Free Born Survivors by Wendy Holden Page B

Then at home I made things out of nothing … we had lots of green material once, I remember.’
    The requirement to work was not only necessary for food but to ward off the ever-present threat of ‘resettlement’ to labour camps, which had started in January 1942 before Rachel and her family swelled the ghetto’s numbers. Jews and Roma gypsies from across occupied Europe had been shipped into Łódź from late 1941, and Rumkowski and his Resettlement Commission were ordered to supervise deportations of 1,000 a day to make room. If the elders didn’t provide enough to satisfy the quotas, the Nazis assured them that their wives and children would be substituted. Repeatedly instructed to hand over his own people, Rumkowski faced a monstrous moral dilemma but felt he had no choice but to obey. He realised early on that those who were hell-bent on the destruction of the Jews would only replace him with someone who would do as they asked. He hoped at least to negotiate the numbers down.
    As each new deportation began, German police accompanied by the ghetto Schutzpolizei prowled the streets hunting for ‘fresh meat’. Salvoes of gunfire could be heard as any who tried to resist were shot during the round-ups. Once a new batch of deportees had been chosen from lists of names, men in uniform would arrive in lorries and surround an apartment block. They wouldthen drag everyone out into the open, even in their nightclothes. If the occupants didn’t open up voluntarily, their doors would be kicked in.
    Those unlucky enough to be on the list were initially incarcerated in the ghetto prison in Czarnecki Street before being loaded onto trams to the main railway line at Radogszcz Station, Marysin, just beyond the ghetto perimeter. An estimated 200,000 Jews passed through what the Germans called the Radegast loading platform during the course of the war. While they were being held in Czarnecki Street, there was still hope. During those few hours or sometimes days, their loved ones raced desperately around the ghetto trying to find a ‘connection’ – a person of influence they might know – who could be begged or bribed to remove them from the transport lists. Invariably they failed, but if they did succeed it only meant that someone else would have to take the rescued person’s place to fill the quota for what became euphemistically known as ‘going to the frying pan’.
    Although there were occasional lulls in the round-ups, everyone in the ghetto lived with the constant prospect of transportation and death. The growing feeling in Rachel’s family was that hope was dwindling. Their sole focus was now on simply staying alive as long as possible and protecting those they loved. Increasingly fearful that he would lose some or all of his family to these random selections, Shaiah Abramczyk did something practical to protect them. The man whose children believed he was clever enough to have been an inventor, extended the partition wall of their room all the way across and built a wooden dresser up against the middle of it. He then created a secret door in the back of the lower cupboard, through which the family could squeeze each time they heard the police and SS arrive. ‘There was just enough room for us all once we crawled through,’ Sala said. ‘Anyone who came into the room would think it was empty. Father even hung pictures up on the wall so that it looked solid.’
    When the deportations from the ghetto resumed in September1942, this secret hiding place proved invaluable. As the clatter of diesel trucks and the thunder of jackboots heralded the arrival of each new batch of guards, their neighbours were carried off to no one knew where. Each time, the Abramczyk family crept through the little door in the dresser and formed a tight human knot as they tried to close their ears to the pleas and cries of women, and the cackle of sadistic laughter. ‘The Germans came in and started screaming at everyone, “Out of the