Letter from my Father Read Online Free Page B

surrounded by other important Russians, watching the parade of young men, women and children marching in different formations into Red Square. I watched as one little girl came and gave him flowers and he lifted her up andkissed her. How I loved him! On 1 May, along with all my classmates, dressed in a short navy skirt and white blouse, I marched proudly carrying a little red flag and singing songs in praise of our batko Stalin. It was one of the best days of the year.
    Since I was now a big girl, I was allowed to walk by myself all the way to school, which was on the other side of the market-place. I felt very grown-up. I knew that my house was the pink building on the left side of the river just before the bridge, and every day I arrived home safely. But one day, I walked on and on until I realised that I had lost my way. I eventually found my way home. I did not tell anybody I had become lost so they would continue to believe I could be trusted like a grown-up.
    One thing that I knew, as did a classmate with whom I often walked to school: it was dangerous to walk in front of the building that housed the NKVD . The grown-ups had told me that they were the secret police . When we approached this building we would cross the street and walk on the other side for a while, before crossing back again. I smelled fear in the very air near that building. What if the NKVD found out about my aunties’ bread-rolls? Just by looking at me they might be able to tell I lived with them, and that would get the aunties into trouble. I understood that it was still important to hide certain things.
    After a few weeks Aunty Gita and Uncle Welo returned to Zbaraz. They wanted me back. Like most other Polishspeaking people in this part of Galicia, they were now going to be sent away to the main part of Poland. I was told that we were all going to a city called Bytom. The Einlegers had come back to fetch me since they would be going first with the aunties eventually following. But Aunty Erna and Aunty Susia had become fond of me and did not want to let me go.
    I felt I didn’t really belong to anyone. I was nobody’s child. Aunty Gita and Uncle Welo took my hand and pulled me inone direction, and the aunties held me by the other, pulling me the other way. I managed to stay with the aunties on the understanding that, when their turn came to go to Bytom, I would go back to living with the Einlegers. I was happy that the aunties would live close by.
    By the time we moved, it was spring 1945, around the festival of Passover, and we took some matzos with us to eat on the long, very crowded train journey to the west. We travelled in an old train that must have been used to transport goods or cattle. But it was exciting to look out the window as the train moved through towns that I could never have imagined. In Zbaraz there were no high buildings which lit up at night, no wide roads and no cars.
    I was seven-and-a-half years old when I arrived in Bytom. What would it be like going back to Gita and Welo? They welcomed me back with a big surprise: a new dress! It was red-and-white check with a white Peter Pan collar and I loved it. They had also bought a matching ribbon for my hair which was tied in a big bow and pinned to the top of my head at an angle. I loved to dress up. But I missed Zbaraz with its river and meadows.
    In Bytom we lived in a three-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a grey stone building on a busy city street. A wide wooden staircase led up from the street. We shared the apartment with another Jewish family, an older lady with her daughter Lusia and husband Janek and their niece Mucha. Her mother and father had also been killed by the Nazis. We were both orphans. They lived in two rooms and we had one bedroom for the grown-ups and an adjoining alcove where I slept. We all shared the kitchen and bathroom, the women cooking together and getting on well.
    My Uncle found a good job. Upper Silesia was a rich coal-producing