My Grandfather (Stanislaw Jonas') Story. Hours of His Voice Transcribed:
I was born in the year 1933 when Hitler became the chancellor of Germany. I was told it was a sign of bad luck, that it was a bad year to be born.
My earliest memory dates back to September 1, 1939. The Germans invaded Poland and were killing people. They were shooting, screaming, and letting their dogs attack children. My mother, Bronislava, took me by the hand and pushed me in between two buildings. She told me that this threshold would be safe from the bombs: “Stash, these buildings have the strongest construction in all of Warsaw. Stay here, in this place, the walls will not crash.”
From this memory on, my mother and I walked on eggshells. My brother, Andrej, born in 1940, was given to a family who took care of him until the end of the war. Meanwhile, my mother and I were placed into the Warsaw Ghetto with all the Jews; we lived there from 1941 to 1943. There were an enormous number of people in such a small part of town; it was always crowded. We never had enough money for food; I was hungry all the time. The only way to get food was to smuggle it into the ghetto. Small children would typically be the smugglers. At night the children would sneak out of the ghetto and jump from the roofs to get food. If the small children were ever caught, they were punished with death. Soon the Germans began to organize the killings of these children – I remember children caught would be killed by the dozens.
In the ghetto I would walk down the streets and find dead bodies covered in newspapers. People would place bricks on the newspaper in hopes that the wind would not reveal the starved body. I would turn my head away in fear that the wind would reveal a face I recognized.
Soon my mother wanted to escape with me. She struggled extensively to put together the money for such an idea. With bribes, the Polish and German policemen that would guard openings in the wall from the Aryan side to the Jewish side took my mother’s money. One morning, we woke up very early – so early that every person would be deep in sleep. We quietly stepped to the opening in the wall, and the guards let us pass without a second glance.
From here my mother and I escaped from house to house, making sure we would never be caught. My mother never let me take my shoes off. She would tell me that in the middle of the night, if we heard the Germans coming, we wouldn’t have time to put on shoes. The only thing she would let me do was keep my shoelaces loose. Somehow, my clothes had become part of my survival.
We eventually found ourselves living with a young woman, an orphan, named Pema. She was maybe sixteen years old and a volunteer at the Red Cross. I remember that she always wore the Red Cross band on her coat sleeve. One day when she was walking down the streets of Warsaw, a bombardment took place. People were wounded, running around, and fires were consuming everything. The next thing she knew, a mother was running towards her carrying her almost-dead child in her arms. The mother begged and begged for Pema to help her, but Pema did not know how. Pema almost instantly took off the Red Cross band and never wore it again. She told me she had never felt so useless and scared.
For a period of time I stayed with a family in Warsaw. I never told the family I was Jewish, so when a woman came to the door one day and threatened to report the family for hiding Jews in their home, the family told me I had to leave at once. I do not blame them, they must have been as fearful as I had been. I left the house and walked along the streets for hours, humming Jewish songs I learned in the ghetto. I would have to constantly remind myself not to sing these songs. I couldn’t allow myself to get caught.
Towards the end o my mother and my hiding in Warsaw, we were taken by the Germans. They were marching us to a place called Aushkaplat, the place where they were to be packed and transported to Auschwitz. This was supposed to be my death sentence. Yet, on our way there, a Jewish policeman recognized my mother. They had known one another before the war. The policeman called his colleagues and friends, and all of a sudden they started to form a corridor between the column of people and the building that sat alongside the street. We quickly ran through the corridor of people to the building.
I no longer risked my safety in the cities. My mother placed me in a small village with a family from 1943 until the end of the war. The small town was in the countryside of Poland, a town named Grójec. It was forty kilometers away from Warsaw. Here, I lived with four old women, all of whom were sisters. I called them my aunts. They owned a small farm with a horse and two cows. One day, the news came that the Germans were coming to look for Jews. One of the women grabbed me and all of a sudden we were picking up pace. We were running across the potato fields to a different village far away. We were never able to slow down or take a break; we never knew when the Germans would reach us.
As I lived in this village, my mother remained hiding in Warsaw. When the Warsaw Uprising took place in 1944, the whole population of Warsaw was evacuated. The people were taken to camps, taken to different cities in Poland, and some were even taken to Germany. My mother was taken to a city in the southern parts of Poland: Czestochowa. It wasn’t until the end of the war that we saw each other in Warsaw.
In 1945, the night before the Red Army came to free us from the Germans, I had a dream. I dreamt that night that the red sun was coming up. And that same night, there were thunders of artillery. The day after, a sea of red army soldiers came to liberate us.
A few days later, my mother came to take me from the village and back to Warsaw. Warsaw was completely destroyed. The buildings had all collapsed, even the one my mother believed would not. We were two stories up from the ground in rubble as we walked down the streets. It was hard to integrate back into society and resume normal life. There was no money, and my father, who had separated form us during the war, never came back to us. He remained in a far away city and would send us money every now and then. We struggled, as did everyone else, to get back on our feet.
I returned to school and completed my basic education. I eventually went to medical school, where I met my good friend Danka, who would later introduce me to my wife, her best friend in high school: Alicia Wereszko. After medical school, I went to the arm and became a physician in a military pace in Pila and Wesola. I would examine and treat the soldiers and officers (1961-1965). When I returned home from the military, I began to date Alicia. I remember being fascinated her; she was an unusual person. We would marry March 16th, 1967.
As the years went on, the anti-Semitic sentiment in Poland grew more and more powerful. It was an awful period in the history of Poland – Jewish people were losing jobs and leaving Poland. I eventually received a contract to work as a research scientist in the New York Medical College. It was at this point that I decided it was time to leave. I went aboard a ship in June of 1967. It was the MS Sniadecki. The ship was extremely old, so we had to stop at various ports for repair. Yet, the most interesting thing about the adventure was the six-day war, a war fought by the Israelis and the Arab State. By the time I reached the United States, the war was over. In the United States, I found myself under immense pressures by family and friends to not return to Poland due to the anti-Semitic sentiments. My whole life was left back in Poland.
Eventually, my wife came to New York and began her career as a composer and piano teacher. We had our daughter, who we named Monica. Monica is a very catholic name, which was chosen as we still lived (and live) in fear of the past’s repetition. I continued to deny and sometimes still do, the fact that I am Jewish. I live in constant fear and still feel as though I must hide.
The End of “Age, Loss, and Acceptance”
Every Christmas Eve, my grandparents would hold a party. A symbol of their survival as Jews during the war, Christmas was once a game of pretend. Just as 7 year old me would dress up as a cowgirl and milk cows while living in the city, my 7 year old grandfather would pretend to be Christian. From the 1970s (when my mother was born), my grandparents and all their Polish friends, joined together and celebrated life.
I arrive at these parties with my family, expecting my cheeks to be pulled, my hair to be pet, and my head to be kissed by distant relatives. Comments on how big I have become are part of the routine. Sitting around the table, we eat our gefilte fish, mushroom soup, and herring (in polish: śledź (sledge)). The scene is set: the small apartment is overcrowded with art. Sculptures, watercolors, acrylic paintings, oil paintings, photographs, colorful rugs, and music sheets, cover their walls to the brim. Lamps that look as though they were pulled from stained glass church windows sit delicately on their cabinets. You can tell you have walked into an old Polish home. My grandmother has just dyed her hair bright red and her eyebrows pitch black. She is running around in her funny fishnet stockings and snakeskin heels, plating and re-plating our stomachs, only to sit her hunching body down when dessert is called. My grandfather, with the sharpest mind, yet deteriorating body, is sitting in his upright chair with his suspenders. He is clean cut with droopy eyelids and shaky hands, the parkinson's and myasthenia gravis glazing his wisdom and sophistication. I call him “manner man” after hearing him say: “Aniczko, put your fork in your left hand and your knife in your right. Take your elbows off the table. Tuck your napkin into your shirt. Do not chew with your mouth open.”
We laugh, our stomachs bubbling with sparkling apple cider. As I hand out the raffle tickets for gifts of Polish vodka, Jewish Santa Claus pushes through the door sending the cat, Pushunia, into a frenzy across the house. It is pure warm chaos until I fall asleep in the car rides home staring at the airplanes hoping they were Santa.
Over the years, as I grow older, the party becomes smaller. Family friends who I knew would squish my cheeks no longer appear. The smell of antique clothes and overused hair gel subsides. It is empty. The cycle of growing old and passing on reflects in the tradition. But my family is always there: me, my brother, my mom, my dad, my grandmother, and my grandfather. We uphold this tradition through our small celebration. The six of us are always there despite growing older.
On Christmas Eve of 2017, my grandfather died. The remaining five of us returned to the lonely home and sat there confused. The mushroom soup was sitting in the fridge, untouched. We eventually ate it quietly, with candles lit for light that seemed unnaturally dim. We left the house that night despaired. A day of survival became a day of loss.
But, you cannot lose tradition. I attended sixteen Christmas Eves throughout my life and each year, I changed: I grew from an infant, to a toddler, to a pre-teen, to a teenager, and nonetheless, the rituals and sense of unity remained the same. Identity flows from our traditions, and this particular one belongs to me. It is my own unique experience that shapes my character, good or bad. The fundamental values I hold today--the importance of family--stem from my memories and traditions. Whether it is everyone sitting together during dinner, me and my brother walking to school with one another, cooking Thanksgiving dinner with my mother, cutting out interesting sections of the New York Times for one another, or diving into art projects with my father, the importance of family flows from my experiences. In a world of human experience, comprised of different traditions and identities, family is essential in mine.