Free Upon the Head of the Goat by Aranka Siegal Page A

over,” I protested.
    â€œNonsense,” said Iboya, “if anyone stops us, we’ll just pretend he’s a friend of ours. And if we act natural, nobody will stop us.”
    The young man, speaking animatedly in Yiddish, told us what had happened to him and to all the other Jews rounded up in Bratislava. He was surprised that Iboya and I did not know about the new anti-Jewish laws in Slovakia, defining who was a Jew. “They are rounding up Jews all over Slovakia,” he said.
    â€œWho are they?” we asked.
    â€œThe Hlinka Guards—they are Slovak volunteers in the SS—the Gestapo, Hitler’s secret police. Some of them used to be our friends, but the Gestapo gave them boots and uniforms and made them feel important. Some can’t even read or write their own names…” He sighed. “Anyway, in our town alone they rounded up close to a thousand of us since the law came out.”
    â€œWhat do these new laws say?” I asked.
    â€œThat Jews are stateless unless our forebears were residents before 1868. They keep chasing us from place to place, then ask us to prove that we have lived in one place for over seventy years.”
    â€œWhere are they taking these stateless Jews they round up?”
    â€œTo German-held territories.”
    â€œWhat are they going to do with them?”
    â€œI’m not sure. That’s why I ran away. They say all sorts of horrible things like slave labor and massacres. Who knows what the truth is? Germans, they will do anything to the Jews.”
    As we reached Main Street, Iboya asked the young man, whose name, he told us, was Jonathan, to lower his voice. “Too many people on this street,” she said. When we were a few houses away from Mrs. Silverman’s gate, I walked on ahead.
    â€œSo it’s you again,” said Mrs. Silverman, drawing back inside her yard after having opened the gate for me. I waved Jonathan in.
    â€œThank you,” he whispered, as he hurried past me. Walking home, Iboya and I hardly spoke.
    *   *   *
    One afternoon, on the eve of Simchas Torah, I came home to a big celebration. Mother pulled a postcard out of her apron pocket and handed it to me. “Your father made it back to the train without getting caught. He is alive,” she exclaimed. There were only a few lines of writing on the card: “All is well with my men and me. I miss you and the children. No address for a while, we’ll be on the move. With love I kiss you. Ignac.”
    â€œThey must be near Russia,” Mother said.
    Mrs. Gerber, Judi, and Pali arrived just as Mother and Lilli finished preparing a batch of doughnuts concocted from a mixture of flour and cooked pumpkin.
    â€œHow nice to see you,” Mother greeted the Gerbers. “We are about to have a treat.” Mrs. Gerber took a postcard from her purse and gave it to Mother, who read it and then smiled at her. “Dear Charlotte, just in time to celebrate the holiday. God is still keeping us in mind.” Handing it back, Mother pushed the plate covered with doughnuts toward the Gerbers as they sat down around our crowded kitchen table. “Be careful,” she said, “they are still very hot in the center.”
    â€œMy, that’s good,” said Mrs. Gerber as she bit cautiously into the puffy pastry. “Whatever is it made of?”
    â€œI have been stretching the flour with all sorts of tricks I learned from my mother. For these, I mixed mashed pumpkin into the flour. But I also use potatoes or squash or carrots; it just depends on what I have on hand and what I am baking.”
    â€œBabi once made fish balls without fish,” I offered. “She had all her ingredients prepared and was waiting for Michael to bring her his catch. Then it got so late that she couldn’t wait any longer. I remember what she said: ‘Fish or no fish, I have to go on with the Sabbath.’ So she mixed all the other