Read Online Trap (9781476793177) by Robert K. Tanenbaum - Free Book Online

Polish curse brudny Zid , ‘dirty Jew’ seemed to come too easily from their lips to be wholly a ruse to fit in. But even more shamefully, I used it, too.”
    Slowly, the memory of her real family faded. “I know they were transported to Sobibor, and though I have no record of what happened to them, I can surmise their fate was the same as three hundred thousand other people who were sent there. Arriving at the depot, they were relieved of their possessions and separated: men and boys capable of labor in one group; women, children, and the infirm in another. The women were forced to strip naked and had their hair shorn; then they were made to run through an enclosure called The Tube and into a building where, they were told, they would take showers. Once they were inside, the doors were locked while soldiers on the outside started an engine and pumped carbon monoxide fumes into the death chamber. When all were dead, the doors on the opposite end were opened and the Sonderkommandos —prisoners forced to do this horrific job—removed the bodies and threw them into a pit for burial.”
    Rose’s voice faltered. Then she looked over at her husband who nodded to encourage her. “There are those here who know much more than I about the horrors of Sobibor so I won’t go into more detail. But I do know that the Germans kept excellent records, so that I was able to learn the day that my mother and siblings arrived in hell and died. My father was a Sonderkommando, and most of them were killed, but he escaped Sobibor and survived the war.”
    This time when Rose tried to continue, her voice came out as a whisper and she began to cry. However, as Simon began to rise to go to her side, she raised her hand for him to stop. “I’m okay, my dear husband. This is my journey.” She took another deep breath. “The war ended; the camps were liberated, and the horror of the German ‘Final Solution’ became known to the world. The Jews who survived began returning to their homes, or at least they tried to, only to run into the antagonism of their former neighbors who didn’t want to give up the property they’d stolen in their absence. What’s more, the Jews were a reminder that they had done nothing, said nothing, when their fellow citizens were shipped away to be murdered. In some places, such as Poland, nationalists were no more kind to Jews than the Nazis had been. Even Jewish partisans who had fought the Germans, such as my husband and Moishe Sobelman, were hunted by their former comrades. Jews had to flee again, some to Palestine and the hope of a Jewish state, others to America.”
    Rose took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. “But what of the children who were given into the safekeeping of others by their parents? Most would never see their families again, if they even remembered them or knew their true identities. The parents, relatives, and communities who could have supplied a link to their past and to their heritage were gone. We were the lost children of the Holocaust.
    â€œWe identified with our new families. Those ‘other’ people had abandoned us, and worse, they were Jews. We, the children of the lost, had grown up in communities in which Jews were despised, or had deserved what happened to them. The curse ‘ brudny Zid ’ did not disappear from Polish lips just because the Nazis were gone.
    â€œI was twelve or thirteen years old and had just finished feeding the chickens in the yard when a strange man appeared on the long drive leading to our home. He looked like a scarecrow. A filthy, skinny, haunted scarecrow with his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks; what little hair remained on his head reminded me of a mangy dog. I stood there watching him approach and suddenly wanted to flee, but I was joined by Piotr Stanislaw and then Anka. He stopped a few feet from me and knelt down. Then he smiled . . . a horrible smile