The Yellow Line: Before the Holocaust: The First Time a State Gave an Interracial Baby to a White Family and Changed California Adoptions Forever

By Paul Barlin

Three generations of the Reinerman family desperately search out ways to survive the anti-Semitism of the Czarist Empire. Grandparents Elihu and Sarah flee the massacre of the Jews in the Novgorod ghetto in 1865. They head north to Riga where the Holy Host has not yet painted the yellow line around Riga's Jewish ghetto. They save their young sons, Herschel and Duvvid, but lose their lives. The boys are raised in foster homes.

Thirty years later Herschel runs a successful brokerage in Riga to support his wife and two children. Fifty miles from Riga, Duvvid works on Count Levidov's estate to support his wife and three sons. Approaching Easter, the Holy Host inflames the Christian population against the Jews. Duvvid's family's Passover visit to Herschel's house has to be postponed because Jews are subject to attacks on the road to Riga.

Only Christians are allowed to serve the three-year apprenticeship to learn a trade. Herschel, allied with Reverend Vilitsin, trains Jewish boys to masquerade as Christians. The Holy Host paints the yellow line around the Riga ghetto further restricting the lives of Jews. Herschel changes his nephew Yussel's name to Joseph and rushes him to Reverend Vilitsin to be trained as a Christian. The Riga ghetto is torched. Their homes destroyed, the Reinerman families scatter to find any measure of safety. Igor, a rabid activist for the Holy Host uncovers Joseph's masquerade and Joseph flees for his life to America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 13, 2008
• ISBN: 9780595900480

Paul Barlin

Paul Barlin was a production specialist and toolmaker before and through World War II for Westinghouse and directed the Paul Barlin Dance Theater for many years. He has two daughters and two sons and currently lives in Colorado. This is his sixth book.

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The Yellow Line:

Before the Holocaust

Three generations of the Reinerman family desperately search out ways to survive the anti-Semitic hatred of the Czarist Empire.

Paul Barlin

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

The Yellow Line: Before the Holocaust

Three Generations of the Reinerman Family Desperately Search out Ways to Survive the Anti-Semitic Hatred of the Czarist Empire

Copyright © 1998, 2008 by Paul Barlin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-0-595-45745-8 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-90048-0 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to Hyman and Anna Barlin in memoriam. They did the best they knew how.

Contents

Acknowledgement:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Epilogue

Acknowledgement:

Many thanks to editor Lynn Gerlach of AllWrite!.com who simplified the many possibilities into this readable final draft.

Chapter 1

Novgorod, South Russia, 1865

Elihu Reinerman heard a pattering of horses’ hooves in his fog of sleep. Was he dreaming? He tugged the blankets to his chin and turned to nuzzle in the comforting warmth of his wife, Sarah.

But Elihu couldn’t sleep. Six years ago, the rhythmic hoofbeats were Cossacks galloping toward the Novgorod ghetto, their curved swords held high. Elihu remembered his panic from that night as he hurried for the woods carrying two-year-old Herschel and holding Sarah by the hand while she hugged baby Duvvid to her.

The distant rhythmic patter of hooves persisted. Elihu knew he wasn’t dreaming. He moved away from sleeping Sarah and stared intently through the bedroom’s dimness. It was Saturday. Those hoofbeats were cavalry horses. Cossacks attacked Jews on the Sabbath.

Elihu bolted upright. He shook his wife. Sarah! Sarah! Pogrom!

In the dimness her large, blue eyes stared up at him. What, Elihu, what?

Pogrom, Sarah! Get the children. I’ll get the horses! Take blankets. Nothing else! Elihu was grateful he had hidden an abundant supply of rubles in the carriage. Pleased that he had planned ahead, Elihu knew there was no coming back this time to repair a shattered life.

Scrambling into his pants, he heard the Cossacks thunder past his house next to the ghetto entrance. Elihu guessed they were headed for the synagogue. Thank God it was too early for a service. He heard screams rise behind the horses like a devil’s harvest. He knew parents were grabbing clothing and children and fleeing for prepared hideaways. It was time for them to leave Novgorod for good. Sarah, I’ll get the horses!

Elihu hurried to the stable beside the house in dawn’s October chill. He regretted that his family had not fled when the yellow line was painted around the ghetto and they were imprisoned behind a wall. Untying Vasya, the lead horse, he heard the Cossacks batter the locked doors of the synagogue, yelling as they smashed through. Elihu imagined the curved swords, which could cut off a head with one stroke, held aloft. Thank God the synagogue was still empty. Lev, the beadle, was probably hiding behind the secret door in the wall. With no one to kill, the Cossacks would steal everything made of silver or gold—the menorah, the pointer, the eternal light, the kiddush cups, the Torah tops—and set fire to the scrolls that Elihu had donated.

Elihu sweated as he buckled Vasya to the traces. Dunya was still in the stable. Would he be quick enough? Elihu knew Lev to be thinking a prayer, calling on the name of his dead wife, Sonya. Caught in the public bath with other women, she was raped, her breasts cut off and her torso slit up the middle. When the Cossacks were gone, Lev went to fetch her. Blood darkened the water and splattered the walls like Shmulak’s butchering room on slaughter day.

Elihu’s hands trembled. What if it had been Sarah? He blinked and shook his head to free his eyes of smoke and tears. Stop taking inventory, fool. We have to run! His eyes darted to check buckles and straps. The glow from the burning synagogue helped him see, a blessing within a curse. He shut out the hoarse cries of men invoking God and the screams of women and children.

Gunshots panicked the horses. Elihu hung on Dunya and Vasya’s bits to keep them from rearing. He strapped Dunya to her trace and clipped the strap of the heavy lead disc to Vasya’s bit to hold her while he buckled Dunya. Where was Sarah? Gunshots spattered again. Elihu froze, knowing he could be hit even if not close to the gunfire. The screams seemed to be coming nearer. The Cossacks were working their way to Elihu’s end of the ghetto. His eyes checked and rechecked his work as his fingers flew.

At last, Sarah and the boys emerged from the house. The boys were running, each carrying a blanket, earlocks flapping. Elihu felt for his pocketknife, in case I have to cut off our earlocks to hide within the crowd.

The fire crackled louder. With a sudden woosh, the roof of the synagogue fell in. Sparks showered down through black smoke as if celebrating a devil’s triumph.

Sarah threw her blanket into the carriage and turned to help the boys as Elihu stood holding the reins of the stamping horses. Herschel threw in his blanket and scrambled in after it. Sarah lifted Duvvid, still clutching his blanket. Sarah climbed in and slammed the door. Elihu bounded up to the driver’s seat. As he turned the near-bolting horses toward the entrance, the last high wall of the synagogue sobbed piteously and crashed. Sparks enveloped them. The horses reared. Elihu leaned weight and muscle to hold them steady. Smoke burned his nostrils. He loosed the reins and the horses leaped toward the opened gates. The carriage plunged sideways, then righted to plunge to the other side. A child’s scream slammed into Elihu’s heart. Shots thudded against the careening carriage as it passed the gates.

Elihu thought of his family inside. Oh, God! God! Let them be safe. The horses tore into a dead run. Elihu prayed to miss potholes, which could break a wheel.

Out and running, Elihu thanked God again for those few seconds to get Sarah, Herschel, and Duvvid out of the house.

In the carriage, wounded Sarah, an arm around each son, stiffened against the upholstery, eyes shut in pain. She bit her lip to stop the flowing tears. Eight-year-old Herschel turned to the window, thumped his small fist on the glass, and screamed in Russian, Dirty Jew-haters! Dirty Jew-haters!

On the driver’s seat, Elihu heard Herschel’s muffled outrage. He nodded in agreement with his son’s righteous temper. What else could the family do but yell at them as they fled? Elihu’s lips framed the words, half wish, half prayer: Maybe, maybe he’ll have it different. Elihu thought of the younger Duvvid. He would be crying and burrowing into his mother’s side. The two boys were as different as a horse and a kitten. But Duvvid was only six. Give him time. His brother was a good example.

Elihu heard Herschel’s voice catch and break. Above the noise of clopping horses and steel-rimmed wheels clattering on the stony road, the two boys wailed their terror like professional mourners at a funeral.

Elihu scanned the familiar buildings of Novgorod ahead. Where would they be safe? Was this an attack by local Cossacks, or was it the Holy Host attempting to wipe out Jews all over Russia, as they’d vowed to do? Elihu determined to stay away from populated areas until he knew.

Though the city still slept, Elihu headed toward Novgorod’s outskirts. The sun found a hole in the gray overcast. Each hut, stone, and weed was suddenly a chiseled sculpture. Elihu knew that he, the horses, and carriage were starkly outlined. He looked up. No, not now, thank you, not now.

When the clouds cut off the light again, Elihu eased. He pulled the fur hat down tighter on his head and thanked God that neither of his sons was the child whose recent scream still caused him to stiffen in pain.

Elihu found the road heading north. In open country, he finally felt distanced from the dawn’s horror. He let out a long sigh and breathed in sweet morning air. He looked at familiar trees and ploughed patches of earth from which he’d bought grain harvests.

Leaving what I know—to go where? Elihu shook his head. Nowhere is it easy for a Jew, but something better than a ghetto. Where?

He passed Petrovsky’s estate. He’d bought furs and lumber from Petrovsky the last four years and grains from the small farmers whose huts clung to Petrovsky’s coattails. They were glad to sell to the Jew.

Leaving forever the area where he’d been a successful broker, where he’d married and birthed his sons, where he’d sat on the dais of the small synagogue every Saturday as an honored member of the community, Elihu was filled with a sense of loss. He tried to remember the names of the peasant farmers he’d dealt with, but there were too many of them. Their names didn’t matter anymore. Elihu added them to the many losses he felt leaving Novgorod for good. The Cossacks had made everything about Novgorod obsolete for the Reinermans.

Elihu turned to look back at the distant buildings for the last time. Never again, Novgorod …

In his sadness, he let the horses slow to their own trotting pace while he brooded over the greatest of his losses, his brokerage, which for all his eleven years in Novgorod had absorbed most of his time and thought …

* * *

Early mornings he climbed the winding staircase to his office on the bridge overlooking the many smells and shouting action in the warehouse below. As many as four wagons could be serviced at the same time by his warehousemen, unloading and loading, lumber, sacks of grain, hides, or paving stones. Elihu smiled wanly, savoring one of his best deals. Both the buyer and the seller were on hand, their wagons side by side. The high stacks of bundled hides were unloaded from one onto the other without having to be stored. Elihu had only to have them sign the papers for the deal.

Elihu recalled the smell of the bitter sap of fresh-cut lumber, the stench of hides, the spice of fermenting grains. The fresh, acrid manure of the dray horses dominated all until the boy shoveled it up into his wheelbarrow and rolled it outside to the rotting pile. Elihu smiled at the aroma of economic perfume.

He felt again the Sabbath morning of peace in the small synagogue, a time when the whirlwind of the week’s work would be shut out from God’s place by the synagogue door.

In the center of the ghetto, the prayer house rose from the press of small homes, carrying to God their individual pleas to be relieved of suffering and shame. Elihu felt glad again that he had donated the money for the stained glass windows behind the altar. They beautified the light coming into the rough-hewn building.

* * *

Elihu made a gesture with his hand as if swiping the past from him. Gone, he mumbled, gone, gone, gone. He looked at the curving road ahead. Where will I take my family now?

The big news that filtered down to Novgorod from the north had been that the czar had wrested Latvia from Poland, which had taken it from Germany. Surely the Holy Host had not had time to institute its campaign against the Jews in the new territory. The laws against the Jews would be more lenient than in the long-standing Pale of Settlement, the air a little freer—perhaps.

The success of his brokerage in Novgorod fueled Elihu’s optimism about a business in the north. It might grow to the size of the Novgorod one, he reasoned. But then, a tightening of the laws could prevent him from owning anything, and in a flash, all would be gone. The Reinermans would be on the run again.

Elihu’s optimism sagged as he imagined losing it all again. What chance did a Jew have anywhere in Christian Europe? But where else was there to go? America? So many had already gone. Khayim Duvvidoff sold his bakery and left. But what a strange world that would be for the Reinermans. In America they had just finished a civil war. Would they live and let live? The language! How could they find a life in such a chaos?

No, Elihu concluded, he was a Russian, even though he wasn’t allowed to be a citizen and yet had to pay a Jew tax. He was successful in Novgorod, despite the fact that vandals had painted filth on his warehouse and broken windows. But after all, where did that not happen to a Jew?

Elihu remembered the meeting at the Novgorod synagogue to hear Rabbi Gutenhoff from the north. Gutenhoff said that in Riga, in the Latvian province of Kurland, the Jews did not have to live in a ghetto. Surely it would be easier starting over in the czar’s new territory than in America.

Elihu estimated that Latvia was eight hundred versts north of Novgorod. In this land new to the czar’s empire, Elihu expected trading and brokerage would be allowed the despised ones. Fluent in German and Russian, Elihu felt he could find his way quickly. He slapped the reins on the horses’ backs and they jumped forward.

Just then Elihu heard Herschel’s muffled yelling again from inside the carriage. Pappa! Pappa! Mamma is bleeding!

Elihu dragged the horses to a stop. Balancing himself with one gloved hand on Dunya’s steaming rump, he jumped down, hurried to the door, and looked inside. His voice was low and tense. Herschel, sit on the other side.

Even if the worst happened, he thought, he must not frighten the children, Elihu worked to calm his fears of the worst as he returned to the front of the coach for the lead disc weight to hold the horses. He snapped the clip of the weight strap to Dunya’s bit.

Inside the carriage Elihu disengaged the sleeping Duvvid from his mother and laid him on the opposite seat with Herschel.

Herschel shifted closer to Duvvid to lay his sleeping brother’s head to rest in his lap.

As soon as Elihu touched the inert body of Sarah, he knew she was dead. Her blood darkened the maroon velvet behind her. Elihu laid her on the seat and stretched her blanket to her chin. Let Mamma sleep, Herschel. She’s been hurt. You sleep too, he soothed. We’ll get a doctor for Mamma at the next town. She’ll be all right.

Elihu adjusted the blanket on each of his sons and said to Herschel, Sleep, my son. We’ll make a new life in Kurland.

Herschel was quieted. The taut, frightened look left his small, pale face. He lifted a hand out of his blanket to touch Duvvid’s head on his lap, leaned back, and closed his eyes.

Elihu kissed Herschel and turned to the lifeless form of his wife. He tucked the blanket gently around her shoulders and neck and whispered in Yiddish to her stilled face. Good-bye, my lovely Sarah. Forgive me, forgive me, darling, that I didn’t protect you from this. He left her face uncovered so as not to frighten the children should they wake. Touching her cold, stiffening cheek, Elihu murmured the prayer for the dead. Elihu stifled his sobs until he returned to the coachman’s seat and slapped the reins on the horses. With their hooves thudding on the dirt road, the wheels jolting, and wind moaning in his ears, Elihu’s tears sprayed into the air as he sobbed this new theme into his symphony of flight. Without Sarah. Without Sarah.

The cloud cover had darkened and threatened rain. The air smelled chill and damp. Elihu welcomed the change for what he had to do. Symmetrical cones of tied grain harvested on small farms bordered the road on either side. He would not be buying them anymore. Elihu smiled bitterly. It was right that he should say to them, Thank you and good-bye.

He chose a field where the sheaves had already been taken to the barn. The stubble had been turned; the field lay fallow for the coming winter. In a rain, this peasant and his family would not have to rush out and gather in the sheaves to keep them from spoiling.

Elihu stopped the horses and sat a moment to let the rumble of the road dribble out of his ears. He searched the dimness of the dark morning, listening for the slightest sound. A meadowlark trilled.

Not trusting the quiet, he waited. The air had turned humidly warm for the first week in October. The stillness suggested peace, Elihu thought, but then changed his mind. No, not peace—it could change any minute.

He looked again at the unfenced field that started at the road. He nodded and secured the reins. Climbing down stiffly, he clipped the lead disc to Dunya’s bit. Walking toward the carriage door, he hoped it wouldn’t squeak. It opened silently.

He waited, checking for movement. Within was as still and silent as the field. Sleeping Herschel was propped against the side of the carriage, Duvvid’s head on his lap. One of Herschel’s hands was under his own blanket, the other under Duvvid’s, on his chest. Exhaustion had taken them.

Elihu whispered in Yiddish, Sleep, sleep, little ones. Keep your eyes closed till this is past. When you open them … The painful knot in his chest could be relieved only by tears. They burned Elihu’s eyes, but he clamped his teeth to restrain his sob and not wake his sons.

He turned quickly to Sarah, stroked her cold, white cheek, and whispered, Good-bye, my darling.

He turned to the boys and removed the glove of his right hand. As if carrying out a ritual of farewell prescribed by ancient Jewish Law, as holy as bringing a corner of his prayer shawl to the Biblical script of the Torah, then touching it to his lips, he touched a finger to Herschel’s warm lips and moved it to Sarah’s cold ones. Herschel says good-bye.

He touched Duvvid’s, then Sarah’s. Duvvid says good-bye.

As if sudden sunlight lit his mind to stunning clarity and elevated his being to holy warmth, Elihu knew that his love for Sarah equaled his love for God.

There was no time to ruminate on his awe. He bent and touched her cheek with his. His tears wet her skin, uniting them. Good-bye, my darling. He put his lips to hers, straightened, and drew the dark blue blanket over her blue eyes and brown hair.

Elihu lifted her from the carriage and walked with her as if returning the Torah to the ark after the Sabbath reading. He stepped over sticks and discarded weeds that made a rough line between the dirt road and the field. Holding her body close as if one with his, Elihu walked to the first furrow.

He thought to bury her where two short lines of rocks met at right angles, marking the boundary of the field. They would act as a headstone. But that bit of land would not get ploughed in the spring, and weeds would grow over her.

A few steps further, his feet sank into the softness of newly turned earth. He tends his field well. Elihu laid Sarah gently on the ground and knelt to dig at the soil with his hands.

Beyond the bite of the plough, the clumped earth resisted his fingers. He returned to the side of the road for a stick and clawed out another half meter of dirt. Satisfied that Sarah would lie below the cut of the plough, Elihu placed her blanket-wrapped form in the grave.

Standing, Elihu asked forgiveness of the Lord because he was without the minyan of ten men while saying the Prayer for the Dead. A thin drizzle began to fall as he looked heavenward and spoke the ancient Aramaic words: Yisgadal, vyisgadash, shmey rabaw. The prayer seared him in penance, branding him forever with the moment of burying his wife, his love. He continued the Kaddish to the end.

Completing the prayer eased him. On his knees again, he pushed mounds of dirt over her, leveling it to his minute satisfaction to make it inconspicuous. He used the end of the stick to re-mark the interrupted furrows. He compared it to the area around it. It was darker, as if moistened with his tears, but if heaven, too, cried for Sarah as the heavy clouds promised, none would think that the body of a beautiful woman was buried there.

Elihu carried the stick back to the roadside, dropped it, and brushed the dirt from his clothes and hands as well as he could. He opened the door and looked at the vacant seat. The large bloodstain was a darker maroon than the rest. When the boys saw the empty seat, they would wake to an emptiness that would last all their lives. But better the emptiness than the corpse of their mother, Elihu reasoned. He would tell them she had kissed them good-bye.

Elihu turned for a last look at the grave. The wetness in his eyes let him see only a dark blur in which Sarah lay asleep. It was a small area, two meters by a half meter. The barley would grow taller there than in the rest of the field, and the peasant would never know why.

Elihu’s chin trembled as he stood there, but he had to get his sons to safety. Sarah would understand. His lips compressed grimly as he turned to the carriage in his pressured need to close the door too quickly on this moment of his life. He released the clip from Dunya’s bit and lifted the heavy disc to the floor under the driver’s upholstered bench. He climbed slowly to his seat. A Jew was fertilizing a gentile’s field with her body! Perhaps the peasant was an anti-Semite, even one of the Holy Host.

Elihu shook his head at the irony. We are all dust.

Elihu sat on the coachman’s seat, holding the reins. What would he tell Duvvid and Herschel when they woke? He would hug them and say, An angel of the Lord has taken her to him. The agony of a father who failed his sons swarmed in him like vermin.

He took off his shoes and snuggled the blanket around his stockinged feet. He would sit shivah as well as he could in a rolling carriage. But now, he must find a permanent home for his sons.

Elihu snapped the reins. The horses trotted. He hoped it would be the last time he wept. If he fell apart, there would be no one to protect his sons. Lord God, he prayed, give me the strength for these two boys.

Elihu guessed that it was two and a half more days to the Latvian province of Kurland.

From reports in the Novgorod synagogue, he knew the Jewish Welfare Council was active in that province. He would arrange to place his sons in a foster home until he could buy a house. Even with paying the necessary bribes for crossing territories in the czar’s empire, his rubles hidden in the carriage were enough to take care of the boys’ placements and to start a business.

As his plans took shape, he felt grateful for the forthcoming help of the Jewish Council. Jews took care of Jews. Elihu thanked God for making