Crossing the River

4. Winter

4 Winter January Little time was left to lament and mourn. One wintry Sunday, the weekly day of rest, we were ordered to evacuate within four to six hours. We had to clear out of our quarter and move to the west, to the other side of Democrats’ Square. This was German logic, cold and severe: since the ghetto population was diminished by at least a third, the ghetto territory could now be considerably reduced. Part of the shrinkage had already taken place by eliminating the little ghetto, and now compression began anew. The process repeated itself over the coming days—the ghetto’s territory was lessened piece by piece, and the remaining population became more and more crowded.Time and again people had to take their belongings and find a dwelling in some corner, and soon there were nearly no family apartments. In time, two families found themselves sharing a single room, and there was no end to the quarrels and bitterness. How were we to find a new place to stay and move to it in a matter of hours? What were we to take? What should we leave behind? Shock and bewilderment. Father was sent to spy out some other place, and Mother began packing furiously. And what would become of our great treasure, the spare logs on the side of the pit in the yard? How could we give them up? And then a kind of miracle happened: at midday a group of men and women appeared at our doorstep, like the three angels, and said, “We’ve come to help you.” They were teachers, father’s former colleagues. We were overcome with emotion and gratitude.They did not linger, as time was short; each of them picked up an object and took it over the evacuation line. Nor did they disdain to take the large wooden beams—two or three pitched in and dragged them across the snow with a rope. I was a bit embarrassed that such well-known and respectable people should work on our behalf at a job that had something demeaning about it. But they took their work seriously, approached it with determination and without hesitation, coming back a second and third 54 Chapter 4 time without appearing nearly as disturbed as I was about their social standing. The power of friendship! It happened on an especially cold day, when the temperature was below minus thirty degrees Celsius. But I do not remember it being particularly cold, perhaps because of my excitement. Where were we to take our belongings when we had no new place yet? It was decided that we would store our things beside Ruchamah’s house until we found a new home. Ruchamah was Arke and Maimke’s mother; she also belonged to the family of teachers and lived in the center of the ghetto, not too far away. Although they lived on the second story of a large wooden house, they had a shed in the yard that had enough room for most of our belongings. We were invited to spend the first night with her, and in the end we spent several weeks there until we found a place of our own close by. While we were crossing Democrats’ Square for the last time, a new fence was already being stretched behind us. Once more we had changed our dwelling, the second time in the last six months. Our new home was a wooden corner house, single-storied, that commanded the intersection of Vigriv and Grinius and had a garden in front. Once the house had been white with a bluish tint, and it had had a flower garden. Remains of the garden were still visible during the first winter, but later its traces disappeared entirely . Our room was the corner one, with a door through which, in better times, the family must have stepped out to the porch and the garden to sit and sip a cup of tea. We placed our wardrobe up against that door in the corner, and thus I was able to locate its remains when I returned years later. Three or four families lived in the rooms of the flat.The main family, who had been there the longest, consisted of a polite and pleasant elderly Yekke couple (Jews of German origin) and their daughter, whom my memory insists on calling Rayah, although her name may have been Lisa, which seems more appropriate . The way to our room led through...