Róża, born in 1937 & Chana born in 1935

He Was Our Father and Mother

It was the year 1937. My parents already had a two-year-old daughter, Chana. My mother gave birth to me (I was named Róża), but she died of blood poisoning a week later. We became half-orphans. Dad hired a nanny. We called her “Aunt Rózia”. She took care of us as if she were our mother. Before the war, when I was a small child, I didn’t understand many things, for example, I peed into a pot with peeled potatoes (it was standing on the floor); I hid under the bed and Aunt Rózia thought I had gone missing—she had great trouble finding me.

During the holidays the table was beautifully set, everyone went to the kitchen, and I went into the room and pulled the tablecloth so hard that several plates standing near the edge fell to the floor. Another time, along with a few other children, I went to my neighbor to throw stones at the window. In a word: I was a mischievous child.

Dad had two professions: a shoemaker and lumber dealer. Before the war, he had a sawmill and a two-story brick house. He bought forest trees for his sawmill.

First, the Russians entered—I remember Aunt Rózia holding my hand while the Russians searched our apartment. As a child I couldn’t understand why strangers moved our things around. I was furious, I wanted to give them a beating. Then the Germans came and we all know what happened next. One day Aunt Rózia, she was walking with us, she carried various bundles and wept. We didn’t understand why. It turned out that she was walking us to the ghetto in the town where we lived, Święciany in the Vilnius region. We lost touch with her after that.

The whole family, that is, Dad, my sister, and I, ended up in the ghetto. It was cramped and stuffy in the apartment allocated to us. Many people were there besides us, including sick people, the bedridden…

We didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation and the danger we were in. Dad always came back in the evening, he was our rock.

One day he came back badly beaten and swollen. It turned out that the Nazis beat him for disobedience. I got scared, started crying, and wanted to run away. My dad then left the house and didn’t come back until a few days later.

In the ghetto, the men were preparing for armed struggle. While exercising, one injured the other’s arm. About 40 people were then imprisoned in the ghetto station, including my father. They were to be shot at dawn the next day. Dad managed to get an interview with the warden and on his knees, he pleaded for his life. He said that if the Germans were to lose the war, and there were signs that this would happen, he would testify that the warden saved him from death. In the morning at four o’clock, the men were woken up and put in line. They were counted, one person was missing, they were counted again. Everyone—except my dad—was taken to be executed.

After the war all transports of people from those areas were evacuated to the Regained Territories, and this warden (I don’t remember his name) was also captured and transported to Olsztyn. A hearing was held, Dad kept his word and said the governor had spared his life. There were a lot of people at the trial, they shouted, threw out insults, and were ready to execute the sentence on their own. The court sentenced him to death, because one vote in defense was like a drop in the ocean.

Dad found out that soon the Jews would be transported to extermination camps. He began a fervent search for a hiding place for us among his friends. Earlier, he took me to a certain family to show them what I looked like, and he told me to memorize the way. The time had come when he said, “Go through the wires and to those people we visited, do you remember?” A dog was barking there. I was surprised because that wasn’t the way we took last time. I went through the wires and walked through what seemed to me like a very high meadow. In the distance, I saw a red brick house. At one point, I heard someone shout in my direction and then I saw a guard with a long rifle on his back (I still remember him). I got very scared, but I came closer and he screamed even louder. I crouched in the grass to hide, but he kept screaming. I was afraid to run, so I walked slowly back to the wires. I saw my dad and my sister by the wires. Dad was very surprised. “Why did you come back?” he asked. I said the man with the rifle yelled at me. Dad was so upset that he told me to go again. I cried, I explained that I was afraid, that I wouldn’t go, so he backed off. I felt happy. That same day, in the late afternoon, he walked with me by the gate, stuck something in the guard’s hand, and gave me a little push to make me leave faster. And that’s how I found myself outside the ghetto’s walls.

As I walked, I was very curious: I saw drunk Germans in uniforms walking with women staggering with alcohol, mumbling something, and laughing; I saw people rushing in different directions. I was a very curious child, I looked around, and walked blindly without thinking about the route, I guess God was leading me. At last, I entered a small street, less frequented. I moved from the sidewalk onto the road. There was ice by the sidewalk and it was cracking under my shoes. It amused me. A man was passing by and asked me where I was going. I didn’t answer. “Don’t get on the ice or you will get sick, you’re all wet,” he said. Finally, I saw a row of houses and heard a dog barking in one of them, so I walked in and it turned out that I was at the right address.

The lady took my clothes to dry and my dad came very late in the evening to find out if I had arrived safely.

The people that took me in were Russians—a childless married couple, the Tumanovs. I hid with them for quite a long time. Mrs. Tumanov hung a picture above my bed: a guardian angel walking a child across the footbridge over the river. I still remember it today. She taught me to pray in Russian.

From time to time, they were searching for Jews in hiding, and once they did it very meticulously in our place and the yard. I was hidden in a bread-baking oven, still warm. Disturbing news began to reach my father about the searches for Jews, which is why Mrs. Kuleszo’s children took me away from Mr. and Mrs. Tumanov. Mrs. Kuleszo, as we all called her, had five living children. Her eldest daughter and husband had died of typhus early in the war. They lived in the backwoods called Woksa, towards Zybaliszki, behind Święciany. Currently, there are no houses there anymore.

I didn’t know where my daddy was or if he was alive, because when I was with the Tumanov family, people said that they had seen Szuchman, “he was lying, tied up with a scarf” somewhere in the meadow. Others said that he was in the woods, with the partisans. Mrs. Kuleszo, knowing about all this, very carefully and not right away led me up the ladder to the attic. There I saw a man sitting on the bed. “He’s your daddy,” she said. I replied that my dad was in the forest, with the partisans. I cried and clung to my caregiver. Dad teared up. Slowly, however, over time, I got used to the new situation and I recognized my father by his beautiful smile and the teeth, some of which the Nazis didn’t manage to break.

At Mrs. Kuleszo’s, I made friends with the children, I grazed pigs and cows. To this day, I remember the breakfast: all the children gathered at the table with their spoons around a large wooden bowl of groats. And everyone ate groats or soup from it.

My sister Chana, as I mentioned in the introduction, was two years old when our mother died. I also mentioned that the three of us ended up in the ghetto, that is, me, my sister, and my father.

After taking me out of the ghetto, my dad began to look earnestly for a hiding place for my sister. But she wasn’t so lucky. She ended up in worse circumstances and with bad people. She lived in basements where rats were running over her, she went hungry and suffered from cold. There were also those who demanded more money from Dad, threatening him that they would give my sister away to the Nazis. Our dad was very careful; when he sensed danger, he immediately changed my sister’s whereabouts. Of course, not alone, but with the help of friends. And this time, he reacted quickly and decisively. My sister ended up with the Zielonka family near Święciany. They had four children and lived in a remote area, in the middle of the forest.

My sister said that one day the house and farmyard were searched. In the Vilnius Region, large ovens for baking bread were fashionable, and the upper level of the oven had a spacious den (several people could sleep there). This den was covered with plenty of rags or various clothes, and my sister was hidden underneath them. A German ordered the landlord to move the rags away and he did. Mr. Zielonka tossed the rags and clothes onto my sister, showing that there was no one there.

Shortly after this event, my father took my sister to Mrs. Kuleszo. In this way, we found ourselves all in one place at the end of the war. We would like to emphasize that our guardians, the Tumanovs and the Zielonka and Kuleszo families, were characterized by exceptional heart, kindness, devotion, and honesty.

After the end of the war, we lived in Święciany with the Misiun family because our house had burnt down. I fell ill with tuberculosis. Dad tried his best to treat me (I often had my lungs X-rayed to monitor my health).

He treated me this way: in the morning and in the evening, hot milk with butter and honey, in the morning two raw eggs (I sucked them through a hole in the shell), three raw eggs after school, three more eggs in the evening, plus milk with butter and honey. After some time, I had another X-ray. It turned out that the lesions in my lungs were gone. I was healthy! It was a great success for my dad, who constantly made sure that I followed my treatment. Sometimes, I got spanked with a belt because I was cheating. I hated sucking the eggs. Today, on the other hand, I like scrambled eggs a lot.

In 1946, we came with the repatriation transport to Olsztyn, to the so-called Regained Territories. We went to school and had food and clothing while my dad still had a difficult life. He had to provide for himself and his children. We stayed in one rented room. Dad worked hard in construction, then he got a job at a Horticultural Cooperative and ran a franchised vegetable and fruit stall. Once he earned some money, he made a rudimentary renovation of our two rooms with a kitchen in a building that was slightly damaged by the war. Later, he opened a shoe store there. He traveled to Warsaw, and he transported various shoes in a huge sack on his back. Business was going well. Dad made sure we went to school, didn’t get sick, and didn’t go hungry. He would buy a dressed hen at the market, put it in a pot and cook barley soup on an iron stove—we liked it a lot. In the years 1949-1950 people recovered a little from the war and began to make money. At the time, the authorities didn’t tolerate private initiative. Dad was accused of trading foreign currency, they even found a witness. Our apartment was searched twice in the presence of the prosecutor and nothing was found. However, because of the witness, he spent over two years in prisons in Iłów and Olsztyn. We were left to our own devices. We were thirteen and fifteen at the time. Nobody cared for us and again we were fatherless. As young girls do, we skipped school. Some of our store inventory was stolen from us, and some we sold to make a living, and finally, in June, on Corpus Christi in 1952, my father was released from prison. He had to start all over again.

The war hardened him, he was tough, unbending. He didn’t break down, was always smiling, happy, and helpful to other people. Since he was a shoemaker by profession, he opened a shoemaker’s workshop. He worked in the craft for a long time, and later, leased a room for a cap maker.

In 1978, he moved to Gołdap, to my sister Chana’s (now Janina) to take care of her, because she had just gotten divorced. He had a pension, joined a sports club. He took an active part in sports and set an example to young people that even an older man in his 80s can be athletic.
He died in 1982 of mediastinal cancer. He never remarried and was a father and mother to us. He took care of us, provided for us, and gave us an education. He so wanted to live, to see how his grandchildren would turn out, but he didn’t live to see it. We saw him fight with his disease in the hospital, but it was stronger.

Thank you, Dad. Your daughters