Claiming My Place Read online

  Sura Gitla Gomolinska, nicknamed Gucia, at age twenty-one in Kraków, Poland, 1937

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

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  For the Six Million, whose stories can never be shared, and for Sabina

  —P.P.

  For Hendla Gomolinska and Chaya Lau, two strong, independent women who paved the way

  —H.R.W.

  Now go write it down on a tablet

  And inscribe it in a record,

  That it may be with them for future days,

  A witness forever.

  —Isaiah 30:8

  LIST OF CHARACTERS

  Sura Gitla Gomolinska, born May 15, 1916, nicknamed Gucia, changed her name in 1942 to Danuta Barbara Tanska, nicknamed Basia. Barbara/Basia were the names she kept for the rest of her life.

  GOMOLINSKI FAMILY

  Itzak Hirsch Gomolinski (father, known to his children as Tatte)

  Hendla Libeskind Gomolinska (mother)

  Hela (Jacob Brem, husband; Marek Brem, son; Abek Brem, brother-in-law)

  Chanusck

  Sura Gitla (Gucia, later known as Basia)

  Idek

  Josek

  Beniek

  Rifka

  Regina

  OTHER FAMILIES FEATURED IN THE STORY

  Uncle Josef Libeskind (Hendla’s brother, Basia’s uncle)

  Aunt Sura Libeskind

  Janek

  Mala

  Mania

  Mendel

  Moshe

  Rozia

  Uncle Mendel Libeskind (Hendla’s brother, Basia’s uncle)

  Aunt Sprintza Libeskind

  Elkanah

  Hinda

  Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau (chief rabbi in Piotrków beginning in 1934)

  Rebbitzin Chaya Lau

  Naphtali (Tulek)

  Shmuel Yitzhak (Milek)

  Yisrael (Lulek)

  Baila Reichmann (Leon Reichmann’s mother)

  Leon Reichmann (Basia’s husband)

  Abraham Reichmann (Leon Reichmann’s brother)

  Henry Marton (Leon Reichmann’s cousin)

  Heniek Wajshof (Basia’s high school boyfriend)

  Mania and Dora Wajshof (Heniek Wajshof’s sisters)

  Srulek Wajshof (Heniek Wajshof’s cousin)

  OTHER MAIN CHARACTERS

  Chana Chojnacka (Gomolinski family’s Jewish maid)

  Herr and Frau Schweibold (owners of Ulm hotel where Basia worked)

  Itka Ber (Basia’s childhood friend)

  Itka Moskowitz (Basia’s college roommate)

  Janova (Gomolinski family’s Polish maid)

  Kazimierz Dobranski (Polish neighbor)

  Krysia (Gomolinski family’s Polish maid)

  Maya (Gucia’s friend and fellow worker at Ulm hotel)

  Rozia Nissenson (Basia’s school friend)

  Sabina Sheratska, née Markowitz (Basia’s wartime companion)

  Sala Grinzspan (Basia’s school friend)

  Sala Jacobowitz Reichmann (Leon Reichmann’s first wife)

  Preface

  When you listen to a witness, you become a witness.

  —Elie Wiesel (1928–2016)

  It really was a dark and stormy night. My husband and I were sheltering from the rain at the bar at Nepenthe in Big Sur, California. The rain was so fierce that the place was empty, until two others came in and sat beside us. During the next couple of hours, Murray and I bonded with a woman named Helen West and her best friend, Marcia Greene, over wine and the free food sent forth from the kitchen, feeling cozy and protected from the raging storm. As we shared our stories, Helen’s mention of being born in Munich opened our conversation to the tale of how her mother, Barbara Reichmann, had survived the Holocaust as a young woman in her twenties, always keeping one step ahead of the Nazis and evading capture. It was a tale of such courage, integrity, and smart choices, filled with odd twists, amazing coincidences, romance, and great losses that, despite my heavy sweater, I kept getting goose bumps.

  The story captivated me for an additional reason. As a teacher of English as a Second Language to immigrant adults, I was often amazed and troubled by questions from some of my students after we read Holocaust stories together. They would ask if those horrific things had actually happened. This wasn’t ancient history. Many Holocaust survivors were still alive. How could my wonderful students, many of them refugees and survivors themselves, not know of the genocide of World War II? Perhaps a personal and unusual story like Barbara’s, with the dramatic appeal of good literature, would make the tragedy of the Holocaust real to them.

  “This needs to be a book!” I urged Helen.

  “I agree,” Helen said. “But I’m not about to do it. I’m busy enough with my psychotherapy practice. I write the occasional poem or personal essay or journal article, but I wouldn’t know where to begin taking on a book and wouldn’t have time if I did.”

  “I’ll do it!” I blurted out.

  “What a gift!” she said. “I’ll run it by my mother.”

  After some initial reluctance, Barbara agreed to the proposal Helen and I presented to her: to share her life stories with me for a book. Helen and I would be partners, collaborating on every aspect. Barbara and Helen entrusted me with authorship of the main narrative, crafting a book out of Barbara’s memories from earliest childhood up to immigrating to America. Helen would write a coda at the end giving her perspective on Barbara’s life from that time on. Helen would also serve as guardian of Barbara’s story, ensuring that the characters and events were faithfully rendered. Barbara would have the final say on everything.

  A few months later I was on a plane from Los Angeles to Washington, DC.

  Helen invited me to stay at her home, and each morning for five days, ninety-year-old Barbara Reichmann—“Basia” to her family and intimates from Europe—drove from her apartment to Helen’s house to let me interview her. We sat around the kitchen table, tape recorder on my left, laptop in front of me, yummy food from Helen surrounding us, and we talked. Barbara—bright, elegant, charming—had the most incredible memory, going as far back as age two. She so graciously and warmly shared with me the most intimate details of her life: her joys and her deep pain. My questions brought forth memories, including not only a wealth of factual details, but also what she remembered thinking and feeling, from her happy early life growing up in Poland to the years leading up to and through the Holocaust.

  Back in Los Angeles, excited and stimulated by Barbara’s story, I immediately started writing, e-mailing, and calling Helen for more information and clarifications from Barbara. I incessantly went over my notes and re-listened to the tapes to be sure to capture Barbara’s voice. What Barbara told me was so vivid, so alive, so in the moment. I didn’t feel I had the right to tell her story; only she should tell it. So I chose to write in the first person, and in the present tense,
to capture the immediacy of her experiences, and as often as possible, I used her exact words and turns of phrase.

  Helen was invaluable, helping me research details, linking me with people involved in Holocaust studies and with survivors. Emotionally consumed by Barbara’s story, I finished the first draft in three months and sent it to Helen.

  Two months later I was again in Washington, DC, to go over the draft with Helen and Barbara. We sat around Barbara’s dining room table, feasting on her chopped liver, stuffed cabbage, and freshly baked almond cookies (mandelbrot). Barbara was able to add even more information and correct my Polish spelling; she said she was pleased with the manuscript.

  This book is the result of that collaboration. All the events, names, details, and perspectives in this book are Barbara’s. In addition to my personal connection with Barbara, I relied on Helen’s insights into her mother’s character and those of the many others appearing in this book, keeping the voice and portrayals authentic and the story accurate. Where some of the dialogue or a few details necessary for the narrative flow have been invented, we tried to keep to a standard of depicting the essential truth, consistent with the nature of the characters described and the actual events.

  What you are about to read is the story of a seemingly ordinary woman who was anything but ordinary: a freethinker, a sensitive soul, a defiant resister, a pacifist, a dreamer whose extraordinary survival can be traced back to traits of character evident from earliest childhood, as this story reveals.

  Becoming Basia

  I’m running from death

  Looking over my shoulder

  Heading straight for Her arms

  —Helen Reichmann West, “Ouroboros”

  1942

  At long last the train is pulling out of the station. I wonder how long I have been holding my breath.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Pan (Mr.) Dobranski sitting next to me. I know it’s not possible that he can hear the pounding of my heart. Even so, I reassure myself that the clatter of the train’s wheels masks the sound. I am lucky to have him as my traveling companion. His typical Polish looks will help camouflage me from being discovered as a Jew.

  Fortunately, there are no Nazi soldiers on the train; at least not in our car, at least so far.

  Looking out the window, I see the houses of Piotrków fade quickly behind me. I slow my breathing and try to relax. I have six hours before we get to Nowy Sącz. Six safe, quiet hours to empty myself of my past, my name, my identity.

  Sura Gitla Gomolinska is no more. According to my forged Kennkarte, I am now Danuta Barbara Tanska.

  Suddenly, I’m in a panic to make sure I have my new identity papers with my new name. Barely moving, I put my left hand in my coat pocket. I won’t take the card out to look at it. That could raise suspicions. Just feeling it between my fingers will give me peace.

  It’s not there!

  A wave of nausea washes over me. With no identification I could be killed.

  Desperately, my fingers search the deep pocket.

  It couldn’t have fallen out. This can’t be happening, not here, not now.

  My head spins until I remember that I had put it in my right pocket, not my left. I reach into my coat with my other hand.

  There it is.

  Such relief. I feel the card with my fingertips. I see it so clearly in my mind: there is my photograph; there is my new name on the gray cardboard the Germans use to identify Poles, not the yellow cardboard designating “Jew.” I am no longer a Jew to be deported and sent to the camps, or worse; now, officially, I am a Pole.

  But the sudden relief mingles with anger at myself. How could I have been so stupid to put the only thing that stands between life and death loose in a pocket, even a deep one? I had carefully decided not to put it in my purse. Purses can be stolen. But a pocket! Pockets have holes; a skilled thief could grab the card without my knowing. What was I thinking? But then I remembered that mad rush to get out of the ghetto. How could I have been thinking clearly about anything? I should have stuffed it in my bra where I had put my money. As soon as I have some privacy, I will put it there.

  I feel reassured now that I have settled on that plan. As the train rushes forward, I wonder what I should call myself. Danuta? It’s so perfectly Polish but I don’t like the harsh sound of it. Barbara is nice and common but so formal. Sura Gitla was always called Gucia; such a sweet-sounding nickname.

  My fingers are caressing the Kennkarte in my pocket and suddenly I see it, I hear it.

  Basia …

  That’s who I will be. It feels so warm and familiar. It’s a good nickname for Barbara and it has the same sweet sound as Gucia.

  I lean against the window and say goodbye to Gucia and my past. Basia is now journeying forward to the resort town of Nowy Sącz and her uncertain future.

  First Grade

  A desire for knowledge for its own sake, a love of justice that borders on fanaticism, and a striving for personal independence—these are the aspects of the Jewish people’s tradition.

  —Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

  1922

  “Gucia, Gucia!” Krysia calls to me. “Gucia, wake up. Have you forgotten what day it is?”

  Krysia has been our maid since I was an infant. It is because of her that I speak such fluent Polish. She throws off my quilt, and when she sees me lying there, she gasps, covers her mouth, and jumps back in surprise.

  I leap out of the bed fully dressed, shaking with laughter.

  “But Gucia, with shoes on, and in your bed?” She is horrified but can’t stop herself from laughing along with me.

  How can she think I would ever have forgotten this day? I have been awake since the Kosciul Bernardinski church bell struck three a.m. Then I had quietly dressed myself, being careful not to wake my ten-year-old sister, Hela, who was sleeping like a log next to me in the bed we share.

  Today, as usual, when the sun peeped through the lace curtains at sunrise, Hela woke up and got dressed. I pretended to be sound asleep. She probably didn’t remember what an important day it was for me and so she didn’t try to wake me.

  As I had lain there waiting for Krysia to come get me, my teeth chattered with excitement, little shivers going up and down my body. It is to be my first day of first grade … a day I have waited and yearned for as long as I can remember.

  Krysia straightens my dress and unwinds my braids. She explains, as she often does, that my hair is just too fine to make good braids and that fine blond wavy hair is just as beautiful as thick straight hair. As usual, I don’t believe her. She ties my wispy hair away from my face with a blue satin ribbon. Then she puts my pink knit cap on my head.

  “Now, go see your mama and tatte (papa) and eat breakfast,” she says.

  I run out of the living room, where Hela and I sleep, and into the kitchen.

  On this special September morning, Chana Chojnacka, our other maid, who is Jewish like us, is stirring the porridge at the stove. Two-year-old Josek—my middle brother—sits on the floor, banging the lids on some pots and pans and making a racket. Four-year-old Idek is eating toast with cranberry jam at the kitchen table. Hela is on her way to school, hugging Tatte goodbye, and Mama is nursing three-month-old Beniek.

  She holds out her right arm to hug me, understanding my excitement. She smiles and says, “Kum aher, Gitla, meine sheine meydle.” Come here, Gitla, my pretty little girl.

  Mama always speaks Yiddish to me, but more and more I am speaking Polish to Krysia and my friends.

  My mama is already elegantly dressed and ready to go to work. Soon she will leave the baby with Chana and walk the few blocks to Zamurowa Street to open our kosher butcher shop. Idek and Josek will stay home with Krysia, without me to play with them for the first time in their lives.

  “It’s my first day of real school, Mamashi,” I say, hopping up and down in my brand-new black patent-leather Mary Janes. “Can I walk alone?”

  The school is only one block away and I have been walking by
myself to visit friends since I was very little. The streets are so safe. There are no strangers, no streetcars, only the occasional horse cart.

  Mama smiles at me and says proudly, “Of course you may. You are such a big girl now.”

  I am excited to go all by myself, and I know that my parents can’t take me anyway. They are much too busy. They both work very hard running the business and our apartment building, and there are so many of us to take care of when they come home.

  The only time all of our family gathers together is for dinner each day at two p.m., except for Friday evening when we eat after Tatte comes home from shul (synagogue). Even then, our mouths share food but few words, apart from practical matters. Hela gabs about her friends and clothes and whatever she wants our parents to buy her. My little brothers Idek and Josek only talk nonsense and Beniek, the baby, just babbles.

  I feel so different from all of them. I am burning with questions. There is so much I want to understand. I want to know why people have to die. What are other countries like? Why are some people kind and others cruel?

  But though I am hungry for attention from my mama and tatte, I don’t want to bother them with my questions and demands.

  The answers, I know, are in books. When I was little, I thought people were just teasing me, pretending that the mysterious marks and squiggles in newspapers and the letters Tatte brought home from the post office really meant something. But now I have figured out that in school I will learn to read. A teacher will be there to explain everything and answer my questions. And then I will know the world!

  Mama kisses me goodbye one more time and I leave the apartment. When I get outside, Rozia Nissenson, who lives in the apartment next to ours, and Sala Grinzspan, whose father owns the apartment building next door, run to catch up with me.

  It is a crisp, almost-autumn day. The leaves on the linden trees are just beginning to turn yellow. Their fragrant white blossoms are drying up and falling like snow.