Marking Humanity: Stories, Poems, & Essays by Holocaust Survivors. Shlomit Editor Kriger
it was the potato-man’s passage through our home that finally made these things clear to me. It was the first time I fully understood that nothing was going to be the way it had been. When I reflect about it today, I realize that must have been the moment during which I started to say goodbye to Father.
Two years later, it was again a burlap sack that entered mine and Father’s lives and severed them forever. My last memory of Father is the image of his hands, once perfectly manicured but now rough from labour, holding open a large patched-up sack full of sawdust so I could step into it and be smuggled on his strong and loving back out of the labour camp from which there was to be no escape for him. This was, indeed, our final farewell. But I did not cry. I was 10 years old, and I was an adult.
Inge Heiman Karo
Inge Heiman Karo at age 11 in 1937.
Inge Heiman Karo was born in Essen, Germany, in 1926. Along with her parents and younger brother, she fled to the United States in December 1939. Many of her relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.
Growing up in Philadelphia, Inge attended high school and went on to hold various jobs, including stenographer, bookkeeper, and legal secretary. In 1982 she graduated from Beaver College (now Arcadia University) with a degree in psychology. She was a member of the Junior Hadassah organization and the Abington Town Watch, and she volunteered in such positions as an aide in the physical therapy department of Abington Memorial Hospital and a cook for the Cook for a Friend program.
In 1997 Inge wrote and published the book Joseph and His Daughter: From 1890–1980, based on her family’s experiences before, during, and after the war. This book includes a play entitled The Library, which is based on her experience of having to turn in her library card during the Holocaust. Students at Muhlenberg College created a theatre show based on this play and other pieces from her book that was performed at schools and Holocaust conferences throughout Pennsylvania.
Now retired, Inge does volunteer work for the Holocaust Oral History Archive at Gratz College. She also speaks to student groups about the Holocaust. She and her husband have one son and two grandsons.
The Library
Inge Heiman Karo
Rachel walked into the library, sat down at her desk in the children’s section, and admired the shiny new nameplate that told anyone who cared to know: Here sat Rachel Klein, Librarian. She got an almost sensual pleasure from the rows upon rows of books. Books which she had read held memories of hours pleasurably spent, while books still unread promised more such hours.
A little girl wearing her hair in two long brown braids approached the desk and shyly asked for a book. After Rachel helped her, she had a strange sensation of having lived through a moment like this before. Something tugged at her memory. A sense of unease, which she could not define, intruded on the happiness she felt.
It was not until her mid-morning break that Rachel remembered just where she had seen a little girl like that before. In her mind, she returned to the Berlin of the 1930s, during one of her many trips to the library. She visualized an austere room, with a counter at one end, presided over by a forbidding-looking woman. Only by the sign outside could one know that this was a library. There was no aimless browsing here. The books were all hidden away. You approached one of the librarians, requested the books you wanted, and if she thought they were proper for you to read, she brought the books from the back to be checked out.
Rachel saw herself, a shy little girl with long brown braids, hesitantly approaching the counter, clutching a list of book titles in her hand.
During the girl’s earlier visits to the library it went as follows:
“Back already Rachel? Did you really finish all those books in just four days?”
“Yes, Miss Schmidt.”
“I find that hard to believe. Tell me what the books were about.”
Rachel, forgetting her shyness, did just that, but Miss Schmidt was not yet ready to concede defeat. A few visits later, she tried again.
“Rachel, these books that you requested are for Grade 8 students, and you are only in Grade 5. You will have to bring a note from your teacher certifying that you are capable of understanding this kind of material.”
After a while, the librarian’s attitude mellowed a little. Miss Schmidt might even venture a smile as she said, “Good afternoon, Rachel. Let me see your list.”
“Thank you, Miss Schmidt.”
“I am only giving you three of the novels you requested, Rachel, and am including some science books. You have a good mind, and you must develop it.”
“Yes, Miss Schmidt.”
One day, the little girl was curiously reluctant to go to the library. She looked into all the store windows, carefully jumped over all the cracks in the pavement three times, and spent an extraordinary amount of time wiping her feet outside the entrance to the library. Even though she stood in the longest line and let a stout lady with a shopping bag full of books get ahead of her, it finally became her turn. There she was, in front of Miss Schmidt.
“Let me have the books you are returning, please.”
She silently handed over the books.
“You are holding up the line. Don’t you want to take out any books today?”
The girl shifted her weight from one foot to the other, chewed on one of her braids, and tried hard not to blush.
“If you don’t want any books, you will have to move on.”
“Excuse me, but I would like to turn in my library card,” she whispered.
“Are your parents moving, Rachel?”
“No, Miss Schmidt.”
“Then why do you want to turn in your card? You know how important it is for a student to read.”
“Yes, Miss Schmidt, but I have to turn in my card.”
“I never heard of such a thing. You do not have to turn in your card. I do not know why you waste my time with such foolishness.”
Miss Schmidt turned to take care of the next person in line. Gathering all her courage, Rachel managed to blurt out loud and clear: “But Miss Schmidt, they’ve passed a law—all Jews have to turn in their library cards—and I am Jewish.”
Rachel then turned around and walked as fast as she could. All she wanted at that moment was to get out of the building before she burst into tears.
The Emigration of the Jews Out of Germany
Inge Heiman Karo
(Written at age 11)
For various reasons, the Jews are emigrating from Germany. They are all going, one after the other, unceasingly, every day, hundreds and thousands of them. Behind them stands sorrow. Unseen, it walks behind many of them, follows their every step into the new land, and never leaves their side.
And yet, we still have a faithful friend, a father who cares for us and will always care for us, our G-d! We will trust in Him and with His help will even be able to create a new life for ourselves in a strange country among strangers.
Our fate is like a huge hurricane; it blows us some place, lets us rest, and then, just when we want to put down roots, it pulls us out and drives us into another unknown part of the world. It was always so and will probably never change.
Our life is a gigantic thick book, in which fate always enters new words and rules that we have to learn. Theoretical knowledge is not enough; we have to show what we can do at once in a practical way. Fate will show no mercy to whoever