the mother who sold her daughter Flashcards
1
Q
difference for Sarna / ROmek on aryan side
A
Sarna lived in own house and Romek lived in hole behind the stove in that house. Easier for women than men on Aryan side – circumcision (birthplace film)
2
Q
pre war antisemitism
A
- As far as the Allies were concerned, the matter ended here. With Poland’s signature under the treaty, the rights of the ethnic minorities inhabiting its territories were guaranteed. The new Polish Republic, however, having barely emerged from years of bitter fighting for its political independence and struggling to formulate and protect its newly achieved nationhood, found it hard to come to terms with its multi-ethnic character
Under its increasingly nationalistic governments, the rights of the two largest minorities – Ukrainians and Jews, – became progressively curtailed and challenged during the interwar period until finally, in 1934, Poland ‘refused to cooperate with the League of Nations in matters pertaining to the question of minorities protection.’
3
Q
treatment of Ukrainians pre war
A
- Towards its Ukrainian minority, Poland carried out determined Polonisation and discriminatory policies almost from the start. The republic reduced the number of Ukrainian-language schools, barred Ukrainians from higher education and government jobs, demolished Orthodox churches, and censored the Ukrainian press.
4
Q
Jewish treatment in Poland
A
- Yet almost from the birth of the Polish Republic, the ‘Jewish issue’ was on the public agenda. Discussions in Parliament and in the media suggested ‘solutions’ to ‘the problem’, which, depending on political orientation, ranged from voluntary or forced emigration to Palestine and ‘de-Judaization’ of Poland to demands for complete assimilation.
5
Q
shtetl life
A
- The shtetl Jew fulfilled the unenviable role of an intermediary between the village, the landed estate, and the town - of necessity tolerated, but often mistrusted. If for the Jew, the illiterate dirty peasant was a figure of derision, in peasant folklore, the figure of a sly and crafty ‘infidel’ Jew was an object of hate and fear.
- Easter holidays kept many Jewish families, especially in the countryside, indoors, out of fear of assault by their deeply religious peasant neighbours
6
Q
pogroms and national conflict
A
- Pogroms and massacres were a familiar part of Jewish experience in times of national strife or conflict, when the level of threat to the shtetl communities inevitably intensified. During the Ukrainian national uprising (1648–49), for instance, Jews, regarded by the Ukrainians as the tool of Polish oppression, were massacred
7
Q
relationship of Jews to soviets
A
- The Poles – who look at the Soviet invasion in terms of a collusion between Poland’s two greatest enemies, Germany and Russia, to obliterate her again from the map of Europe – refer to the brutal occupation of their land and mass deportations aimed at destroying the country’s social infrastructure. The left-wing Jews, on the other hand, though they were by no means a majority within the Jewish population, focused primarily on the new system of social justice, liberation from Polish anti-Semitism, and protection from German genocide. My mother’s case, it has to be said, would confirm the Poles’ suspicions, as she took a clearly pro-Soviet stance.
8
Q
early and casual experiences of antisemitism
A
o ‘Boys would sometimes throw stones or shout abuse as we were passing,’- at the Jewish inn- she says. The very matter-of-fact way she glides over what must have been her earliest encounters with the animosity of the outside world takes me slightly aback, as though this was just part of Jewish life.
9
Q
idea of antisemitism as learnt?
A
o In primary school - Paszkowski apparently used to shout at his Jewish playmates, ‘Jews to Palestine!’ Most likely he was just parroting the ubiquitous political slogan of the Right. The Polish state considered the large number of Jews within its new borders a ‘problem’, and emigration of Jews from Poland was publicly debated as a possible solution
10
Q
how nazism in Germany effected Poland
A
- The anti-Jewish campaign intensified in the 1930s when the Nazi Party came to power in neighbouring Germany from 1935 to 1937, and was the most severe and widespread, with random attacks in the streets, on commuters, and on students and plundering of Jewish shops. Between twenty and thirty Polish Jews were killed and an estimated 2,000 injured
11
Q
reference to universities
A
- In the 1930s - Political parties with nationalistic and anti-Semitic agendas gained influence among university students. Members of the All-Poland Youth an association of the nationalist youth groupings, had already voted in one of its earlier national rallies (1921) to exclude Jewish students from university fraternities and other student organizations. Now they demanded restrictions on the number of Jewish students at the universities
12
Q
boys education
A
- Heder- where all boys went to school- would spend the day repeating Hebrew verses from the holy scripture. Very few boys went through the state education system.
13
Q
social interaction of jews and non Jews
A
- In the socio-economic landscape of Galicia, individual ethnic communities, the Poles, the Ukrainians and the Jews, lived side by side, with a minimum of social interaction, separated by barriers of language, lifestyle, and religious prejudice.
14
Q
Jewish and non-Jewish interaction
A
- In the other room, the daughter of the house, Pesia, (‘who spoke good Polish’) served meals to the ‘regulars’ – the local Polish elite. These included the school headmaster, the town mayor, the policeman, the judge, the elderly doctor… ‘Their anti-Jewish sentiments obviously never stopped them from enjoying Jewish cooking - doubtless the best and most hygienic food around.’
Neither did it stop them from marrying Jewish women. And many did. Take the judge, for instance – he was married to a local Jewish girl. And yet, he was a well-known anti-Semite”
15
Q
memory as a constant intellectual exercise
A
- Mother pauses for a moment and reflects- Neither did it stop them from marrying Jewish women
16
Q
emergence of zionism
A
- Emerged in wake of ww1. , particularly fertile ground in Poland.
- Nothing short of a revolutionary re-examination of the diaspora experience began to take place, calling for a redefinition of Jewish identity, not as a religious but a national minority.
17
Q
Sara’s own engagement with zionism
A
- Zionist youth movements sprang up all over the country, encompassing a diverse political spectrum with new ideas being passionately argued in youth clubs, in family circles, and among friends
‘Evenings at home were often spent in animated and heated discussions; my brothers and sisters would gather with their friends round the kitchen table,’ my mother remembers.
18
Q
split in Jews over zionism
A
- There were a few who tried to undermine her authority. Two Jewish brothers, she remembers, sons of a local baker, ‘simple, uneducated men’, denounced her as a Zionist, a dangerous deviation in the Soviet ideological spectrum and, to make matters worse, someone with a family in Palestine
19
Q
courage of zionism
A
- Portrayed the courage and strength of the Jew going to Palestine, cultivating the land etc. This was in obvious contrast to the diaspora Jew, whose character was distorted by centuries of hate and prejudice and whose life was governed from cradle to grave by religious Orthodoxy and tradition.
20
Q
idea of physical objects and memory
A
- Wanted to keep her plaits, her hair she chopped off- ‘I wanted to keep it, to remind me of who I once was. I had nothing else, you know – there were no photos, no objects from the past, no people who would remember you when you were young, nothing. So I wanted to keep something.’
21
Q
absence of objects of memory for Jews
A
- No photos or documents escaped the conflagration. My father emerged from the war with none.
- ‘You could not find the house,’ he told her, ‘because it was not there! As soon as the Germans entered the town, the local górale’ (mountain folk) ‘burned down the Jewish homes.
- The Jewish Nurses Training School, established in July 1923 …. During the war, First it was relocated, together with the hospital, into the Jewish ghetto area of Warsaw, where its staff and students were gradually decimated through hunger, disease, killings, and deportations to camps. Finally it ceased to exist when the ghetto itself was liquidated
22
Q
physical removal of Irena from her mother’s descriptions
A
- The images that take shape in my mind as I listen to Mother’s stories from the village of Borek – the place where, I estimate, she stayed the longest during the war – have all the elements of a small-scale pageant…. There are scenes of gripping drama. The protagonist performs acts of daring as she’s subjected to the violence of the terrifying night raid or cleverly negotiates her way through the pitfalls in an almost comical setting, cohabitation with German soldiers. These situations would be, just like in a medieval pageant, farcical, absurd, and uplifting, in their presentation of both courage and cowardice
23
Q
precision of her mother’s memory
A
- I begin to realize that the certainties of my mother’s memories are acquiring some blurred edges. The name of the widow Wawrzyncowa, for instance, that she so often mentioned, raised no echo with Irena or her cousin. And now this name Styrna crops up, a name that I had never heard from my parents
24
Q
the idea of memory coming from own perception
A
- My mother’s stories invariably convey the same sentiment. ‘I always felt,’ she says emphatically, ‘that their life in the ghetto was a hundred times easier than my existence on the outside, where I was exposed day in and day out to the scrutiny of strangers.
25
memory effected by exposure to danger
* Places always fell into two categories in Mother’s wartime terminology; they were either ‘not so dangerous’ or plain ‘dangerous’.
26
idea of taught prejudice
* Attended Catholic services to fit in - The sermons she heard in the church terrified her. Overtly anti-Semitic and inciting to violence, she thought. To the end of her life, my mother blamed Christianity for the popular anti-Jewish sentiment in the countryside. ‘When you are being told all your life that Jews were the Christ killers, that they drain the blood of innocent Christian children in ritual murder, that they are sinners who obstinately refuse the true (equals Christian) salvation, no wonder you believe that they are an evil force in society that should be eradicated.’
27
hyperboles
* Trip to Palestine- It was crazy, she reflects, to set out across Europe under a false identity and, most likely, on a counterfeit passport belonging to a man she did not trust. ‘I trembled at every border crossing. Every time the documents were taken away for inspection, I feared we might be arrested, and I would linger in some jail, with nobody knowing what had happened to me.’ I have always accepted my mother’s account of that trip to Palestine as a highly risky adventure, a unique act of daring. Yet, I later discover that it is, by now, well documented that, in the immediate post-war period, large groups of Jewish illegal immigrants, thousands of Holocaust survivors, were making their way out of Poland.
28
notion that two people can see things very differently
* Travelled back from Palestine under the care of a man whom took them first to Rome- I was awed by the Basilica of Saint Peter’s – its huge space, height, and colours. I had never seen anything like it. We climbed up to the galleries, where the guide did something quite unbelievable. He spotted a little blue-green mosaic stone of perhaps half a centimetre in size, loose in the wall. And right there, before my very eyes, the stone was gently wedged out of the wall and given to me!. My mother’s memories are of a different calibre. ‘Rome was where that man tried to dump us first,’
29
inherited political viewpoint
. ‘Stalin was not a good man…I know it…from my mum.’ This is the first time I hear anyone criticizing the ‘great leader’. My parents had never said anything negative about Stalin….. She lowers her voice. ‘He was an enemy of the Poles. He imprisoned and exiled many of them to camps in Siberia, where they suffered and perished. He killed Polish officers so that they would not fight against him…My father was one of them.’ She finally looks at me.
30
trauma effecting silence/ voice
* My father, as mentioned before, was rather reticent when it came to his wartime experiences, and it was only in his later years as he was preparing his testimony for the Holocaust Visual History Foundation that he began to mention some of the events. He also jotted down notes in a rather disorderly fashion on (many) separate sheets and scraps of paper, frequently referring to the same incident more than once. However, by contrast to my mother’s characteristically expressive depictions of scenes and people, his records consist almost entirely of dates, names, and facts the significance of which often escapes me
31
resentment of her mother
* If you just take the war, for instance,’ she says. ‘I would have had a much better chance to save myself had I been on my own. I was young, strong, did not look Jewish, and spoke good Polish. It was much more difficult with you by my side – it’s obvious, since who would want to hire a woman with a baby?.
* she confided in me that she felt entitled to nothing short of “a royal treatment” from her daughter, whose life she had saved, for the suffering she had endured and the sacrifices she had made
32
post war ability to feel emotion
* The resourcefulness and courage that sustained her over the last five years is suddenly gone. She has recurrent panic attacks and, for days if not weeks, is afraid to leave the apartment.
* In Krakow encountered other survivors- ‘Roise was sobbing and shaking uncontrollably as she was telling me how she had lost her two children and her husband. “This country has become one big graveyard!” she cried. She would not contemplate remaining in Poland,’
33
lack of joy because of war
* ‘Since the war, I can no longer sing,’ she would say, adding by way of explanation, ‘I did have a very good voice when I was young…a strong, warm alto. I loved singing and sang a lot, all the time and everywhere. Then, after the war, I realized that I could sing no more.’ She says it in a flat tone, in a very matter-of-fact way, as though it was just one more loss that she’d had to accept, like she had so many others
34
battle for survival continued post war
* For my mother, it seems, the battle for survival was not quite over yet. It just shifted onto different territory and was focused entirely on her child. In common with other survivors, she had a heightened sense of fear for her child, dictated not so much by anxiety over the future as by her own experience of the past.
35
trauma of children of the war
* Despite my occasional rebellion, I had obviously internalized my mother’s anxieties. It is touching to see how strenuously I tried, from a very young age, to reassure her at every opportunity as to my well-being. We sensed the dark places of their unspoken ordeals and strove hard not to give them any further cause to worry.
36
mother's mental health issues post war
* My mother was treated in Oxford for depression, insomnia, and anxiety by a sympathetic young psychiatrist who visited her at regular intervals. Yet none of it seemed to be making much difference, as she herself readily acknowledged. ‘He can’t really help me. Nobody can. There is no cure for my problems. He might as well stop coming.’ She died battling alone with her angry ghosts from the past.
37
continued fear of Poles at end of war
* As soon as the Soviet Army passed through the village, Sarna decided to flee. ‘I left Borek the very next day at dawn,’ she tells me. ‘I did not want to stay there even a day longer. I was scared that, once it was discovered who I was, they might kill me!’
* ‘Kill you?’ I repeat the words, rather startled. Was the moment of liberation, so eagerly awaited, a signal for a kind of free-for-all lawlessness? ‘Why?’ I ask. Out of resentment, not only for who I was, but also for having been deceiving them all those months, living in their midst under false pretences. People were killed in the last days and hours of the war and even after the war had ended, as we now well know
* The hostility against the Jewish returnees, lawlessness, looting, and even killings on the railways are mentioned in many accounts of the Jewish survivors
38
liberation of Soviets
* Got help from Soviet soldiers to travel in their army vehicles with them to Krakow- It seems quite unbelievable in the light of today’s knowledge that she would willingly and rather naively put her trust in the army notorious for its violence against women in conquered lands. Yet there she was – a single young woman sitting at the back of an open truck, entirely at the mercy of a group of war-brutalized soldiers.- dichotomy between perceived liberation and reality?
39
differing views of Soviet liberation
* I recently used the phrase ‘after the liberation’ in a conversation with a Polish friend of mine, and she scoffed. ‘Liberation, indeed! Some liberation it was, too! It might have after all been better had the Germans won the war.’ I stare in incomprehension. In our home, the events of 1945 were never referred to otherwise than as ‘the liberation’
40
feigned identity continuing post war
* I note that, in all the official documentation, he figures under the name of Stefan Janicki. He obviously must have decided to continue functioning under the Polish identity he’d adopted during the war, and I can’t help wondering whether it was simply a matter of expediency. On the one hand, there was undeniably pressure from within the new administration for the employees in exposed public positions to change their Jewish-sounding surnames; the incipient communist regime needed the credentials of good ethnic Poles working on its behalf to combat its own insecurity. On the other hand, Jews themselves often elected to retain the Polish names they had acquired during the occupation.- about her dad
41
notion of Jewish identity as transformed post war
* The seeds of my father’s disregard for his Jewish roots were no doubt sown much earlier, in his communist youth, but might the post-war discarding of his Jewish identity, to some extent, have been driven by the desire to compensate for those years when he was forced to be nothing else but a Jew?
By 1956 o The very word Jew or Jewish had disappeared from public life. It was no longer uttered in the public sphere. When I heard it mentioned in private, it was often in the context of a joke or an anti-Semitic remark that made me blush uneasily- shifts in the regime’s policies and the practices of ‘misremembering’ the Holocaust, denying that its primary target and victims were the Jews
42
orthodoxy pre war
* As far as I know, Orthodox Jewish women were supposed to wear wigs (the natural beauty of their hair might tempt other men)…. ‘I don’t in fact remember anybody in Tartaków wearing a wig. There wasn’t a hairdresser or a wig-maker there. Then, however, she recalls the wife of one of her uncles. ‘He made a good living by trading, and she could afford a dentist in Sokal and elegant dresses. Yes, she was the only one I recall wearing a wig.’ The wig is suddenly transformed from a symbol of submission, as I had thought of it up till now, into a mark of affluence, a luxury item
43
pre war view of women
* Mother gets quite passionate when it comes to the treatment of women within the Jewish tradition. ‘A religious Jew thanked God in his prayers every morning for not having created him a woman!’ she scoffs. ‘Can you comprehend this sort of mentality?’ – divide between when she was writing and when this happened- Girls were not expected to go to school at all. They were meant to stay at home and learn how to be good wives and mothers. Many women of my grandmother’s and mother’s generations could not even read or write!’
44
women in zionism
* Palestine- This new country was going to be built by a new kind of Jew – strong and proud, male and female side by side engaged in the hard physical labour of cultivating the land, and ready to defend him or herself against injustice
45
Jews persecution straight from German occupation
* For the Jews, the German occupation unfolded from the very start a nightmarish spectacle of unprecedented terror and brutality. The streets of Lvov became the scenes of arrests, sadistic humiliations, beatings, shootings, and massacres. The atrocities were perpetrated not only by the German soldiers but also by Ukrainian civilians, who were given free rein to take their revenge for the murders committed by the Soviet regime. About four thousand Jews perished in the city in the first three days.
46
German ordinances on Jews
* As the German social order took hold, ordinances directed at the Jewish population begin to rain down daily. Under punishment of death for non-compliance, Jews were now obliged to identify themselves in public with a blue and white armband worn on the sleeve of an outer garment. They were forbidden the use of public transport. They were obliged to surrender to the authorities their jewellery and their furs. Their food rations were reduced to starvation rates (253 calories a day).
* 8 November is also the date when the Germans announced the establishment of the Jewish ghetto. All Jews had to move in by December 15. Anyone found outside the ghetto walls after this date would be shot; German ordinances pasted all over the city made it quite clear
47
bridge of death
To get to the ghetto, one had to pass through what was to become known as ‘the bridge of death’ – where the first ‘selection’ took place. The old and feeble were targeted, beaten or shot at whim, belongings scattered or stolen, pillows ripped open in search of gold and diamonds. The signs were ominous, and the chances for survival in the ghetto seemed slim
48
balancing of perspective with info
* The chronicler of the destruction of Żółkiew’s Jewry, Gerszon Taffet, records, ‘The Germans set fire to the synagogue on the day they entered the city- not just relying on mum’s account. Putting it in bigger/ accurate picture
49
isolation of the ghetto
* Jewish ghetto in Rzeszcow where her father had gone in 1941- on 10 January 1942, it was closed off, imprisoning behind its three-meter-high wooden fences and walls approximately twelve thousand people. Its gates were guarded by Jewish and Polish police, and only those with work permits outside the ghetto were allowed out and in
50
persecution outside of the ghetto
* ‘a catching game’. It referred to the unexpected, sudden round-ups of civilians on the streets of Polish towns and cities by the German military. Out of the blue, a street would be cordoned off, people’s documents checked, and buildings searched. Those without proper documents would be arrested and sent to slave labour in Germany or concentration camps. Jews caught this way were often killed on the spot or transported to death camps.
51
inhumanity
* Described how she was taken to an office with the words “I brought a Jewess”- She was no longer a young woman or a person or a human being, but had suddenly transformed into this object called ‘Jewess’, and ‘they could do with me what they liked.
52
German awareness of polish aid
* ‘It is unfortunate’, declared a German proclamation issued in Lvov on 11 April, ‘that the rural population continues – nowadays furtively – to assists Jews, thus doing harm to the community.’
53
round ups on aryan side
part of everyday life and therefore a term in occupied Poland, łapanka comes from the Polish verb łapać (to catch) and means something like ‘a catching game’. It referred to the unexpected, sudden round-ups of civilians on the streets of Polish towns and cities by the German military. Out of the blue, a street would be cordoned off, people’s documents checked, and buildings searched. Those without proper documents would be arrested and sent to slave labour in Germany or concentration camps. Jews caught this way were often killed on the spot or transported to death camps.
54
inevitability of death for Jews was obvious
* Into the second year of German occupation, it was becoming increasingly clear that anyone marked as a Jew was condemned to death. All over the occupied territories, Jews were herded into the ghettos, from where regular transports were taking them to the extermination camps. There was virtually no way to break out of this masterly and efficiently devised chain of evil, except to attempt to escape from the ghetto
55
luck of her father's case
* Those found were shot. It is estimated that about twenty thousand people were murdered in the ghetto of Rzeszów. About a hundred of Rzeszów’s Jews survived the Holocaust in hiding and in camps- reference to her father’s own circumstance to truly show the horror- personal
56
aid of Ukrainians
“if anybody helped me during the war, I mean really helped, it was the Ukrainians, and not the Poles or the Jews”.
- Ukrainian help- Sarna’s sister Klara had ‘fragile health, already undermined by malnutrition’ - thought that moving to countryside would improve her health but she could not walk the distance & jews were not permitted to use public transport, ‘the offer of help came unexpectedly from the Ukrainian couple’, who persuaded a farmer to take her to countryside +
given identity documents by Ukrainian woman (this document bestowed nothing less than the right to exist. It was a passport to life. And to secure it was nothing short of a miracle- most people had to pay and were often scammed. She was given a real document for free)
+ when her father also made his escape from Lvov ;he did so with the assistance of the 25 year old son of a friendly Ukrainian family’.
57
ignorance of what the ghetto was
* first deportations of Rseszow ghetto - Romeks father among them - ‘admits that at the time, he had no real understanding of what such a ‘resettlement’ involved. “it will show you the extent of my ignorance, when I tell you that I had spent the whole of the night prior to my father’s departure preparing him for this unknown destination - sewing the few diamonds & the few rings left from Mother’s jewellery into the sleeve of his coat so that he could sell them when times got hard and making sure he had something to wear for the coming autumn & winter’
58
ghetto - interaction with outside world
* a thriving barter trade evolved between the ghetto and the world outside, as Jews were selling their last possession in exchange for food- Poles could see and involved - the local population became its primary beneficiary’ - “Poles were making money on Jewish misfortune. I saw for myself those pianos transported by peasants on their wagons along the cobbled roads out of Lvov”
59
divide between life outside and inside ghetto
* divide between who u were in the ghetto and who you were outside – transformed from a member of a subhuman species inhabiting the starving, tormented, and disease-ridden environment of the Jewish ghetto to an elegant young woman confidently hurrying along the streets to a date with her lover.
60
isolation of aryan side
* inside the ghetto, however terrible the situation, at least you were there together with your parents, siblings, or friends. But on the outside you would be completely alone, in a hostile environment, exposed and vulnerable, at the mercy of strangers’
61
courage of living outside ghetto
* I had a very good friend in the Lvov Ghetto … I begged her, “Mania, come with me. Together we would have a chance. With one looking after the baby and one working it would be much easier.” I tried so hard to persuade her, but she simply did not have the courage. Like many others, she was too scared to face the hostile world outside the ghetto walls and unwilling to abandon her parents
62
luck/ quid pro quo in irena's saving
* the young man was spotted by the German patrol policing the perimeter of the fence precisely at the moment he was lifting baby me over the fence into the ghetto. Since there were no longer any children in the ghetto
* ‘But there was another slim chance.’ My father takes up the story. ‘We knew of a Jewish woman who lived with a German officer as his mistress. And she agreed to plead with him. And it was through her that we succeeded in bribing the German. A large sum of money and gold was collected for you within the ghetto. And we bought you out!’ The smile in his eyes when he turns to me reflects both his pride and the immense relief he felt…. not only that.’ She giggles. ‘Next morning, this German first came on his own to check for himself, as he put it, “whether the room would be suitable for a child”. And only then he did send for someone to fetch you! A truly touching concern, don’t you think, all things considered? And he even gave you some chocolate before he left.’
63
moral dilemma faced by Poles helping Jews
* The carpenter in Jaszczów almost fainted when he saw me again. You should have seen his face.’ Mother laughs. ‘He hoped he had got rid of me for good. He had even taken me to the station in his cart to make sure I boarded the train! But what could I do? I had nowhere to go from Rzeszów, so I returned to Jaszczów. And, to give him his due, he did take me back. ‘He was not a bad man,’ she reflects. ‘But the neighbours kept badgering him. I overheard them talking, so I know. They were scaring him. Not only would his own house be burnt down for harbouring a Jewess, the whole village would suffer…And finally, he asked me to go.’
64
unforgiving view towards Poles who didn't help Jews
* ‘I do not remember ever leaving you at Ryncarz’s place,’ Mother adds. ‘That is why I say’ – she justifies her earlier harsh comments – ‘that the Ryncarzes did not do much for me, in practical terms. Obviously he protected us overall, passed messages, information, and so on. But on a day-to-day basis, I relied on the Gavors. You liked Mr Gavor very much.
65
Polish underground and aid
* Jews, if not treated with outright hostility, as was often the case, were considered too much of a risk for the Polish underground. And as for supporting the ‘Jewish only’ resistance unit, the standard argument was that the Polish underground did not have at its disposal sufficient resources or weapons to do so…. To give him his due, however,’ my father notes for the record, ‘Ryncarz did offer to provide us with two Aryan ID documents.’- different reactions to lack/limit of Polish help
66
what life was like as a Ukrainian during war
* When Sarna was questioned by official when she was living with Widow- What was a Ukrainian woman with a child and no relatives doing in the village? The Ukrainians – he did not disguise his resentment – were doing very well under the Germans. They had their own autonomous region and were promised independence. They had inherited jobs and properties expropriated from their Polish and Jewish owners. So why was she burying herself in a Polish village? Was she really a Ukrainian? She spoke very fluent Polish for a Ukrainian, he commented dryly.- not just fear but good of their condition
67
Poles as evil according to Sarana
* Wartime behaviour of the Poles according to her daughter ‘weighed heavily on her mind’ “I could not imagine shaking hands with a Pole after the war!”- it was not just the material benefits they derived from Jewish misery. It was abetting the killings, the denounciations, and the cold indifference that I cannot understand or forgive. It hurts too much…. Eternal shame on them”
68
communism and aid to Jews
civilian round-ups on streets of Polish towns & cities where people’s documents checked and building searched – Sarna one day almost caught up in one – so she ran to an old friend’s house from the communist days in Krakow- were exceptions to Poles helping Jews
69
knowledge was key
* Today I know that there were organizations like Żegota and other groups or individuals active in the cities who were helping Jews. But at the time I had no idea! I had no money, no contacts. How could I survive on my own, with a child, in a city?
70
Sarna's vulnerability as a woman
* Irena says – “I am struck by this motif of physical vulnerability that I keep encountering in Mother’s narrative. It might have perhaps been easier for a Jewish woman than for a man to find shelter, to live (in hiding or in the open) under the disguise of an assumed identity. Yet by the same token, being a woman and alone made her easy prey for all manner of ruthless predators. She had to be constantly on her guard”
71
expectations of female saviours
* Then, a glimmer of hope – a German woman with a small child entered the room, perhaps the wife of one of the station officials. ‘That sight of another mother with a child in her arms was to me like an appearance of humanity in hell.’…. A ray of hope entered my heart. I looked into that woman’s face for any sign of that shared feeling of motherhood, of that universal human bond stronger than prejudice or nationality…’ She pauses her narration to ascertain that I fully grasped the extraordinary significance of that encounter- what is given emphasis in the story, when a sympathetic response from one mother could determine the fate of another whose life hung in the balance….. But when asked, the woman responded without any hesitation, and arrogantly, ‘Ja, sicher, eine Judin!’ (Undoubtedly, a Jewess!) – thus condemning Sarna to death
72
Jews working for Germans
man who questioned her when taken off the train even though she had Ukrainian documents- He was obviously working for the Gestapo. Many Jews did.
73
antisemitism was admired
* Strengthened in her determination not to reveal her true identity, she now turned her back to the Jew, insulting him in the nastiest and most spiteful tone of voice she could muster. ‘Ja nie rozmawiam z żydowskim parchem’ (I do not speak with Jewish scum).This saved her life
74
Sarna privy to antisemitism casually under fake identity
* Manged to get lodgings under a widow and had to use her fake identity of being Ukrainian. The widow would treat Sarna to ‘precautionary tales about Jews… Jews steal Christian babies, gouge their eyes out, and take their blood for making the Passover matzos.’
75
being a woman with fake identity was somewhat more empowering
* Under hidden identity Sarna now had own independence – hid the dad
o For my benefit, a charade and pretence had to be kept that Pietrek and Janka (as they were known to me – I had no idea that the man was my father) just came to visit. At my bedtime, they would say good-bye to me, and my mother would blow out the light. Then the door would be opened and closed with a bang to simulate the sound of them leaving the house.- rumours spread as she was buying more milk and bread
so she brought in 6 German soldiers to live with her for 6 weeks She slept with me on the bed; the soldiers slept on the floor. She cleaned, washed, and cooked for them and pretended not to know much German…. they shared their food rations with her, so she had more to put on the table than just kasha or potatoes
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Sarna's sense of holocaust inevitability
* Powell - Sara was sent, as a young girl, on errands to a nearby village, she would have to cross the forest to get there, but was never worried – ‘no one in those days felt that it might not be safe’
* Sara (Mother) was proud of being Jewish and had no sense of inferiority – large population in the town = strong sense of identity
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Sarna's early signs of modernity
* Sara’s elder sisters, Leah and Bluma were forging their own way towards modernity and emancipation, marrying men of their choice
* Enlisted as a student at the Faculty of Law at Kraków University in 1933
* Between 1930 and 1935 Sara’s older siblings all left Poland for Palestine, whilst she was already in Kraków, falling in love with a student communist
