And She Had a Cloth Bag Filled with Cookies

  Dr. Giselle Cycowicz is in her nineties, but you wouldn't know it to look at her.  You definitely wouldn't know it if you heard her laugh and saw the sparkle in her eyes.   She's still working as a psychologist for survivors through the organization "Amcha" and after years of not telling anyone that she was a survivor, her life in Israel has freed her to tell her story and help others recover from their own.

 As a child, "Gita" Friedman grew up in the Carpathian region of what was then Czechoslovakia  German was the lingua franca of the time, so she and her sisters all could get by with this language. She also spoke Hungarian with her mother, Yiddish with her father, Czech in school, and used some Ukrainian with the workers in her community.  This is how it was back then; I like to feel part of that tradition with my polyglot tendencies.

  The town where she lived, Khust, was known for the lumber industry.  There were many poor Ukrainians who lived in the mountainous areas and cut down trees, tied them up, and sent them down the river.  Her father, though, was among the business people in town.  He owned an "inn", which was more like a restaurant or bar than our current image of an inn as a place where you would stay over.  In this rural area, medicines were not highly developed or accessible; as the only person in town who sold mineral waters, he was the person to go to for problems like indigestion or infertility.  It was a profitable business and it was connected to their house. The mineral water was in the cellar, the inn was on the street, and there was an apartment upstair with a kitchen.  Her mother cared for the large backyard with flowerbeds and over 25 years of marriage, the parents had furnished the house well. 

    Gita's father valued education, and had gone away to a special yeshiva to study the Talmud in his youth.  "He always had a book with him."  However, when it came time for her formal education, the schools were blocked from her because she was Jewish.  "It was painful to know I was blocked from being able to study," she said, but acknowledged that she and her sisters were largely self-taught from reading a lot and valuing learning.  (At about forty, she finally was able to pursue her dream, and as you can see from her title, she eventually pursued and achieved her doctorate!)

   This all changed, though, in 1939.  A few months before, Hitler had invaded the Sudetenland region, but promised never to ask for more.  Then, sure enough, he  expanded his reach.  Czechia and Moravia became German, Slovakia declared "independence" but espoused Nazi values, and Hungary occupied the Carpathian region where Gita lived.   Because Hungary had an agreement with Hitler and was on the Axis side, and because she lived east of Poland, this left her five years before any deportation. However, her father, a literate and informed man, saw the writing on the wall. 

"When the military marched in, he cried.  He knew they were antisemitic."

  Gita shared some stories from this five year period.  She spoke about the enlisted men of her town who were taken to dig ditches and build tracks to prepare for the invasion of Russia.  She remembers how some parents were very worried about how their sons would fair without kosher food and without the Sabbath.  They paid doctors to inflict damage on their sons: cut fingers, punctured eardrums.  (My great grandfather lost a finger to avoid serving in the Russian army; I didn't realize this was a "thing" until today. Yikes!)  

   Her town was not free from the Aryanization laws the Nazi era.  Stores were taken over by non-Jewish owners.  Her father received a letter from City Hall saying that his inn was to be given to another man. He stayed on for a few weeks to train the new owner, but then he had to tell his children that they had no income anymore.  Gita was 13 years old at the time.  She remembers worrying about him and what he would do.  

   She described the "old fashioned" nature of her house, and how there was no running water back then.  This is just how it was in the countryside; they didn't know any different.  People would fetch water from wells, filling up barrels and bringing them inside.  The toilet was just an outhouse in the backyard.  There was a fence behind their house where they would throw the garbage, and the Roma folk would clean up every so often.   

   The family still had the upstairs apartment, and Gita's family offered to start a hotel to make some kind of a living.  Basically, when the inn downtown had spillover guests, they would come to the Friedman house.  This meant that the family ended up all sleeping on found mattresses at the top of the staircase. She felt humiliated, but of course, much worse was to come.

   One Sabbath day, Hungarian police descended on some Jewish families.  They indiscriminately grabbed anyone who was in each house (and often there were visitors, because it was Shabbat),  and sent them to a field in the Ukraine.  Ditches were prepared and they were shot to death into mass graves.  Some "lucky" ones were shot but not to the point of death.  A cousin's son, fourteen years old, was one of those "lucky" ones.  He lay there for days, feeling the heat of his seven siblings and other bodies, and eventually got out.  He sent a letter to Gita's family to help save him.  The letter arrived too late.

   We speak a lot about turning point moments.  Around this time, Gita's father received a certificate allowing him to take his family to Palestine.  However, her mother didn't want to go.  Instead, they sent Gita's two older sisters to Budapest to learn a trade. Edith was 19 and Helen was 15.  It was safer in big cities, too.  In small towns, everybody knew everyone.  It was easier to hide in a large city like Budapest...you could pretend you were a Christian with some false ID.  Then, the only telling sign would be if you were circumcised-- not a problem for her sisters.

    

  (An aside: Gita told a story of a fourteen year old boy who was pulled over in the street by a police officer.  He was told to undress to prove that he was not Jewish.  "Police were not ashamed to do that", Gita said.  He started crying because his family didn't know where he was.  He told the police officer, "I'm crying because my mother had five children and now she only has four."    Gita paused after this story.  "It's one of the miracles,"  she said.  "There are plenty of miracles in this Shoah story."

   However, you'll have to wait for these miracles.  

    March 19th, 1944.  "This is the day of our death sentence."  This is the day the Germans came in to her area of the Carpathians.  It was just three weeks before Pesach, and her father wanted the family to be together.  He sent letters to her sisters to tell them to come home from Budapest.  Edith, her elder sister, went ahead to the train station. It must have been that everyone had the same idea, and the police descended on the train station.  Whoever was Jewish there was sent to a concentration camp in Hungary.  Helen, the middle sister, heard this on the radio, and when she couldn't find her sister, realized what it meant.  She didn't have the words to tell her parents what had happened.  She didn't know that they eventually received a postcard from Edith saying, essentially, "I'm fine, don't worry!"  My mom never believes me when I tell her that same sentence; I'm sure there was a dark cloud of doubt for all of them.  However, at least she was alive.

    Then, it was the eve of Passover.  The men went to synagogue while the women prepared the seders.  Gita remembers her father leaving in his traditional garb: the black hat, the prayer shawl, and all that.  But her father didn't come home.  Eventually, her mother enter her out to look for him.  She waited on a corner, and then in the distance she saw a "big black cloud of a man, terribly frightening. The man comes over to me. It was my father. I didn't recognize him with his beard shaven off."  He had always had a nightmare that somebody was going to peel off his beard one hair at a time, and now he was sad that his own daughter did not recognize him.

    One beautiful thing happened that seder. Helen got up the braver to go to the train station and come home on the train.  "Father threw himself on the floor and hugged her.  Thank God we have you!" 

   Soon after, the Germans called upon a Judenrat, a group of Jewish leaders, to carry out their orders.  Her uncle was one of them.  It was through this Judenrat that Jewish people were required to hand over their gold, their bicycles, dishes, and eventually homes for the soldiers.  "They were our people, our friends, our information,"  Gita said, "But even they didn't know what was happening to us."

   Before the family was pushed into on of the ghettos, Helen begged her father to dig a hole to preserve any of their precious belongings.  His response was very fatalistic:  "If we live, we will have what we need.  If not, who cares?"  So, 25 years worth of accumulated stuff was placed in the cellar behind the mineral water vats.  They locked the door, and left the house.  "It was the end of an era."

   Gita spoke of how three streets were turned into three ghettos.  Four or five families were crammed into two-bedroom houses, with one bathroom and one kitchen.  The roads were left open for non-Jewish traffic, so the streets were separated, although there was some ability to get from one to the other.   The house was so crowded that they all needed to bathe in the same water.  

  For five weeks or so, they lived in this condition.  They heard about the looting of their former houses and were shocked: "These had been our good neighbors!"  

  Soon, the people of Gita's ghetto were taken into a railway station and pushed into a small wagon. 95 people or so were there, and they had two pails: one for drinking water and one as a latrine.  The only light came from two high windows blocked by barbed wire. It was very crowded; people believed they were going to forced labor camp, so they brought pots and pans to cook, and whatever light food might hold up.  They didn't bring books or laundry or pictures, just the necessities.  

  She remembered a debate that was held among the men.  Some wanted to pray.  Others thought it was wrong to pray in front of an open toilet.  (Even diapers needed to be changed before family prayers!)  After much ado, the decision was made to pray.

    After about three days, they arrived at the camp.  

    "Father told us: Watch for mother.  Watch for yourselves.  And work.  Volunteer to work.  Say you know how to do whatever it is; you can always learn."  

   The last time she saw her father was at this selection.  He was sent to work with the men.  She was sent with her sister and mother to work with the women.  

   In the next five months, Gita remembers standing at attention for long hours in the morning and long hours at night. She remembers being looked over by the SS officers and knowing each time that some would be picked to be killed. She knew her mother was older than most of the other women, and worrying about her mother took a great toll on her. Plus, standing for hours without water, without toilet, hungry, tired and thirsty and longing to wash her face--- all of this was a mental and physical torture.

  Still, there was kindness in the camp.  She tells the story of her friend, Bella.  One day when they were standing at attention, Bella noticed a girl who had a hump on her back.  This was unusual; if the Nazis noticed, they would clearly have sent her to her death.  To make matters worse, this girl had been handed extremely bright clothing with big yellow dots.  She was new, and this clearly was going to make her noticeable.  Bella found an opportunity to give her dress to the girl. After the war, the two met up again. The girl with the hump recognized Bella and said, "You know that you saved my life."

  After five months, something awful happened.  Gita's mother was selected along with five hundred or so girls.  They were all sent to a room to undress...and somehow, Gita's mother was able to sneak behind a cabinet.  She stayed there until it had all calmed down, and then escaped back to her daughters. At this point, a decision was made.  Do anything. Volunteer for anything. Just get out of Auschwitz.

  As it happens, there was an opportunity for some women to go work in a factory.  Gita, Helen and their mother volunteered.  However, their mother wasn't sent away.  The sisters were put on a train to a labor camp, but they had to leave their mother.

  At first, the new labor camp looked "like Paradise".  They each had individual bunk beds (instead of 12 to a bed, only able to lie on their side) with straw!  They had a bench and a table, too.  Of course, it wasn't Paradise.  They had to work twelve hours a day, six days a week, and also walk an hour each way to get there, in the snow, without gloves or scarf.  The hunger was still a constant, but they were able to scrape through the garbage to find some potato peels.   Deep down, Gita knew that her mother could never have survived this labor.

   Around this time, though she didn't know it, her father was finishing up his five months of working in the coal mines. The men from Khust were brought back to Auschwitz to be killed.  With a bloody face, he passed someone and asked "Are there any people here still from Khust? Tell them that 200 Hungarian men were brought back from the coal mine, and 30 men from Khust. Tell them that I am Wolf Friedman and tomorrow I won't be anymore."

   One day, it was spring, and in the middle of work the girls all heard whistling.  This was the signal for roll call.  They ran out into the field to line up for the SS officers. However, something was different.  With a fog horn, the officers told the girls not to line up, just to stand where they are.

"Today is May the Eighth.  

The War is declared over and You are Free.

You may do whatever you want.

You may go wherever you want. 

We are here to watch you until the Russians arrive.

We are only here to watch you.

Please don't do us any harm."

  There Gita stood, traumatized. She felt crazy because she wasn't happy.  "Is there a place I want to go? Is there a place I can go? What about my mother? My father? My big sister?"   She and Helen spoke about it, and eventually decided to go home to Khust. It was a long walk-- some 600 kilometers.  At the border of Carpathia, there was a train that worked. This area now belonged to the Ukraine and was in better repair than the areas she had crossed through.  

   After two hours or so, the train stopped.  She jumped down off of the train.  She looked out of the open doors to see if she saw someone, anyone, that she knew.  Then, a man spoke to her from around the corner.  In Yiddish, he asked who she was.  She told him her father is Wolf Friedman.  He said to her the most beautiful words:  "Your mother is at home."

   Mr. Heimford had been heading to Budapest, but he left his train and took the girls to find their mom.  The Jewish houses had been made uninhabitable and so she had found shelter in an apartment.  Edith had even come back!  They had been liberated back in January and had made it back to Khust by February.

    The moment of reunion was etched in Gita's mind, and I'm sure that after I write the next sentence, it will be etched in yours.  Her mother greeted her with full cheeks and a cloth bag she had filled with cookies.  "She had been waiting for me."

   Thank you, Gita, for sharing your story with us.