Where Are We Going?

By Miriam Finder Tasini

This is the inspiring true story of a courageous Jewish family's escape from the Nazis and survival against all odds. In this action-packed memoir that reads like a novel, the author recounts the severe hardship that she, her sister, and parents, Markus and Rena Finder, endured as they escaped Krakow, Poland, in September 1939, just ahead of the advancing Nazi invaders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781884092329

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Author

Introduction

In this book you will find memories, fantasies and family myths that have been aggregated into one story—the story of my family, the Finders (Photo 1, p. 161).

I have wanted to write this story for many years but was unable to bring myself to do so until now. However, the time has come, for I am afraid that if I wait any longer the story will be lost.

In November 1991, I was on my way to Krakow, Poland, to take care of the legalities of my family’s property restitution, and changed planes in Munich, Germany. I felt uneasy there; I was frightened and could feel hate rising in me in full force. I spent the hour between flights sitting in an airport lounge, and though it was irrational, I decided to forego even a cup of coffee. I could not bear to give a penny to anyone who might have had—even remotely—a connection to any Nazi past or present. Whoever I had become in the last several decades gave way to the child who was terrified of those around her, a child whose paranoia was justified.

Starting in September 1939, the Nazis marched into city after city in Eastern Europe, including the one where I lived, claiming they created a New Order that was to last a thousand years. They took over the house where my mother was born. When I returned fifty-two years later to the old homestead in Krakow, a four-story mansion, the rats were its only living inhabitants. After long negotiations, I sold it and watched strangers place their signatures on the sales agreement. The lawyers noted the details: the house was built in 1637, it was 10,000 square meters, had defective plumbing, the banisters needed replacement, and the frescoes in the second floor ballroom needed restoration. Generations had preceded me in that old mansion, from the wealthy burghers of the seventeenth century to the hard-working Jews of the twentieth.

As a child, I heard about the ballroom where our family gathered for celebrations and funerals, with angels and flowers painted on the dome above the dance floor. In my early years, I would conjure up the image of people dining and dancing in that room on the night of my parents’ engagement party.

My ancestors came to Krakow six centuries earlier to escape the Spanish Inquisition. Now I was spending ten days there to put an end to the European chapter of our family history.

I heard about love at first sight—after all, Cinderella did marry Prince Charming. But today I wonder if, in my parents’ case, it was also their embroidered memories of their happy past in Krakow . . . memories that helped them to survive the harsh winters in Siberia and starvation and drought in the Uzbek desert, when we endured our long escape from the Nazis.

In my memory, the many places where I have lived have blended with each other. In the house where I was born, I dimly remember hugging the smooth leg of a grand piano while my mother, in a flowing white robe, played charming melodies. There were pictures on the walls in a room with a skylight and very large armchairs. As I stood on my tip toes, I could look at the candelabra in the middle of the long, shiny, gleaming dining room table that seated twelve. Furniture, rooms, paintings, balconies and closets are easier for me to remember than people.

I do remember, clearly, being hugged by my mother’s father, Bernard Feilgut, and sitting on his lap, holding onto his gold watch as he taught me to tell time. My father’s father, Jacob Finder, was honored, admired and feared. I have seen many photos of this handsome, imposing man, and only remember kissing his hand as it rested on top of his silver-handled cane.

My grandfather Jacob was the oldest of five brothers. His life was one that could be the basis for a Hollywood movie. He was the son of a poor, Jewish farmer who built a business that supplied grain to the Polish army during World War I, and, as a result, was able to accumulate wealth and power. He ruled his brothers, employees and children with an iron hand, the same hand that I used to kiss as a child.

Jacob, one of his brothers, and two nephews were hidden for almost two years in the countryside by an old employee. He was denounced for hiding Jews by a neighbor. When the Nazis came to transport them to Auschwitz, Jacob did not go quietly. The villagers, after the war, reported to my mother that they saw him wave his cane at the Nazis and their collaborators. They shot him as he attacked them, and I am proud of him for resisting.

I do not remember either of my grandmothers, but I do recall a photo of my father’s mother, Rosa, lying in bed deathly ill with her youngest baby granddaughter—me—at her side (Photo 6, p. 163). They told me that my other grandmother, Fela, was a stern, imposing woman who loved only her son and never showed any affection to anyone else.

I looked out of my hotel window that winter in 1991 and watched the bundled up pedestrians scurrying across the city square. There was no place here anymore for a descendant of people who were sent into oblivion. The clean-shaven uptown intellectuals, the modern Jews and the Kazimierz Jews, who piously wore beards and black hats, were all long gone. They disappeared into labor camps and crematoria. Those who survived found other, faraway places to live. Only a handful stayed.

As I wandered through Kazimierz’s narrow, medieval streets that once teemed with Jewish life, I was overcome by a sense of unreality. I’d left the city more than half a century earlier, as a small child wrapped up in a blanket on my grandfather Jacob’s lap. Now I was a grandmother revisiting my past.

I could see hidden signs of that now extinct community. A school building, once a synagogue, had a Star of David engraved over the front entrance. On some dwellings, mezzuzot, the talismans that Jews are required to post on our doorways, were still nailed onto the doorposts. The Great Synagogue where my parents were married is now a museum, and the Remu Synagogue is currently the only functioning synagogue in the city, and also a museum. The Remu was built in 1560 and had the oldest Jewish cemetery in Krakow. Now only a few headstones remain—those that were too misshapen to be used by the Germans for paving roads.

I walked through a junkyard and over railroad tracks to locate the new Jewish cemetery established in 1840—one that has not seen much use recently, as there are few Jews left in Poland. The gates are locked and entry is through an old building that smells of mildew and urine. An elderly woman wrapped in layers of old, torn clothing greeted me and offered to sell me a candle. She said she was one of only 300 Jews who still live in town, and invited me to her home—one room with a bed and a small cooking stove but no sign of running water.

The cemetery was choked with weeds and collapsed tombstones that blocked the path. I tried to decipher the blurred names on the old headstones, but I was not sure whether I had heard some of them in my childhood or if they were familiar old Eastern European Jewish names: Herzog, Klein, Lacks, Sacs. I did find one stone with Nabel, my maternal grandmother’s maiden name.

I considered if my DNA would match the DNA of some of those people who have been dead for more than a hundred years. My grandmother was fortunate, the last of her family to die a natural death, but I could not find her final resting place. Grandparents, great-grandparents, their acquaintances, teachers, friends and relatives—Rozner, Kleinman, Hochwald, Nabel, Hecker—the names were all around me, but I did not know who was who and what my relationship to them might have been.

I can only imagine what my mother—the last survivor of her generation—would say if she sat surrounded by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I can hear her telling them, I wish I had been a writer or that I had kept a diary so that my family and friends, too many to name or remember, will never be forgotten. They are all dead, most never survived the train ride to the concentration camps. Others are buried all over the globe. But for the sake of our future we must never forget them.

All families have histories and legends that are passed on to successive generations. I hope to capture the dim memories mixed with fantasies of my childhood with recollections reported over many years by my parents, Rena and Markus, and a few surviving relatives now dispersed around the world. Now I have to fill in the gaps for them and to honor all those Jewish souls who vanished into the smoky mists of our past.

A Note about Names Used in the Book

Several members of my family discussed in this book either had multiple names of endearment or changed their names during the course of their lives. For the sake of simplicity, I refer to the people below as follows in the book: My mother’s name was Regina but she was always referred to as Rena.

My father’s name was Maksymilian Finder on his birth certificate. In the book, he is always called Markus, the name he used most of his life.

My uncle, whose name was Maurycius Hochwald, as I put in the Dedication, is called Julius, who was married to my father’s younger sister, Anna.

I refer to myself as Mira, and was between three and seven years of age during the events recounted.

Markus’s eldest sister was named Leah at birth, but changed her name to Leontyne, as she is called on the Finder Family photo (p. 161). Leontyne’s husband, Wilhelm (Wilek) Hecker, is called Willi.

Markus’s next eldest sister is called by her birth name, Golde. She later changed her name to Eugenia, as she is called on the Finder Family photo, and is referred to as Genia on page 110. Her husband’s name was Layosz Halasz, who is mentioned in the family photo and elsewhere in the book.

Miriam Finder Tasini

Los Angeles, California

2012

Chapter I

Friday, September 1, 1939

A dog began howling in the garden below. Rena was startled from a deep sleep. Thunder? But I do not hear the rain, she thought. There was no moisture in the air and the patter of raindrops was absent. She looked at the clock by the bedside; it was five-fifteen in the morning. She turned over to go back to sleep when the thunder struck again. This time it seemed closer.

Did you hear that? she asked her husband, Markus.

He sat up, got out of bed, and walked towards the window. He stood there a moment then quietly said, The refinery is on fire.

Rena muffled a cry of dismay. She jumped out of bed, grabbed her robe and wrapped it around herself as she ran to the window. Markus put his arm around her shoulder and together they stepped onto the balcony facing the river to watch the thick, black smoke billowing above the burning refinery across the Vistula River, obscuring the view of the picturesque city on the opposite bank.

A rumbling sound emanated from the silhouettes of two low-flying airplanes over the river. A rapid series of explosions followed the disappearance of the airplanes into the smoke cover on the opposite river bank.

Is this bombing a beginning of a war? What else is going on? Rena kept mumbling under her breath.

The dog was now whimpering in the garden below. Markus cried out, Come here, Wolfie! The dog approached the house and sat at the front door waiting to be let in.

Markus pulled Rena gently back into the bedroom and said, Let us try to find out what is happening, we need to listen to the news. We’ll let Wolfie in and go to the library; the poor animal is going crazy.

The commotion wakened Mira, their three-year-old, in the bedroom down the hall. She began to cry and yell, Mama, I don’t like this noise. They walked down the hall into the children’s bedroom. Markus gathered Mira in his arms and Rena lifted the eighteen-month-old Lisa out of the crib (Photo 9, p. 165). Together they carried the children into the library at the back of the house. It was a large room, with tall bookcases surrounding the large windows that faced an apple orchard. Opposite the comfortable leather couch was a large antique credenza, where the radio sat between shelves that held Rena’s large collection of charming china figurines. Markus turned on the radio.

Suddenly the planes returned and the explosions, although muted by the books and closed windows, continued to wreak havoc around them. The terrified Mira squirmed out of Markus’s arms and clung to Rena’s bathrobe, crying uncontrollably. Wolfie barked loudly in the garden. Markus went to let him in, then returned and gently separated the sobbing child from Rena and carried her to the couch, where he sat down and cuddled her in his lap. Rena, still holding baby Lisa, sat down next to him. The dog settled on the large Oriental rug in the middle of the room.

The radio announcer was reciting names of towns on the Polish western border that had reported bombings. He interrupted his report with an announcement: We will now hear the inspector general of the Polish armed forces, Marshal Rydz-Smygly, who will provide the information about our battles with the invading German army.

This is the Inspector General speaking. We have received a formal announcement that the German army has crossed the Polish border earlier this morning. Our cities are under attack. Our gallant army will resist this savage attack with full force. This armed military invasion occurred without prior declaration of war. This is a barbaric action unprecedented in the history of civilization. There was no direct communication with our government. I am calling all able men to join the forces that will defend our land, he concluded.

Markus turned to Rena and said, I always thought that the Germans were gentlemen who played by the rules in business and in war. It seems I was wrong. You stay here with Maria and the children. I have to go to the office. I will have to try to keep the factory running with the night shift, if the day shift is delayed getting to the factory.

The telephone began ringing. He walked to it and answered, Director speaking. Yes, I know, I will be there in fifteen minutes.

Thoughts were racing through his mind as he was getting ready to leave the house. Out loud he tried to sort out their priorities to Rena. It is hard to make any plans, as we do not know what to expect from minute to minute. I know you will take care of the girls and be safe here with Zosia and Maria, while I go down to the office and try to keep the mill running. But I am worried about my father. He is alone and may not be able to take care of himself in this dangerous situation.

Why don’t we bring him here? You know I will take care of him, even if he complains, Rena said with a smile.

Great idea. I will call him. Markus kissed her. I still think you are the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Markus rapidly ran down the curving flight of stairs out of the house. He heard several new explosions before reaching the end of the garden path. He felt anxious and was overwhelmed by sadness as he looked at the newly-renovated, hundred-year-old mansion, with its carved doorway and balconies with elaborate wrought-iron railings, sprawling on the top of the hill. The copper roof reflected the morning sun. Rose bushes at the base of the house were in full bloom. The garden was surrounded by a fence to provide a safe playground for the children. A large, recently-built sandbox, a swing and the doghouse built for Wolfie were the newest additions. The lawn spilled towards the fence at the bottom of the hill, which stopped just above the river bank. As Markus looked towards the children’s playing area, Wolfie, out again, approached him wagging his tail. He gave the dog a quick pat. Be a good dog, he said. Watch my girls.

The Vistula River, which ran through the city of Krakow, was usually crowded with sailboats and wooden barges at that hour of the morning. Now it was almost deserted. Markus saw a lonely barge moving north. He had difficulty imagining there was anyone, anywhere, who had not heard about the war. He unlocked the gate and walked towards the parked car. He started the car and drove towards the six-story building that housed the mill, a mile down the road. He remembered his father announcing the decision to move and enlarge the family business from a small building in Kazimierz, the Jewish section of Krakow where the family lived, to a new location on several acres of land across the river.

The Kazimierz section of town had been the center of Jewish life since the fourteenth century, when King Kazimierz the Great invited Jewish artists and tradesmen escaping from the Inquisition in Spain to settle in Poland. The king envisioned that the enterprising, talented goldsmiths, silversmiths and craftsmen would help his country to become part of the evolving European culture. When the Jews settled in Krakow, they built a new section of town named after their benefactor—Kazimierz. Poland became a Jewish haven for the following 200 years. After 1600, when anti-Semitism became a way of life that restricted Jews from other areas in the city, Kazimierz became a crowded ghetto. Numerous synagogues were built throughout the four square miles, and Jewish culture flourished.

Markus’s parents, Jacob and Rosa Finder, had moved to Kazimierz after their marriage, into a building owned by Rosa’s family, where they had their first child, Leah, ten months later. A year later, they had their second daughter, Golde. Markus was their third child, the only son. One of the family legends about Markus’s birth was Jacob’s announcement in synagogue—God finally heard my prayers—after he learned he had his long-awaited male heir.

As he approached the mill Markus recalled the many times, when he was young, that he and his father walked across the bridge to Zablocie, to watch the construction of the mill at the new location adjacent to the bakery. His father always declared on these outings, This will take care of you, your children and your grandchildren.

After graduating from high school, Markus (Photo 3, p. 162) was expected to go to a university. Neither he nor anyone else in the family considered Jagelonska University in Krakow as a possibility. Poland tried to introduce a Numerous Clauses law in 1923 to limit students of Jewish origin, but it faced objections from the League of Nations. The law existed unofficially, however, so Jewish students were not acceptable in the newly established Republic of Poland after WWI.

Jacob told his son, I think Vienna might be a good place to study. I have lived with the Austrians most of my life who treated us, Jews, well. I hope that Poland will change and your children will be accepted to universities. Vienna is a beautiful city and I am sure you will be happy there.

Markus was initially reluctant to go to Vienna, worried about the competition in a famous educational institution, but his fears very soon disappeared. Vienna—the town of emperors, intellectuals and entertainers—provided him with a range of experience he never imagined was possible. He loved Latin, Greek and literature. He enjoyed the Vienna night life. He and his friends spent many a night waltzing their way through clubs and dance halls.

Markus planned and expected to become a lawyer, but the idea seemed less and less interesting as time went on. His father was providing financial support for his university education, but he did not keep it a secret that he expected his only son to join the now-thriving family business. At the end of Markus’s third year at the university, his father told him the mill had become a shareholders’ corporation and that he was now a major shareholder. Markus had been awarded the fourth largest block of stock, exceeded only by his father, his uncle Izak and his brother-in-law, Willi.

I know that you wanted to become a lawyer and I am very proud of you, Jacob told him. I want each and every one of my children to have a good and comfortable life. Your mother and I hope you will marry soon and have a family. I want you to run Ziarno. I need you because you are smart and able to get along with people. I want to know that my son, my daughters and all their children can all live in comfort for the rest of their lives.

I have heard this before, Father, but I do not know much about the business. Besides, you know how I feel about Willi, Markus replied, irritated.

Just this once, come to the stockholders meeting next week. I insisted to make you one of the major stockholders, and I would be embarrassed if you did not come.

I know how you feel. I will come and try to listen but this is not a promise to join, Markus answered.

He attended the meeting of stockholders and was the youngest person in the room. He was bored as he listened to the lawyers discussing the reorganization of the structure of the company and the distribution of shares. He did not want to participate in the discussion, and his mind wandered to the soccer game he had scheduled for the next day.

I am not sure if I can stand working in Ziarno. It seems like a nightmare, he told his cousin and best friend, Zigi.

Now as he was approaching the mill, he tried to reconstruct the process that led him to not only join the company, but also to assume a leadership role. It was not an easy transition. His father was domineering but cooperated and went along with any decisions, as long as he felt honored and admired in his role as the president and founder. It was his adversarial, combative brother-in-law, Willi, a Talmudic scholar chosen by Jacob to marry his older sister, Leah, who was much disliked by the workers and caused turmoil by his erratic behavior.

Markus found himself taking charge and enjoying the aspects of the business that required multiple involvements with the employees. He climbed, almost daily, up the six flights of stairs in the mill, greeting the workers as he walked by. He often came to work early in the morning and stood on the loading dock to discuss the orders and deliveries with the dispatchers. Markus hoped that the morning turmoil would not alter the work schedule. He parked outside the small, off-white, office building, and walked towards the large brick building that housed the mill. As he entered the mill he was greeted by the familiar roar of turbines.

The guard at the door greeted him with the familiar, Good morning, Mr. Director.

Have you seen Mihal? Markus inquired.

Mihal had worked his way up to a main supervisor during the past ten years. He lived with his wife and children on the factory grounds.

He is probably in the back supervising the loading of the train, the guard said.

Markus walked to the loading platform. Mihal, a tall, heavy-set man in his thirties, and four other workers were loading sacks onto the two flatbed railroad carriages.

Mihal turned to Markus. Shall we continue loading? Germans are bombing.

Yes, Markus responded. We have to continue to live as if nothing changed; we cannot let them win. Let us see if the day shift will get here. Please keep as many of the night shift here as you can. They will get extra pay.

You know I will be here, Mihal answered with a tense smile.

Markus walked back to the office building, unlocked the doors, and climbed up to the second floor. He sat at his desk pondering the next move. Jacob, his sixty-seven-year-old father, was still a major stockholder in the company, but had not been involved in the daily activities of the business since the death of his wife three years earlier. He turned over the management of the factories to Markus and his son-in-law Willi. Markus decided to delay calling his father and Willi until he had a clearer idea about the staffing situation. He dialed home knowing that Rena, whose family had business in the city, would provide some information and counsel.

He told her, as soon as she answered, I am still all alone in the office. None of the office staff or the day shift at the mill got here so far. The products are accumulating, as only one train has arrived so far this morning. Have you been able to talk to your father or anyone else to find out what is going on in the city? I am not sure what is going on with my father, he is alone and may not be able to care for himself in this dangerous situation.

She replied calmly, Papa opened the restaurant at six and his regulars were all there. The city center is calm, but the radio reports that Warsaw and many other cities are under attack. I still think we should try to bring your father here.

He chuckled as he responded, I knew that you would have all the information I might need. I will call my father again and send a driver to fetch him.

He felt a wave of calm and excitement as he hung up the telephone and focused his gaze at a photograph on his desk. It was a beautiful woman in a wedding dress. It was the best decision in my life to send her those flowers.

He thought back to a warm, sunny day early in the summer, seven years earlier, when he had chanced upon his cousin Mania sitting with friends at an outdoor café. Mania stood up and put her arms around him. Turning to her friends and smiling, she said, Please meet my favorite cousin!

Markus was in a hurry, preoccupied with a business dilemma, and felt irritated. My pleasure to meet you, he said, tipped his hat and quickly walked away. But before he disappeared around the corner, he noticed Rena’s sparkling blue eyes and radiant smile. He wondered who she was. Later that evening he telephoned Mania and said, I want to apologize for rushing off. I hope you were not insulted.

Sarcastically, Mania answered, Oh, well. I know you are a busy man, but you could have stopped and at least stayed to meet my friends.

He replied, I am sorry I was not very polite, and I hope you would not mind if I asked who the blonde woman was sitting at the table on your left.

Oh, so you liked her. She is very pretty, isn’t she? his cousin jokingly responded. The beauty is Rena Feilgut. She lives just off the central square at 5 Szczepanska, in the mansion over her family’s restaurant and bar, ‘Under the Three Fishes.’

Markus was taken aback by this information. That restaurant was not kosher, and he remembered seeing drunken men in front of the bar, which no self-respecting Jew would enter. Markus decided it didn’t matter. What the hell, he thought, I have nothing to lose and she is beautiful.

I think I want to send her flowers, he told Mania.

Definitely do this. I think she liked you, Mania said as she repeated the address for him.

In a note attached to the bouquet of roses he asked her to meet him.

On their honeymoon a year later, Rena, laughing, told him how surprised she was when her mother walked into her room the next day carrying a large bouquet. You must have a secret admirer or you’re keeping a secret, she announced in her usual sarcastic manner.

Rena was puzzled. I have no secrets,