From Buchenwald to Carnegie Hall

The Warsaw Ghetto

When I arrived back in Warsaw after being away for more than two years, it was bitterly cold, and things were very different. When I left, there had not been a ghetto. There wasa Jewish neighborhood, but Jews lived in every part of the city. Before the war Warsaw had more than one million people, a third of them Jews. While I had been in Lemberg, the Germans had collected Jews from Warsaw, its suburbs, and all the nearby towns and put them together in what was to be the ghetto. Then they built a ten-foot-high wall around it. They wanted us all in one place so they could murder us more easily. But we didn't know that yet. My guide took me to a very large hole in the ghetto wall where a Polish policeman stood guard. Because the Germans had ordered that Jews give up their fur coats for the German army freezing in Russia, Poles went into the ghetto to buy fur coats cheaply. They didn't know that in a few weeks they would have to turn over their own fiir coats. So the guide and I walked up to the policeman and said we wanted to go in to buy fur coats. I gave him some money 56 9# WMMV $£ffi The Warsaw Ghetto 57 and said that when we came out there would be more. As we stepped through the wall, a Jewishpoliceman came up to me. "Hey, you came through the hole. Give me szmakowe [some money]." Tm Jewish," I said. "Beat it!" It must have been about seven in the morning when I arrived "home" at 72 Sienna Street. Since incendiary bombs had destroyed the building on Gesia Street we lived in before the war, my family was now living in the apartment of my uncle Joe Frankle, who had left for Bialystok with his wife and two children to join his wife's family. Bombs had torn off the front of the building, but the rest of it was still standing. I went upstairs and knocked on the kitchen door. I heard my dad say, "Who is it?" "It's me, Dad! Open up!" He tried to open the door but couldn't. They had placed an iron bar across it, and the weather was so cold that the bar had frozen against the door. I heard him call to my mother, "Where's the hammer?Where's the hammer?" "In the bathroom," I heard her say. Just hearing my mother's voice made me cry. When my dad opened the door, I fell into his arms. It was still very early—and extremely cold—and everyone was still in bed except my father. I took off my outer clothes and jumped into my mother's bed and kissed her hand for about half an hour without stopping. Then I cried some more and turned around and fell sound asleep. We had a wonderful reunion, but something waswrong. Mysister Helen had hugged me joyously when I went to her bed, but she stayed there. When we ate breakfast, Helen didn't join us. At noon she was still in bed. "Helen," I said, "what's wrong? Are you sick? Do you have a cold or something?" "Oh, I'll get up a little later." Myparents looked away and didn't say anything. Helen was very, very beautiful, with lovely blond hair. After the Germans marched into Warsaw,they began looking for Polish army officers, who were now civilians since there no longer was a func- 58 Fires of War tioning Polish army. The officers with Jewish friends got smart and went into the ghetto with their wives to hide. They put a Star of David on their coats and pretended they were Jews. The Germans got wind of it and began stopping people in the ghetto who didn't look Jewish. My sister didn't look Jewish. Three months before my return, the Gestapo grabbed her on the street. "Where's your husband ?" they demanded of her. "He's a Polish officer, isn't he?" "I'm Jewish," she had said. "I'm single." They slapped her. "You're lying." They took her to Gestapo headquarters on Szucha Avenue and threatened her, saying they were going to beat the hell out of her and kill her. Fewpeople walked out alive. As a result of the horror...