blessings and songs by heart.

Because there were so many passengers, the meal was divided among several halls, and in each the atmosphere was excited. Thousands of them crowded around the tables, sitting and standing. Women blessed the Sabbath candles, and Gertruda’s lips whispered along with them.

After dinner, they burst into Sabbath and Israeli songs, and started dancing on the deck to the music of accordions and violins. Gertruda and Michael were swept up into the circles of dancers. Outside the circle stood the minister John Grauel, who had volunteered to go with the ship and wondered whether to join everyone. “Come on!” called Gertruda. “It’s not so complicated.” He took her hand and imitated her steps. “You see, it’s not hard,” she laughed.

The
President Warfield
(
Exodus
). Haifa Harbor, Israel, 1949
.

When the dancing ended, Gertruda sat down with Michael on the pile of bundles at the edge of the deck and the minister approached them.

“My name’s Gertruda and this is Michael,” she said.

“Gertruda, if I’m not mistaken, is a popular Jewish name.” He spoke German with an American accent.

She laughed. “It’s not a Jewish name at all. I’m a Catholic.”