Gertruda's Oath: A Child, a Promise, and a Heroic Escape During World War II (34 page)

Michael looked at the writing. The numbers of the bank accounts weren’t indicated in the notebook, but there was a precise list of the balance of cash and gold bullion with a net worth of twenty-four million dollars. In the values of the 1930s, when the money and the gold was deposited, that was considered a major fortune. In current exchange values and after the price of gold increased, the sum was much higher.

“Maybe there’s an official bank document here that confirms the existence of the account?” he asked.

She searched but didn’t find anything.

“I have to know the secret number,” he said hopefully.

The woman leafed through the file again.

“Unfortunately, there’s no trace of the numbers you’re looking for,” she said. “My husband was a very discreet man. He probably kept the numbers in his head.”

“Did your husband leave more documents connected with my father’s money?”

“Unfortunately, that’s the only file. No files were left in the office either. I took everything home.”

Michael wrung his hands nervously. “Did your husband mention the names of the bank officials who took care of the account?”

“Never.”

“What shall I do?” Michael wondered.

She patted his head sympathetically.

“I don’t think you can do anything. Maybe it’s just better for you to forget the money.”

Michael was restless. He wandered around aimlessly all day and tossed and turned all night. He hoped his fears wouldn’t come true and that instead, when he returned to the bank, the official would have good news for him. Maybe, by some miracle, a way would be found to transfer his father’s money to him.

With much hesitation, Michael returned to Credit Bank. He still had no proof of his father’s account. All his information was based on his mother’s words on her deathbed and the testimony of the widow of his father’s Swiss representative. He feared that neither of them would change the bank’s firm position.

And it didn’t.

The bank official looked uncomfortable when he saw Michael.

“You must understand that under these circumstances, I can’t do much for you,” he said.

“I understand. I thought I’d go to an attorney who would take this case.”

He stood up and shook the bank official’s hand. “Thank you anyway,” he said.

The official looked at him sympathetically.

“I shouldn’t be saying this,” he whispered. “But I will tell you something that might help you.”

Michael sat down again.

“You said you’re Mr. Stolowitzky’s only heir,” said the official.

“Correct.”

“Could your father have left other heirs?”

“To the best of my knowledge, all members of my father’s family are dead.”

“So,” said the official, “something strange is happening here. We received another appeal about your father’s legacy.”

“I don’t understand,” muttered Michael, who was stunned.

“Just recently, a Swiss lawyer sent us a request to find out details about your father’s account for a client of his. Since then, I’ve met with him a few times.”

“Who is this man?”

“It’s not a man, it’s a woman, who claims that she deserves the legacy.”

“Can’t be …”

“Mr. Stolowitzky,” said the official patiently. “All I can do for you is give you the address of the attorney who’s representing that woman. If he’s willing to give you details about his client, you can soon learn who she is.”

Michael rode the whole night on the crowded train from Zurich to Paris, racking his brain in a vain attempt to figure out who the
woman could be. Her attorney did give him her address after getting her permission to do so, but added no details about her. Michael thought of all the relatives he knew and who might demand the money for themselves. He hadn’t heard a thing about them since the war began and had every reason to assume that they were no longer alive. Nevertheless, a woman had popped up demanding his father’s money for herself. He was curious to meet her and harbored a dull fear that, in the race for the money, she’d get there first and the whole thing would fall into her hands.

He walked from the railroad station to the address in the Sixteenth Arrondissement, filled with public parks. When he got there, he looked at the rich houses of the neighborhood, the liveried chauffeurs waiting at the entrances of the houses of well-to-do businessmen, the handsome women in silk suits seen through the big windows and balconies eating breakfast served by maids in white aprons. He imagined that, when he knocked on the door of the house of the woman he was looking for, a uniformed servant would open it and ask him to wait until he informed his mistress why the guest had come.

The house he came to was one of the most magnificent in the neighborhood. On the door was an unfamiliar name. He looked at the note on which the lawyer had written the address of the woman he was looking for. No. There was no mistake. This was the house.

He rang the bell and a servant dressed in black opened the door.

“I’m looking for Madame Anna Massini.”

“Who are you?”

“I was sent by her attorney.”

“Follow me,” said the servant.

He led Michael to a small shed in the yard.

“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll get her.”

Michael waited impatiently. He soon saw the servant walking
toward him with a thin woman in her mid-forties, wearing a white apron.

She looked inquisitively at Michael.

“I’m Anna Massini,” she said. “How can I help you?”

“I’m the son of Jacob Stolowitzky” he said by way of intro duction.

She looked at him a long time.

“My attorney told me you’d come, but I couldn’t believe it. Your father was sure you had been killed in the war.”

He gave her a brief account of what had happened to him.

“Come inside. This is where I live. We’ll sit and talk.”

She opened the door of the little shed and the two of them went inside.

“You must be hungry,” she said. “I’ll make you something to eat.”

She went to the kitchen and returned with two cheese sandwiches. He ate them hungrily while she rummaged through the clothes closet, took out a worn envelope and a piece of paper from it.

“This is your father’s will,” she said.

Michael read the writing. The will said explicitly that if he was still alive, he would inherit his father’s money and Anna Massini would get a monetary grant.

She smiled sadly at him.

“Your father talked about you a lot,” she said. “He loved to tell about your life in Warsaw. When he concluded that your mother and you were dead, he mourned for a long time. Then, when the Germans were approaching France, we decided to get married and moved to my mother’s house in Italy. I thought he would be safer there, but it didn’t help. In the end, the Germans arrested him, and after that I didn’t hear anything from him.”

“I was a child when we parted, and I’ve missed him ever since.”

She nodded.

“After the war,” she continued, “I tried to search for your father. Months later, I finally found out his fate. Since I couldn’t find work in Italy, I came back to Paris. Fortunately, I found work as a cook in the house of a rich businessman, where you find me now.”

“In recent weeks,” said Michael, “I’ve tried to collect my father’s legacy but haven’t been able to.”

Michael stood up to go.

“Wait a moment.” She pulled his hand to make him sit down. “We haven’t finished yet.”

He sat down and looked at her inquisitively.

“It’s true that you should get your father’s will,” she said. “So I don’t think it’s decent for me to demand the inheritance for myself.”

She suggested that Michael ask her lawyer to represent him from now on. “He’s done a lot of work already,” she said. “I hope he can help you.”

Michael heard her words with excitement, amazed at her generosity.

“I can’t agree,” he said. “You spent a long time with my father. You helped him in his hardest hours. He loved you and I think you should get part of the inheritance.”

“You’re a stubborn kid,” she laughed. “Go get the money. Then decide yourself if I deserve anything.”

Not until August 1964, six years after Michael Stolowitzky had started his struggle for his father’s inheritance, did his lawyer manage to acquire a first sum. Only $148,000 for the factories in Poland and a factory confiscated by the Nazis in Germany. The mansion on
Ujazdowska Avenue was still owned by the Polish government, since all the documents of ownership had been burned when the Soviet Union bombed Warsaw. All attempts to realize the lion’s share of the inheritance in various Swiss banks came to nothing.

The money went into Michael’s bank account and he consulted with Gertruda about how to use it.

“It’s your money,” she said. “Do whatever you want with it.”

He sent half the sum to Anna Massini in Paris and the next day Gertruda found the rest of the money in an envelope on her bed.

“What’s this supposed to be?” she asked in amazement.

“You told me to do what I want with the money,” he replied. “I want you to be able to spoil yourself a little, to buy whatever you want and couldn’t allow yourself before, to take a trip, to work less.”

She wept with emotion and that same day she announced that she had decided to give the money to her parents. Michael went with her to their house in Starogard. They found the old couple living in greater poverty than he had remembered. The two carried on with much difficulty, the mother in a wheelchair and the father leaning on a cane. Their condition grew worse from one day to the next. Their house needed many repairs. The roof leaked, the walls were peeling, and the plumbing was rotten. They were shocked when Gertruda gave them the money.

“My life is fine and I’m happy,” their daughter told them. “I don’t need this money.”

Two days later, she returned to Israel with Michael.

“I’ve got a feeling I won’t see my parents again in this world,” she said.

From then to her dying day, she didn’t leave Israel.

When Gertruda and Michael returned to Israel, a letter from Paris was waiting for Michael:

Life returned to normal. Michael found work in a big travel agency in Tel Aviv and rented a nicer and bigger apartment for him and Gertruda. She furnished it modestly and happily followed Michael’s progress at work.

In 1962, Yad Vashem granted Gertruda Babilinska the title of Righteous Gentile and after Michael married, she moved to Beit Lokner, a home for Righteous Gentiles in Nahariya.

“I’m an Israeli,” she would say proudly. “This is my home. I don’t have anything outside of Israel.”

As an expert in tourism for pilgrims, Michael Stolowitzky had to move to the United States, but he came once a month to visit Gertruda. On those visits, it was he who brought her the chocolate she loved.

On March 1, 1995, when she was ninety-three years old, Gertruda fell ill and told Michael that she felt that her death was near. He sat at her bed in the hospital in Nahariya day and night. Her last words were: “Take care of yourself, my son. We’ll see each other up there, in Heaven.” She died with Lydia Stolowizky’s wedding ring on her finger.

On Thursday, March 5, an elaborate funeral was prepared in the plot for the Righteous Gentiles in the cemetery at Kiryat Shaul. Representatives of Yad Vashem prepared speeches and Michael also asked to say a few words at the grave of the woman who had become his mother.

But the body was late. Embarrassed and tense, Michael phoned the ambulance driver who was supposed to bring it from the hospital and asked nervously: “Where’s the body?” The driver was surprised at the question. “As far as I know, they already buried her,” he replied.

Stunned, Michael phoned the hospital and discovered, after a brief explanation, that a family from Carmiel had come to the hospital the night before and identified Gertruda as their deceased relative. The body had been taken to the cemetery in Carmiel and buried during the night.

The chief rabbi of Carmiel refused to disinter the body, but after the family from Carmiel returned to the hospital and identified
the correct body of their relative, he gave his permission. Gertruda’s body was taken out of the grave and transported in a helicopter to the cemetery in Kiryat Shaul. The eulogy was delivered by Father Daniel Rufeisen, who was born in Poland as a Jew, hid in a monastery during the war, converted to Christianity, and settled in Israel. He said: “God wanted Gertruda Babilinska to be buried twice, once in a Jewish grave and once in a Christian grave. No other event could be more symbolic. Gertruda was both a devout Catholic and also a Jew. May her memory be blessed.”

Gertruda was laid to rest a few minutes before sundown on the Sabbath.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, 2004, Etti Bernson, the daughter-in-law of Elisheva, Karl Rink’s daughter, took the stage. Elisheva, confined to a wheelchair, sat in the front of the auditorium and listened to the piece read by Etti from the book
In the Heart of Darkness
, which had recently been published by Yad Vashem. The book was written by Aryeh Segelson, a retired judge, who told of his uncle Moshe Segelson: