Looking Back – Why Did I Survive?

Why did I survive?  I don’t know why. I should have been the first to die.  The youngest were the most useless. I couldn’t do any work.  I couldn’t contribute to the coffers of the Germans. I was an extra mouth to feed.  If I had gone to Treblinka with my mother I would have gone right into the gas chambers – together, immediately upon arrival.  My brother Zelig, 13, begged the neighbors to take him in and hide him. He went by himself, and made the desperate requests. “You’re a Zhid. (Jewish male) “You look like a Zhid.”  “Why should I risk my life for a Zhid!” Those were the answers. I was a Zhidovka (Jewish female). I looked like a Zhidovka. They took me in. I didn’t have to ask. Being the child of Esther and Mendl Przepiorka was enough.  My father had the little leather factory in town and was highly respected. Many of the Polish teenagers got their apprenticeships there. But Zelig, too, was the son of Esther and Mendl Przepiorka. He was the bright and handsome son.  I was cross-eyed and showed no extraordinary promise. I lived. He died.

So many were betrayed.  So many shot by cooperative, Nazi-sympathizing Poles.  My aunt, Esther, Breindl, was caught by the Gestapo as she tried to get food for her family in hiding. She was tortured for a week before she died without divulging her family’s hiding place. So much for going like lambs to the slaughter… My Uncle Joseph survived in the woods until the end of the war, and then was shot by Polish police.  Someone must have told the German soldiers where to look, so they could appear in the middle of the night with flashlights to catch a Jew in hiding. Did they really believe that I, with my dark, crossed eyes and black curly hair was the illegitimate child of a blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful young Polish woman? And what Catholic woman in staunchly Catholic Poland in the early 1940’s would even admit to having an illegitimate grandchild?  Logic played a very small role.

And after the war, having survived what should my life have been?  I should have been baptized, continued living with Pania Kowalczyk, and going to the big church in the town square.  Perhaps I would have finished elementary school, married young, and contributed a Ztajek and a Maria to the Polish Communist proletariat.  

There were more miracles.  How was I discovered across the continents?  The serendipitous meeting by my Aunt Norma of an American soldier from New York!  What were the chances that, Phil Kaplan, who was part of the American Army’s administration of Foehrenwald D.P. Camp, would be in the same room at the moment my Aunt decided to yell out “Esther! Max! Bernstein! Bronx! New York!” over and over again?   That this tall, pleasant-looking soldier would speak to her in his broken Yiddish and tell her that the Bernsteins were his neighbors in the Bronx?

If that wasn’t enough, there were more unlikely events in my childhood.  Living in four countries, having four mothers, and two institutions, orphanages, as “mother”, becoming a miniature polyglot, at one point around age nine, speaking or at least understanding six languages!  And blessed with so much love, from family and even from strangers!

I survived but lost the experiences of childhood; I survived and recouped my childhood.  My eyes were swollen, my cheeks tear stained, and I was quiet and shy; now I laugh a lot, am interested and outgoing.  I am Gitl, Gucia, Guta, Gloria. Mother Goose. I am, quite simply, a lucky woman. I am not a guilty one, for I never caused anyone else’s death by living.  I do not have survivor guilt. I only have regrets.

Why did I survive?  Some questions have no answers.  But my survivor status carries with it its own special effects.  I work at everything very diligently, and try to be the best Gloria I can be, so I’ll be worthy of having outlived everyone else in my family, probably by age four.  I don’t like to relocate; I’ve moved around enough already. I lived – so I must do something useful with my life, and do it well.

Did I survive to teach about the useless, tragic deaths?Was it to perpetuate my Judaism?  Was it to remember the righteous? Was it, to fulfill the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply”, to have children, children who have no grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins on my side of the family?  Was it to defy the edict that marked me for death? Was it my victory and the victory of the Jewish people to teach tolerance and love, and show what hate can do, but not get down to the level of the killers, and preach vengeance and hate?

Truly, there is no rhyme or reason.  Randomness, and good fortune, just part of an imperfect world, and to my uncomprehending eyes, God’s illogical plan.