Authors: Halina Wagowska
The Testimony (2 page)
My parents must have followed a rule of ‘not in front of the child’, for I never witnessed, nor was I aware of, any conflict or angry exchanges between them. Is it possible that there never were any? This made dealing with conflict later in real, unsheltered life a bit difficult for me for a while.
Looking back at my parents’ 1930s parenting skills with the greater wisdom of the present time, I see much of value. I was disciplined with reasoned disapproval, and recall having an early sense that rights are connected to obligations. Corporal punishment was anathema. When a new teacher in my primary school smacked my palm with a ruler, my parents kicked up a fuss and their protests about corporal punishment were mentioned in an article in the local newspaper. I was never told to do or think something ‘because I say so’. My right to receive explanations and negotiate complaints was really a lesson in respect and reciprocity. And my parents’ affection was never conditional.
My parents believed that if one was not crippled, physically or mentally, then there was an obligation to be an active member of society—not just to look after one’s own backyard but to help those who cope less well.
I knew my parents only as a child, so wonder how valid these assessments of them are. But they are all I have. When interviewed by a psychologist in 1995 for the project ‘Holocaust Child Survivors: Scars left 50 years on’, I asked what builds resilience. The interviewer said it could be forged from emotional security in formative years and, like an inner rod of iron, it could prevent one from crumbling under blows, humiliations and in adversities. This made sense to me.
My parents were agnostics. While of Jewish origin, neither their appearance nor their name was Semitic. I don’t know why they did not obtain false Aryan papers, as some others did, and move to another town to try to escape Hitler’s Final Solution.
It was not a large room, yet I think it revealed a lot about a sheltered, carefree childhood in a middle-class family. Shelves held my books, crayons, various games, strangely shaped stones, seashells, an ornate box full of old photographs, a box brownie camera and, later, a stamp collection. There was a small, upright piano, my bed and wardrobe, a little table and chair near the window. When I started school, the small table was replaced by a student’s writing desk.
The window looked down from our first-floor flat onto a square courtyard surrounded by other apartment buildings. Housekeepers met there for their daily gossip or to have their fortunes told by itinerant Gypsies. Buskers, alone or in duets, sang heart-rending ballads, invariably about a maiden seduced and abandoned. Housekeepers with tear-stained faces appeared at open windows, and threw down small coins.
Puzzled then, I now know that this entertainment reflected life in the rural areas, a legacy of the feudal times when the lord of the manor and his sons ‘had their way’ with village maidens. The housekeepers, mostly women from the country, identified with this popular melodrama. But for me it was a bewildering glimpse into the real world from which my room sheltered me.
There were various items of decoration in my room: pictures, a colourful woven wall-hanging and a large stork made of wire and wool. It had a beady eye in its cocked head and was about to take a step with its one raised leg. Mother had made it at a time when it was much taller than I was. Mother urged me to change or rearrange my art objects, in a nudge towards my appreciation of the finer things in life.
My most treasured possessions were my photographs: either duplicates of those displayed in family albums or those not good enough to display. This black-and-white world of family members living in other cities, of the places we had visited—me as a grinning, toothless baby and my parents before they were married—endlessly held my fascination and filled me with imaginings. Mother’s dress and hat from the 1920s seemed very funny: I thought she had acted in some comedy show.
In a special envelope proclaiming that this photograph had won first prize at a photo competition was a picture of me as a three-year-old about to hug a large Alsatian dog. An enlarged and framed copy of it hung in our foyer and throughout my childhood most of our visitors exclaimed, ‘Oh, what a beautiful dog!’ Nary a word about me. Great damage to the psyche can result from being upstaged by a dog in one’s formative years, but I too thought the dog was lovely.
The stamp collection started when I was about eight and recovering from diphtheria. In those days, before antibiotics, the received medical wisdom was to have a long recovery period in virtual isolation to prevent the onset of complications. I was housebound for three months, mostly in my room. Homework sent from school did not fill those endless days, but my father’s idea of philately did. Each day he gave me a packet of used stamps from all over the world. I was to find their countries of origin on the map, look up basic information about each country in a special book and place them in the proper order in the stamp album. I loved doing that. Each evening I presented a geography lecture to my parents and Stasia. It was brief but in-depth, with the help of a globe and a pointer. Stamp collecting became a hobby, and I assembled several albums full of stamps from many countries.
My visitors were mainly school friends and younger cousins, and we played my various games, drew pictures or just chatted. The janitor of our building had a twin son and daughter who were about my age and I often invited them to play with me, but all they wanted to do was to play a tune on the piano with one finger. I was puzzled because I thought everyone had a piano and all the other things I had.
This cocoon was abruptly shattered a short time after Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. When war broke out I was due to start my fourth year of primary school.
A few days later—I am not certain of the exact date, but the memory of the day is very sharp—we were having breakfast when an armed German soldier burst in and asked Father whether we were Jews. He then called up several civilian men and, using his rifle as a pointer, indicated which items in our flat were to be removed and loaded onto the truck waiting in the street outside.
He yelled something at my parents and pointed his rifle at them. He hit my father repeatedly with his rifle butt, demanding his wallet, mother’s jewellery, and our watches.
Father gave him his wallet and Mother took off and gave him her silver chain with a pendant that held a small portrait of my grandmother inside. Then he took their wedding rings. Stasia pushed me into a corner, stood in front of me, prayed with her rosary and made frequent signs of the cross. The soldier went into every room and opened all the drawers and cupboards. He took a bottle of Stasia’s homemade brandy from the larder and drank from it as he went about. He laughed and said it was ‘
sehr gut!
’ (very good).
At one stage he went down to check the truck and sent it away. Another empty one arrived soon afterwards. Some neighbours stood around and watched the loading of the trucks. Several of them displayed Nazi flags from their windows to indicate their German origin. Previously friendly neighbours had suddenly become a threat. Later we wondered if any of them had ‘dobbed us in’.
On his return the soldier spent time in my room, and I watched as they carried out my piano, the desk, the shelves, the stork and a large bundle of smaller items wrapped in the bedcover. The soldier, a bit tipsy now, sang German army songs loudly and still carried his rifle at the ready. It was well after midday by the time they had finished and left. The four of us hugged in a mix of shock and relief. I think from then on I was in a state of shock for months.
The place was unrecognisable. Much glass and china lay shattered on the floor; pictures, drapes and most of the furniture had gone. The wardrobes were only partly ransacked and some clothing was left strewn about. Stasia’s room suffered least. Her religious pictures were left alone but they took her fur coat. (This had been my parents’ gift for her birthday and was a valued possession.) She sobbed uncontrollably for many hours.
In my room, my mattress was on the floor among scattered books, shells and pebbles. My treasured photographs had been tipped out of their pretty box, which the soldiers had taken. I put them in a plain cotton pouch and cherished them as a hidden treasure.
Such a sudden loss of the material possessions acquired over years of work and saving—inherited family heirlooms as well as gifts and souvenirs—had a lasting effect on us. Objects became devalued and soon went unlamented in the face of the increasing loss of lives.
For many people this devaluation persisted for a long time after the war. For me, since that day the soldiers took our things away, objects have not regained their previous value and importance. Photographs are the exception; I feel their loss keenly. I would give the proverbial arm and a leg for one photograph of my parents.
Stanisława Lemanska, affectionately called Stasia, ran our nuclear family of mother, father and daughter. She came to us when I turned four and Mother wanted to go back to work. My parents interviewed her and, although I had a major part in that interview, I cannot recall it. Yet I know every detail of it from an often-repeated after-dinner story.
When visiting friends asked where we had found such a good housekeeper, Father would invariably say, ‘Halina seduced her.’ I learned all this when I became old enough to stay up after dinner for a while.
The story went as follows: Stasia was shown around the five-room apartment we occupied on the first floor of a large block of flats. A room near the kitchen would be hers. She was very pleased with this and the salary my parents offered. Back in the lounge room to discuss other matters, she said she was surprised not to see any holy pictures or crucifixes with fonts of holy water. When my father said we were non-religious Jews, she started crying and explained that she had been warned not to work for Jews because they often threw their servants out of the windows.
My father got up to see her out. Just then I came in holding my teddy bear, saw this crying lady and proceeded to console her. I offered her my teddy bear and said that if she was hurting very badly my mummy could kiss it better. I gave her a hug for good measure. At this stage of the narrative Father always made the comment, ‘Stasia tells us that we are likely to throw her out of the window—not ground but first floor, mind you—and my daughter offers her my wife’s kisses!’
Instead of kisses Mother offered a suggestion: would Miss Lemanska consider staying with us for a few days as a trial? Stasia put me on her lap, looked at Mother’s smiling face, wiped her tears and stayed. For good.
She was in her early forties, single, of medium height with brown hair and hazel eyes. She moved purposefully and had a quiet dignity about her. Stasia came from a remote village and was one of a large family of siblings. Like many daughters of rural families, she went to the city to work as a servant. At that time, before the war, servants were in plentiful supply. Some were poorly paid or just given keep and shelter—usually a bed in a kitchen corner—in exchange for their services. Stasia had had several jobs before she came to us. She did not talk about them but told Mother she had once worked for a family of bad people.
An accomplished housekeeper and cook, Stasia was also a wizard at making preserves and liqueurs from a variety of fruits. Our pantry held many jars of preserves, and on long benches there were carboys for making brandies. Alternating layers of sugar and cherries or plums would ferment slowly into a delicious tipple. I loved the smells in our pantry.
Stasia was a pious Catholic. It was either for her birthday or Christmas that my parents gave her a rosary. It came all the way from the Vatican in a shiny box lined with mother-of-pearl, and had a certificate to say that it was blessed by the Pope. I was five or six years old then and distressed to see that Stasia cried when she opened or held this box. I asked my parents to take it away. Mother explained that Stasia cried because she was so happy to have it. My emotional range did not include tears of joy: you cried when you were hurting. When you were happy you jumped up, did cartwheels, sang at the top of your voice or, at least, told everybody how pleased you were. But tears? It was a worry.