Free Dobryd by Ann Charney Page A

cities.
    â€œThere was also a feminist movement but for some reason they were taken even less seriously than the anarchists. They had their own special dedicated following, but the rest of the town laughed at them. Why? I don’t know really. They were just considered ridiculous and that was that.
    â€œTheir leader was an American girl, Maria. She had come to the town on a visit with her parents. One of our doctors had fallen in love with her and she married him and remained in Dobryd. Your poor aunt Celia was her friend and that’s how we all got to know her. She was a lovely woman and somehow no one ever laughed at her, even if they laughed at the marches she organized, and at some of her other activities. Your mother was a little girl then and she would often follow Celia on these marches. When they noticed her they would send her to the head of the column. Your mother enjoyed this a great deal, until your grandmother heard about it and put a quick stop to her activities. Once she was older she immediately joined the movement just to spite your grandmother. After all, your grandfather had always encouraged his daughters as much as his son. He was an exception in his time and his class.
    â€œI want to tell you about Maria, so you will remember her. She should never be forgotten. She was young when she took up the feminist cause. No one could understand why she chose to make herself ridiculous. Being the wife of a small town doctor had a lot to do with it. The poorer Jewish women in the ghettos, you see, were really miserable creatures—they were considered inferior from birth. When they married, their wishes were rarely consulted. They had many children whom they usually had to provide for by taking in work or keeping shop while their husbands spent their days praying and studying the holy books. Even on feast days they had to serve their husbands and sons first, and they were not allowed to sit next to them in the synagogue.
    â€œThe conditions of the Christian women who came to see her husband were even worse. Most of the time they were the only beasts of burden their husbands could afford. A Polish peasant usually wore out two or three in his lifetime.
    â€œUnfortunately, the women Maria wanted most to reach were the ones who, under their husbands’ orders, closed their doors in her face. Her following consisted of a small number of enlightened, middle-class women, like your aunt Celia, for whom feminism was another way of being ‘modern’ and filling their days.
    â€œYet Maria was never discouraged. Always full of energy, she rushed about town from morning till night, seeing to her women, organizing volunteers, giving of herself to anyone who needed her. At the end of her life, when she was in her forties, it was reported that she had retained her spirit of defiance and her courage.
    â€œIt happened in Treblinka. I wish you might never know of such places, but from now on all children will be taught about them. That way it may never happen again. Treblinka was a place where people were taken to be killed. Many people from our town died there and often they did not suspect what was going to happen to them until it was actually happening. This was a horror without precedent, and the worst rumours tended to be discounted. We refused to believe what we heard.
    â€œMaria was taken to Treblinka with her husband, but they were separated as soon as they arrived. A few hours later she found herself surrounded by a group of women all of them naked and shivering, their heads shaved, waiting to go into the “showers” from which they would never come out alive. In the few minutes that remained before the doors opened for them, Maria had somehow guessed the sinister purpose of those showers. She passed the word along to her companions. It was the last time that she was to appeal to them and they did not let her down. When the moment came and the guards were moving the women along,