A Child Al Confino: The True Story of a Jewish Boy and His Mother in Mussolini's Italy (4 page)

“You go here and you there!” the officer barked. This was the same man who, only moments before, had saluted us so gallantly.

I cringed and took one step closer to my mother. With one menacing finger he ordered Mother and me toward one door and my father to another.

I held on to
Mutti
's skirt as we moved quickly in the direction the man had pointed. We walked through the door and found ourselves in a small room, made tinier by a very high ceiling and white sheets, draped over metal frames, to partition the space into small cubicles. They reminded me of the oppressive prison cells I had seen in the movies. I looked to
Mutti
for help. She offered none. Her forlorn look — one I had never seen before — made her face seem very small.

“Undress. Take everything off. Everything!” a woman sitting at a small desk shouted. The tone of her voice was similar to the one I had heard in the hall. I was shivering. “
Schnell! Schnell! Ich kann nicht auf die Juden Schweine warten!
” she yelled, ordering us to hurry, hurry, for she could not wait for Jewish pigs.

The fear I had felt over the last four days was pale in comparison to my present terror. If only I could run away or maybe hide somewhere. How could so many people be so heartless?

I stood there, unprotected in that empty space. Catching an encouraging look from my mother, who was standing naked, bashful, and full of fear, I removed my clothes as well, laid them on the floor and waited. I, who once had refused to undress when Papa had taken me to an all-male Turkish bath, now stood stripped, while evil-looking men and women milled all around.

A large woman, wearing a black dress, high black leather boots, and the scary red and black armband on her sleeve, pushed the partition to one side. She seemed tall, perhaps taller than she actually was because of my nakedness. That hair pulled tightly to the back of her head, those thin lips held rigidly together, and her manly gait all exuded a ruthlessness that held me paralyzed. But what terrified me most was the icy, empty look in her eyes, a blank stare that cut through me. I was naked and cold and so frightened!

“Do you have any jewelry?” the woman bellowed.

“No, no! No jewelry, I swear,”
Mutti
protested in a high-pitched voice.

As the big woman's hands searched all of
Mutti
's body, my eyes turned away. I had never seen my mother naked and didn't want to be a witness to my proud parent's indignity.

Then came my turn. I heard the heavy boots hit the pavement and felt the woman's rough, large, sweaty hands grabbing me by the shoulders. Without a sound, she forced open my mouth, looked into my ears, looked under my arms and last, pushed her cold finger into my rectum. I was too crippled by fear to scream and though the physical pain was intolerable, my mental anguish was even more so. Several times she rotated that large searching finger inside me. Dying at that very moment would have been a relief.

After what seemed the longest wait of my life, we were allowed to dress and join Papa. The strain on my parents' faces reflected the ordeal they had endured. I felt so helpless and wished I were big and able to comfort them. I wanted to say, “Don't be sad. It's all over.” Instead I was just a little boy, not yet eight.

Leaving the vast hall, we walked toward the platform. Papa, bent over by the weight of the two suitcases.
Mutti
and I following close behind. As we reached the train's open door, my mother, breathing with great difficulty, stopped to dry the tears off my face with her pretty embroidered handkerchief. “I want you to forget what just happened.”

“Why did they do this to us?” I asked, still trembling.

“Because we're Jewish. Just because we're Jewish.”

My father lifted the suitcases on the train and boarded. “I'll find us a compartment. Wait here.”

We waited and waited. No sign of my father.
Mutti
was wringing her hands. Finally, Papa's head showed through a partially opened window. “I found us a compartment.”

Dad's find was already occupied by five other people. One of the men helped my father lift the suitcases onto the rack, freeing the wooden bench of the second-class cabin for us to sit on. We had removed our overcoats, which Papa had hung on one of the wall hooks.

The train was late leaving the terminal. My parents were nervous. Father looked at his watch every few minutes, almost as if he kept forgetting what time it was. “This train was supposed to leave twenty minutes ago. What's happening?” he asked. I didn't know to whom he was talking since no one responded.

German soldiers dressed in those ghastly black uniforms and those heavy boots, were everywhere. Each time one poked his head into our compartment,
Mutti
, as though hit by some electric shock, stiffened in her seat. Unable to follow her advice to forget, I cringed and broke into a cold sweat at the sound of their every step. After what seemed an eternity, the conductor whistled and the black locomotive, with a deafening blare, spewing white steam and dark smoke, began pulling the train out of the station to the screeching of its iron wheels. But the soldiers, stiff in their black uniforms, continued to mill in the narrow passageway outside our compartment, refusing to give our nerves a moment of rest.

By the time the long line of cars pulled over the maze of rails and onto the open tracks, the sky had become dark and the streetlights were turned on. I leaned out the window and watched as the distance increased between my city and me. Accompanied by the rhythmic clank of the iron rails as they bounced back on the passing wheels, we traveled through the night.

I sat immersed in my own thoughts while my parents, absorbed by their own fears, did not speak for the longest time. The snack cart passed our compartment and Papa bought three sandwiches and two bottles of mineral water.

Mutti
broke her silence. “Go to sleep,” she said. “I'll sing you ‘Sonny Boy.’” Since my birth, Mother had put me to sleep with Al Jolson's famous melody. I loved that song and she sang it so well.

This time, however, the song held no appeal. My mind was so mixed up. Before I had wanted to escape; now I was determined not to shut my eyes, fearing that if I did fall asleep something might happen. My eyelids kept closing, for I was exhausted, but I was too stubborn and afraid to give in.

“You'll be tired tomorrow,”
Mutti
added gently. I could tell she was not going to insist on my going to sleep.

I didn't even know what time it was, for my beloved silver watch, a special gift my grandfather had given me for
Pesach
on one of our last trips to Poland, had been left behind.

It was still pitch dark when the train stopped and what sounded to me to be foreign-speaking soldiers boarded the train.

“
Passaporto, per favore
,” one said, asking for our passports.

“Why don't they speak Polish?” I asked.

Only after the men left and Mother realized we were no longer in Austria did she share the truth with me. She jumped from her seat. “We are in Italy!” she exclaimed. Then she looked at me, sat, took my hand and, in a soft tone, said: “We are not going to Poland.”

Because I was unable to grasp what was going on, that bit of news had little impact on me. But I was excited just being in a new country and my anguish gave way to anticipation.

The border crossing had a big effect on the other passengers. Everyone, silent before, was now engaged in lively conversation. Dad ventured into the corridor, looked right, then left, and shouted with enthusiasm: “No Nazis.”

“Not so loud,”
Mutti
warned.

There was an air of jubilation in the compartment. All the lights were turned on and snacks were exchanged between passengers.

My father sat next to me and looking out the window, told me of his experiences during the war. “This is where it all happened. Some of the bloodiest battles took place right here. The Italian army tried desperately to push us back but with no success. We were at the top of the mountain and they were down below. You can imagine we made chopped meat out of them.” Papa seemed to be reliving those days. “The Italians had mules to carry their big guns. We were set in place and our machine guns just cut them down.
Tat
,
tat
,
tat
. Even the animals were killed.”

“Did you get wounded?” I asked.

“Oh, no. Never.” Then he told me he had been kept from combat because of his flat feet.

“That was a blessing,”
Mutti
said. “The Polish army was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, if your father had been allowed to fight, the empire would have collapsed sooner than it did.” Mother had regained her sense of humor.

Papa's words created all sorts of fantasies in my fertile mind. As he related stories of battles, I envisioned swarms of soldiers rushing from the dense foliage, surrounding the fast-moving train and shooting wildly at an invisible enemy. I could see bodies partially entombed under a thin layer of soil, their bloody limbs stretched upward toward the sky, the gruesome sights of death.

For hours my mind ran wild as my eyes followed, in the faint light coming from the window, the smooth up-and-down movement of the telegraph wires as the train raced from one pole to the next. In the end, overcome by fatigue, I fell asleep until the screech of the iron wheels, braking to a slow halt in the Milan terminal, awoke me.

As the train came to a full stop, excited passengers moved with a new charge of energy. Everyone in the compartment was standing, stretching limbs, loosening necks by turning from side to side, then reaching for items placed on the overhead racks the night before. There was no room for anyone to stand for the floor was covered with baggage. Papa was close to the window and pushed it down. A strange smell, a mixture of steam and burning coal, invaded the cabin. Mother was busy gathering the belongings we had pulled from our luggage during the night, while Papa, with the aid of a stranger standing outside on the platform, pushed our two valises through the open window and into the man's outstretched arms. Nothing about my father's dapper look betrayed that he had sat up all night. His hair was neat, his tie perfectly knotted and the white handkerchief in his breast pocket gave a finishing touch to his steel gray, double-breasted suit.

He grabbed his overcoat, then rushed down the corridor and onto the platform to claim the luggage gathered there. Mother looked around one final time to be sure nothing had been left behind, then, handed me my fur-lined coat and pushed me ahead through the corridor and down the three steep steps. The height of those steps made it impossible for a woman to get off the train in a ladylike fashion, for she needed to lift her skirt way above her knees. Standing at the top of the platform, her head outside the door, holding on to both side railings, Mother looked to either side, before lifting her skirt and stepping down.

Seeing my father's hand gesture, a wrinkled porter, who seemed older than any other person I had ever seen before, rushed up to us. He grabbed a thick and heavily worn leather belt that was holding up his pants and ran it through the handles of our two suitcases. He secured the strap to the buckle and then with a rapid jolt, draped the belt over his right shoulder, letting one suitcase fall in front and the other behind. After balancing himself under the heavy weight, mumbling words I could not understand, he led the way through crowds of passengers. We walked the full length of the platform under a steel and glass roof, blackened by years of smoke from the coal-burning locomotives.

The old man carried our bags to the side exit, from where he hailed a taxi. The driver rushed from the cab to place our luggage on the car's roof, then tied it down with a rope that was hanging there. The porter looped the leather strap through his drooping pants, gave them a yank to stop them from dragging on the ground and, respectfully removing his oily and sweat-stained cap, turned to my father and said, “
A suo favore
,” leaving the tip to my father's discretion.

Papa pulled from his wallet a few Austrian Schilling. The porter, with a blocking motion of the hand and a smirk on his face, made it clear he wasn't at all interested in taking those bills. Papa had to find an exchange booth to bring the predicament to an end.

Poland — My Extended Family

B
oth my parents were born in Poland: my papa, Markus Lifschütz, in Krzywczyce on February 15, 1897, the oldest of three boys; my
Mutti
, Carlotte Szyfra Brandwein, in Nadworna on May 10, 1901, the youngest of four. When the 1914–18 war was nearing its end but before the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, my father and his two brothers moved to Vienna.

Vienna was a cosmopolitan city, and the three young men looked for a better future than what would have been possible in rural Poland. Moreover, their uncles, Simon and Maximilian, had already settled in the Austrian capital and become successful property owners.

I met both of my great-uncles, my grandfather's brothers. I visited Uncle Simon in his luxurious apartment with its thick Persian rugs, but Uncle Max, who was held in awe by the family, I only knew from a distance.

In 1936, my parents took me to Lwow, Poland, where most of the Lifschütz family had settled after leaving their
shtetl
. We stayed with Papa's parents, and during that visit I spent much of my time meeting the more than sixty members of my father's large family. I couldn't believe I had so many cousins, aunts, and uncles. But of greater disbelief was the uncle who was younger than his own nephew.

“How can
Yankle
be older than his Uncle Morris?” I asked.

“Why do you always have a question?” She hesitated struggling to explain. “
Yankle
was five when his grandmother died. Her husband married a much younger woman and their first child was Morris. When he was born,
Yankle
was already eight; that's why he is older than his Uncle Morris.”