102
The Jewish Home n
M ay 3 0 , 2013
Lola's Story
Lola Lieber Schwartz
A World After This
A Memoir of Loss and Redemption Lola Lieber Schwartz is a world-renowned artist whose paintings have been exhibited in art galleries throughout the United States and are part of the Yad Vashem archives in Jerusalem. Most importantly, Lola is a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother to many. She has myriad friends and sees life in all its vibrancy and vitality. But life was not always easy. Lola was only sixteen-yearsold when Hitler ym”sh invaded Poland, and Lola was forced into hiding and spent years on the run with her husband, Mechel. Through six years of trying times, near
Chapter 15 Strange Interlude
W
e were in a state of suspended disbelief. We had actually crossed out of Poland and therefore escaped the Reich’s territory. I wasn’t Lola any longer. I was a person named Lola, who looked pretty much like Lola, but I was someone else. Mechel and I were both deeply fatigued yet we tried to repress our feelings of despair. We did not discuss our dreams, which were often nightmares. We had survived, but there were images in our heads, portraits of our dead. It was a slow-motion movie, unreeling itself day after day and night after night in our brains. We had seen too much: too much murder, too much betrayal, too much loss – loss of place, of self, of Jewish identity. My love for Mechel had grown and deepened into a profound admiration and pride, more than the normal love of a wife for her husband. We were not just a devoted married couple; we had become true partners. He had maneuvered in a world of cunning and greed yet remained a moral and pure man. I had witnessed a few others who had done the same in our world; the Bobover Rebbe was one. Mechel wasn’t fearless. Neither was I. Nobody was fearless. Our souls were riddled with holes where the fear had pierced through us. We had become practical, pragmatic, and resourceful in order to survive and to help others survive. To be aware that you are afraid, you have to remember a life that did not contain fear. Mechel and I no longer remembered a time when we were not afraid of “them.” Were we happy in our escape? Not really. We were not unhappy with each other, but happiness was not even a
relevant concept. When we arrived in Kosice and were greeted by Mammiko’s brother, my uncle Beri, we permitted ourselves an overt expression of relief. We took our first deep breaths in a long time. The family in Munkach had sent Beri to Kosice. He had arrived a year earlier to attempt to save family members. Word had not reached us that he was doing this work. He had left his own family behind in Munkach and moved to the border town to do what he could for our extended family as well
starvation and brutality, Lola and her husband held onto their faith and values. It was Mechel’s words of encouragement, “There will be a world after this,” that helped them cling to the hope that there will be a life of light and joy waiting for them at the end. This is the story of Lola’s life—from her grandparents’ “enchanted garden” to meeting Eichmann ym”sh to making the Pesach seder for the Bobover Rebbe during the war—her words will take you back to a different world. same thing: “They are somewhere in Hungary and probably with the Bobover Rebbe.” I don’t know if I really believed them. I needed to believe them, so I pushed skepticism to the side of my brain. Rose was still with us as she didn’t have another place to stay. Mechel and my uncle had been discussing where we should head and their proposal was Budapest. Mechel initially thought it was too dangerous because he assumed we would have to cross the border from
Nobody was fearless. Our souls were riddled with holes where the fear had pierced through us.
as for others. He was part of a Jewish smuggling network, working against the fast clock of the Nazi extermination plan. It was a dangerous place for illegal immigrants. My uncle took care of us, although it was a risk for him to house us. He saw we needed rest and said we would make a decision later about what to do. Mechel and I would have to relocate, but we had no idea where we would go next. My brothers Ben and Tuli had crossed safely and had been taken by my uncle to Munkach. I convinced my uncle and Mechel that we should stay in Kosice for a bit longer because I was waiting for the arrival of my parents. They did not come. We did not know what had happened. Mechel and my uncle had heard a rumor but neither of them shared it with me. Their kind “deception” allowed me to be a young woman for a brief time. I was not exuberant or joyful, but I did feel relatively young again. Whenever anxiety about my parents threatened to overwhelm me, Mechel or my uncle would say the
Czechoslovakia into Hungary. Bloated by the land-grabbing opportunities of war, Hungary was not as it had been. At this point it was an enormous country. We had been in Hungarian-controlled territory the moment we cleared the mountain checkpoint and gotten past the Hussar guards. There was no dangerous border to cross between Kosice in Slovakia and Budapest. We would not be Hungarian Jews, however, but “aliens” and therefore subject to deportation. However, after Bochnia, it seemed like an opportunity to live in an earthly paradise. Dear Uncle Beri escorted us and Rose to Budapest. He gave us all some money. Here Rose’s life finally took a turn for the better. She met up with some friends who were going to Palestine and she decided to join them. I had known and been around Zionists my whole life and so her decision seemed like a sound one. I did not understand how difficult it would be to find safe passage to Palestine during the war. After much suffering and going through horrible ordeals,
she arrived in Palestine safely and in one piece. She had suffered enough in her life. Her decision was a good one, but it would be a long time before we knew of her triumphs. My uncle put us up in a lovely hotel in Budapest and notified distant cousins, who came to see us with fresh new clothing. It was the nicest place Mechel and I had ever been in as a couple, but it was far from a honeymoon. Although the setting was perfect, our mood was anything but romantic. We were still fraught by memories of the struggle and the ghostly whispers of voices we would never hear again. Now I was convinced my parents had perished, although I used all my energy to persuade myself they had crossed safely into Hungarian territory. This scenario seemed increasingly implausible, but I did not voice my suspicions about their fate. Nonetheless, Budapest was a most pleasant surprise. There was no ghetto into which Jews were herded. The anti-Jewish posters and placards that had been all over Krakow were not present in Budapest. Things seemed a little too normal to believe. In fact, what we did not know was that the Allies had been holding secret meetings with the Kallay government, and the Hungarians had therefore toned down their anti- Jewish rhetoric. There was a Jewish Quarter, but it was not a hole of misery and plague of death as Bochnia had been. We took our meals at a kosher restaurant in the large home of a Jewish family in the quarter. My uncle proposed a trip to us. He said, “Let’s go to Munkach for Shabbos.” I almost fainted. Back to the garden? Back to the gate that led to the delights of my youth and not a ghetto gate? He must be joking – but in those days there was no joking about anything. He was serious and we were going. Sever-