Gertruda's Oath: A Child, a Promise, and a Heroic Escape During World War II (9 page)

“It’s awful, Mr. Stolowitzky,” the woman added. “Berlin has turned into hell. Anti-Semitism is rampant, the Jews are thrown out of their jobs or are arrested, every one of us is doing all we can to escape from here.”

The conversation was cut off.

Jacob Stolowitzky clutched his head in his hands. He had been following events in Germany in the newspaper, had read about increasing abuses against Jews, but his plant was under foreign ownership. After all, he himself was a foreign citizen who did business with the German government. It didn’t occur to him that Germany would dare do anything bad to foreign citizens.

He went home despondent, recalling the bleak deathbed prophecies of his father who had seen what was happening and understood the inevitable process of incitement against Jews. Angrily, he told his wife about the arrest of the manager and the expulsion of the engineers.

“I have to consult with my lawyer in Berlin,” he said. “I’ll go there today”

She tried to stop him.

“The Germans will arrest you, too,” she said. “There’s talk of war in Europe. Wait until things calm down.”

He took her hand.

“I have to,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back in a few days.”

One of the maids packed his traveling case, and he said goodbye to his wife and son. On his way out, he met Gertruda.

“I’m going,” he said. “Take good care of Lydia and Michael.”

She looked at him with dread. Her senses told her that he was going on a dangerous trip.

“Yes, sir, I’ll take care of them as best I can,” she replied.

Emil carried his suitcase to the car.

“To the railroad station,” Stolowitzky ordered his chauffeur.

He got into the first-class carriage and sank into the soft seat. As the train moved, Jacob Stolowitzky looked out the window at Warsaw receding in the distance.

He was sure he’d be back in a few days.

School ended as usual, late in the afternoon. Twilight was falling as Helga left school and walked home, wrapped in her coat, wool gloves warming her hands, along a street where signs of the Kristallnacht pogrom were still evident. The display windows of shops had been smashed and
JEW
was written on their doors. Her heart stopped at the sight of SS men dragging an old Jew into a gray car. For a moment, she imagined she saw her father among them, wearing a uniform and pitiless like them, but he wasn’t there. She
thought of his relationship with her mother, destroyed recently because he insisted on staying in the SS. She pictured family memories from the recent past, walks in charming landscapes, sailing on the lake of Berlin, a picnic in the forest, joyous birthday celebrations. In all those scenes, Karl Rink appeared as a devoted father, smiling, and happy. She remembered days when she was proud of him. What had happened to her father, she asked herself, what had made him change his skin, turn his back on his way of life, stick with the beasts who ruled the country she loved with a regime of thugs?

As she was still sunk in her thoughts, a group of boys blocked her way. She tried to get away from them, but they surrounded her and called her names. Their leader, a strong, fair-haired boy, approached the girl, pulled her hair, and cursed at her. Helga tried to resist but he punched her and pushed her down on the sidewalk. Her nose started bleeding. The boys laughed. “Stinking Jew,” shouted their leader, and he kicked Helga. “That’s only the beginning. We’ll be back here tomorrow.”

In pain, she stumbled home. She wiped the blood off her nose, hoping her mother wouldn’t notice. But Mira saw it at once.

“What happened?” she cried in amazement.

Helga told her.

Mira washed her daughter’s face and bandaged her nose. Helga locked herself in her room. The house felt dreary. Mira walked around like a shadow of herself. She thought of what had happened to her daughter and knew that such things would happen again, maybe worse. Yes, she’d tell her husband everything, but she didn’t believe he could do anything. She knew it wasn’t easy for him, that he was torn between the party and his family. Her heart ached at his refusal to resign from his job with the SS. She smoked nervously and drank a glass of wine, unable to think properly.

Karl Rink didn’t come home much and today, just when his wife
and daughter needed him the most, he wasn’t there. When he did come, late at night, Mira was lying on the sofa in the living room, smoking.

She gave him a brief account of the incident. Karl Rink sighed in pain, went to his daughter’s room, and hugged her.

“Don’t worry,” he said in a soothing voice. “It will pass. Everything will be fine.”

Helga lowered her eyes. She knew that nothing would be fine, nothing would go back to the way it was.

“Do you know who did that?” He pointed to the bandage on her nose.

Yes, she knew. His name was Paul, the neighbors’ son. In the past he had always smiled at her. She couldn’t imagine that someday that nice boy would turn into a monster.

On June 20, 1939, the train from Warsaw to Berlin was unusually empty. Jacob Stolowitzky sat tensely in his compartment, upset by the gloomy thoughts about the danger lurking for his business in Germany. His only consolation was his upcoming meeting with his attorney. He wanted to believe that, in spite of everything, things could still be done legally in Berlin.

Facing him, in the first-class compartment, sat a German couple. The husband rode silently the whole way, and his wife clutched a whining baby. A waiter passed among the compartments, offering hot drinks and food. Jacob Stolowitzky wasn’t hungry. Nausea climbed up his throat and grew worse every moment.

At the border station, the train stopped and German guards entered the car, carefully examining Stolowitzky’s Polish passport.
They asked the reason for his trip to Berlin. He said he was traveling on business.

“Jew?” they asked.

“Yes.”

They grimaced. “What business do you have in Berlin?”

“I’ve got a factory.”

“It won’t belong to you for long,” hissed one of the guards mockingly and his companion asked, “When do you intend to return to Poland?”

“This week.”

They stamped his passport reluctantly and left.

When the train continued, Jacob Stolowitzky looked out the window and saw military traffic on the roads. Trucks packed with soldiers and cases of ammunition moved along slowly in long columns, towing machine guns and field kitchens. In the railroad station in Berlin, there were more soldiers carrying equipment and weapons.

Jacob took a cab to his lawyer’s office. He saw
JEWS OUT
written on smashed display windows of shops on the main streets and Nazi thugs marching on the sidewalk with wooden cudgels in their hands.

The lawyers’ office was locked, and a sign on the door read:
CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
After feverish searching, Stolowitzky came to his lawyer’s house. He saw a man who seemed to have grown old overnight. He invited him in. The lawyer corroborated all his client’s fears: the Nazis were quickly taking over factories owned by Jews, limiting the movements of the Jews, and imposing heavy punishments on anyone who dared violate their increasingly strict orders.

“None of us knows what will happen tomorrow,” said the lawyer. “They took away my license, I lost almost all my clients who no
longer want any contact with Jews. My colleague, a Jewish lawyer, who dared complain to the police against a Christian businessman, was beaten up, stripped naked, and forced to walk in the street with a sign hung around his neck by the police reading:
I WILL NEVER AGAIN COMPLAIN TO THE POLICE.
Many of us are escaping from here. Others are staying at home and shaking with fear.” He revealed that in a few days, he and his family were moving to Palestine. “I tried to sell my property,” added the lawyer. “But there are no buyers. Everyone is waiting for the Jews to leave and our property will go to the rabble for free.”

“What can I do to save my business?” asked Jacob Stolowitzky anxiously. “Is there any point in going to court?”

“No,” said the lawyer sadly. “They’ll just throw you out.”

Stolowitzky glanced from the window to the bustling street. Life appeared to be going on as usual, but in fact it was hell.

“I’ve got only one piece of advice for you,” said the lawyer. “Go immediately to the railroad station and return home before it’s too late.”

“The situation is that bad?”

“Worse. There are signs that war is approaching. If I were you, I would also weigh the possibility of taking the whole family and getting out of Poland. In my opinion, that’s liable to be one of the first targets the Nazis are planning to hit.”

The train to Warsaw was to leave at dawn the next day. Jacob Stolowitzky took a room in a hotel near the station and ordered a phone line home. Two hours later, he heard Lydia’s voice.

“How are things in Berlin?” she asked.

“Very bad. I’m coming home.”

Emil met him at the railroad station and drove him home. Jacob was tired. He sat down in the backseat and was silent all the way. Lydia greeted him in the vestibule.

“What happened?” she wanted to know.

He told her.

She gave him a telegram from his agent in Paris.

He read it quickly:

Stolowitzky’s eyes sparkled with joy.

“At long last, good news,” he said to his wife.

“You’re going to Paris?” she asked.

“Of course.”

He went to Michael’s room, hugged and kissed him.

“I’m going again,” he said. “When I come back, I’ll bring you a terrific present.”

“When will you come back?” asked Michael.

“In a few days.”

He phoned his agent in Paris and told him he would be there the next day.

A few hours later, in the train that left for Paris at dawn, he thought, One door was closed, but another door has opened.

Karl Rink was restless. His head was spinning and he was on edge. With clenched fists, he walked around the house of the boy who had hit his daughter, trying to decide what to do with him. He remembered the days when everything was fine in Germany, days when he could have complained to the police about the boy who had attacked
his daughter and expected something would be done about it. But everything was different now. The police certainly wouldn’t accept a complaint against someone who hit a Jewish girl, and he couldn’t do much himself either. He couldn’t go into the boy’s house in an SS uniform and threaten him and his parents. One complaint from them to his superiors, and he would land in jail immediately. But Karl couldn’t just drop it. He just couldn’t let it go.

He knew the boy’s face and went on watching for him near his house, hiding behind an announcement board filled with Nazi manifestos. At nightfall, he saw him coming home, followed him, pulled out his gun, and hit him on the back of the head with the barrel. The boy collapsed with a groan of pain. “That’s for the girl you beat up,” he hissed. “If you touch her again, your punishment will be much worse.”

“Who are you?” groaned Paul. He couldn’t recognize Karl in the dark.

“Never mind,” growled Karl and hit him again with his gun.

Paul wept bitterly. “But she’s a Jew,” he tried to explain.

“Promise you won’t go near her again,” demanded Karl.

“Promise … promise …”

Karl Rink turned around and disappeared, and the boy stumbled home. His mother was scared when she saw him.

“What happened to you?”

“Somebody beat me up.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see in the dark. He said it was because I took care of some Jewish girl in our class.”

“My poor boy.” His mother clasped him to her breast. “The Jews are a curse. Don’t go near them. Hitler will take care of them.”

•   •   •

When Karl returned home, he found Helga and her mother sitting next to each other. The windows and doors were locked.

“Paul won’t hurt you anymore,” he said.

“You’re sure?”

“Trust me. I know.”

“I’m not sure I’ll go to school at all,” said Helga. “If not Paul, some other anti-Semite will come. I’m scared I’ll get worse than a punch in the nose.”

He wanted to comfort her but he didn’t know what to say. She looked out the window. It was raining again.

“Father,” she said, “Mother and I don’t feel safe here. It gets worse from day to day and you can’t take care of everybody who decides to attack us because we’re Jews.”

He went to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

“I love the two of you,” he said. “I love you more than anything else in the world. Please, have a little patience. The persecution of the Jews won’t last forever.”

His hand gave her a wave of warmth, as in the past.

“Thanks for trying to persuade us.” She made a great effort to get the words out of her mouth. “But that won’t help, Father. You won’t dare to look directly at the truth, you delude yourself that you can go on for a long time being in the SS and being part of a Jewish family. It’s only a question of time until something bad will happen to you and to us.”

Karl gave her a long look and then he said to his wife: “Helga may be right. The only solution is for you to leave here with her. If you stay in Berlin, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to go on living calmly.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Mira. “This is my home. I can’t leave my parents. They’re elderly and not in good health and they need me. Nobody will throw us out of here.”

He sat down across from her with an expression of pain on his face.

“Don’t be stubborn,” he demanded.

“Leave us alone, Karl. Go away from here. Go back to your friends.”

“You have no right to risk your life. You have no right to risk Helga’s life.”

“She’s a big girl. Let her decide for herself what to do.”