1943

February, 1943

Chana Z__________ is marching along a narrow tree lined woods in Southern Poland. Her face is gaunt and skeletal. Her strong cheekbones are made more pronounced through starvation and illness. Her knees are bony, devoid of the muscle and tone she was known for; they are mere slivers of their former beauty. Still she walks passing fields of dirt and debris. Her arms are weak, her back ladened down with the few possessions still left to her name: scraps of Shabbat tablecloth; the base of a silver candlestick; a couple scraps of a Siddur, ripped from the spine and storied away deep inside her worn clothes. The air is frozen, it is early February 1943, and her short breaths hang in sparkling clouds of ice before her bulging tired blue eyes. Her curly hair, once full and thick, is tied in thinning whisps out of her eyes and tucked loosely into a scarf made from an old bedsheet. The road is torn by vehicle traffic with deep gouges in the thick mud, as it cuts  straight as an arrow through the remains of small farms, along the perfectly flat steppes of southern Poland. She had been marching for two days, having left Lodz the previous Shabbat. They were heading south, passing Kielce after dark, heading towards Krakow.

Chana remembered these roads from her childhood. She took wheat to market in the back of her grandfather Wolef’s farmyard cart. The smell of wheel grease and the deep caustic scent of wood stain mixed with the sweet smell of hay. Now she focuses on the old village outside Lodz, and of her summers spent in the country helping the family. Her father Gavriel would take her to Mniow each August to work on the farm before the harvest. She remembers begging to stay until the fall, to build a Sukkah from all the farmyard straw. On good years they would buy grapes to hang, and would braid garlic stocks together into long fronds. On starry nights they would lay after dinner looking up through the leaves towards the stars, which would glitter and move in the dense fall air. But her frozen feet bring her back to reality, as the ice cracks beneath her, and she stumbles and falls into a deep muddy puddle. Breaking through shards of ice, her ankle is trapped and twists. She hears her tibia crack under her meager weight -- the under nourished bone splintering as she falls. Before she can scream, a gruff hand, gloved in thick leather grabs her by the scraps of her collar, lifting her clean off her feet and pushing her forward. She tries. She stumbles and cries in pain. She can’t. The thousands of other marchers flow past her like the determined rivers of the Sandomierz Basin.

There is yelling between officers. German. Incomprehensible and unrelenting. Lokshen putz she thinks - noodle dick - her father’s favourite insult.

She is pulled once again by the back of her shirt, out of the line of marching bodies, towards a deep snow bank. She looks out through a row of trees, small pines lining the road, the peaks of which are heavy with snow, which sag towards her, opening a small gap through which a view of a snow covered field reveals itself. She is forced to her knees, but strains to keep an eye on the view. Across the field she notices a small farmhouse, with white washed walls and rosy red trim. The single story cottage opens onto a barn, the back of which houses a small stack of hay bales, steaming as they are caught in a long ray of sunshine. The pain in her leg reverberates up her spine. She can’t move. She watches the steam spiral off the hay, remembering her time spent in the Sukkot with her grandfather, the sweetness of the horse manure and the chirp of birds preparing to migrate south. She drifts so deeply into the embrace of memory she doesn’t hear the shot to the back of her head.

Chana Z___________ was born in Lodz, Poland. She died in 1943 near Kielce, Poland. She married Hillel Scislowski on Unknown.

Death Notes: Source Pages of Testimony

Last Name Z___________

First Name CHANA

Father's First Name GAVRIEL

Mother's First Name FAJGA

Permanent residence LODZ, POLAND

Place during the war LODZ, POLAND

Place of Death SHOT IN WOODS NEAR KIELCE, POLAND

Date of Death 1943