Trap (9781476793177) by Robert K. Tanenbaum Page B

and many Roma, whom we call gypsies, were forced to live. In 1942, our oppressors began herding the inhabitants of the Lublin Ghetto onto cattle cars to be taken to the death camps to be exterminated, my family among them.”
    Rose’s voice caught and she struggled for a moment before going on. “Although I have few recollections of this, and most of what I know was later told to me by others, my father had somehow managed to save quite a bit of money. When rumors began to fly that we were going to be sent to the camps, my father was able to persuade one of the gentile farmers, Piotr Stanislaw, and his wife, Anka, with whom he’d had a good relationship, to spirit me out of the ghetto. He gave the Stanislaws every cent he had, but there wasn’t enough money for my brothers and sister, just me.”
    Rose took a deep breath and wiped at a tear that trickled down one cheek. “One of my only memories of my mother is the face of a woman crying as she held me one last time. I remember her saying it will be okay. ‘We will find you again someday.’ Then my father pried me away from her and handed me to Piotr. ‘Remember who you are, Rose; remember your family,’ he said. ‘Tak, ojciec,’ yes, Papa, I promised. And then they were gone.”
    More than seventy years later, Rose bowed her head at the memory. “Simple enough instructions. Remember who you are. Remember your family.” She looked up at the faces of her listeners, many of whom had tears in their eyes. “I failed at both, but I was just a little girl, and so perhaps can be forgiven for that at least.”
    Rose continued with her story about how the Stanislaws took her in, telling their neighbors that she was the child of Piotr’s brother who’d served in the Polish army and died during the Nazi invasion. “I was lucky to be blond-haired and blue-eyed, and I did not ‘look Jewish.’ ”
    The Stanislaws, she said, did everything to allay any suspicion that their “adopted daughter” was a Jew. They hung a gold cross around her neck, had her baptized, and took her to Catholic mass. “They even gave me a new name, Krystiana, ‘follower of Christ,’ and forbade me ever using my real name, ‘Rose,’ even in the privacy of their home.”
    Rose paused for a moment. “The Stanislaws saved my life,” she said. “They fed me, gave me a warm place to sleep, and risked their lives to protect me from the Germans, and they later hid me from the Russians. They helped me escape to America. They showed me love, and for that I am forever grateful.” Then her voice grew hard. “But I was stripped of who I was, what I was. My family, my real family, was taken from me and murdered; I was stripped of my culture, my heritage, and my identity. All because we were Jews. In fact, I learned to despise Jews.”
    Growing angry, Rose began to pace in front of her audience. “The transformation didn’t happen overnight. My memories are hazy, but I had loved our Jewish traditions—my father blowing the shofar, and eating apples and honey for Rosh Hashanah; my mother reading the Book of Ruth for Shavuot , lighting the menorah for Chanukah. But the Stanislaws told me that it was for my own protection that I had to forget my family and my culture. They didn’t have to say much more than that; I was already deathly afraid of the German soldiers who treated people so cruelly on the streets and whom my parents had obviously feared. But it was more than that. I came to view Christians, like the Stanislaws, as my protectors, while Jews were weak and shameful.”
    The Stanislaws carried the makeover of Rose Kuratowski into Krystiana even further. “Perhaps to protect me, or maybe because they believed it, my parents, as I came to think of them, like most of their neighbors, voiced no objections to what they knew was going on in the death camps. The