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Secrets
- Northwestern University Press
- Chapter
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233 First Name: Sheila Last Name: Gerber Also Known As: Shulinka Taub Birger Maiden Name: Taub Date of Birth: September 9, 1941 City of Birth: Kaunas Country of Birth: Lithuania Secrets Sheila Taub Birger Gerber It was the end of June 1967, when I was twenty-six years old. I had just finished another year of teaching. I was home on Chicago’s Northwest Side when the doorbell rang. Who could it be, I thought. It was my father. I was surprised to see him because he never came alone. My mother was always with him. We talked a bit, and then he told me that he was not my father and my mother was not my mother. They were my aunt and uncle, Rosa and Daniel Birger. He said, “Your aunt is your mother’s younger sister.” He continued talking, telling me that my parents were killed in the Shoah by the Nazis. We were all in the Kovno Ghetto, his family and mine. I was born shortly after the Jews were forced to move into the ghetto. My parents, Jonah Taub and Fruma Tarshish, kept my September 9, 1941, birth a secret because children weren’t allowed to be born in the ghetto. I survived the many Aktionen by being hidden. One time when it was not possible to hide me, my uncle saved me from being killed. He told me that during a selection in the Ghetto Square, he saw me in my buggy in the extermination line. I do not know where my parents were at this time. My uncle grabbed the buggy and pulled it out of the line when a Nazi attacked him. My uncle vigorously fought back. Another Nazi approached the fight and yelled, “Do you know who you are fighting with? He’s the middleweight Lithuanian boxing champion.” That ended the fight. Uncle Daniel grabbed the buggy and ran away with me. Even when he retold this story to me, he stopped there and wouldn’t go 234 Out of Chaos any further. He never explained how he was able to flee the Nazis. Perhaps that is all he wanted to tell. My uncle continued to tell me that my real father learned that the Nazis were going to burn the ghetto and march the survivors out to their death. This news spread like fire in the ghetto. Because conditions were desperate, my parents decided to get me out. My father made arrangements with a Lithuanian farmer, who was a friend, to smuggle me out of the ghetto. I survived in hiding with the farmer until the war’s end. Aunt Rosa, Uncle Daniel, and his parents had escaped through an underground tunnel during the burning of the ghetto. After the war my aunt and uncle searched for and retrieved me. My father had been murdered trying to escape to the partisans. It is unknown how my mother died. My uncle ended the secret story by saying that I had to know the truth and that they should have told me before, but my aunt was against it. I don’t know why she was against telling me the truth. Perhaps it was too painful for her to remember those days. Listening to him, instead of feeling surprised, I felt a sense of relief, and I understood that he was telling me the truth. I thought about my past, about my unanswered questions, and about being told not to ask questions. I was told that I was a child and therefore could not understand. I thought about the secrecy that surrounded me, and about my mother’s—no, my aunt’s—mysterious tears even at times of joy or even when she looked at me. On these occasions I asked my aunt, “Why are you crying?” She would say, “You wouldn’t understand.” I sensed from my aunt’s behavior there was more to my past than I was being told, but I just accepted it when she said, “Don’t ask questions.” My aunt strongly conveyed to me how much she had suffered and gone through during the war. I did not want to cause her any more suffering by reawakening painful memories. I stopped asking questions. My uncle got up to leave. I thanked him. He came as my father but left as my uncle. I’m now an orphan—a first-time pregnant orphan about to become a mother to my unborn child. I was numb. I was drained...