Open Writing

The many tales I had heard as a little girl about the event of my birth, led me to believe that I actually witnessed it. This assumption became reinforced by my personal recollection of the birth of my brother, Bolek, on the 30th of June, 1929, in the midst of summer.

We were still living at 102 Sienkiewicza Street, where I had been born six years earlier. I remember the layout of our apartment well. It had a long corridor with doors opening out to various rooms, on either side. The kitchen was the first one on the left, and the bathroom and toilet were located at the end of the corridor.

My Mother stayed in bed in the main bedroom for several days. The room was overflowing with bouquets of flowers from relatives and friends. I remember being told that people always brought more flowers for a baby boy than for a baby girl. I did not like this piece of information one bit.

About a week after Bolek's birth, a general commotion erupted in Mother's bedroom. I hid behind the closed door linking my parents' bedroom with the dining room. No one bothered to explain to me what was going on. But I found out much later that my new brother was undergoing the trauma of circumcision.

As I peered through the keyhole, I saw, in the adjoining room, a few bearded men in dark suits standing around my Father. I do not recall who was holding my brother, but I can still hear his screams.

I was born in Catholic Poland in the early hours of Palm Sunday on 26th March 1923.

Officially, springtime begins on the 21st of March, yet, most years, the weather remains cold for quite a while, and the accumulated sleet on the footpaths melts ever so slowly.
The beginning of spring conjures in my mind the unforgettable sight of the minutest buds protruding from tree branches which had been stripped bare by the icy cold winter. The city of Lodz is a very ugly industrial town, and one could hardly notice the slow awakening of nature. To experience the miracle of spring, one had to take a stroll in one of the two public parks: Sienkiewicza or Poniatowski.

Lodz was called 'the Polish Manchester.' The city boasted numerous textile factories from which rose tall tubular red chimneys. They spewed billows of black smoke into the air. The city lacked a proper drainage system, and the waste products of the dyeing processes from the textile factories flowed into the street gutters. Smelly coloured water ran freely, and it provided barefoot street urchins with rivulets in which they sailed their small boats fashioned out of newspaper. Large sections of the city outskirts remained unsewered for years and years. Road works (called 'kanalizacja' in Polish) resulted in deep trenches in many areas of the city. They were a familiar sight in my childhood. When some object was lost, we used to say that 'it disappeared like a plum in the kanalizacja.' One must acknowledge, however reluctantly, that after the Nazi invasion of Lodz in September 39, these road works were all completed in record time.

At the time of my birth in the twenties, Poland was in the process of nurturing its independence. This independence had been fiercely fought for and gained by the great national warrior, Marshal Joseph Pilsudski. Prior to the First World War, Poland was occupied and was divided amongst her three foes: Russia, Germany, and Austria. The first Prime Minister of the newly formed Polish Republic was the famous composer and statesman, Ignace Paderewski.

In their attempt to contain the effects of Polish anti-Semitism, many Jewish middle-class parents officially gave their newly born babies Christian sounding names. In keeping with this practice, I was given the lengthy name of Melania, which was meant to correspond to the Hebrew word Malke, meaning 'the Queen'. With the Polish passion for diminutives, I soon became Melusia and, thence, Lusia.

My brother's name, Boleslaw (Bolek), was supposed to have a link to the Hebrew 'Dov', meaning a 'bear'.

Even though I was a very small baby at birth, my Mother had a difficult time of it. Only a midwife and our dear neighbour, Mrs Taub, who was Mother's bosom friend, assisted her. As was the custom then, I had a wet nurse, a peasant woman, who most likely fed her own baby on cow's milk.

I had a Polish nanny who was also of peasant stock. She was elderly, motherly, and a staunch Catholic.
My nanny would often station my perambulator in front of the Lodz Cathedral while she went inside to pray to the Lord, with me perched on her lap.

I believe I was a rather difficult baby: never very hungry nor very sleepy. I was born with a large potato-like nose, in the tradition of all the members of my Father's family. My Mother felt that maybe a washing peg placed on my nose could improve its odd shape, but Father would have none of that. Thus, to this day, my nose has retained its original ghastly contour.

At the age of three, I shared my cot one night with my one-year-older boy cousin from Warsaw. I was told much later that his family was moving abroad to Palestine the following day. In the morning, after a rather tumultuous night, the cot sheet was wet. It has never been established with any degree of certainty who did the deed. When I visited that cousin (Yarden) in November 1992, we still puzzled over who the culprit might have been.