KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
knew about it. The next night, we went back to the place where we had been, and we found only a leg with one little boot. Haya is Hebrew for animal. Chaya was my sister’s name. A haya ate up Chaya. “Then we were just wandering around until we found my father and brother. Rosa was still missing. We were asking if anyone had seen her. And someone said, ‘Yes, she is lying in the field about twenty feet from the creek.’ It was the little creek where we used to get water. She had been running towards it and was shot. She apparently fainted and died. We found her dead, lying there with her eyes open, and her hair around her...and her beautiful dress. She was seven or eight years old. My father said, ‘We have to bury her here,’ and we dug a grave, and put her in it, and covered it with brush. Then my father lay down in it and said, ‘I want to be buried here, with her.’ He would not get out. We had to pull him out of it, finally. “Often, we lost each other. One night, my father, brother, and I crossed the river to Bistricht. Ukrainian Banderas were there, preparing to attack the German police in the village, but when they saw us, they started to shoot at us. We ran in different direc - tions. Apparently, my father fell and one of them said, ‘Kill him!’ but when they picked him up to kill him, my father recognized a neighbor, Alexander, and started to hug and kiss him, and said, ‘Oh Alexander!’Alexander said, ‘You can’t kill him. He was my neigh- bor, and he owned the flour mill.’ That night, we heard my father clearing his throat and recognized the sound. We were so happy. In the dark, we called out, ‘Papa!’ Really, we were all walking around those woods like lunatics. “Somehow, the three of us got together with my mother and went into the woods again and built a camp next to where a Polish man, a Mazurian, lived. The Polish people of this area were Mazurians, who are a little different from the other Poles. The man was a forester for the government, a gayurve, so he had a little house there in the forest, although he was away, fighting somewhere, I think. We were there for several months. My mother was not well,
130
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online