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The Jews in Sokal are busier than ever making arrangements for places to hide when (and I no longer say "if") there is an Aktion. My plan is that our family should not hide together in one place but should be scattered, so that our whole family will not be wiped out at one blow. At least some of us must remain as living witnesses to the tragedy that befell our people.
My brother Shmelke has prepared the cellar of the home of Ivanich, a Gentile acquaintance, on New Street, as a shelter for our sisteres, Leah and Yitte, and Leah's little daughter Feyge Chashe. Chana and our two children, our sister Dvora and I will go to the home of Mrs. Francisca Halamajowa on No. 4 Street of Our Lady.
We have known Mrs. Halamajowa for some years. She is a Polish Catholic woman in her late fifties who lived in Germany for a time and learned to speak a perfect German. She was married to a Ukrainian whom she threw out of her house because he was a Nazi, which she definitely is not.
This is how we came to the arrangement with Mrs. Halamajowa: Some time ago, my mother went to sound out Mrs. Halamajowa about a place where we could hide during an Aktion. Mrs. Halamajowa took Mother to her pigsty next to her home and pointed to a hayloft that could be reached by climbing a ladder from the pigsty below. "That's where my daughter Hela hid out when the Germans were picking up Ukrainians for slave labor," she explained. "You and your husband could stay there, too, Mrs. Maltz." Mother was surprised and deeply touched by Mrs. Halamajowa's offer. "You'd really give us shelter at your own home, in your own hayloft?" she asked. "Why not?" Mrs. Halamajowa replied.
On her way home, my mother stopped at my house to tell me about her visit to Mrs. Halamajowa. I gave my mother a ring, and enough material for a blouse, and said to her, "Please take these things to Mrs. Halamajowa as gifts from your family and tell her that if there is an Aktion, your youngest daughter and son Moshe with his family will be coming to the hayloft along with you."
My sister Leah accompanied Mother to Mrs. Halamajowa's house. Mrs. Halamajowa took Mother and Leah outside and showed them a path around the back of her house that led directly to the pigsty. "Better use this roundabout way when you move into my pigsty, Mrs. Maltz," she said. "People are less likely to see you then."
The next day Leah took me to Mrs. Halamajowa's house by this arranged roundabout route so I should know the way also. The house virtually touches the east bank of the River Bug that formerly marked the border between the Russian and German sectors of Poland.
On the way to Mrs. Halamajowa's house we saw a number of Jews hurrying past us alone the streets near the river. They were probably looking for hiding places. Some were carrying packages; perhaps they were taking their belongings to the homes of Gentile friends for safekeeping.
In the hayloft, Thursday, September 17, 1942
At five o'clock this morning we hear gunfire from the streets and from the direction of the fields behind us. Mrs. Halamajowa brings us our breakfast and informs us that the Aktion has begun. The Germans, accompanied by members of the Jewish police, are all over town, picking up Jews. We don't touch Mrs. Halamajowa's food; we have lost our appetites.
At nine o'clock we hear a guttural German voice from Mrs. Halamajowa's courtyard. "Any Jews in there?" Mrs. Halamajowa calmly replies in German, "No, sir."
At eleven o'clock Mrs. Halamajowa is back with the latest news. She says that her neighbor, who shares her house with her, has found out that we have gone into hiding in some part of her home. So he sent his twelve-year-old son with a message to Mrs. Halamajowa, strongly urging her to throw the Jews out. The neighbor turns out to be none other than the stationmaster at the railroad station where my brother Shmelke is working. How could the stationmaster possibly have found out where we have gone?
[Much later, Shmelke confessed that he was to blame. In an unguarded moment, he had said to the stationmaster that if there would be an Aktion, he, Shmelke, would not have to worry about his brother and sister because they had found a good hiding place. Shmelke even told the stationmaster the name of our benefactor. He had thought that the stationmaster, a quiet elderly man, felt sorry for the Jews and would be happy if we survived the war. Unfortunately, Shmelke had too high an opinion of this stationmaster. It seems that the stationmaster knew we had arrived at our hiding place when he heard Lifshe crying, and he was afraid that if the Germans caught us and Mrs. Halamajowa, he, too, might get into trouble as an "accomplice" of a Polish woman who gave shelter to Jews.]
Mrs. Halamajowa is distraught. She says we should leave her hayloft and hide among the tall ears of corn near her backyard until the Aktion is over and we can go home again.
I plead with her to let us stay in her hayloft. If she puts us out, we're lost because the Germans will be searching for Jews in every corner of her place, not excluding her backyard.
She leaves us. But in a little while she is back. "I've decided to let you stay," she says. "But my daughter Hela is the secretary at the post office. I don't want her to get into trouble if the Germans find you here. So I have my bags packed; if the Germans find you, I'll take all the blame for sheltering you and I'll tell the Germans to take me wherever they'll be taking you." What a courageous woman!
Mrs. Halamajowa and her son do a very brave thing. They enter the ghetto at the risk of their lives and come to see us at Mrs. Yachetz's apartment. They want to know why I didn't bring Lifshe to Mrs. Halamajowa's home as I said I would. When Chana and I tell her what happened to Lifshe, Mrs. Halamajowa bursts into a loud weeping and tears her hair. After she has calmed down, I say to her, "You can't help Lifshe anymore. But perhaps you can help some of us others as you did once before. There will probably be another Aktion soon. This time the Germans will be out to get all the Jews. It's time for us to leave the ghetto. Could you allow part of our family to move into your hayloft and maybe give them a little food? If they can hide at your place, they may have a chance to survive this horror."
Mrs. Halamajowa says, "All right. I'll do it." I tell her that Chana, Chaim and my sisters Yitte and Chaye Dvora will move into her hayloft. I'll stay in the ghetto and find other hideouts for the rest of the family. My plan is to disperse the family in three separate hideouts so that there's a chance the Germans won't catch all of them.
My wife and two sisters begin to pack their most essential belongings and wait for the right time to leave the ghetto.
The Sokal Ghetto, November 3, 1942
Very early in the morning of November 3, 1942, when other Jews are leaving the ghetto for their work assignments, Chana, Chaim, Yitte and Chaye Dvora leave the ghetto to go into hiding. The grownups carry their usual safe-conduct passes stating that they have legitimate places of employment outside the ghetto. They keep about 200 meters' distance between one another in order not to attract attention. Six-year-old Chaim comes last, alone. He already knows the way. My brother Shmelke, who is going to work at the railroad station as usual, follows them at some distance to keep an eye on them.
On December 6, St. Nicholas' Day, Mrs. Halamajowa's daughter Hela comes to visit, with toys and candy she has bought especially for Chaim. Hela actually treats us like human beings; she seems to have a special feeling for children. And just about one kilometer from the Halamajowa home there is a ghetto, where Jewish children suffer from hunger, cold and abuse.
Back in Sokal, Shmelke goes to his job on the railroad every morning. On their way to work, Shmelke and his friends pass Mrs. Halamajowa's backyard. Sometimes they see her there, drawing water from her well. She stops and asks them with a note of good-humored banter in her voice, "Hello, there, Jews! Are you still alive?" Sometimes Shmelke slips a message for us into her hand - quickly and surrepeitiously, so his friends shouldn't notice. They must not know that Shmelke's family has gone into hiding, and where. All they know is that Shmelke is transacting some kind of business with Mrs. Halamajowa. They warn Shmelke that this woman is a dangerous anti-Semite. Shmelke doesn't answer them.
Shmelke's notes give us the latest news from the ghetto. Each report is worse than the one that has come before. Hunger and misery are rampant; hardly a day passes without deaths from starvation or disease.
At two o'clock, Thursday morning, May 27, we hear a series of explosions. It sounds to me as if the Germans are lobbing hand grenades into cellars where they think Jews may be hiding. We lie motionless, as if turned to stone. Before long, we hear shouts and screams from the direction of the ghetto.
Later, Mrs. Halamajowa brings us our breakfast and says, "The Aktion is on." We ask Mrs. Halamajowa not to bring us any more food today because we don't feel like eating.
We hear shooting all day long. We feel as if every shot has gone through our own hearts. We know that each bullet will hit one of our own people in the ghetto. We hear screams - Jews screaming, struggling against death. Mixed with these sounds of pain and horror we hear singing and music. Ukrainian schoolchildren are parading through the streets. They seem to be celebrating something - is it the death of the Jews in the ghetto?
At noon Mrs. Halamajowa's daughter Hela comes home from her job at the post office. She reports that all the other clerks have gone to the ghetto to watch the show and see the dead Jews. They asked Hela to come, too, but she couldn't find it in her heart to go with them.
The Aktion continues all day long. Later, we get the details: Anyone who attempted to offer resistance was shot. Yehilel Zinz preferred death to the humiliation of being ordered to strip naked at gunpoint. So he hit one of the Gestapo men and they hacked him to pieces with an axe.
My old school friend Dr. Babad was caught hiding out in an attic; the Germans tossed him out the window and then shot him. The Jews were herded onto trucks and driven out to the Tartakow highway, three kilometers from Sokal. The trucks stopped in front of a deep, wide ditch, apparently left from the trench warfare with the Soviets. On one side of the ditch stood a large chest into which the Jews were ordered to place all their money and valuables. After that, everyone was ordered to strip naked. Sitting on one side of the ditch was a German operating a machine gun, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, obviously bored and doing his job as a matter of mechanical routine. He shot ten Jews at a time. The next ten had to dump the bodies of the dead onto a pile of corpses like so many bales of hay before they themselves were shot. So that was the destination of the trucks we heard rumbling all day long.
Several hundred Jews were marched to the cemetery on Switeszower Street. Some tried to escape, but were gunned down. At the end of the day the Schupo men from Lvov were replaced by German and Ukrainian police who guarded the ghetto all day and all night while Jews were being rounded up. The Jews were herded into the prison. Each day an additional truckload of Jews was driven from the prison to an execution site outside the town and shot.
My little four-year-old niece, Leah's daughter Feyge Chashe, won't stop crying. We all beg her to keep quiet. We give her toys (Hela's holiday gifts) to divert her, but nothing helps.
Mrs. Halamajowa comes up to us and says, "For mercy's sake, can't you people make that child stop crying? Do you want the Germans to find you and kill us all?" She takes a stick and begins to beat the piglets she has brought in place of the ones she slaughtered. She hopes their squeaks of pain will drown out the sound of Feyge Chashe's crying.
The hours go by Feyge Chashe is still crying. We are all terrified. Mrs. Halamajowa and Hela are still beating the piglets but how much long can they keep this up? And how much longer will the poor little pigs be able to stand this?
At about eight o'clock that evening Mrs. Halamajowa knocks on our hayloft door with her stick. We open the door. "You'll have to do something," she says, very much upset. "If this crying goes on, it'll be the end for all of us." We promise her that we will "do something."
We come to a terrible decision. We will have to kill Feyge Chashe with poison from Dr. Kindler's medical bag. We can't endanger fourteen other lives - those of our family, the Kindlers and the two Halamajowa's - because of one child. We report our decision to Mrs. Halamajowa. She doesn't say a word. What could she say? Feyge Chashe goes on crying.
We cover Feyge Chashe with blankets. Dr. Kindler pours a spoonful of poison from one of his vials and forces the spoon between Feyge Chashe's lips. Feyge Chashe makes a face, spits it out - and keeps on crying.
Finally, some of the poison seems to stay in. After a few minutes, Feyge Chashe stops crying. Her eyes fall shut. She appears unconscious. She does not seem to be breathing. We all squat around the little figure lying on the straw as if we were already sitting "shiva" after the funeral. No one makes a sound. My sister Leah, Feyge Chashe's mother, does not weep. "I forgive you for what you have done to my child," she whispers, "as long as G-d forgives you too." One life for a chance to save fourten other lives....
Two hours later - at about ten o'clock - Mrs. Halamajowa comes to us holding out a large burlap bag. "The child's soul is with G-d now," she says in a voice that betrays no emotion. "Put her in this bag. I'll bury her."
Dr. Kindler leans forward to pick up the limp little body from the straw. As he touches the child, his sensitive hands feel something unexpected. He motions to me and whispers in my ear, "There's a pulse! It's faint, but I can feel it! This child is alive!"
It takes a moment to grasp what the doctor is saying. Then I say that if the child wasn't killed by the dose of poison he gave her, it is nothing short of a miracle. Feyge Chashe was meant to live.
In the hayloft, July, 1943
In addition to cooking for thirteen of us, Mrs. Halamajowa brings us ripe vegetables from her garden. She also buys us berries from out-of-town Gentiles who happen to pass through Sokal.
Once every few days, when she has finished her housework, Mrs. Halamajowa comes to us in the hayloft just to talk. She tells us the latest news, for instance, that Jews from this village or that have been rounded up and brought to Gestapo headquarters in Sokal. She says that posters have appeared all over Sokal announcing that anyone who hands a Jew over to the police will receive a reward: five liters of whiskey, along with some cash. That's the kind of news Mrs. Halamajowa has for us these days.
Every afternoon she brings us the daily newspapers. What interests us most are the official communiques from the Wehrmacht, the latest news from the Eastern front and Africa, and Allied air raids on Germany.
One day the newspapers carry a report that the Germans are "adjusting" and "shortening" their battle lines on the Eastern front. This must mean that the Germans have been forced to make a major retreat from the Russians. So the Germans are running away. We are happy. Mrs. Halamajowa has brought us a map of the Eastern front. I study the map and figure out how far the battle lines are from us now. We see that the Russians are still about 1,500 kilometers away. Therefore, even assuming that, with luck, the Russians will advance steadily from now at a rate of 30 kilometers each day, it'll be another five months or so before they get to Sokal. It'll be hard for us to hold out that long. Every day seems like a year.
From the day Sokal became "judenrein," I have been keeping a Jewish religious calendar so I should not forget the dates of the Jewish holidays. I also note the date each Jewish month begins, and the Sabbath immediately preceding each New Moon, when prayers for a healthy, happy month are recited at the synagogue.
With Chaye Dvora gone, we are only twelve in the hayloft now: eight adults (my mother, my sisters Yitte and Leah, my brother Shmelke, Chana, Dr. and Mrs. Kindler and myself), one teenager (Sever Kindler) and three young children (Eli Kindler, Feyge Chashe and Chaim). We have between us one single festival prayer book from which to recite the High Holiday prayers. We ask Mrs. Halamajowa not to bring us any food on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, because we will be fasting on that day.
Mrs. Halamajowa has bought blankets and warm boots for the Kindlers and brings them up to the hayloft. But she also has alarming news for us. Ukrainian nationalist groups in Wolyn, just a few kilometers from Sokal, have organized gangs; they call themselves "Banderowitzes" or "Bandera men" in honor of their leader, Stefan Bandera. They hate the Germans, but they also hate the Russians and the Jews. They are not discriminating about whom they kill; they are gunning down the populations of entire villages. The Germans aren't doing anything to stop the Bandera men. They are happy to have the nationality groups under their rule turn against each other and kill each other off.
Since there are hardly any Jews left to kill, the Bandera gangs have turned on the Poles. They are literally hacking the Poles to pieces. Each day, Mrs. Halamajowa says, you can see the bodies of Poles, with wires around their necks, floating down the River Bug.
Sokal is swamped with Poles who have run away from the Bandera gangs in Wolyn. The Poles who live in Sokal are taking these refugees into their homes, but they are afraid that the Bandera men will come to Sokal also and kill them, too.
The following afternoon, Mrs. Halamajowa comes up to us at the usual time, but without any food. She tosses the newspaper to us and says, "You'd better pray very diligently to your G-d because we are all lost. The Germans are moving in."
The newspaper is an army newspaper. All the regular newspapers in Lvov, the nearest city, have ceased publication.
We ask Mrs. Halamajowa to make sure she is frequently seen around her house and in her garden so the Germans shouldn't think her house has been abandoned. If they see that the house is occupied, they probably will not try to enter our hayloft in search of more camouflage material.
From whom, we ask Mrs. Halamajowa, did she get the newspaper? She says she got it from some German soldiers who have moved into her house. I open the newspaper. The headlines say that the Allies have opened a second front in France on June 6. This is the second front for which so many Jews have been waiting so long and which so many of them did not live to see. We have lived to see it, but there can be no joy for us because we are now surrounded by Germans.
That evening Mrs. Halamajowa brings us some food. She says her house is packed with German troops, all of them officers. Now she has to cook for them, too.
The next day the Germans are out in full force again, digging trenches. The guard in full battle gear is also back, guarding the cannon in the trench. Another day of fear and apprehension for us.
On the third day, it's the same story all over again.
In the afternoon of the fourth day, we hear the German soldiers going through their drill in the courtyard. One voice - apparently an officer - announces, "We're leaving, men." Someone asks him, "Where are we headed?" The officer replies, "My good man, the world is a big place." This sounds encouraging but how do we know that the Germans are really leaving?
In the evening, Mrs. Halamajowa comes to us and tells us that the Germans are indeed leaving. One young German volunteer has explained to her that he and the other soldiers were transferred to this area from France, but now that the Allies have opened a second front, they are eager to return to France as soon as possible.
At one o'clock in the morning, we hear a lot of noise outside: motors starting, heavy doors opening and military vehicles driving away. I tell Dr. Kindler that if we were able to survive those days of pure hell, we'll also live to see the end of the war.
In the afternoon the shooting subsides a little. Only now do we learn that Halamajowa is sheltering a Jewish family of three in the cellar of her own house: my friend Joshua Kram, his wife and his child. Mrs. Halamajowa brings the Krams up to us in the hayloft; there is hugging and kissing all around.
Kram, who is a housepainter, tells how he and his family survived. Not long after the Germans took Sokal, he painted Mrs. Halamajowa's living room. On that occasion he gave Mrs. Halamajowa some money and asked her whether she would be willing to shelter him and his wife if there was an Aktion. Her reply had been, "Why not?" When Sokal was declared "judenrein," Kram was in a labor camp outside the ghetto where the Germans kept skilled Jewish workers day and night to make sure they would not be caught in an Aktion. Mrs. Kram and their child were in a bunker inside the ghetto; since they could contribute nothing to the Nazi war effort, their lives were worth nothing. From time to time, Kram would sneak out of the camp and bring food to his family in the ghetto.
Two weeks after the final Aktion, the Jewish workers in the labor camp were stripped down to their underwear, piled into two trucks and driven to a place outside the city to be shot. Kram jumped from the truck half naked, right in front of the ditch that had been dug as a mass grave for the victims. The Germans took aim at him but he escaped, hiding amidst the tall grain in the fields.
That night he entered the ghetto, when to the bunker where his wife and child were hiding, smuggled the two of them out of the ghetto under cover of darkness, and took them straight to Mrs. Halamajowa's house. Mrs. Halamajowa had just finished cutting a hole in her kitchen floor directly above her cellar when the Krams arrived, so she was ready for them. After the Krams had gone down to the cellar by way of a ladder, Mrs. Halamajowa covered the hole with floor boards and placed a table on top of the boards.
Mrs. Halamajowa asks Dr. Kindler whether he has a spare suit for the young German deserter who is still hiding in her attic, so the Russians will not catch him in his German uniform. Dr. Kindler gives her one of his suits.
The time has come for us to go home.
Mrs. Halamajowa gives us 300 zlotys and another 200 to the Kindlers so we should have a little cash to buy whatever we may need.
On Wednesday, July 19, 1944, at three P.M., Mrs. Halamajowa bids farewell to the fifteen Jews who owe her their survival: my mother, my wife, our son Chaim, myself, our sisters Leah and Yitte, Leah's daughter Feyge Chashe, my brother Shmelke, the four Kindlers and the three Krams. She walks with us a little part of the way. We pass through the gardens in the back of the neighboring houses. Each of us is carrying a package with some of the things we brought with us to Mrs. Halamajowa's hayloft. We try to walk without stopping, but our legs won't carry us. Every step hurts. After so many months of virtual immobility in incredibly cramped quarters, we have forgotten how to walk.
As we come closer to our homes, we see no civilians in the streets, only long lines of Russian soldiers marching single file, with guns and steel helmets. They are wearing ponchos over their uniforms because it is raining. We pass wagons loaded with Russian wounded, pulled by large dogs.
We keep walking, or better crawling, along. After two years spent lying or crouching in the hayloft, our bodies are stiff. Dr. Kindler is bent almost double, leaning on a stick he has picked up somewhere.
The Kindlers bid us farewell and go off to their house. My house is only about one kilometer from Mrs. Halamajowa's place, but it takes our family two hours to get there. When we finally arrive, we find that our entire house was taken over by the post office as temporary headquarters for its technical division. But now all the personnel is gone. I find a few pieces of furniture that we left behind when we moved into the ghetto.
We look around. Are we still alive, or is this only a wishful daydream?
Suddenly a loud explosion outside blows our doors and window slats wide open. There is a smell of smoke. We run outside. The house where our neighbor, Boschwitzer, used to live, has been hit by a hand grenade. We make for our cellar to take cover in case another grenade comes flying. Only the day before, when the shooting went on nonstop, we lay in Mrs. Halamajowa's hayloft and laughed because we simply didn't care what happened to us as long as the Germans got what they deserved. But now we are free, and we want to remain alive.
We stay in our cellar for a while. Since we hear no more explosions outside, we finally go upstairs. You hardly see anyone on the street. The few miserable Ukrainians who haven't run away seem to be hiding in the cellars of their homes. They are afraid of the Russians.
Russian soldiers enter our home and question us in minute detail. They seem surprised to find us here. A Russian major talks to us in a broken Yiddish. He says he has come all the way from Moscow with the Red Army without ever seeing a Jew - until now. He leaves, but he soon returns with several other Russian officers. They all stare at this wonder of wonders - Jews, real Jews!
On January 13, 1986, Franciska Halamajowa's three grandchildren helped honor their grandmother's memory at a reception given at the Israeli Consulate General in New York City. While three generations of Maltzes looked on, Consul General Moshe Yegar handed to Mrs. Halamajowa's grandchildren a certificate and a silver medallion from Yad Vashem, the Heroes' and Martyrs' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. Engraved on the medallion was Mrs. Halamajowa's name, encircled by a passage from the Talmud: "Whoever saves even one life should be regarded as if he had saved the whole world."
from: "Years of Horror - Glimpse of Hope," by Moshe Maltz, Shengold Publishers, Inc.,
New York, 1993
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