Free Out of the Shoebox by Yaron Reshef Page A

nickname was Pepe, so the picture's description
should be amended. The person in the photo is Pepe, a close friend of my
mother's. I quote: “Moshe would come over to our house and to the store every
day. Pepe, the adopted daughter they treated just like their own, was my good
friend and Moshe was also part of this friendship. On holidays they wanted her
to go home and see her poor mother and orphan brothers, but she didn't want to
and only did so because she had no choice.” My mother also says one of the two
families that lived upstairs in the rented flat was the Greenberg family.
Weddings were held in a place called Bristol and your parents probably got
married there. My mother remembers well when your mother came to visit with the
baby. My mother visited her often. She was 16 at the time, and remembers also
when they went back to Palestine. My mother also remembers Zelda, but not Simka
the doctor. The most interesting part of the story she told at the very end of
our conversation: The family hid in a bunker (shelter?) with a door that had to
be closed from the outside and then locked from the inside. Pepe sacrificed
herself for them; she went out to close the door and was then discovered and
killed. That's how those who were inside were also discovered. Moshe was the
one to come and close the door to our bunker. The families were close and each
felt the need to help the other... in the end they were all killed. The Nazis
flooded the bunker and drowned them. My mother wasn't in the bunker, and maybe
that's why she survived. Best to you and your family, Hanna."
    Wow.
I did not expect such a letter. A short and concise description of the murder
of my mother's family came from an unexpected source and with very little
effort on my part. Again I felt that no sooner do I think of a missing piece of
information than I promptly receive the answer in a surprising and unforeseen
manner. I had no doubt that this was indeed how my mother's family came to
their end, though a year ago I had different reports that told of the murder of
my grandfather Menachem Mendel Kramer. At that time my sister bought me Marta
Goren's book Voices from the Black Forest, a detailed and chilling account of
the extermination of Chortkow's Jews. In the book I found an account of the
murder of a man named Mendel Kramer:
    "On
the night between the 26th and 27th of August 1942 the first evacuation Aktion
took place in Chortkow. In this Aktion Jews were sent by train to the Belzec
death camp. About 2,500 Jews were sent to their death. After the Aktion the
bodies of 500-600  murdered Jews  were strewn in the ghetto and town streets.
When the Aktion was over, a few Jews were selected to gather the corpses. Three
teams were formed, each with two Gestapo soldiers and one Jew... Mendel Kramer,
a 65 year-old Jew, was among those to collect the bodies and pile them in the
market square. Albert Brettschneider, of the Gestapo, ordered him to turn
around and without reason shot him in the head.”
    As
far as I know my grandfather was the only Mendel Kramer in Chortkow, but I
could be wrong. So at first, I accepted this account of my grandfather's
murder. That Gestapo officer was tried in Mannheim in 1974 and was sentenced to
20 years in jail, and likely died behind bars. After a more thorough
examination though, the age of the man in the story did not fit my grandfather.
My grandfather was born in 1890, so on the day of the Aktion he would have been
only 52, not 65. I suppose the man who gave his account of the event knew
Mendel Kramer or he wouldn't have mentioned his age, but I could be wrong.
That's why Tonia's account "felt right", true and more reliable. Her
close acquaintance with my family left no doubt in my heart regarding my
mother's family's tragic end.
    A
cynic might say that I could choose for myself one tragic end or the other, and
I chose to believe the reliable information I received in that most unexpected
way.
    I
completed the puzzle using the new