Procession: Stories from a Polish Past

By Anna Baum

Short stories of the Jewish experience in Poland in the years before, during, and after World War II. A slow but steady parade of real-life characters marches across the page, beginning in the paradise of privileged prewar life, moving inexorably forward despite the early warnings of the imminent destruction. Along the way, they forge chasms, shed possessions and family, face the abyss, then regroup with the tatters of their dignity to take stock and give thanks for the mixed blessing of their survival. Anna Baum presents a human catalogue of the vanished world of prewar European Jewry: it is as though she had to survive to become the curator of a treasure trove of personal experience. For while there is suffering and tragedy in this volume, there is culture, tradition, art, music, history, professional and social achievement - and, yes - laughter, dancing and love. Book 1 of 3.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257472765

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1. Itta

There is always something special about one’s first day of school. Mine was no exception. In my place and time school started at the age of seven. But as I was able to read and write much earlier, owing to the eagerness of the two grown girls next door, who constantly played school, - in which I was the only pupil, I was promised admission one year earlier if an extra place were available. It was. But, when glowing with pride I was ushered into the classroom some days after school had begun, and faced the teacher on the dais and the forty-odd pupils in their assigned places, who by then knew how to behave and look slick, I lost heart. I felt utterly insignificant, even smaller than I really was.

To my rescue came a tall, light blonde girl who offered to be my guide for the day. The teacher agreed, and it was love at first sight. I was attracted to her heavy wheat-coloured long braids, her porcelain-like complexion, and her light brown, almond-shaped darkly framed eyes, overflowing with thrill and laughter. In contrast to her good looks, though, her tunic seemed shabby, did not quite fit, and exuded some kind of carbolic scent. She introduced herself as Itta.

From the very beginning, Itta teamed up with me and enlightened me in all important matters of school. I followed her everywhere and was amazed by the abundance of her knowledge, but she cleared up that question by announcing, not without a certain measure of pride, that she was the only one in our classroom, and perhaps in the whole school, who was repeating grade one.

In the lower grades we did a lot of singing, not only during singing lessons but also on outings, for relaxation or just to break the monotony of the day. It was during these singing periods that I really could admire my new friend. Almost from the beginning the teacher singled her out to sing the solo parts. She would stand in the front of the blackboard, her head slightly tilted back, eyes half closed, and intone in the purest of sopranos. She gesticulated vigorously as the song demanded and jumped around when the song was humorous. She was absolutely uninhibited and not at all concerned about whether anybody approved of her performance. She was never glad or proud that she was the only one to sing every new song. She was convinced that that was the reason for her being in school: her duty was to sing.

I passionately wanted to sing as Itta did. I sincerely believed that to be able to do that I had only to emulate her in undulating my chin, keep my eyes half closed, and tilt my head back while singing. I even pranced around tirelessly, something in which, to my great satisfaction, I achieved remarkable results. Although some doubts started to gnaw at my expectations, I didn’t give up. I even auditioned for the school choir, only to be told perhaps some other time - which in fact encouraged me to try even harder.

But Itta’s real merit lay elsewhere. This became evident as soon as we started drawing lessons.

If Itta could not explain something, she would right away draw it, to show how it looked - or should have looked. She did not bother to learn the simplest arithmetic or spelling. She learned only what she wanted to know. She was not interested in more and did not pay the slightest attention. During classes, not able or not willing to concentrate, she would wait for the sound of the bell, her cheeks flushed and her gaze fixed on something beyond the window. And then after school, while she would romp around, sing and chirp like a bird, I would do her homework. It was my duty (imposed on me by our teacher) to instil in her some interest in other subjects, but to no avail. She kept cajoling me with all sorts of songs and all sorts of words: ‘just keep doing it and don’t worry: give me some paper and I’ll draw something for you.’ Good paper was not easily available to us so a good grayish or brown paper bag, cut and straightened out did do nicely. Itta would draw whatever one desired. A portrait of somebody or of a whole family. She did it with such ease, and with only a few strokes.

Her songs were usually jolly, lively, often humorous. She sang them as a bird would, her chin and underchin quivering along with her larynx. And she loved to move rhythmically while singing. In contrast to her songs, all her drawings and especially the people in them were surprisingly three-dimensional and had mass. As we progressed from grade to grade Itta’s songs - their quality and execution - remained always the same: light, cheerful, volatile. Her drawings, on the other hand, did not change as much as they improved. They matured, became more massive and were executed with the greatest economy of line.

My lasting uninterrupted friendship and fascination with Itta caused my half-sister Mania a great deal of concern and pain. There were only two furniture businesses of significance in town - one owned by the Boytel family, the other by the Wojciechowskis (Mania and her husband). Itta’s father was one of the competitors’ porters. In those times most of the furniture was carried to its destination on the backs of porters girded with heavy ropes, and the townspeople had long memories. Itta’s maternal grandfather was our district water carrier. On the other hand, Mania and her husband belonged to the democratic left. They were active in the Poalej-Zion, in general city affairs, and in their youth had been involved in amateur theatre, choir, and poetry reading. They were known and respected as community activists.

In fact I was never reproached for my friendship with Itta on social grounds, only that I was spending too much time indoors in a stuffy and seldom-aired house.

As soon as I could each day, I would run to Itta’s. Their home was far from tidy and had a musty, gloomy air about it. From our earliest years, Mala and I had to help in the house. On Thursdays - baking day - we had to be in the kitchen: to clean fruit, peel vegetables, and then help clean up. We always knew what we had to do. And everyday we had some assigned chores. Itta, however, had no such obligations: she was always free. She was never bothered. Mania was forever fretting about who would be my friends later in life. Had she known at the time, she would not have had to worry.

I was admitted to school a year earlier on the grounds that I could read and write. Consequently, I had very little to do in class, and the teacher, sympathizing with me, would regularly bring me books to read. After Hans Christian Andersen, she introduced me to stories of real people by native writers and then, much before my prescribed time, I was allowed to use the school library. A new enchanted world opened for me. I read during every free minute, in daytime and, if I could, at night. I slept on a couch next to the window and would sit on the window sill, read, and forget about sleep. How much I cried during those nights! The tears were hot and sweet and had such a soul-cleansing effect. It was enough just to think about those brave boys and Nemecheck’s death in Francz Molnar’s story that my heart started to ache and I would cry again. The joys and sorrows of the heroes were mine as well. Whatever I read I minutely related to Itta. She was interested, asked questions, wanted to know - as long as she did not have to read it herself. If the story was a sad one, her eyes would glaze over with sorrow, like a cloud over the sun, whereas a happy ending would send her into a state of intense exaltation.

Soon books became my private wonderland and I acquired a special taste for favourite authors. I do not suppose I was the only one to find so much happiness in reading at such an early age, there must have been many others, but Itta was surely not one of them. She could not be troubled. She could not ‘waste’ her precious time. She had to sing, to run, to draw, and just pass the time. Nothing could disturb her spiritual ease.

By this time I knew that all the teachers were aware that I was doing Itta’s homework. They practically stopped asking her questions of any importance. The teachers knew that her parents could be of little help, and that she simply would not learn anything, and so they just let her pass. Some of the teachers recognized her possibilities, but who could do anything about it? Perhaps a world of apprenticeships would have been better than such a lack of concern and insensibility.

But there is one achievement I can claim to be my own: under my influence, Itta, with time, started to read! True, not too much: she would always look for some uncomplicated light plot and the story had to be short. She could not be involved for long and had absolutely no critical mind. Whatever she read was ‘nice’ or ‘not so nice.’ Her critique did not go any further.

Though Mania was very bitter about our friendship, she finally stopped intervening. However, I should mention an incident which was very much to her credit. It was at the time of the long textile workers’ strikes, which lasted all of one winter and into the spring. Ours was a textile town, and during the strikes all the plants were shut down. A hushed silence enveloped the streets and courtyards. There was no money. The houses went cold. Many families were without food. The school authorities started distributing free lunches for the workers’ children: a big roll and a mug of hot milk. For many it was the only meal of the day.

One day Mania asked me how Itta’s family, the Tayfels, were doing. I answered that their house was cold and everyone slept with their clothes on. She told me to go over and ask Itta’s brother to come with a basket and a sack. I remember when he came in: a youth with bushy hair that gave his yellowish face a shadowy look; and melancholy, protruding eyes with a suffering expression that stared intensely into the distance. Mania took him down to the cellar, filled his big basket with potatoes and vegetables, and then sent him down to the kitchen cellar so that he could fill his sack with coal. When he left, bent over under the weight of the sack on his back, she passed on her best wishes for the whole family.

In the spring, the effects of the strike grew worse. Details now are hazy, but there was a sit-in and then a hunger strike at the Schlesser plant, the largest in town. I went almost every day with one of my friends to the plant to see her father and older sister. We would stop in the lane, call for Itta, and she would come down the narrow wooden stairs singing and turning on every step. Together we would start out in the cool sunshine on the long walk all through the centre of the town, turn to the left and cross the bridge. There the river bank was low: we would walk past the semi-dark meadow, shaded at the far end by mysterious, centuries-old, widespread oaks, past the Schlesser mansion, and stop at the closed wrought-iron gate of the plant and wave. Nobody could get in. The strikers, emaciated and weak, lay stretched out on the grass, little bundles under their heads. The relatives and sympathizers at the gates were silent, their expressions sullen and grave. The feeling was one of doom and disaster. Nearby, the police on horseback watched and waited. I was terribly afraid of them, and my heart pounded. Nevertheless I felt it my duty to accompany my friend every day. I do not remember how the strikes ended, but I do remember the people who returned home: tightmouthed, weak, utterly exhausted. Their mood, however, was hopeful, and the air filled with a drop of bittersweet satisfaction. Life very slowly returned to some kind of normality. Business didn’t pick up until long afterwards, and then the squeeze was felt at home. Many things had to be forgotten and plans stored away. And we, the children, matured much faster during these times.

The summer after the strikes was long and beautiful. Money was scarce and one had to learn to curb one’s cravings. Itta came over and asked what we were doing with the vegetable and fruit peelings. Already an expert, she instructed me how to keep the peelings fresh for a few days until there was enough for exchange. And then she would take me across the river to the Rauscher farm. Tall, motherly Frau Rauscher would examine our offerings in her spacious kitchen, crowded with drying fruits and mushrooms. One could never forget the abundance of flies and the thick aroma of the place. Stirring marmalade in the enormous cauldron on the eternally lighted stove, she would order the kitchen girl to give us so many flowers of such and such a kind or sometimes she would take us along with sleepy and lazy Rex to the flower beds and arrange a beautiful bouquet. Occasionally, Itta would ask for fruit instead, and Mutti Rauscher would tell her to pick as much as she liked. What bliss it was to swim back to our side of the river with our trophies held high above our heads.

Soon school started again, and as we returned to classes, rumours started to be heard about a contest for an art school scholarship. It was a new and unprecedented phenomenon and many students started to work seriously, trying to convince each other that they were good and knew a thing or two about drawing. I had no such illusions. The atmosphere during drawing classes became competitive and intense, but everything boiled down to two most promising contestants. One was Issa, a very gifted girl. Her middle class, financially comfortable parents early noticed their younger daughter’s possibilities and arranged for a private instructor. The other girl was Itta.

One day at the appointed hour both girls sat down for their battle. The teacher announced that they had forty-five minutes to complete a drawing of their own choice. It could represent a portrait, landscape, or an event. Issa drew a portrait of Marshall Pilsudski, copying from the official one hanging in the classroom. Itta, as it was the season, drew a picture under the title ‘Mardi Gras.’ Of course, Issa’s portrait was absolutely correct. It was an exact copy of the one on the wall. There was no doubt that she was talented.

Itta, having on the spur of the moment chosen the week’s actuality, drew an exquisite expression of the national genre. In my mind’s eye I can see that picture even now. On a large sketching pad she presented a fair-sized, sparely furnished room, where a family sat gathered around the table. The source of light was a naked electric bulb above the table, which was laden with traditional food prepared for the feast. Though the stolid figures looked crude, they certainly commanded respect. In them I recognized Itta’s father, brother, little sister, and godparents (a childless couple living in the same block).

In the woman at the stove, her back to the room, I saw the bent posture of her mother, and cheerful Itta herself, with a large tray of doughnuts, was making way from the stove to the table. Although there were a fair number of figures in the drawing, there was no feeling of congestion. Air was flowing around every person and there was still a lot of free space. The whole picture expressed a festive and jolly mood.

The opinions were divided, but the scholarship went to Issa, for whom it was a matter of prestige only. She already had a private tutor and would in any event had gone to art school - scholarship or no scholarship.

For Itta it was a decisive event. Not that she was that much concerned - she took everything in stride. ‘Well,’ she concluded, ‘no luck,’ and kept on drawing on whatever piece of paper came her way.

Much later on, when I had seen reproductions of Bruegel, I would think of that simple arrangement which showed the region’s custom with a somewhat Bruegelesque approach and intensity. The figures presented Itta’s closest family (it did not matter that, being Jewish, they celebrated Purim, not Mardi Gras) because she knew them best. Abstractions had no place in her mind or vision. The whole group appeared to have the maximum solidity and represented the inner soul of realism. There was so much imagination and dramatic power in her so easily discarded drawings, but there was never anybody to instruct or guide her.

Shortly afterwards I left our town, and we would see each other only briefly during my visits. Itta, after finishing school (she was two years my senior), started to work in a textile factory. This was not customary for a Jewish girl in our town. Those who could not afford to continue education to become teachers or clerks turned to dressmaking or seamstressing. But Itta preferred the factory. She did not acquire any new friends, though she became close with our childhood friend Jacob, who came from a family of writers, educators, and public figures. The dramatist and Hebrew- and Yiddish-language poet Itzhak Katzenelson, who in the ghetto wrote the famous Song of the Murdered Jewish Nation, was his uncle. Jacob would often visit us and through him I met the Katzenelsons and their families. I was very touched by their friendliness, involvement in public life, and sheer simplicity.

When in the spring of ‘39, Itta came to Łódź (where we were living at the time) to stay with us for the week of Pesach, everyone just loved her. We did not know it then, but that was the last time we saw each other. Her thick blond hair was then cropped short: she was of no more than medium height and had a very good figure. She had obviously matured, but was as free as ever. She sang a lot and everyone was impressed with her ‘purity of soul.’ All my friends, and, most important, Jacob’s family, the Katzenelsons, approved of her. We parted making great plans for the future.

Years later, I found out that Itta was one of the first girls from our town to die in Auschwitz. I can never forget Itta, who was like the primitive shepherdess leading her small flock of geese, singing her simple songs - sometimes sad ones, lyric, but mostly happy ones - unconsciously expressing the primordial fundamental truth. She was like the sun, like the pasture, like the woods, like a single beautiful tree standing in a green meadow on a bright cloudless summer day.

2. Mister S.

During the summer the air of the vast expanse of the factory lot was heavy and hot. On very bright days it was stifling and the sun seemed dimmed by the clouds of vapours and steamy mist. The fresh cool breeze from the river never reached the lot, being shut off by a dense row of poplar trees and a high wooden fence. To the left of that fence there stood the low, murky and stuffy sorting sheds, and moistened cubes of raw material were scattered all around. The lot was far beyond the massive factory buildings, past the spotless boiler room, at the far end of the very long yard, and served as a perfect setting for our outdoor games.

There we could play with unrestrained abandon, and run and shout to our hearts’ content. This playground was our own kingdom. Nobody bothered us there. Perhaps the closeness and profusion of the steam, the odour and heat of the dyer vats, and the moistened wool made our voices seem muffled and considerably lower than they really were, and consequently less audible to sensitive adult ears.

The impressive - for our city - apartment building we lived in housed only four or five tenants with very few children. Mostly girls, roughly the same age, we spent all of our free time, and played and grew up, together. We formed a separate self-contained group because seldom could an outsider slip in without being noticed by our self-important, lordly janitor. To us he was a dear friend and accomplice, but, to a stranger, a ruthless foe.

He often threatened to let his dog loose if we would bring in anyone without his permission - a permission that was granted rarely and then to only one friend at a time.

Late one afternoon, just before sunset, when the game was at its best, I heard someone call my name. Knowing what that meant, I tried to ignore it, but it was no use, and soon, to my great regret, I had to leave. I was called to take a message to Mr. Sladkowski and bring back an answer. Usually I was more than eager to run to Mr. S., but now in the midst of a good game I was irked and grumbly. But, grumbly or not, it did not even occur to me that I could disobey, and I left at once. I thought that if I ran fast enough I could still make it back before the game broke up.

Pretending to be a swallow, I manoeuvred my outstretched arms like wings and ‘flew’ under the old widespread lindens humming to myself. I made a broad sweep into the gate to the yard and then to the side door, bypassing the front entrance through the barbershop, where, through the corner of my eye, I saw two of Mr. S.’s sons engaged in idle conversation. Because I did not see any customers in the shop, I was afraid of being teased again. I knew well that it was only a game, but sometimes I was really scared by their ‘threat’ to cut off my braids.

I frequently had to take messages to different people. And although I liked to crisscross the city from one end to the other, and usually everyone was nice to me, I really enjoyed going only to Mr. S., for somehow it always turned out to be such a pleasant diversion for me.

This time, I found Mr. S. in his armchair between the dining table and the window, reading