Take the Child and Disappear by Nina Bassat

Author:Nina Bassat [Bassat, Nina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, History, Holocaust
ISBN: 9781925736731
Google: Vh4-EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Hybrid Publishers
Published: 2021-08-01T02:41:32+00:00

Chapter 13

Breslau 1946

We made our way, over several days, to Breslau, now Wrocław. The journey, which nowadays takes between five and six hours, took some days in the chaotic aftermath of the war. I don’t remember where we stopped; it may have been Katowice. We would have passed close to Opole, where my grandmother Chaya was born.

Like Lwów, Breslau had a chequered, multinational history, changing its occupying power from century to century, although the two predominant reigning countries were Germany and Poland, with periods of Hungarian, Bohemian and Austrian intervention. After the brutal siege of Breslau from February to May 1945, with heavy loss of life and huge damage to the city’s buildings, the city was returned from German to Polish control. Nonetheless, when we came there in 1946 it was still known as Breslau and its majority population was still German.

Childhood memory is a gossamer thing. Some things which by rights I should not remember because of my age at the time, stand out clearly. My rabbits and the chestnuts with which I played in Szepanowska; the icon in the small room which my mother and I shared; Sam picking me up from Kraków; my mother trying, and failing, to get drunk on the day of liberation – these are my memories, not stories which I heard from others. Other events are a blur, even though I was older when they happened. Much of Breslau is in the latter category. This must be where I learned to speak German, but it happened so seamlessly, with German replacing the now abandoned Ukrainian, that I have no conscious memory of its occurrence.

What I do remember is that Breslau was the place when my mother hit me, for the first and only time. We were living in some rented rooms at 3 Schlachnach Strasse, where there was a woman, Frau Schmidt, who was the housekeeper. One day I was sitting at a table and dropped my spoon. ‘Frau Schmidt,’ I ordered, ‘pick it up.’ I was unceremoniously yanked out of the chair by my mother, taken out of the room and given a thorough smacking. This was accompanied by some short but pointed words about how one speaks to people. That was the day on which I learned a lesson which has been a lifelong guideline. Treat everyone with respect – politeness is not an option; it is an imperative.

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