The Crime and the Silence by Anna Bikont Page B

the wedding of Rachela’s sister, Matylda. Rachela had told him about it, but she didn’t dare go up to him or invite him as a wedding guest.
    â€œThe wedding took place in front of their house. A rabbi came, the couple stood under a canopy, the groom broke a glass. I was the only Pole there. I stood off to one side. Though Marianna’s cousin invited me inside I didn’t go in the house because I knew Rachela’s sister wasn’t expecting any Poles.”
    â€œIf there hadn’t been a war, Rachela’s mother probably wouldn’t have let her daughter marry you?”
    â€œNever.”
    â€œAnd if she’d agreed on the condition that you convert to Judaism?”
    â€œI would have said yes, without even asking for time to think it over. I never had any Polish girlfriend I can remember.”
    The war ended Rachela’s career in the city. In September 1939, she was on holiday at her mother’s in Radziłów and didn’t go back to Kielce.
    She: “As soon as the Soviets came they took over our mill.”
    A Pole was appointed by the new authorities as manager of the Finkelsztejns’ mill, but they, the Finkelsztejn family, were permitted to live and work in the mill as hired labor.
    He: “Under the Soviets our life here in Kramarzewo went on as normal. There were twenty-six households and not one family was deported. Only a farmer who got up at a meeting and made a critical comment about poverty in the Soviet Union—‘There are more pigs at our fair than in that whole Russia of yours.’ They came and took him away the next day.”
    I ask Ramotowski if he remembers how Rachela’s family behaved at that time.
    â€œGod forbid they’d ever take a liking to the Communists!”
    â€œBut the people in Radziłów say it was Jews who supported the new regime.”
    â€œThe poorest Poles went to work in some capacity for the Soviets right away, but I didn’t see any Jews do that. At least not in Radziłów.”
    To say that Stanisław has no prejudices against Jews is an understatement. When I remind him that someone from Rachela’s family was said to have collaborated with the Soviet authorities, he breaks out: “What are you talking about? It’s true Rachela’s brother-in-law Lejbko Czerwiński was a Communist, and under the Russians he strutted around with a machine gun, but he was a black sheep in the family, they didn’t like him, no, not one bit.”
    Ramotowski doesn’t remember the Soviet occupation changing anything in relations between Jews and Poles. No one had any particular complaints about Jews in Kramarzewo, and Rachela’s mother looked askance at him, the same as before.
    Until the Germans and July 7 arrived. After making sure that the Finkelsztejns were safely hidden in the grain and bringing them food, Stanisław went to see what was going on at their mill. It was already late in the evening.
    â€œThere were looters there, behaving as if they owned the place. We all drank four bottles of vodka that I’d brought from upstairs. When they had all drunk a bit, my brother-in-law and I threw the Finkelsztejns’ things, the things we’d hidden the day before, on our horse-drawn cart. It would give them something to live on later.”
    â€œWhere did you hide them?”
    â€œIn the rye.”
    She: “We heard screaming and saw smoke from there. We were four kilometers from Radziłów.”
    He: “They lay in the grain for two days and two nights. They were thirsty, it was very hot. In the morning I chased the geese around with a bucket in my hand to show it was water for the geese. I was afraid of the neighbors. At my mother’s house I walled off a hiding place for Rachela with planks between the stove and the wall, and another hiding place nearby for her family—her mother, Sara; her brother, Szabsa; her sister, Matylda, and her two children: