I saw the kids whom I’d played with. They were all around my age — five, six or seven. It was Kinderselektion. Children’s selection. It was their time to die because the Nazis were liquidating the camp and they didn’t have room for children. They were making it Kinderrein. Child pure. Cleansed of children.
Mothers were pleading in vain as they were separated from their children. I can still hear their screams if I close my eyes and replay that scene in my mind. Some parents tried to get into the trucks with their children. With their guns raised, the soldiers forced them back. The parents were fighting for their children’s lives against impossible odds.
There was one sight I will never ever forget. A mother was engaged in a tug-of-war with a soldier. Caught in the middle was a baby. The mother was clutching her child’s upper body under the arms, while the brute in uniform was pulling the baby’s legs with all his might. Neither would yield. They were using such strength that the baby was dismembered.
The parts of the child’s body were hurled onto the truck. It was the worst thing I ever saw and gives me nightmares to this day. Although I have done my utmost to block out the image, it’s lodged deep inside my brain. I never talked about that incident with my mother to try to keep it at bay, but it keeps coming back to haunt me.
Infanticide is the most despicable act of war. The Germans were aping evil empires from the beginning of time that eviscerated their enemies’ spirits and hopes for the future by slaughtering their children.
The mother’s cry was the most harrowing I ever heard. I knew that I was supposed to remain silent, but in the face of such barbarity, my self-restraint faltered. As ever, Mama was one step ahead and clamped her hand tighter than before, stifling the scream that was rising in my throat.
I watched through the gap in the roof until the roundup was finished. I should have averted my eyes, but something inside compelled me to bear witness. The arguing and wailing in a jumble of German, Polish and Yiddish seemed interminable. But there was only ever going to be one outcome. The trucks pulled away, and not long afterward, the early summer air was punctured by bursts of distant machine-gun fire. My playmates tumbled into a mass grave dug by their parents earlier that week. My father had been among them. Not only had he been forced to prepare a tomb for his parents, but at gunpoint, he had also had to dig a grave for his child. Me. But somehow, I had cheated death. Again. The Nazis used us to bury our own people. To me, Poland is nothing but a mass grave for the Jews.
Eventually, when the commotion had subsided, my father returned to our room. He opened the hatch to the roof space and helped Mama and me climb down. My face was black-and-blue from my mother’s grip. The bruising lasted for weeks.
The mass murder of the children of Starachowice changed the pattern of my life immediately, as the light went out of my world.
“Tola, you can’t play outside again”, said my mama. “It’s far too dangerous for you. You saw what happened to those other children”.
I was more of a prisoner than ever before. For endless hour upon hour, I would be in solitary confinement in what I knew as the Dark Room. The sensory deprivation of such treatment is hard enough for an adult to bear. Imagine what it’s like for a child of five and a half who has been exposed to more than four years of carnage close at hand. A child whose experiences of life were far worse than any flights of nightmarish fantasy the mind can conjure.
The next day, I briefly caught sight of the dawn of a summer’s day through the open door as my parents left for their shift at the ammunition factory. I knew that I wouldn’t see them until long after the sun had set. My mother secured a blanket over the window. Not a chink of light penetrated the gloom. I was under strict instructions to stay away from the window.
“The guards might be able to see your shadow on the blanket if you go too close to the window”, Mama explained. “Under no circumstances are you to touch the blanket or peek outside. It has to appear as though our room is empty, that no one is home. You must be invisible. Do you promise to obey me?”
“Yes, Mama”.
“Okay. Be brave. We’ll bring you some food when we return”.
After hugging me with tears in their eyes, they closed the door and the slash of dawn disappeared. I took the piece of bread they had left me and ate it. It was still early, and I plunged into a deep slumber.
When I woke, I began to worry what would happen if my parents didn’t come back. No one would find me. Maybe I’d starve to death. I contemplated the alternative. What would happen if the Germans conducted a search and discovered me? I knew what the consequence would be. That thought alone was enough to keep me away from the window.
I sat on my bunk debating with myself. I convinced myself that my parents would never abandon me. I was certain of their unconditional love. But then I remembered the yellow powder that the workers sometimes inhaled and the stories my parents recounted about their colleagues succumbing to the yellow death. What would happen to me if they were careless and they, too, were poisoned at the factory? There were graves near the factory where the victims of the powder were buried. Would I ever see Mama and Papa again? The questions kept going in circles in my mind and they spun so quickly that I became almost dizzy.
I have no idea how many days I spent alone with my fears in the darkness while the summer sun shone on Starachowice. My isolation might have lasted for weeks. I yearned for the sound of other children, just to be reassured that I wasn’t completely alone. Although I was silent, and I strained to listen to the world beyond the blanket at the window, I didn’t hear the voice or laughter or tears of another child, or a mother’s words. I began to wonder whether all the other Jewish children in the world were dead. Was I the last remaining one on earth? If so, I had to survive.
In my braver moments, I convinced myself that it was better to be alone. I no longer had to play Catch the Jew with those rough boys. I didn’t have to run away frightened. I didn’t have to endure the beatings with their stick guns. I persuaded myself that I was fortunate I wasn’t one of those children on the trucks who had been driven away and had never come back. My internal argument was supported by the regular sound of gunfire far away in the distance. But the solitude always overwhelmed me. My mind would begin to float. Things became unreal and I became detached from my circumstances. I was no longer frightened or worried. I zoned out.
I know now that the clinical term for what was happening to me is dissociation. It is a condition where the mind activates a protective mechanism when a person is unable to cope with a situation. A person feels disconnected from themselves and the world around them. It’s a way of dealing with stress or trauma. In the most extreme cases, it becomes a personality disorder that can last for years. But I believe my condition back then was short-lived. My survival instincts were so strong, even at such a young age, that I had the mental resources to be able to handle reality when it really mattered.
One day in particular stands out. For once, I was not in solitary confinement. My mother had stayed home for some reason. Before the Kinderselektion, I used to chat away brightly to my parents when we were together in our room. Since the murders, I had learned to keep my voice down, because officially, I didn’t exist. Mama and I were having a whispered conversation when we heard boots approaching. We stopped talking immediately. To our horror, there was a rap on the door. For a moment Mama was paralyzed with indecision. The soldier knocked again, less patiently this time. Mama had no choice and knew she had to open the door.