Noike: A Memoir of Leon Ginsburg. Suzanne Ginsburg
Noike and his mother walked through one side of the square; Herschel and Blima walked through the other. Noike followed his mother, clutching at his pillow.
They entered the hiding place through an outhouse behind Gitel Silverberg’s grocery store. Pesel and Herschel went inside first, pushing the toilet aside to reveal a tiny dirt entrance carved into the floor. One by one they squeezed through the hole and climbed down a long, narrow ladder. At the base of the ladder was a short passageway that led into a room.
The basement was crowded with at least fifty people, mostly women with young children, the only demographics left in Maciejow. It was dark but in one corner Noike could make out Gitel Silverberg’s lively brown eyes and warm smile. She was wearing a long, black dress and had a babushka over her hair like his mother. He also saw his brother’s friend Haim Rosenberg sitting with his mother and sister.
Pesel led them through the basement until she found an open spot away from the original entrance. Gitel had sealed off and painted the door when they created the hiding place but one could still see the street through small cracks along the bottom. Pesel laid a blanket across the cool cement floor, trying to secure enough room for her family to sleep later that night. Noike sat down with his mother while Herschel and Blima wandered off to another corner and searched for friends.
There was little to do in the basement: moving around too much would create noise; talking too much would create noise. Most people huddled in small groups, whispering to each other, eventually nodding off in the darkness as nighttime approached. Pesel started humming as she stroked Noike’s back. As a young girl she sang with the local Yiddish theater group; it was there that she met her husband Kalman, a talented violinist and actor who died less than two years after Noike was born. She stopped performing many years ago but she still sang around her family. That evening, she sang a familiar lullaby to young Noike:
Pretty like the moon
Bright like the stars
From Heaven you were
Sent to me as a present.
Noike leaned against his mother and imagined lying in his bed at home, nestled under a thick layer of goose down bedding. Soothed by the lullaby, he was starting to fall asleep when he heard Blima talking to his mother.
“We’re going to hide in the Pearlman’s attic for the rest of the night,” Blima whispered, motioning to a group of teenagers gathering near the entrance to the hiding place. “We’ll head to the woods before sunrise—some of the boys have built a bunker.” Many of the teenagers who had escaped to the woods during the previous raids had managed to survive. In the forests they could occasionally breathe fresh air and would have somewhere to run if discovered.
“Blimele, I don’t think it’s such a good idea,” Pesel said, shaking her head. “We should all stay together.”
Pesel eventually resigned herself to Blima’s decision. Children were no longer children in those days; the fight for survival forced them to think and act like adults. Noike reached his arms out to embrace his sister. She bent down and placed a kiss on his forehead as he hugged her legs, which were covered in layers of wool stockings and long underwear. He watched intently as she crossed the room then disappeared down the passageway.
GUNSHOTS SHATTERED THE EARLY MORNING SILENCE. Some people in the basement had been sleeping but most had stayed awake all night, unable to rest knowing that the aktion was imminent. Women grabbed their children and hurried into the darkest corners of the basement, barricading themselves behind boxes and wooden crates. Herschel and the other teenage boys ran towards the original entrance, taking turns to peek through the cracks and provide updates for the group. “They shot Esther!” one of the boys announced.
Esther and her elderly mother owned a small corner store that sold candy, ice cream, and soda; her father was killed in one of the earlier aktions. When the police had tried to drag Esther’s mother out of their home that morning Esther stood in their way, hysterically crying and begging the officers to leave them alone. The police ordered Esther to step aside and quiet down. As she fell to her knees one of them pulled out his gun and shot Esther, right in front of her mother.
THE GERMANS HAD ASSEMBLED THE POLICE FORCE a short time after the occupation. Young men were typically recruited from neighboring farming villages with large Ukrainian nationalist populations and trained by the SS. Many of them had criminal records and had done time in Polish prisons; others were poor peasants desperate for work. Because the force was composed of ethnic Ukrainians and backed by Ukrainian leaders, they were often referred to as the “Ukrainian police.” At first they helped enforce the curfew, later on they passed out the armbands; in the end they dragged women and children from their homes.
Ukrainian police continued to go house to house, pushing people out into the street and then taking them to the big synagogue, Beis Medrush, where they were forced to line up and kneel on the cobblestones as the German officers collected their valuables. After they had captured about seventy-five people, they would march them from Beis Medrush to the lime mines on the edge of town. As the Jews approached the mines they immediately understood their fate. Einsatzgruppen shooters were standing behind bushes near the mass grave, which was filled with the victims that came before them. The Jews were forced to stand in front of the grave and undress as they heard their neighbors slowly dying in the earth below. Some would try to escape, others would yell obscenities at their murderers; most would kiss their loved ones goodbye and pray for a quick death. The murderers left the graves uncovered until their work was done, almost two weeks later.
Decades after the war, Noike met a teenage boy who had survived the graves: Rubin Grosser. Rubin thought he was dead when the bullet struck his head, but the wound was superficial. He remained motionless in the grave as they continued to shoot his family, friends, and neighbors. When the Einsatzgruppen left the site that evening he started to crawl out of the grave, pushing through the mountain of dead bodies. He was about to run off when he heard moans coming from a boy beside him, Leibel Naimark. Naked and bloody, the two of them ran to a farmer who had offered to help when word first spread of the aktion. The farmer and his wife nursed the boys back to health and sheltered them until it was safe to leave. Rubin and Leibel were among the very few to survive the graves; the earth was said to be shaking for four weeks.
EVERYONE IN GITEL’S BASEMENT REMAINED SILENT as the raids continued, except for one little girl who couldn’t stop crying. Each time she wailed, the others in the basement would look towards the mother. “Please do something,” their eyes begged. The others were sympathetic—many were mothers themselves—but they also feared for their own lives. When the girl finally settled down and fell asleep, the mother slipped out of the basement and put her in the house next door.
At some point the little girl woke up, or the Ukrainian police came into the house and woke her up; no one knows exactly how it happened. The police brought her outside and asked: “Where’s your mother?” She immediately ran to the outhouse and wept, “Momma, Momma.” The police opened the outhouse door and checked inside, but found nothing.
The police started to walk away but the little girl refused to move. Clinging to the edge of the outhouse door she continued to cry: “Momma, Momma.” The police went back to the outhouse, poked around the seat, and then finally nudged the toilet aside, revealing the entrance to the hiding place. One of them stuck his rifle inside the hole and yelled in Ukrainian: “Vilezai! Come out!”
With no place to run, the women and children started filing out of the basement. Noike and his mother were on the far side of the room, a safe distance from the police who continued to shout, “Vilezai, Vilezai!” Pesel scanned the room for Herschel but it was difficult to see in the darkness, or to shout over the weeping women and children. They had stood to follow the others when Pesel noticed a section of wall that was loosely boarded.
“Noikele, quick, get inside,” she said, pulling a board off the wall.
He crawled inside and stepped as far back as he could.
“Hold this