KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
it. It was freezing cold, and the Germans were inside a tiny booth at the guard post by the bridge. A German came out and asked the farmer, “What’s going on?” The farmer said that he was transport- ing a wagonload of hay to feed his cows. We were lying hidden on the bottom of the wagon, covered by a six-foot-deep layer of hay. Normally, the Germans would have stabbed their bayonets into the hay to search it thoroughly, but because it was so cold, the guard just waved us through. The farmer brought Faygele and me to the house where my aunt and uncle were living. We had a joyous reunion. They immediately stripped me of my filthy clothes and burned them. They bathed me and dressed me in clean clothes. I got so excited that I asked them to turn on the electricity — I forgot that there was none, of course. People were lucky to have a little kerosene lamp or wood saturated with sap to burn for light. Faygele Welman’s brother Mordechai came to my uncle’s house to pick her up the next day. She survived the war and settled in Israel. I slept through the night, and when I woke up in the morning, the foul smell of my feet permeated the house. My feet had been frozen for a long time, but now that I was in the nice warm house, they thawed out. They were in terrible condition. Again, my uncle, because he had weapons and was a fighter, went out and pressured a Christian doctor from a nearby village to advise him on medical treatment. The doctor suggested that we should coat my legs with lard and wrap them in bandages. That was the only thing he could suggest under the circumstances. My aunt and uncle tried this for a day or two, but my toes were just hanging off the end of my feet by the skin. My aunt took a pair of scissors and cut off all my toes. I watched her do this, but I did not feel it because everything was dead down there. After she cut off my toes, she put on bandages improvised from cotton cloth that they washed and reused. My aunt washed the wounds every day with warm water and she kept my feet very clean. I never got an
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