A Simple Life by Giora Amir

Author:Giora Amir [Amir, Giora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-09-06T23:00:00+00:00

3. The Bunker—Part 1

Why is this century worse than those others?

Maybe, because, in sadness and alarm,

It only touched the blackest of the ulcers,

But couldn’t heal it in its span of time.

Else, in the West, the earthly sun endows

The roofs of cities with the morning light,

But, here, the White already marks a house,

And calls for crows, and the crows fly.

Anna Akhmatova, 1917

At the end of March 1944—or it may have been at the beginning of April—when we returned to Prešov from Hungary, the Red Army was at the height of a four-month offensive, during which the entire southern division of the German military was destroyed. Belarus and Ukraine were liberated and a strong force of four million soldiers, more than 4,000 tanks, and 45,000 cannons attacked the German army under cover of thousands of airplanes on a front of 1,300 kilometers that wound through the Carpathian Mountains. This was one of the largest offensives of World War II.

We found our parents in a small apartment in a building belonging to the community, adjacent to the ritual bath. In the past, the house had been used as the living quarters of the family who were responsible for operating the ritual bath. They were very modest quarters. We had to forget Hungarian and relearn the Slovak language, which we had made great efforts to erase when we arrived in Hungary. We now had to learn it all over again, which did not require too much effort in itself. But no sooner had we settled back in when we were ordered to move on.

The German army was retreating. Its many failures turned the war from a journey of conquests into a defensive battle against the threat of the Russians, Bolshevism, and masses of barbarians.

The Jews of eastern Slovakia, who were considered to be hostile elements, were ordered by the government to move away from the eastern border, toward which the Soviet army was advancing. We were ordered to move to the western part of the country. Years later, I discovered that the government, in agreement with the Germans, had sought to transfer all the Jews into two labor camps in Sered and Novaki, where they would be concentrated for speedy handling—from a logistics point of view—when the deportations were resumed. I have already mentioned that the activities of the Working Group prevented this by cooperating with several ministers who were opposed to the resumption of the deportations. Thanks to them, the Jews were allowed to move to any place where they could find proper employment. Looking back, and in light of the events that took place over the months following the move west, it was clear that if the government’s plan to concentrate the Jews into the two camps had been carried out, we would not have survived.

***

We had no connections, family or professional, in western Slovakia. So once again, Adolf Amster and his wife Ettelka came to our aid. They were now an elderly couple with no children, nor anyone to help them.

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