I Shall Live by Henry Orenstein Read Free Book Online Page B

left, I spoke with Father about Hitler and the threat he represented to our future. I was eloquent, talking about Hitler’s concentration camps. I said I was convinced that the invasion of Poland was inevitable and imminent, and that I thought we should all go to America.
    Father agreed with me about the approaching danger, but felt that it would be very difficult for him to begin a new life elsewhere. All his roots, his business, his friends, and most of thefamily were in Poland. “How can I now, at the age of fifty-six, start from scratch in a foreign land, without understanding a word of English?”
    I sensed that I was making no headway, and in desperation I did something I had never done before: I threw myself on the bed and started crying almost hysterically, repeating over and over, “But you don’t understand. He will kill us all. He will kill us all.”
    Surprised at the intensity of my feeling, my parents looked at each other, not sure how to handle the situation. Finally Father sat down on the edge of the bed, put his arms around me, and said, “I cannot go, but if you feel so strongly about it, I will send you to America to study after you graduate from the gymnasium.” I realized then that it was useless to try to change Father’s mind, and I never brought up the subject again.
    In fact, although a few families in Hrubieszów had relatives abroad and the financial means to emigrate, only one family actually did so. Dr. Grynspan had a very successful medical practice and his family had lived in Hrubieszów for generations, but one day he and his wife and children said farewell to their relatives and friends and left for Argentina. This event was much discussed by the Jews of Hrubieszów. Some felt that the doctor might well prove to have been the smart one in the end, but no one else followed his example. I admired his courage and wisdom, and wished that my family would follow the Grynszpans’ example.
    By now I was well into my junior year of gymnasium, and still riding on my reputation as a good student. Then one day, when our history teacher asked me to lead a discussion on a subject we had been studying for weeks, he discovered that I was totally unfamiliar with it. He was shocked and angry that he had let me get by with bluffing for so long, and threatened to fail me. He notified other teachers of his discovery as well, and suddenly I was in trouble.
    I began studying day and night, frantically trying to regain the ground I had lost. My parents were surprised and troubled to learn of my drastically lower marks. In the end I managed to get promoted to the senior year, but for a while it was touch and go.
    Our last summer before the war we spent in Domaczów, a resort deep in the woods about a hundred miles north of Hrubieszów. There was some talk of an impending German attack, but most people dismissed it from their minds. Our villa was surrounded by trees and I enjoyed myself lying in the hammock, reading, swimming, and playing poker with the other kids. We returned home in the middle of August. The radio and newspapers were full of rumors of concentrations of German troops on the Polish border. Hitler was rattling his saber and demanding Danzig and the “corridor.”
    On August 23 Germany and Russia stunned the world with the announcement of their “nonaggression pact.” We couldn’t believe it. Polish Communists who had been rotting in Polish jails for years and had been taught by their leaders that Hitler and fascism were the devil incarnate were bewildered by the sudden flip-flop. White was black now, and black was white. Colonel Józef Beck, the Polish foreign minister, was seeking a peaceful solution, but the country was in a hopeless position. England and France, unwilling to subject their people to mass destruction in a war that promised to be even more savage than World War I, were searching desperately for an honorable way out, all