Nazi persecution
Holocaust Child
Having recently been thinking about the Holocaust in association with International Holocaust Memorial Day, I was drawn to another book in my tbr pile: Holocaust Child: Lalechka, by Amira Keidar. It’s based on a journal written by a Jewish mother, Zippa Jablon-Zonsheim, recording the horrors which befell Poland when the Germans invaded, authenticated by interviews with key figures from the time, rare documents, photographs and actual letters exchanged.
Even before the war, tensions existed between Poles and Jews, but Zippa as a schoolgirl made firm friendships with girls from both cultures, particularly two Polish Christian girls, Sophia and Irena. University, marriage and the isolation caused by the polarisation of the Jews drove distance between them as the years went by, hardships and inequalities exacerbated their differences, and they rarely met. 
In 1941, forced out of their home and into a vastly overcrowded, disease-ridden, derelict ghetto, Zippa despairs for the baby she is expecting, due to be born into a world devoid of hope. Wouldn’t it be better never to exist? But even though the restrictions and hardships imposed by the Nazis grow ever more harsh, on the day a wire fence is erected around the ghetto to further limit movement and supplies, she gives birth to a daughter, Rachel aka Lalechka – ‘a drop of happiness in an ocean of despair‘. Zippa is absolutely and fiercely determined to do whatever it takes to keep this precious baby alive and safe, and it’s to her old school-friends she turns.
Just before Lalechka’s first birthday, the Nazis begin the liquidation of the ghetto, systematically murdering everyone in it, and Zippa smuggles the child, a letter of explanation and three photos, outside the boundary of the Jewish quarter to a waiting Irena and Sophia. Sophia has arranged a safe place for Zippa too but, after a few days there, she returns to the ghetto to look for her husband and parents, wracked with guilt for having left them. Outside, Sophia and Irena too face grave danger and summary execution for pretending the little girl is part of their family. They live in a state of constant terror – for themselves and their families as well as Rachel.
Anyone willfully sheltering Jews or aiding them in other ways will incur the death penalty …Henceforth this rule will be executed severely and without mercy.
The outcome was never going to be a happy one, and the barbarism and cruelty which determined the fate of so many thousands of human beings are hard to hear. But in the midst of the blackness, the story of devotion and bravery and loyalty between these Polish and Jewish girls transcends the divides, and the survival of Zippa’s baby feels like a triumph of love over hate. Which makes the post-war behaviour of many Poles towards Jews who survived – continuing hostility, abuse and even murder – the harder to understand and bear. I’ve read and written about this before but it never ceases to appall me. Imagine surviving the unspeakable horrors of Nazi brutality, concentration camps, starvation in war time, only to be vilified and hounded by one’s neighbours in peace time too.
But Zippa had left her own instructions for her daughter:
I ask you that after the end of the war you’ll look for my brother who immigrated to Palestine and give him this small child.
And between them Sophia and Irena do just that. Shimon has his own burdens though, having survived a very different kind of war as a POW for years. Even in the new homeland of Israel there is precious little stability or security for Rachel.
It’s a harrowing premise for a story, and the alternating accounts from Zippa, Sophia and Irena (and later two other voices, Rachel herself and her uncle Shimon) give a window onto the lived experience of persecution, bombings, deprivation, and all-pervasive fear as they see their beloved country destroyed, their culture desecrated, and they face appalling choices.
Somehow the literary deficiencies in the telling add authenticity to this account of life in another country at a time of unprecedented horror.
Zippa’s diary: Will people who didn’t live near these events ever believe it? Can anyone believe that what I write here is the truth and nothing but the truth?
It’s certainly painful to absorb this incomprehensible truth.