Helen’s Story

By

Helen Rothstein

Chapter 1 BEFORE

Before I was born my father had tried to come into the United States from Poland. He got as far as Mexico but no farther. He said that Mexico was hot and he didn’t know the language and with the quotas he wasn’t allowed into the States. My father thought that with the business that he had back in Wyszków, Poland that he might as well come back to Poland. My brother was just a baby - -

Later he would regret having something to come back to because without his business in Poland, he would have been forced to weather the difficulties of this new place… He could have started a business there, in Mexico, but he didn’t, he decided to return to Poland…

But this was all before I was born and… before the war…

Before the war

We all lived in a two-family house, but it was more like a one-family house. We were always going up and down living in each other’s home spending everyday with one another. My aunt, my father’s sister, lived upstairs along with her husband, children and my father’s mother. We (my mother, father, and brother, younger sister and me) lived downstairs. My cousins, brother, sister and myself were very close. My uncle, Icek Holland, was in the horse business…a business that would come in very handy when the war broke out in 1939.

I had a very happy childhood, but as a child I didn’t realize the full extent of the anti-Semitism all around us in Poland. For me, I was unaware that it was so constant and looming. It was just a part of our lives. In 1938, when I saw Poles in brown shirts closing Jewish stores, I didn’t pay any attention to it because I was too young. It was then that Hitler decided to take all the Jewish people who had been born in Poland and were living in Germany and ship them back to Poland. No matter that they were by this time German citizens. We didn’t know it then, but this would be the beginning of the Final Solution. Anti-Semitic Poland didn’t want to accept these Jews, so they were left to sleep on the border with no other place to go.

I was just a little girl of about ten. How did I know about the Jews on the border? I listened to the radio and saw the newspapers and heard the adults talking. I along with my brother, sister and cousins listened to the adults in silence. We took everything in, listening, not always understanding, but listening nonetheless.

My Aunt returns to Poland and the family

I remember when my Aunt Gittel Sobie came from Cuba. She had been having a tough time in Cuba with business and family. She missed us all and decided that she would come back to settle once again in Poland. We were very excited to see her come back to the fold. My father’s family was made up of five sisters and one brother, my father. Except for my Aunt Temma and my father, the Rosenberg family had scattered to parts of America, Cuba and far away Poland. Here was one who was returning to be with us. We were happy to have her back with us.

My Aunt Rachel Wenger had also settled in Cuba - - later after the war, she would be very helpful to me sending me what little money she could when I was living in a displaced persons camp. My Aunt Lena had after World War I moved to America. Aunt Sura Rivka, had married and moved to Ostralenka. She would perish during the war with all of her five children and her husband.

Listening then at the kitchen table, I could tell that Aunt Gittel was very bright. From her stories, I could tell that she had been a good businesswoman. The Cuba that she spoke about had been very welcoming and for the most part, she had done well. The recent difficulties that she had encountered with family and business seemed to be only temporary setbacks. When she spoke about her life in Cuba, with its Spanish and Caribbean ways, we were all enchanted, but it was the warm emotional climate which greeted Jews that made it altogether different than the life we lived as Jews in Wyszków. Cuba was so far from our small town in Poland, far away from what I knew. As a child, I could not understand. Only later would I know of this different way of life.

The taunts from Polish Christians were a way of life - - I couldn’t imagine a world where children and adults didn’t spit at you, or call you names, or sing threatening songs. I heard her speak about the anti-Semitism around us. It seems that she had forgotten how things had always been in Poland for Jews, but now coming from Cuba she saw the situation clearly. The anti-Semitism around us had become second nature, just a part of our lives as Jews in Poland. Aunt Gittel took a look at the situation that she saw upon her arrival in prewar Poland and at once she left the house that she had just purchased in Wyszków– she wasn’t able to sell it – and went back to Cuba. She had come from a different world – she had forgotten about all the anti-Semitism in Poland. In Cuba, she was already used to a different kind of a life. Even if she would have benefited financially from the move, she realized that she couldn’t live in Poland anymore. By leaving Poland, my Aunt Gittel saved herself, her husband and her three children and countless generations to come.

Living with anti-Semitism

Aunt Gittel’s clear perspective, her ability to point out the anti-Semitism around us all and her stories of a different life in Cuba, made us all aware that a different world existed than the one to which we had all become accustomed. Even so, all of my family and all of our Jewish community didn’t understand what was to be. We were all used to making do, managing with the derision of Jews by the Poles and the limitations that the Polish government and church imposed on us. That was, we thought, how life was supposed to be for us Jews.

The Polish Brown shirts would march through Wyszków taunting the Jews, “Nasha ulica wasca kamienitzia!” “Our streets, your buildings!” We all knew what they were saying, ‘the buildings may be yours, you Jews, for now, but the land belongs to us.’ They meant to make Poland Yudenreit and take back what they thought was theirs. Sadly, that is exactly what would happen, no more Jewish communities in Poland, Poland was and is essentially Yudenreit, a country now only of Polish Christians (save the few surviving Jews). After the war, when the few of us who survived came back to what had been our homes for centuries, we were driven away by murder and violence. Ironically as well, many of the Jewish survivors would end up in Displaced Persons Camps in of all places, Germany. Those DP camps in Germany would be “safer” for Jews than to risk the idea of life in Poland. To remain in Poland meant death and heartache.

Life for us in Wyszków

My father was in business, living nicely. What I mean by nicely is that we never had a lot of money, but we had enough for a comfortable life. My father had a fishery on the River Bug and, during the year, he would have several people who worked with him. In spring, summer and fall, my father and the men would go into the River with their nets and in the winter they would cut holes in the ice and continue to fish the River. My father had created both a retail and wholesale fishing business. The wholesale business would bring people from neighboring villages who would come to buy the fish that then they would sell in their village stores. The retail business was the sale of my father’s farm-raised karp. Together, with the men who worked for him, my father would create small ponds in which to raise the karp and then people would come from Wyszków and the surrounding towns to buy.

In our house and all the others in Wyszków, the bathrooms were outside, outhouses, and water also had to be brought in, but that was the way of life years ago in Europe. There was a well in the center of Wyszków and the vassatraigers, the water carriers, would bring the water to the houses. In Warsaw, they had already water in the apartments, but in small towns they did not.

A fairly happy childhood

We were as I remember it a happy-go-lucky family until the war started. I was a mischievous young lady. My father bought me a bicycle, a red bicycle. Red was and is my favorite color. For the most part, in those days it was accepted that girls did not have bicycles. I was lucky. My father taught me to ride. He would hold onto to the bike on both the front and back so I wouldn’t fall. I fell a few times but in short order I got the hang of it and began to ride by myself. I loved riding by the girls in the neighborhood especially showing them I as a girl could ride.

With my brother and cousins Marty and Rachel, we would ice skate and toboggan. My life as a child was great and throughout my young life, my father took time to play with all of us. Running, playing, liking to do all sports, I felt confident and able.

While my sister was shy, I was brave and always ready to take on new adventures. Looking out as we did on the River Bug, I would run down to the shore and take a little boat out onto the River. After just a few moments my mother would inevitably look out of our window and see me in the little boat, she would scream for me to get back to shore. I would say, “The only way I’ll come back is if you’ll buy me ice cream.” Only when I was promised ice cream would I return to shore. It was like blackmail, but I got the ice cream.

Jewish holidays

I remember the Jewish holidays, always sweet, but not without difficulties. When our holidays fell on Sunday, Jews from all over would still need to buy fish, but Polish law prohibited us from opening on Sundays. No one could sell anything on a Sunday. On those holidays, we couldn’t have our fish out in the market because of the prohibition to sell on Sunday. So, we put our fish out in the backyard in special wooden barrels and Jews would come in through the front of the house and on out to the backyard. We would close the front gate so that no one walking on the street would be able see the fish market in our backyard.

I remember that I was a little girl and a policeman who had gotten word of the sale came to our gate. Knowing that I had to protect my family, I slammed the backyard gate right in his face. By the time he came all around through the front of the house, all the barrels had been hidden. That time we did not get any tickets. My father was so proud of me - - the nerve I had to slam a gate in a policeman’s face. My father had such trust and faith in me. We didn’t know then how handy my courage would be in the future.

As a Jewish child in a Polish town

We went to the public school and sometimes the Polish children would tease the Jewish children and try to hit us. I was the heroine and always protected the other Jewish children. I was a fighter. My cousins and I would band together to stop them from attacking us. Wyszków, then, was fifty per cent Jewish and we lived in a Jewish area, though I did have a couple of non-Jewish friends who lived on our street.

We would bring our kosher lunches to school. My brother, sister and I went to public school. I loved school. We felt ourselves to be Jewish, but also Polish and wanted to learn to speak Polish well - - for me, the mastery of learning to speak Polish well would be important later on…I liked learning and I was a good student.

The teachers were Polish teachers, not Jewish. Were they anti-Semitic? I didn’t think so… but it was after school that we as Jewish students would feel the anti-Semitism, the threats and taunts of our Polish classmates. In Wyszków my friends were my cousins who lived upstairs from us and down the block from our house.

There were a few Polish children who were our friends. One was Danka who was an illegitimate little girl and often she would be teased, “Bastard.” We too would taunt, but she nonetheless was our friend.

Our street was called Ulica Koscielna, which means Church Street, and from our house we were able to walk up the hill and through the churchyard. As a child I remember being very frightened, when on every Easter Sunday the Polish Catholics would take the statue of Christ and bring him in a procession down to the River Bug to wash him calling it a “resurrection” and blaming the Jews for his crucifixion. Now, I know that they were never told that Christ was a Jew. Knowing what I know I blame the Catholic Church for the death of many Jews for their hate teachings, “The Jews killed Christ! Jewish matzos are baked with Christian babies’ blood.” This was the norm throughout all of Europe that enabled Hitler to have the willing cooperation of the local populations.

Hebrew school

After public school we were to go to Hebrew school, but I loved ice skating more than Hebrew school. My brother and cousins would go on to Cheder (Hebrew school) and I would sneak off to the river to skate. Our Hebrew school was held in our schoolteacher’s home, just down the block from our house. Watching from his window, he would see me skating on the river and indignantly come down to the River Bug, grab me by the ear and take me back to class. For the next few weeks, then, I would behave and go to class at least, that is, until the winter was over.

In the spring, I would run to the river once again avoiding Hebrew school and doing what I loved to do, run and play. I would go out on a little boat sailing up and down the River Bug. The Hebrew schoolteacher would dutifully come down to the River and yell at me to come to class. Too far away for him to grab me, I would mischievously continue sailing. Later, as I landed on shore and made my way home, my mother would yell at me making me promise to behave.

Zionism in Wyszków

In our Hebrew school, we learned how to read and write Jewish, Yiddish. We didn’t learn to speak Hebrew. Later, I would meet survivors from other towns who had learned Hebrew and they could, therefore, communicate with the Israeli Brigade of the British Army. In Wyszków before the war, there was a group of teenagers who spent their afternoons preparing themselves to go to Palestine, imbued with a strong Zionist spirit and learning to speak Hebrew. We called them the Halutzim, the pioneers. All of us thought that they were very brave. Perhaps if I had been a teenager, then, I too would have been preparing to journey to Palestine. A few families from Wyszków had completed their preparation and made it to Palestine before the war.

I remember one young family who, having made it to Palestine, was having a difficult time financially and there was talk about trying to bring them back to Poland. From conversations gleaned as a child, this young family, no matter their financial problems, refused to come back to Poland saying that they would never live in such a place as Poland again. When you live day in and day out in a place, you often don’t realize the restrictions placed upon you. In Palestine, they were able to breathe free air, they weren’t called “dirty Jew” and they were able to own land, outright.

In Poland the seeds of anti-Semitism and hate had been there all the time - - there were the Poles who were kind, but so many Poles only knew the hatred that they had been taught. They hated Jews and daily they told us through marches, slogans and taunts. In my lovely childhood of Wyszków, we had to as young Jewish children band together to go to school and home so as not to be beaten up by the Poles. The families who had made their way Palestine were able to know the difference, to see how life could and should be lived free of hate. My aunts in Cuba, America and my grandmother’s sister living in London also knew a different life.

The Family Rosenberg in Wyszków

My father thought I was funny and charming. He never worried about me because I was a good student, but my mother often worried about me. She thought that because of my antics that I might drown or break a leg. She couldn’t swim and so she couldn’t help me and that terrified her. My brother and sister stayed in Hebrew school class. In my father’s eyes, I could do no wrong. I loved both my mother and father, but I had a special relationship with my father.

My sister was just a little girl, I was the middle child and my brother, while the eldest child, was very gentle. We all got along well - - we loved one another very much. My brother looked very much like my mother with dark black hair and blue eyes. I was a tomboy enjoying sports and proud of my courageous spirit. My sister relied on me. My brother, Moshe, was named for our grandfather, Neha’s (our grandmother) husband, Moshe Nachum. Several of our cousins were also Moshe Nachum because all of the firstborn boys had been named for our grandfather. My sister was named Rivka. Later, I would name my youngest daughter after my sister and my youngest son after my brother.

We were close to all of our cousins who were more like brothers and sisters. Living on the river made for all the fun - - in the winter ice-skating and in the summer swimming and fishing. We played kick ball and soccer – and our own kind of golf in which we would make holes in the ground and then try to knock a small ball into the hole. We would tease one another, “You can’t skate.” “You can’t play.” But we loved one another.

Having cousins to play and go to school with meant that our family was lively. We each of us had a playmate our own age. All of us, cousins too, would go fishing with my father. Together, we had such fun. My father taught us all to be good fishermen.

All of us were encouraged to do well in school. We were geared for education, fully aware of the unique pressure placed upon us as Jews. In order to enter gymnasium or high school, as a Jew you had to do better than anyone else, to have higher grades and scores, so we studied hard.

My brother’s Bar Mitzvah

My brother had his Bar Mitzvah just before the war. All the cooking for the celebration was done at home. After my brother read from the Torah at our synagogue, the congregation was invited to a kiddush (reception following Shabbat morning services) of cakes that my mother and our friends and family had prepared. Then the whole of our whole family in Wyszków gathered together. The weather was warm and our house small, so we set tables in the backyard. There was plenty of fish and meat, plenty to eat and drink. The whole of the Wyszków Jewish community came to celebrate - - but they had also come to talk about the impending war and the Jewish situation.

This would be the last simcha (joyous occasion) that we would celebrate together. Our younger cousin, Moshe Nachum would never have a Bar Mitzvah, the war would come before he reached his thirteenth birthday.

Our Rabbi and the priests

Our rabbi was a tough one. He would make sure that everything we did was kosher, as he supervised our matzo kitchen. He was the community shochet (ritual slaughterer) as well as our rabbi, slaughtering our chickens and determining their kashruth. If you had a marriage problem, you went to him. If you had any kind of a problem, you went to the rabbi. He was most learned person in the town and so it was to him that you went with your questions and concerns. As spiritual leader, he performed all the marriages and funerals and was invited to all the festivities and celebrations.

As the rabbi was essential to small town Jewish life, so I think were the priests to Polish life. The priest did more than to answer questions, they filled their parishioners with hate. I remember being always curious about the church, priests and Christianity. I didn’t know much about Christianity because my life was so completely immersed in my all-encompassing and loving Jewish community. In Wyszków, I would see the church from afar. Only later would I see for myself the church up close.

A short but loving childhood

By and large we had a short, but loving childhood. My father’s travels gave him newfound knowledge and courage that he shared with us - - his adventures made him more lenient, modern and aware. He wanted to try new things.

I remember that our family was one of first to have a telephone in the community. It was 1939 just before the war. It was an old-fashioned phone. We were lucky enough to be one of the few families in Wyszków to own a phone, as not very many people had phones or radios. Everyone would come in to our house to use the phone.

Trips to Warsaw

We used to go to Warsaw often because my mother owned a fish store there. Warsaw was about sixty miles from Wyszków and because of the distance, my mother would stay in Warsaw during the week and come back to Wyszków on the weekends. It was difficult to travel back and forth, either you took a horse and wagon or a motor scooter with a sidecar. My father had such a motor scooter and all of us would pile into the sidecar, my brother, sister and myself. This was considered an upgrade in status, my father and his motor scooter - -we felt proud and special.

All together, we would go to see my mother in Warsaw. Her store was in the Jewish section. Warsaw was made of two areas, Praga and Warsaw, like Buda and Pest in Hungary. Praga was home to a large Jewish community. When the ghetto was created, the Jews from Praga had to leave their community and go to the ghetto in Warsaw leaving behind a vibrant area filled with stores, synagogues, schools and community centers.

In my mother’s store, the fish was kept and displayed on ice as there was little refrigeration. I loved coming to my mother’s store. We would watch as Jewish families would come to shop for Shabbos. Proud of my mother as a businesswoman, I knew that my mother and my Aunt Temma worked in the world outside of their homes to help their families. As a young girl, I saw, too, their accomplishments in the larger world of men.

While my mother worked in Warsaw, a young Jewish girl helped to care for us in our house in Wyszków. She was a poor, young girl who needed the room and board that she earned for caring for us. Her parents were too poor to keep her. There were plenty of children for her to watch over, as my cousins from upstairs joined us, so that their mother could also tend to her business. My mother’s sister, Golda, would also send her three children over to house as well. It was with my aunt Golda that my grandmother Malka Holtzman lived, just a few blocks away.

While my mother worked and the young Jewish girl watched over all of us, two Polish women would come to do the laundry and cleaning. I remember the laundering of clothes. They would first warm the water on the stove and then scrub the clothes on a washboard finally rinsing them in the River Bug. Life was so much more difficult in our little rural town, no washing machines, and just the strength of women struggling to keep the house clean and right.

My Aunt Temma

Temma was very close to my father. They did everything together. She would help in the fish business and with her dairy farm and cows, provided us with milk and cheese. My Aunt Temma and my mother were models for me of how a woman might have a family, but also be successful businesswomen. Only later, would I come to emulate their lives and business acuity. Providing for my family and feeling the success of my own business would be for me a crowning achievement! …Oh, how I wish that they had lived to see me in my own business!

Yiddishkeit in a world of hate

Often when we would visit Warsaw we would go to see a lot of intellectual doings – theatres, museums and shops. Together, we went to the Yiddish theatre and saw Molly Picon and Cantor Kousevitsky. Warsaw had lots of synagogues – all together, the population of Praga and Warsaw was at least fifty percent Jewish.

In Wyszków, as well, often there would be traveling shows from Warsaw and other larger towns and cities. Always the performances would take place in the larger of the two synagogues and all of Jewish Wyszków would come to see. I remember singers and Yiddish shows, plenty of comedy among the, sometimes, tragic circumstances of our lives. Amidst the daily screams of hate from the Brown-shirts, so terrifying for all of us as children, life continued for us Jews. The fear was even more so for our parents and grandparents. Even in midst of the growing anti-Semitism, we would come together to listen to Yiddish stories and songs and laugh at the comedies presented.

Passover and other holidays in Wyszków

Holidays were great because the whole family came together to celebrate. Passover was especially fun. Six or seven women would come to the special matzo bakery that my father had created. He had built on an extension to our house, a special kitchen with a special matzo oven. Together, the women would roll the matzos out and the rabbi would come to supervise. This matzo was then distributed to all of the Jewish families in Wyszków.

The house had to be made ready for Passover all the plates and bowls and pots and pans had to be changed - - it was so much work. We spent our Seders with my Aunt Temma and her family and, of course, my Bubba Ne’ha. My mother’s family, her sister and mother would have their own Seders. My mother’s sister had three boys. Her husband was a butcher and we would always get our meat from him. My mother’s sister, brother-in-law, nephews and mother would all perish in the first of the German onslaught.

Sukkoth

During Sukkoth we would build a Sukkah for our family. Our backyard Sukkah was beautiful, but as I recall, it seemed that it would always be raining on Sukkoth. There we would be having our Sukkoth meal and inevitably the rain would begin. Rain or shine we would sit in our Sukkah.

Synagogues

We had two synagogues in our town and my father belonged to the smaller one. My father belonged to the smaller synagogue because his father before him had belonged to this smaller synagogue. This was the long held tradition of Jews in Europe - - when you bought a seat in a synagogue that seat belonged to the family for generations to come. My grandfather had the seat and after his death it passed down to my father. If the war had not intervened, it would have belonged to my brother.

Shabbos

When Friday came, everyone was rich. We made sure that everyone had enough meat, fish and eggs to have a Shabbos. Money would be given to the Rabbi for him to provide for the poor people for Shabbos – or they would come over on Friday to my father and my father would give them to eat… If you didn’t eat all week you would eat on Shabbos.

The Vassatraiger would carry the water on his back to our house. He was very poor but this was his way to make a living. The Vassatraiger would go to the town well to get the water. Then, he would carry his buckets filled with water to all of the homes of Jewish families in the village. All of the Jewish families would make sure that he had what he needed to make Shabbos.

There were no hotels so if Jews came to town they went to the synagogue and there someone would share their hospitality offering a meal and a place to stay. Every Shabbos evening my father would go to shul and he would always bring home an orech a visitor for Shabbos. The joke that people told was that when a wife would hear that the husband was bringing home a Shabbos orech, she would put a little more water in the soup to make it stretch. My mother would always make room for one more.

Herschel Stopoler the Yiddish writer tells of a very hungry poor orech coming to the home of a very poor family and when he sees the wife cooking something, he asks, “Nu, what are you cooking?” The wife answers that she’s not cooking soup, she’s cooking the clothing (sterilizing them for laundering). The orech says, “Nu, so cook my underwear, too.”

Everyone was religious – my father didn’t wear peyous or a beard but, on Shabbos, we went to synagogue. That’s how it was with all of the Jews of Wyszków, on Shabbos we all went to shul.

We would have our Shabbos luncheon at home with my uncle, aunt, grandmother and cousins and then go for a walk in the forest around Wyszków. We would cross a bridge to get to the forest, find a pretty place to sit and there have an afternoon picnic.

I didn’t know anything else so this was a good life to me. Even now, as I look back, I know that it was. We were fed and clothed and we had our family around us.

Ne’ha, my Bubba

Everyday, I would see my father’s mother, Ne’ha, my Bubba, who lived with my Aunt Temma in the apartment upstairs. She was a chubby five-foot person and would always have money in the pockets of the apron all around her - I can remember like it was today. My cousins, brother and sister and I would put her in the middle of the room and dance around her to get the money to buy ice cream. Bubba Ne’ha would dance and jump as we danced and little by little the coins would fall from her pockets. She would pretend not to notice the coins as they fell and then we children would gather them to buy our ice cream. We knew that our strict grandmother loved our dancing and playing.

With our coins, we raced to the ice cream store. At the corner of our street, there was Rosenberg’s, the ice cream store with the same name as mine, though we weren’t related. Ice cream was a luxury to us, as we didn’t have our own icebox. There at Rosenberg’s, we would indulge ourselves, choosing our flavors and then, ice cream in hand, we took time to enjoy each and every delicious lick.

My Bubba was very bossy but we loved her…She bossed everybody around. My Bubba was disciplined. We were her grandchildren and when she said something, we obeyed. The house we all lived in was in fact her house. All of the adults and children gave her respect and love. I don’t remember her as affectionate; it was my mother’s mother who was more outwardly affectionate. In that time, older Jewish women were known to the community to be widows by the black dresses that they wore and my grandmother was such a woman. I remember thinking that it was a gloomy way to be to always wear black. There would be Ne’ha in her black dress and sheitl.

When I was seven Bubba died. This was the first funeral that I went to – in Poland we didn’t use caskets, rather they would place the body on piece of wood and then lower it into the ground. They placed broken glass pieces, sharbiness, on her eyes. I had never been to a funeral before this and all of the traditions were strange and frightening to me. The Jewish cemetery was just a little ways out of town, close enough to walk to for us to follow the horse drawn wagon carrying my grandmother’s body. When I saw my grandmother in the ground, I wanted to jump in after her. All I can think of now is that it was a blessing that she died before the war began.

Not long before Bubba Ne’ha died, her sister from London came to visit. My grandmother’s maiden name was Bloom - - years later my husband and I would visit a kosher deli in London named Bloom. It was such an event when someone from London came to Poland visit – like a visiting head of state. We just rallied around her, so excited to have a relative from London. We asked her thousands of questions to know what life was like in London.