Out of Chaos: Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust

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190 Charcoal Aaron Elster Why do I tell my story? We are the last of the survivors and we have an obligation to tell the younger generations of the atrocities that humans are able to inflict on others. When I speak to children, I ask that they take away two ideas from my story. First, you must believe in yourself. You must trust that you are stronger and smarter than you think you are. In the end, it is essential to love, appreciate, and respect yourself above all. Second, I want children to learn that prejudice and intolerance against others can lead to another Holocaust. As the decision makers of tomorrow, children must understand the consequences of indifference and hate. They must not be bystanders: they must always be proactive and have the courage to speak up and care. —Aaron Elster The Russian Army bombed our town before its liberation in August 1944. Certain smells, sounds, sights, tastes bring me back to a time and place of my early childhood—a childhood that I try to keep buried and leave hidden in my past. More often than not my past reemerges, and I am suddenly twelve years old. It is September 1944, when the Russians liberated us in the town of my birth, Sokołów, Podłaski, Poland. Most of the twenty-nine Holocaust survivors attempted to establish some type of normalcy despite having lost their families and possessions. A Russian soldier guarded our building against our former neighbors, who were unhappy that we had survived and returned to reclaim what was ours. The curse of antisemitism still existed. Because of all we went through to survive the Germans’ attempt to exterminate us, we lived in fear. My sister Irene, fifteen years old, and I were the only two children who survived in this community and existed among these broken human beings. From a thriving population of six thousand Jews, we were the remnants. Having lost our parents and our little sister, Sarah, and all close relatives in the gas chambers of Treblinka, we had become a burden to those Jewish survivors. Suddenly,akindandlovingPolishwoman,Mrs.Kuczewiczowi,whowasafriend of the family, appeared. This woman still owned and operated a restaurant. She is the same woman who gave me a loaf of black, round bread when I had escaped from the 1942 massive deportation. On that same night I had used the bread as a pillow when I slept in the forest. Now she helped Irene wash and be deloused. She poured naphtha on Irene’s hair, and although it was very smelly, it got rid of the lice that had been nesting there during our hiding time. Mrs. Kuczewiczowi took Irene under her wing. She put her to work in her restaurant while I became a “street kid.” Word spread among the remaining survivors Aftermath 191 that two orphans had survived, and one child needed a daily meal. They decided that each survivor would provide a meal for me on a daily rotation. Some insisted that I perform chores before I was given my meal. It certainly was not the life I had imagined after escaping the town’s liquidation and surviving the horrors of life hidden in the dark and filthy attic during the war. The winter’s freezing cold and the summer’s sweltering heat under that tin roof had sucked the air out of the attic and made it impossible to breathe and turned me into a fifty-pound skeleton. I lived with hunger and isolation for two years. My only companions were the lice on my body, the rats and mice, and the daily visit by Mrs. Gorski, who handled my toilet bucket. The remnants of the Jewish community were busy trying to reconstruct their own lives under harsh and hostile circumstances because antisemitism was rampant . Their former neighbors resented the Jews because they survived, and the neighbors feared that they would lose their stolen Jewish property. Therefore, they had little room for others. I adapted to my circumstances and learned quickly to fend for myself. I became street-smart and learned about survival all over again. Most of my days were spent on the streets with boys who were in similar life situations. I was enrolled in the fifth grade in grammar school. I had difficulty adjusting because I could not read or spell, causing the other children to make fun of me and call me the “lice-infested Jew.” My Catholic schooling ended when the...