Transcending Darkness: A Girl’s Journey Out of the Holocaust

3. Ghetto and Moral Resistance

3 Ghetto and Moral Resistance A new decree panicked the community. Even non-Jews would have to abandon their homes; churches and businesses would have to relocate. Children asked their parents , “What is a ghetto? What will happen to us?” Then we went back to our world of make-believe, with hearts too heavy, and wondered, How come insane people are allowed to make laws and run the world? The day the formation of a Jewish quarter was announced, turmoil hit the city. Both Jews and Christians were in a frenzy to find new homes. Justina, our Ukrainian maid, packed her belongings in two valises, tucked the money my parents gave her into her bra to keep it safe, and left our house. We hugged, our eyes filled with tears, but I felt relieved that I would no longer have to worry that she might denounce us to the German soldiers she dated on her days off. On the day all Jews had to move into the ghetto, thousands of hungry, cold, overwhelmed , evicted people flooded our streets searching for apartments. By law, no one was permitted to remove furniture, but the streets were full of defiant people pushing carts loaded with household goods. Nowolipki Street, where we lived, and Muranowska and Pawia, where Aunt Hannah and Aunt Malka lived, remained in the Jewish sector. In the ghetto, if you had an apartment, you had everything; without one, you had nothing. Some of my new friends who had been forced into the ghetto were Jewish children born into Christianity, children of mixed marriages, and even third-generation Christians. In some instances, Poles tipped off the Nazis about some irregularities in the family trees of their coreligionists. And that was not all. More nightmarish decrees followed and stretched my belief of grown-ups’ propensity for cruelty. In the spring of 1940, the Judenrat was ordered to build, at its own expense, a thick wall all around the ghetto. I was horrified. We will be walled in! Imprisoned! In no time the brick barrier rose tall to block my horizon. It had twenty-two hellish guarded gates. When a gate swung open, I felt an irresistible temptation to steal a glance at freedom on the other side. At the same time, a shudder of fear went through me and warned me to keep far away. The menacing wall zigzagged, closing off some streets and bisecting others. Chlodna Street was split into three parts and divided by two walls. To Warsaw Ghetto wall, 1940. Courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. War 12 keep the Jews and Christians from meeting, the Nazis ordered the Judenrat to construct a bridge about two stories high with steps leading up and down the same street. When I followed Mama across the bridge, she held my hand tightly and cautioned, “Don’t look at them. Don’t let them notice you.” I struggled to heed her warnings and become invisible, but I could not resist my curiosity to check out the faces of our tormentors. I was astounded . How could people with human faces be so beastly? They named our ghetto-prison “Totkasten” (Death Crate) and packed our streets with refugees driven out of surrounding areas. Some 400,000 Jewish people were forced to live in a 1.3 square mile area. Thirty percent of the city’s population squeezed into less than 3 percent of its space. The deportees came with harrowing stories of mass murders. I would ask, “Mama, Tata, will the Germans do the same to us?” My parents tried to soothe my fears. “Don’t fret. Go play. We will look out for you.” But they could not hide the blight. Most evacuees came on foot and without a penny, sometimes without shoes on their feet. German soldiers had driven them out of their beds before dawn, and they had left everything they owned. Talented musicians gave moving performances at street corners. Passersby stopped to listen, and then left feeling guilty for not having money to place in the collection hats. A skinny, ragged, gifted boy, with dreamy dark eyes, only a couple of years older than I, stole my heart. He always stood at the same street corner, a violin resting under his chin, eyes lost in a dream world, a bow in one hand lovingly stroking the strings and making the violin play so beautifully—no one could...