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If anyone was confident enough to say something about the exemptions, it would be the girl from the wealthiest Jewish family in Humenné. Proudly, Adela Gross looked down at the intimidating men, the arch of her eyebrows a silent query, and informed them that her grandfather was Chaim Gross, the prominent lumber tycoon. An exception had been promised from President Tiso himself. They looked right through her.
—Next!
There is a look that men have when they don’t want to be bothered by a women, a look so dismissive that she feels at once disregarded and invisible. That was the look the girls received now. For many, it was the first time they had faced such dehumanization.
Edith noticed that at the long table next to the civilian officials, there were several Hlinka Guards and an SS man. This surprised her. What did the SS have to do with them?
It was a good question. If they had known, their parents, neighbors, and community might have resisted more. But they didn’t know, and while smart girls like Edith noticed and wondered, they knew better than to ask. No one would have responded, anyway. Who answers questions asked by girls?
As their names were checked off the list, they were asked about their professions: seamstress, domestic help, milliner, factory worker. Teenagers still living with their parents were listed as “domestics.” At no point was “child” written down as a vocation.
With more than a hundred girls now in the building, they were told to take off their clothes so a doctor could give them a physical exam. The girls froze at the order. Not one of them had ever undressed in front of a man before. The officials seemed delighted by the utter terror in the girls’ eyes. The men yelled at them to undress. Reluctantly, slowly, Edith and her friends began to unbutton and unzip their outer blouses and skirts.
Margie Becker had worn two coats, a lighter gray one and her best beige coat underneath, to keep her warm. She looked very stylish, but no less than the other well-to-do girls of Humenné. Folding her beautiful blue dress carefully, she hesitated at the thought of placing it on the floor, which was dirty with slush from the outdoors. Other girls hesitated as well, and looked for a way to hang their clothes properly on wall hooks.
—This is a physical exam! Remove everything! one of the officials bellowed.
Standing in their panties and bras, they wrapped their narrow arms around their waists and breasts and shivered.
“We were so ashamed to be standing there in front of men without our clothes on,” Edith remembers. A gentile doctor walked up and down the rows scanning their budding figures.
“Open!” he shouted, peering inside their mouths. “Stick out your tongue!” He looked at their tongues.
Ediths scoffs at the memory. “It was not a physical.”
“The call-up was the chance for cheap and lewd enjoyment of girls stripped naked by official decree,” Ladislav Grosman wrote years later.
“If they want to see a girl’s breast, they made her remove her bra,” Edith confirms. “They weren’t interested in mine.”
Behind the doctor, a clerk flipped back and forth through the pages of his list, checking Citron on one page. Gross on another. Check. He was supposed to write down health notes, but “the whole examination was a lie.” Whether they were healthy or not didn’t matter. The officials needed only to appear as if they cared; they did not actually need to care.
“How are you feeling?” the clerk asked Edith.
“I am often dizzy.”
“Every month?” he sneered.
She felt more like a farm animal than a human being. Huddled together like a flock of lost lambs, the girls shuddered under the stares of the men. Why weren’t there any matrons from the school to protect them from the ogling eyes of the officials? Why weren’t their parents there? The only comfort they had was that it was almost Shabbat, and in a few hours it would all be over and they would be released into their mothers’ arms and the light of her candles and blessings. All Edith wanted was to hear her father sing “Shabbat Shalom” and feel his strong, comforting embrace.
Outside on the sidewalk, parents stomped their feet to shake the numbness from their toes. It had been a few hours now and all of the Jews in town, and half the gentiles, were milling around the school in various states of confusion and distress. What had been gossip was now reality, and there were still questions to be asked. What were they doing to their girls? Why was it taking so long? They hadn’t even broken for lunch!
Voices of dissent rose outside the schoolhouse:
—What is happening to our girls?
—They are going to work.
—What kind of work?
—I heard a shoe factory.
—It can’t be just one factory.
—For how long?
—Three months.
—Where is this factory?
No one knew the answer.
INSIDE, THE FRIEDMAN GIRLS STOOD next to girls they had known all their lives. Some were Lea’s friends, some were Edith’s. Everyone knew everyone from the marketplace, from synagogue, from splashing in the river on a hot day. There were also over a hundred girls they did not know well, who had come from the provinces. Under the lascivious gaze of the men, the girls began to share a new, unspoken kinship. Pale, anxious faces mirrored one another. Class no longer divided them. They were equals in fear.
Among the Polish refugees, Rena had left her suitcase at the house where she worked as a nanny. “Someone will take you to pick it up,” the policeman told her. Erna’s cousin Dina had decided to hide, but at some point in the afternoon, she came stumbling into the school escorted by the Hlinka Guard; her face was flushed with humiliation, her hair disheveled. She had been found and arrested.
The slow trudge of time made the teenagers impatient and irritable. Then the government’s gears began to crank. They were in it now. Dressing. Moving. The authorities—all men—were shouting.
—Get your things!
—Get in line!
—Move out!
Startled, not only by the instructions but by the gruffness of the orders, the girls bumped into each other as they dressed again and headed toward an open door. Surrounded by armed guards, they stepped into the gloaming.
From the front of the school, someone yelled that the girls were leaving through the emergency rear exit. The crowd hurried down the side street. Some parents ran home to get supper ready for their daughters, sure they were famished and would be home soon. Others ran after the column of girls shouting their names. Questions tumbled out into the impassive air: Where were they taking them? When were they coming back?
Margie Becker knew one of the Hlinka Guards quite well and asked him if she could go home to say good-bye to her mother. He slipped her out of the line and escorted her down the street. Standing next to one of their neighbors, “who was a relative also,” Margie’s mother held onto the window curtain, wringing it in her hands. She didn’t want to cry in front of the Hlinka Guard member, even though she had known him since he was a boy. Why was he, of all people, taking her daughter, his childhood friend, away? Tears streamed down her face as she whispered to her daughter, I won’t “give him the satisfaction of crying . . .” Slipping Margie some food for Shabbat, “fresh challah and some hamburgers,” she kissed her daughter good-bye. It was the last kosher food Margie would eat for three years. It was also the last time she would ever see her mother.
Returning to the column of girls, Margie dragged her luggage with her friends. Down Main Street. Past Gross Street. Suitcases bumped against shins and scraped ankles, handles dug into palms. Edith’s weighed almost as much as she did. Her siblings always joked that a strong wind could blow her away. Her sister’s hand reached down for the handle and shared the burden. Tears stung Edith’s eyes. Something was wrong. She could feel it in her bones, but it was too late to run or hide. Looking for assurance from the adults in the crowd, she heard only woe.
The news that the girls were being taken directly to the train station spread through town instantly, and the entire population of Humenné rushed down Ševenkova Street to reach the yellow and red stucco train station before it was too late.
Being surrounded by the Hlinka Guard, with their hard faces, black uniforms, and guns, made the youngest begin to cry. Guards pushed back mothers who tried to break through to hug their daughters. Edith frantically searched the growing throng for her parents. Saw them. Cried more. Anxious voices called out. Brothers to sisters. Mothers and fathers. Aunts and uncles. Cousins, grandparents, friends. Names rose into the cold air, mingled with prayers. How many girls were there? More than two hundred. How many tears? Too many to count.
“We were so afraid of what might happen, we could not think,” Edith remembers. “All around us girls were weeping.”
Lamentations. Weeping and waving. Waving and weeping. A strong March wind blew down from the mountains. Lea grabbed her sister’s hand lest Edith be carried away with the rotting leaves and sorrow.
At the station, a passenger train was idling. Forced onto the platform, the girls hauled their luggage up the metal stairs of the carriages and clambered aboard. Crowding to the windows, they waved good-bye to their parents and families. Lou Gross was too small to remember going to the train station and waving good-bye to Adela, but her sister and the rest of the family chased the air with their hands.
“When next you see me, I will be a married woman!” Debora shouted. “I’ll miss you, Adela! Lea! Anna!”
Through the open the windows of the train, girls leaned out and shouted back to their families.—Don’t worry! I’ll be home soon! I love you!
From over the heads of neighbors and relatives and the whole of Humenné, Edith heard her mother’s voice, “About Lea, I’m not so worried, she is strong, but Edith . . . she is like nothing.”
The train whistle blew. The carriages shifted forward. As Humenné faded in the distance, Margie Becker tried to lighten the mood, and others joined her. Klary Atles, who was older, gave everyone a pep talk; she reminded the older girls to help the younger ones because they all needed to be grown-ups now. Then Gizzy Ziegler teased Adela. Someone burst into song. Helena, who had a lush soprano, joined in. With the resilience of youthful optimism, the girls revived their sense of adventure. They were going into the world. They were together. They were being asked to do something for their government. They were adults now. Soon, everyone began to feel more excited and positive about the unknown. Even the idea of traveling on Shabbat, which was against Jewish tradition, added to their sense of maturity. In the spirit of the holy day, Margie and others shared the food their mothers had packed for them with their friends and girls who had nothing and hadn’t eaten all day.
As the train rounded a bend in the tracks, the highest mountain peaks east of the Swiss Alps rose in the distance. Magnificent white crags glinted under the setting sun. Girls leaned out the windows and shouted that they could see Ger-lachovský Peak!
Some of the peasant girls had never even seen the High Tatras before. Filled with patriotic idealism and a sense of purpose, they began to sing the Slovak national anthem. Edith’s and Lea’s voices lofted over the rumble of the engine.
There is lightning over the High Tatras
Thunderclaps wildly beat
Let us Stop them, brothers
For all that, they will disappear
The Slovaks will revive
That Slovakia of ours has been fast asleep so far
But the thunder’s lightning
IS rousing the land to wake up.
It was almost dark when the train shuddered to a stop at Poprad Station. Disembarking with their suitcases and buoyant cheerfulness, the girls were met by black-coated Hlinka Guard members wielding riding crops. These were not the boys they had known as children. These were stony-faced, violent men yelling at them to march and lashing their backs and behinds with whips. The same jagged peaks of the High Tatras that had filled their hearts with song and patriotism now looked cold and threatening. Everything strange got stranger. An empty two-story army barracks awaited them. Forlorn and tired, Edith thought, At least now we will be informed and know what to expect. But there was no welcoming committee, no matron, no organization at all. The girls wandered into the massive building, confused about where they were supposed to sleep. When no one told them, they found corners and haphazardly hung hammocks to curl up in. As darkness descended, the empty building echoed with the sound of girls sobbing themselves to sleep.
Chapter Seven
Women are the bearers of life and light to the world.
—THE KABBALAH
SHABBAT—SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 1942
WHEN ELSE BUT ON SHABBAT would young, unmarried, well-brought-up young Jewish women be sure to be at home? Setting registration on the day before Shabbat assured authorities that anyone trying to shirk the government call-up and avoid the opportunity to work by hiding could be easily picked up in the morning in her parents’ home.
Hiding created its own uncertainties, but there were few other options, especially for teenagers. In order to save them from the unmarried status that made them immediately vulnerable, some families had spent the weeks after the initial announcement trying to get their daughters married off. Other families sent their daughters to relatives in neighboring Hungary. Families who were promised government exceptions did not think any of those drastic actions were necessary. But when the exceptions didn’t arrive, these families had only two choices: obey the law and surrender their daughters, or disobey the law and hide them. The Gross and Friedman families obeyed the law. The Amsters did not.
In the early hours of March 21, the local police showed up at Adolf Amster’s villa with the Hlinka Guards. A knock on the door that early in the morning meant only one thing. Magda’s mother rushed to her daughter’s bedroom and sent Magda straight into “a hiding place under the roof ” of their large home. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, Mr. Amster answered the door as innocently as possible. His reception was not pleasant.
Giora Shpira remembers seeing his former classmates, now Hlinka Guards, collecting their friends—classmates arresting classmates. So it is likely that Adolf Amster opened the door that morning and found the same young men who had once been the pimply-faced boys who knew his daughter, standing in front of him with guns drawn. He told them that the government had promised the Amster family exceptions, so they needn’t have bothered to come. Puffed up with the power of their black garb, the boys dragged him out into the street, raised their batons, and beat him.
Was it because Mr. Amster was considered a wealthy Jew that they wanted to lash out at him and degrade him publicly? Neighbors came outside and watched in horror. Bloodied and bruised, Mr. Amster pleaded for the young men to stop. He was not too rich or important to beg.
The boy guards yelled at Mr. Amster.
—What daughter lets her father get beaten to death? If Magda truly cared for her father, she would save you! What kind of daughter is she to let you suffer so much?
The trap was laid with the bait of love. To hear her father being viciously pummeled was more than Magda could bear. The gentle-faced wisp of a girl stepped into the street. Her father held her in his arms and begged the guards to let her stay. He had no other daughter. They needed her at home. What about his own service to the government?
The guards guffawed and taunted the Amsters. Whisking the delicate young Magda away, they forced her down the snowy street to join other girls who had thought they could hide. Good girls were so easy to find!
A FEW KILOMETERS away, in a community outside of Prešov, the Hlinka Guard arrived at the Rosner family home and gave their daughter, Joan, two hours to pack. Together with twenty-three other girls from Šarišské Lúky, she was “crammed like sardines into a pickup truck,” driven into town and dropped at the firehouse, where their names were checked off. By now it was about ten in the morning and over two hundred other young women were being processed at the firehouse.
Despite the early hour, Giora Shpira and his brother had heard about the confrontation at the Amsters’ house and waited outside the firehouse to see what would happen next. When the girls were suddenly marched out onto the road, the boys ran after the column of girls, calling Magda’s and Klara’s names as they stumbled through the streets. Because it was early Sabbath morning, some members of the Jewish community were not yet aware that the girls were being treated as if they were common criminals, and bereft of one last caress or kiss from their families marched to the train station. The image of these distraught and confused young women haunts Giora still. “The worst disaster of all was when they caught the girls and rounded them up . . . It was the prototype of all of the evil that would follow.”
Giora Shpira (Amir), then and now.
PHOTO COURTESY GIORA AMIR.
Seeing their daughters board a passenger train bolstered the illusion that the newest proclamation truly was nothing more than government service and may have alleviated the anxieties Jewish parents felt as their daughters were taken. In the morning light, the girls opened the windows and leaned out to blow kisses to their family and catch return kisses on the wind. They shouted to their parents, if their parents were there. Prayers were offered. Few were granted.
For Ida Eigerman, there was no one but her aunt to wave good-bye to. She wondered how her parents were faring in Poland; if she had known, she might have fled the station. In fact, in a few days time, back in her hometown of Nowy Scz, elderly Jews, along with Jewish and gentile business owners, would be taken to the Jewish graveyard and gunned down. Among the murdered were, most likely, Ida’s parents as well as Rena Kornreich’s parents from Tylicz.
