Noike: A Memoir of Leon Ginsburg. Suzanne Ginsburg

      SKULL AND CROSSBONES

       Maciejow, Poland. September 1941

      “Aufmachen, Yakob,” the German soldiers shouted as they stood on the front stoop and banged their fists on the door. It was a cool night in late September, three months into the German occupation.

      “Yakob” referred to Yakob Ginzburg, Noike’s paternal grandfather, a deeply religious man who wore peyos (sidelocks) and attended synagogue twice a day. Noike’s family had fled to his house when they saw the Einsatzgruppen motorcade enter town two days earlier. The Einsatzgruppen, a division of the SS, was a mobile death squad that came on motorcycles followed by trucks covered in thick, black canvas. Their last visit to Maciejow had been to kill the 400 young men and boys behind German headquarters.

      News spread that the next aktion, as these roundups were called, would be less discriminating. Although the very old and those under sixteen years of age were still safe, women between sixteen and sixty were now vulnerable. Escaping from town was no longer an option, for the roads were heavily guarded and Jews were not permitted to own wagons, bicycles, or cars, or travel via public transportation. Maciejow’s remaining Jews had no choice but to hide.

      “Aufmachen, Yakob,” the soldiers shouted again.

      The soldiers began shining flashlights into Yakob’s bedroom. Streams of light panned back and forth across the ceiling, searching for hidden trap doors. Noike recognized the soldiers’ voices from earlier in the evening: young Ukrainian girls from across the street had been socializing with them and laughing at their jokes. Noike looked over at his brother Herschel, who was awake but too scared to move. Herschel was quite tall for his age and feared he would be mistaken for a boy of sixteen. Yakob was also awake but he was in poor health and unable to get out of bed. Noike realized that he was the only one who could speak on behalf of his family.

      When Noike opened the door he saw two giant SS officers standing in front of the house; they glared down at the little boy in his pajamas. These men weren’t ordinary SS officers, Noike realized: only the uniforms of senior officers were decorated in a confetti of badges, stripes, and medals. They wore the Totenkopf death squad mark—a skull and crossbones embossed in silver—on the front of their caps. The division was initially formed from concentration camp guards and men from an SS unit that fought the Polish Army back in 1939.

      “Where are your sisters?” the first one barked in German.

      Noike had never spoken to a German soldier, but the Germanic roots of the Yiddish language helped many Jews make the transition when necessary. “Sisters” implied the women of the household. Someone must have told the officers that his sister, mother, aunts, and grandmother had not been rounded up. The Germans relied on the locals to provide this information, offering money and extra rations—a few cigarettes, a liter of vodka, a kilo of sugar—in return.

      “They took them away,” Noike responded in Yiddish, acting as if he was on the verge of tears. “Maybe you can tell me where they took them?” If he told the truth, they would all die; if he lied, he might save them all.

      The soldiers pushed past him and entered the front room. Noike insisted that there were only three people in the house: his sick grandfather, his “younger” brother, and himself. Unconvinced, the soldiers began searching all of the rooms in the house, poking underneath beds and throwing open armoires but finding nothing.

      “The basement—where is it?” the first soldier demanded, scanning for its entrance.

      Noike led them to the cellar door located in the narrow hallway that connected the front room and the master bedroom. The first soldier pulled the door open; the second one drew his gun. Cool air rose from the cellar wall, sending a chill through Noike and making the little hairs on his arms and legs stand on end. The first soldier moved his flashlight’s beam along the perimeter of the cellar walls, illuminating stores of butter, baskets of eggs, and sacks of potatoes. Nothing else was revealed.

      “Show us the attic,” the soldier demanded.

      Noike pointed to the drop ladder in the hallway ceiling.

      “Is anybody up there?” the soldier asked.

      “No,” Noike said, trying to hold the soldier’s gaze.

      The soldier pulled his pistol out of its holster and cocked the gun. He pointed it at the center of Noike’s forehead and then pressed it firmly against his skin. The gun looked like a cannon to him; the long, cold, metal barrel was numbing.

      “If somebody is up there, you’re kaput,” he warned him. “Are you sure nobody is up there?” he asked again.

      “Yes, sir,” Noike replied. “Nobody is up there.”

      The soldier with the flashlight pulled the attic door open, unfolded the ladder, and climbed up to search the attic.

      Noike held his breath. His mother, sister, aunts, and grandmother were hiding in the second attic above the kitchen, which was accessible via a concealed trapdoor in the kitchen ceiling. The women had also taken steps to mask their age and beauty. Tears had streamed down Blima’s face when her mother cut off her long, blonde hair a few days earlier. Pesel understood Blima’s grief: as a teenager in Maciejow during the First World War, she was harassed by German soldiers when she walked through town. She never imagined that her daughter would have the same experience; she never imagined that she would find herself, at the age of thirty-six, covering her hair in a babushka and impersonating an old woman.

      “Did you find somebody?” The soldier, still pressing his gun against Noike’s forehead, called up to the attic with impatience.

      “Nisht,” the other replied, climbing back down the ladder.

      The two soldiers conversed in rapid German, too fast for Noike to understand, then barked their next order: “Take us to the garden.” The Ukrainian girls must have given the soldiers some clues since few homes had gardens large enough to provide cover for one person, let alone five. Although the gun had been pulled away from from Noike’s forehead, he could still feel the cold metal.

      Noike led them to the back door that opened onto the garden. Walking through the house he thought of his family—his “sisters”—crouched above them. If someone coughed, sneezed, or shifted, the officers would hear them and it would be over for everyone. The soldiers walked into the vast garden, which was brimming over with lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, and even tobacco. Noike shut the door behind them as it started to rain.

      Noike pressed his ear against the door and listened as the soldiers weaved through the rows of vegetables, stomping on the lettuce and other vegetables in their path. After a brief silence he heard them leave the garden, walk along the side of the house, then head towards the street in the front of the house, off to raid another Jewish family. Their footsteps grew quieter; then at last there was silence.

      Although he could breathe again, Noike’s teeth were chattering like a machine gun. Herschel helped him back into bed and held him until he fell asleep.

      ABOUT A WEEK LATER WORD SPREAD THAT THE RAIDS were officially over and the Einsatzgruppen had moved on to another town. The aktion had been a success from the German perspective: 1,500 Jews had been killed—a full third of the local Jewish population. Those who survived the raids emerged from their hiding places in cellars, barns, attics, fields, and the woods. They found the streets scattered with bits and pieces of fabric, torn from their family, friends, and neighbors as they tried to escape from their attackers.

      When