Noike: A Memoir of Leon Ginsburg. Suzanne Ginsburg
the front door with a small bundle. Pesel looked down at the bundle and immediately understood: it was the crocheted shawl that had belonged to her mother, Beila, who had worn it nearly every day.
Beila had refused to leave the house when the rest of the family went into hiding; she had grown senile in recent years and would not listen to reason. “Nobody is going to force me to run from my home,” she had said repeatedly, shaking her head. Her shawl was found near the sidewalk, amid the other personal effects that littered the street, their owners long gone. Beila had raised her family in that house; she was the first one killed.
Noike had never experienced the death of someone close to him, let alone lost someone in such a brutal fashion. He could not comprehend why the Germans would kill someone as harmless as his grandmother. He imagined the Germans dragging her away and wished he could have been there to protect her, as he did his “sisters.” He pictured himself standing in the doorway, steadfastly convincing the soldiers that no one was in the house except for him.
Pesel changed into black clothing and covered the mirrors according to Jewish tradition. She gathered her children to say the mourner’s kaddish, a prayer honoring the dead, and thought of her mother’s good deeds, praying that no one else would meet the same fate. Kaddishes were being said all over town; most women no longer had sons, husbands, or uncles. Hundreds of women had also been murdered, leaving many small children wandering the streets and nearby fields without parents. The Judenrat collected furniture and other household items from the abandoned houses and created an orphanage. Adult survivors took turns helping to feed, bathe, and comfort the little ones.
WINTER CAME AND LIFE WENT BACK TO NORMAL, although to the Jews of Maciejow, “normal” became a relative term. One afternoon soon after the first snow, Noike was heading to a neighbor’s house when he noticed an old rebbe, a teacher of Hebrew and the Bible, walking on the edge of the road. A group of German soldiers pulled up in a horse-drawn sleigh, the customary way to travel in winter. One soldier dismounted the sleigh and pushed the old man into the snow, causing his hat to tumble to the ground. Then the soldier made him pick it up, fill it with snow, and put it back on his head. All of the soldiers laughed as the snow dripped down his face, into his shirt collar. After taunting him a little more, the soldier got back on the sled and they drove away.
Many ethnic Ukrainians were quick to take full advantage of their neighbors’ weakened positions. For years Herschel had begged his mother for skis. Knowing she could not afford them, he started putting aside his own money and somehow managed to save enough to buy them that winter. The skis were made of cheap wood and fitted with leather ankle straps; no special shoes were required. On one of his first outings, a ski trip with friends, he returned home empty-handed.
“Where are your skis?” Noike asked, trailing Hershel as he stormed off to their bedroom. He had hoped Herschel might loan them to him one day.
“Now Jews can’t have skis!” Herschel fumed as he paced the room.
He had been skiing with a group of Jewish boys on the outskirts of town when a couple of Ukrainian farm boys came upon them. “Jews aren’t allowed to own skis,” one of the boys had said. “Give them to us or we’ll call the Gestapo,” another leered, knowing the Gestapo would punish even young Jews for the smallest violations.
Noike felt sorry for his brother; Herschel had wanted those skis so badly.
Later that winter German soldiers came to their house, this time demanding that his mother hand over all of her fur coats. Their countrymen were fighting in the harsh Russian winter and freezing to death; trains filled with wounded and frostbitten German soldiers had been passing through Maciejow in recent weeks. Noike watched with anger as his mother went to the hallway closet and returned with a dusty box containing her late husband’s fur coats; she had kept all of them. She kept almost all of his things for years after he died, until the Germans came and started taking everything away.
5
HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS
Florida, February 2006
A few days into my Florida visit, I woke to an unusually quiet house. I assumed that my parents were immersed in the morning newspaper but no one was in the kitchen. Eager to make the most of my time with my father, I started setting up the video camera and reviewing the questions I had prepared the night before.
“I don’t know why, but I didn’t sleep well last night,” my father said as he walked into the kitchen. “I think I’m going to lie down for a few minutes.”
“All right, well, I was hoping we could get started on ‘42 but we don’t have to do it today. We covered a lot of material over the last few days—1939, 1940, 1941,” I said, starting to wonder if I had gone too fast, if the interviews had taken a toll.
He went into his office and closed the door.
Aside from the “little boy” stories, my father rarely spoke to anyone about his wartime experiences. He started to open up around the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war, when he learned about an international conference for children who had spent the Holocaust in hiding. The organizers had expected a few hundred attendees but almost two thousand people gathered together and broke their silence. Around the same time, many educators, reporters, and filmmakers were reaching out to survivors, wanting to document their stories for future generations. My father was reluctant at first but soon agreed to a number of private interviews and eventually public talks.
Our interviews would be different, I soon learned.
He shaped most of the agenda that first day, providing me with background on his town and summarizing relevant historical events. But in the days that followed, I started to probe, hoping to lead him down new paths. While he was recounting about the story of hiding at his paternal grandfather’s house I realized that I was missing a piece of information: “Was your maternal grandmother hiding in another house?” I asked.
“I never told anyone this, but . . .” he glanced at me and then at the floor, thinking back. Suddenly he brought his hands up to cover his face.
I stood up to try and comfort him but he remained stiff, his arms pressed close to his body. He had always been a slight man but he suddenly looked frail, fragile, somehow more human. “Should we stop?” I asked. My hands shook as I reached to turn off the video camera.
“No, I want to continue,” he said. Then he described the details of her death: the stubbornness, the raids, the shawl found in the street.
The writer in me felt that I had made a breakthrough; the daughter in me felt tremendous guilt. Was my quest for knowledge at the expense of his suffering? I did not want to cause him pain, or force him to relive the most tragic moments of his life, but it did not seem possible to avoid it. And this was just the beginning of the war. Would I even be able to keep it together when the story got even worse? I, too, had not slept well the previous night, thinking about how I had upset my father. But a sense of responsibility urged me to continue.
When he resurfaced that afternoon I suggested that we spend the rest of the day relaxing at the community pool, a short drive from the house. Taking a break and slowing things down seemed like the only choice. As I read my book I looked over at my father, who was sleeping peacefully as the sun beat down on his face, his arms, his legs. He wasn’t wearing any sunglasses or sunblock; he had refused to let anything get between him and the sun over the years.
“You know, we don’t have to write the book,” I said when he woke up. Although I was committed to pressing ahead, I felt I should give him an out.
“No, I’m fine,” he insisted. “I was just feeling tired today.”
“Well, you can change your mind anytime,” I said, still worried about him.
Back in San Francisco a few days later I reviewed