Beautiful Soul: Bella Kurant’s Memoir of the Nazi Era

1942

Prologue

The Horror Begins

Fifteen should be a beautiful age for a young and healthy teenage girl. Life should begin to unroll the carpet of pleasant experiences such as going to high school and falling in love. I should have been allowed to enjoy each new experience which life had to offer. Instead …

One beautiful fall day the sun was shining brightly over the buildings and streets and parks in Warsaw. Suddenly the sky became dark, not with clouds, but with enemy planes which attacked Poland on September 1, 1939. The sound of bombs falling was totally unexpected. People panicked and ran from place to place looking for shelter. There were no shelters. Children lost in the streets looked for parents who were most likely dead or wounded.

The first two days were so shocking that no one thought of food, but finally when hungry overtook fear, there was little food to be found. People were running from street to street looking for some store where they could buy any kind of food. Some people had to exchange valuables such as jewelry and watches for food that others had in storage. People who were poor and did not have anything to exchange went hungry. The only food for them was in the streets where they could only find garbage and dead horses that had been killed by the bombs or abandoned by Polish soldiers.

My first horrifying experience was when I saw women, men, and children throwing themselves on dead animals and devouring them. In the process of eating pieces of the dead creature, they became ill. I thought I would never be able to do something like this, but eventually hunger is stronger than cultural taboos. People can overcome their aversion and do almost anything. Those horrors in Warsaw went on for four weeks getting worse each day. Finally the government took over some bakeries and organized bread distribution once a week.

People of all classes formed lines for days to get some bread. Mothers sent out their children to stand in lines for hours at a time. I was one of those who had been standing in a bread line for hours. While I waited, the lines became longer and longer. All of a sudden German planes flew overhead and bombs began to fall. People again panicked and ran in every direction. Walls crumbled. Fire, dust, and dead bodies were all we could see. When the planes flew to their next target, to destroy another part of the city, people began searching for their loved ones who were scattered. If they were fortunate, they found them alive; otherwise, they found them torn apart in the ruins.

The last few days when the bombings were at their worst, the city was in flames and ruins. Humanity had lost its kindness. How could even an enemy inflict such horrors on a beautiful city like Warsaw and on its intelligent and beautiful citizens?

German law and order soon took hold of the city’s people. People with hardly any strength left were forced to clean up the damage done by those who now stood over them with guns in their hands, pushing and beating their broken bodies.

Regaining a little strength, I decided to return to my home town, Skrzynno, about 150 kilometers (95 miles) from Warsaw, where my parents and my siblings lived.¹ However, there was no transportation available; therefore, I was forced to walk most of the way. As a young girl of fifteen years old and of Jewish descent, it was quite dangerous to go by main roads; I was afraid of the Wehrmacht (German soldiers) and what they might do to me. I took side roads and walked through wooded areas. If I was fortunate, I got a lift by horse and buggy for a few miles. I also stopped by farms and asked for food. I usually had to work a day or so to earn this food.

As I journeyed all this distance home, I had a lot of time to think back to my childhood.

Chapter One

Skrzynno

I was the fourth child of eight and had quite a happy childhood. We lived in a small town, Skrzynno, thirty-two kilometers (twenty miles) east of a bigger city, Radom, Poland.

My father, Abram Kurant, made a living farming. My mother, Ita Leah (nee Zoman) was a homemaker who looked after her children: Chaim, David, Itcha, Bella, Aba (who died in 1938), Moishe (died at 6 months), Miriam, and Chana. Chaim, David, and Itcha were from my father’s first marriage; their mother had died. The younger siblings and I were from the second marriage.

My maternal grandmother, dear Bracha Zoman, lived with us. I never knew my grandfathers; they passed away before I was born. My maternal grandfather’s name was Aba Zoman. My paternal grandfather’s name was Itcke Kurant; my paternal grandmother’s name was Laja Abrac. My mother had two sisters and one brother; my father, five sisters and three brothers. I belonged to a large family, lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Most of my family was slaughtered during the Holocaust. I survived with guilt. I felt, Why me? Why was I alive? For many years I suffered with these feelings. I had to make up my mind to go on living and remember all my loved ones, never to forget. I was determined to be watchful so that it would never happen again.

My memories of my childhood are very happy ones. Our tiny town was primitive. It had no electricity, no running water, and no inside toilets. We lived in a house with two rooms and a kitchen, with a long hall. There was also space to store wood. We had a large, deep cellar for storage for potatoes during the winter; in summer, it was a cool place for dairy and other foods. We had stables for cows and a horse, sheep and chickens as well as a silo for grains.

We were not rich. Yet we had enough to eat. We had a farm and grew or slaughtered everything that we consumed: potatoes, beets, beans, rye and wheat for flour, barley, and canola for oil. What we ate was picked fresh every day or we used the meat right away. There was no refrigeration. We made our own oil and flour. We also grew cabbage and onions. We made our own butter, cottage cheese, and yogurt. In the summer we went into the woods to pick mushrooms and berries. We knew what ones were poisonous.

The food was always fresh. We made the butter in a churn, a wooden container that had a stick with a round disk made out of wood. We had to pump this up and down until the butter separated from the buttermilk. In the morning my mother and grandmother cooked breakfast: potatoes garnished with butter and dill when it was in season and a borscht made from a Bräu (beer) starter, water, cabbage, and sour cream. They cooked on a wood stove that my father stocked up for the season. My brothers chopped the wood which they stacked in piles near the house.

After breakfast my father went to three markets a week to buy and sell cattle and grain. We went to school. The school was one room for a class of about twenty to thirty children. This was a public school for grades one to seven. In Skrzynno there was no gymnasium, which is a combination of high school and junior college. A student had to be rich and privileged to go off to a big city to attend gymnasium. After we came home from school, we helped out with the housework and did homework.

We dressed simply. There were no luxuries or luxurious times. There was no TV or radio. I remember as children we had to invent our own games and make our own toys to play with. There was always something to play with, even with buttons, pebbles, or pieces of wood. We invented games. We made our own dolls from sawdust and pieces of wood and made whistles from young willow branches. We were never bored.

When I was old enough to start school, things changed. We had to study hard even in the lower grades knowing that we, like the majority of children, would have only a public grammar school education. In the seven grades we had to learn writing, reading, mathematics, history, geography, art, music, and gymnastics. This would be the only education that most of us would get. There was only a very small Jewish community in our town—only about thirty-five families. We had no Jewish education for the girls. The boys used to go to cheder to learn Hebrew and prepare for their bar mitzvahs. Although national secondary education had been established in the 1920s, the depression of the 1930s decreased school attendance. Very few could afford to send their children even to gymnasium, not to mention university. We had to learn as much as possible in the seven years, enough to last us for a lifetime.

I was one of the fortunate ones. I was sent to Warsaw to go to gymnasium. In Warsaw, I had to stay with one of our relatives, so I could be protected. I stayed for only one year, until the war brought everything to an end. Under the German occupation, all Jewish children were excluded from all schools. There was no form of education of any kind for us, except underground schools.

While all this was going through my mind, I mostly worried about my beloved parents. If wondered if I would find them healthy, but more so I worried if they were still alive because during all those weeks we had been cut off from each other. They did not know anything about me and vice versa. The closer I got to my home town, the greater my anxiety. I was very much afraid not to find them there waiting for me. I needed their love and affection so badly after my horrifying experiences.

Chapter Two

The Horror Continues

I remember when I turned onto the street to approach our house—which looked like a castle to me—my little sister Miriam was standing in the window. She saw me first. She screamed to my parents, Bella is home! My parents greeted me outside the door. Words cannot describe our happiness and all those other emotions that the war had brought to us. My father, Abram, looked at me with tears in his eyes, thanking G-d for bringing me home safely. My beloved mother, Ita, was so happy. She just kept on holding me not believing that it was actually me. When I entered the house, my dear old grandmother, Bracha Zoman, was waiting to give me her welcome. Inside, everything was in its place. However, as I looked around, I realized there was no one else there. I asked, Where are my brothers? My parents’ faces turned sad. The answer was that they were all gone. My brother David was in the Polish army fighting against the Germans. They did not know if he was free or in a prison camp. The other two, Chaim and Itcha, had left home, fleeing the Germans, traveling most likely to the Soviet frontier. My two sisters Miriam, nine, and Chana, eleven, were left with my parents.

German occupation, especially for the Jews, was onerous. The first sign of persecution was a law forcing us to wear a sign that identified us as Jews. We had to put a white band with the star of David on our right arm. After that they knew how to pick any Jew out of any crowd or from his or her home. At that time it was a band of shame and disgrace because that was the way we were stigmatized. Now as a flag the star proudly flies over Israel.

We had to report every day at dawn to work at different tasks such as repairing roads or digging ditches, always under very strict supervision. Arbitrarily there would be a stern punishment, and sometimes people were taken away never to be seen again. With a lot of young people—practically all teenagers—I was picked to dig stones in a quarry. Each morning at 6:00 we had to be ready to be counted—like animals. They would then march us off to work. The work began with strict orders not by any means to break the rules: never to stop working or even to lift our heads until we heard the stop work whistle. We were forbidden to talk to each other. Any wrong move or stopping a minute for breath when working would mean a severe beating and other kinds of horrible punishments. This went on from the end of 1939 until 1941.

In 1941, the ghetto was created in Skrzynno. We were thrown out of our homes that most of our parents had inherited, homes passed down from generation to generation. We had one half-hour to take our belongings which had been acquired after years of working hard and trying to establish comfortable homes. What can anyone take with her in a half hour knowing she is leaving a home to which she will never return? We left practically empty-handed to a ghetto that was in the slummiest neighborhood in town. Three and four families were thrown together in one house. Living conditions were terrible—no privacy, crowded rooms, and one toilet for all of us.

Those were the conditions we lived in for months. From day to day we could hardly wait for the food rations that were handed out to us. We experienced hunger and also saw our dearest ones suffer. However, the work went on in those stone pits no matter the weather. People used to fall on their faces from malnutrition and hard work.

My will to live and overcome every possible obstacle was great. I remember one day a German came over to me and ordered me to push a wheelbarrow full of stones up a steep hill. I knew I had to do this so that I would not be punished; in the same moment it flashed through my mind that if I would show him that I was capable of doing it, he would force the other girls, some much weaker than I, to do it also. I just stood there and stared straight into his eyes and refused to follow his order. I felt a strong slap across my head, and then I blacked out. I was beaten without mercy. After that, I was carried home by my coworkers. In normal conditions, I would probably be in a hospital for a long time, but under the Nazis I had to get up the next morning and go to work. How I did that I will never know. I knew that if I did not return to work, greater harm would happen to my parents. We never knew what was in store for us.

Chapter Three

A Surprise

Life went on this way for a period of one year until late 1942. In the meantime, we heard rumors that the Germans were deporting old and sick Jewish people as well as Jewish children from Polish towns and cities. We had no idea where they were taking those people or when our turn would come.

One Saturday, late in the afternoon I returned from work to a great commotion in our home. When I walked in, my mother told me that I should go up the attic where I would find a very wonderful surprise. The first thing that came to my mind was that I would find some food hidden (which meant a great find in those days). When I entered the attic, my brother David greeted me. This surprise so shocked me that I was completely overcome by happiness. I lost my speech.

My brother had been away for three years. We had not heard anything from him for about a year and a half. At the beginning my mother had gone from one prison camp to the other looking for him, but without results. After a year, we received news that he was interned in a prison camp in Germany. He had to change his identity while he was there so as not to be persecuted as a Jew. He passed as a Pole for all that time until one of his fellow Polish prisoners recognized him and went to the German authorities to betray him and tell them that he was a Jew. His life was immediately in danger, but he was a Polish officer so they could not kill him without a trial. The easiest way of disposing of him was to send him away with a transport of German Jews condemned to die in one of the famous Vernichtungsanstalt (Ger. death camps), which were located in Poland. This camp was named Treblinka.

There thousands of Jews were brought every day by Sonderzüge (special trains) to be gassed and thrown in ditches and burned. My brother was chosen to dig those ditches. He was strong, handsome, over 6′5″. He slaved there for months seeing all the horrors that went on. He knew that his day would soon come. There seemed no escape possible. One day, as he was marched with a group of prisoners, he saw that a German officer was standing over a sick cow, trying to help her. In that split second, a thought came to my brother’s mind—to stop and observe the situation. When he stopped, the German who was in charge of my brother’s group came over to him to ask why he had stopped. My brother told him that he used to be a veterinarian and could help this animal. Well, the German went over to the owner to tell him that one of his prisoners would be able to help. They gave my brother an ultimatum—if the animal dies, he dies too. David had nothing to lose anyhow since he would die sooner or later and here he was hoping maybe there would be a chance to escape. He examined the creature. He did have some ideas because we always had animals on our farm. His luck was that it was not serious. The cow just had eaten fresh alfalfa and had pasture bloat.² David punctured the stomach sack, and the animal started feeling better. When the owner saw that, he asked the German officer if he could not spare him so that my brother could work for him on the farm taking care of his stock. The owner was a famous German, so my brother started working for him.

Every day and night my brother was planning his escape which, nonetheless, seemed impossible. He had all kinds of plans figured out, but none was safe. It was only chance that would help him. One day he went to his quarters, which were closely guarded. He noticed that a big party was gong on. That same night, he decided to take some clothes so he could throw off his prison uniform. To get these, he had to get into the main house. He risked getting caught; however, he got into one of the bedrooms and took a German uniform. Fortunately nobody saw him. David changed into the uniform and made his escape. He ran for miles that night to distance himself from that dangerous territory. He finally was safe in a big city. From there he hid in woods and fields most of the way back home; after a week, he reached the ghetto. When he entered our house, my mother was frightened. She thought he was a German, but my little sister recognized him and started screaming, Mother! It is David, not a German! Seeing him alive, my mother’s heart almost stopped.

It was hard to break the news to my father. He was always under the impression that he would never see any of his sons again. Seeing his son alive was the greatest gift from G-d. My father was happy and surprised. He could not believe it. It was like a miracle.

My brother had to go into hiding because he was afraid he would be searched for in the ghetto. Every day we had to line up to be counted like sheep. While my brother was in hiding, we had long talks. I was overjoyed to see him and talk to him, but he was always sad and always brooding about what would happen to us.

One day he told me what he knew, that is, what was happening to the Jewish people. He asked me to bring a few of his friends who were young and could be trusted. He told them what was going on. In the beginning they would not believe him. It was like a nightmare to listen to his tales. One day, he said, I wish my father would die a natural death, so I would at least know where his burial place is. I thought he was going insane. He knew what would soon happen. He felt that there was no way out, no escape, not even for young people. We had nothing to fight with. My father was an older man, and so was my mother; they were all worn out.

One night my brother called me to tell me that he just had to make one more attempt to escape to the woods and look for a connection with the Underground. He had no idea where they were or how to get in contact with them. He told me not to say anything to my parents until he was gone. He did not want to cause them more grief. His heart was breaking to leave us.

Knowing that we would probably never see each other again, David told me he was leaving not only to save his life but also to try to fight back. He had seen many atrocities that the Nazis had perpetrated. He told me that I was of an age that could go into a fighting unit and be of use in the Underground. I just could not leave my parents at this time. They were too helpless and would be left only with my two little sisters. He told me in case he got into the Underground movement, he would send for me. He left me a password and told me that if someone comes with this identification, I should go with him or her.

When he left, I just sat there for hours completely drained of any emotion. My heart felt like a stone. What had the world come to? Children are separated from their parents not by choice but are forced to leave by a certain instinct which I would call not human at all. The power to live and survive was so great that we had to overcome all human emotions. Sitting there and thinking, I found in my heart a spark of love and pity which grew into a flame. I decided not to leave my parents. I would wait and see what would happen to them and that should happen to me also. Then I hardly had the strength to think. I had to face my parents and break the news that their son had left without saying goodbye. I also told them why he had left. My parents just looked at each other and sighed deeply, saying: G-d be with him. What was in their hearts nobody will ever know.

Chapter Four

Murders

Life in the ghetto was very sad. The routine was the same: hard work and fear about what the next day would bring us. We heard some rumors that the ghettoes were getting smaller each day. Everyday the German Gestapo or SS were shrinking the ghettos by taking away people by the thousands in box cars. Many Jews from Skrzynno were being forcibly transferred to Opoczno Ghetto and from there to Treblinka Death Camp.³ I later learned that Opoczno ghetto was liquidated in January 1943. The uncertainty was so great that we were even afraid to undress at night in case they would come and chase us out. If a person was not ready, he or she was shot on the spot.

In October of 1942, one Friday early morning, I was awakened by my father because I was late for work. I grabbed my clothes and dressed in a hurry.

At the quarry we were ordered by the SS to go home. We did not know if they were going to kill us on the spot or not. A young boy started to escape but was shot down on the run. Maybe some others escaped. The place then was scrubbed clean of blood. The rest of us were marched back to the ghetto and ordered to our homes. When I entered the yard where my parents lived, I don’t have the words to describe what I saw. I was stunned. My father had been shot. He was leaning against the wall with his head split open. A few feet away my grandma, about eighty years old, had also been shot to death. They had been shot by the Einsatzgruppen, killing squads.⁴

As I looked again, I saw Miriam, one of my little sisters, dead too. I started screaming. When I screamed, I saw the SS men who shot them point their guns at me. That is all I knew. I blacked out. When I came to, somebody was standing over me. I didn’t know who he was, but he called my name and said, Bella, you are alive. Get up, and with all your strength, run. The Germans shot your family, and you were shot at too, but the bullets missed you.

I will never know how I got up and ran away. While I was running, I felt my head bleeding but this did not stop me. I had superhuman strength in me. A nightmare! I don’t know how long I ran. I collapsed in some shrubs close to a river. While lying there and collecting my senses, I thought I heard someone whisper. At first I was very scared. I thought, someone who is looking for me, but then I figured out maybe it was someone I knew who had escaped from the stone pit.

Slowly I crawled over to the spot. They had heard me too. All of a sudden, I found myself face to face with the few boys who had run away from the stone pit. At first my relief was great. After a while we all realized only five of us were left, and we were facing great danger. There was no place to go to hide. No Jewish people were left in our little town. They had all been massacred or taken away. We did not know where or to whom to turn. The Gentiles could not be trusted. Most were collaborating with the Germans. If they wanted to help in any way, they would be punished by the SS.

We found ourselves in a most horrifying situation. Finally we decided that when night came, we would move on, running to the woods, which were about fifteen miles away. Unfortunately we could not avoid little villages that were on our way. We were scared to pass through them, but the woods were our only path to safety, so we started on our way. Mostly we ran all the way. At one village we were spotted, and some farmer started chasing us screaming, You Jews! You cannot run away. You have to be finished off like the others! By some miracle we ran so fast and in different directions that we were not caught. Then after searching for each other we assembled again and started out for the unknown.

We ran along not having had any rest or food, and worst of all having in front of our eyes the appalling picture of what had happened to our loved ones just a few hours ago. It was inhuman to be so strong and so selfish at a time like this. My heart was breaking: I had my father, sister, grandma, in my mind, seeing them strewn over the ground like dead flowers, and not even knowing what had happened to my mother and my sister. How could I run away and try to save myself, leaving all those behind me? I thought I was running to safety, but we were in greater danger than I had realized.

We reached a wooded area early next morning. We wanted to be hidden in the woods by daylight, so we were just dragging ourselves along, looking for a safe place, though if it were safe was just a guess. Finally, we settled in a thick wooded area. We were aching all over. Our feet were covered with blisters, but we were afraid to take our shoes off in case we had to move again. Sitting there we tried to collect our senses and decide what we should do next. Hunger and thirst overcame us. However, there was nothing to eat. We decided to send out two of us to make marks on trees. In this way, if some of us left to look for food, we would be able to find our way back to this place. The next step was to look for food.

We could not find much because this was the end of October. Winter would soon be upon us. For days we lived on a few nuts, berries, and grass. For water, we licked the early morning dew from leaves. After a few days, we sent out two men of the five to look around for some food. The fields were bare; the only thing they could find were a few rotten potatoes left over from the harvest. We had to eat them raw because we were afraid to build any fire in case someone would see the light and we would be discovered. One night walking a distance away from the woods, the men went into a farmer’s barn where they hoped to find some food left over by the animals. We were afraid to go into any home. We were never sure if people would be friends towards us or the opposite. If they were collaborators, they would keep us as captives and report us to the German authorities in exchange for a certain price.

It happened many times that human life was sacrificed for those things. I regret to report that some Poles lost their integrity, stooping as low as to give up Jews to the Germans for sugar or whiskey. I also have heard about good people who helped in whatever way they could. We just did not know where to find them.

As days passed by we did not know what to do or where to turn. Our only hope was to find a connection with the Underground movement, with Jewish partisans. But where to look for them? We had no idea.

One day as we were huddled together, we heard some dogs bark close by. We did not have enough time to hide in the trees when a fellow who was a guide approached us. We were really scared. In the split moment I got up and told him that we were a unit in the partisans, and we were here participating in an Aktion. However, to carry that out we needed food and water; therefore, he should cooperate. If not, he would hear from us and would not like what he heard. We were almost sure that he believed my story. After he left we began to be skeptical. Did he really believe us? All kinds of thoughts came to our minds. Maybe he went away with a purpose: to report us to the authorities or to gather more men to come back to capture us. Being alone, he was afraid to start anything. We decided to move on and not to leave any tracks behind. We actually jumped from tree to tree like monkeys for most of the way. To disguise our tracks we would sometimes run around in every direction to mislead anyone following us. We were looking for a place to hide again, but we knew that if the guide had in mind to pursue us, we were not safe anyplace. After a few hours of running, we had no more strength left. We decided to hide in the trees for the rest of the day. At night we started out again without knowing where we were or where we were going.

It was late in October or early November of 1942; we were not sure even of the dates or time of day. We lost track of everything. The temperature was at the freezing point. We were without any warm clothes or any physical strength left. For all those days we did not have any warm food or the least warm water. We decided to get out of the woods and go to a farm to be able to ask for shelter and food. In the end, we did not care what would happen to us anymore. We were exhausted and disheartened. In the present circumstances, we could not go on any longer. The only thing that had kept us going was the will to survive and hope that maybe we would yet find the Underground movement. We found not a trace of them in this region. Maybe they were nearby, but we did not know where to search for them. We had no strength left to go on.

Chapter Five

Refuge?

When we left the woods behind and were out in the open, we did not know which direction to take or where to go. We decided to find the road by which we had traveled to the woods. To go to a strange village would be dangerous because we did not know what kind of people lived there. We did not want to take a chance. I knew that on the outskirts of our town was a farm that was connected to a piece of land that we used to own. I knew that this farmer was always friendly with my father. I had hoped that we could find protection there. So we decided, or I should say I decided, and it was voted on. We agreed to go back there where maybe we would be able to rest a day or two, and also we hoped to get a lead to the Underground movement or any news at all.

We were so weak that each one had to drag the other most of the way. Our feet were swollen, frozen, and full of