Out of Hiding Read online

  To my children and grandchildren

  Imagine that to save your life, you had to sleep curled up inside a trunk for twelve hours a day.

  Or spend hour after hour—for years—sitting perfectly still in a corner, never speaking, never moving a muscle, for fear that someone would hear you or see you and send you to your death.

  Imagine staying hidden away for so long you forget what trees look like. What the sky looks like. You even forget how to walk.

  Imagine being in so much danger that you would plan your own execution to save the lives of the people hiding you away.

  All that—and more—happened to Ruth Gruener when she was a child in the Holocaust.

  I first met Ruth when I was asked to help her husband, Jack Gruener, write the story of his life as a boy during the Holocaust. When I began to work on Jack’s book, my family and I flew to New York City to meet Jack and Ruth. They were two of the kindest people I ever met. We spent the morning at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, where Ruth worked as a docent and had donated some artifacts (a pair of socks she wore from her time in hiding during the war). Then we went back to Jack and Ruth’s home. There, while I interviewed Jack for the book I was writing, he and Ruth plied me and my family with more food than ten families could eat—in defiance, perhaps, of the years they had both spent starving during the Holocaust.

  The book I wrote with Jack, Prisoner B-3087, tells the story of how he survived ten different concentration camps during World War II. Toward the end of Jack’s book, he meets a young woman named Luncia—who changes her name to Ruth when she moves to the United States, and eventually becomes Jack’s wife.

  Jack shows up halfway through this book, Out of Hiding. So for all the readers who write to me begging to find out what happens to Jack once his book ends, now you’ll know!

  Ruth’s story echoes another novel I wrote called Refugee. That book is not about Ruth or Jack—at least not specifically. But like the characters in Refugee, Ruth is driven from her home, and with her family must cross stormy seas on their journey to another country, where they will have to learn a new language and a new way of life to survive. Ruth and her family, like millions of others before them and since around the world, were refugees.

  Roughly 250,000 European Jews were displaced by World War II, and many of those refugees, like Ruth and her family, hoped to immigrate to America after the war. But the application process wasn’t easy. The American government kept changing the rules, sometimes from day to day. Ruth and her family persisted, though, and were lucky to eventually end up in the United States. And the United States was lucky to have them.

  As I remind students when I tell them about Jack’s story, unfortunately, the last generation of Holocaust survivors is passing away. That’s why it’s more important than ever that we hear their stories directly from them, while we still can. Ruth Gruener understands this. I hear her voice loud and clear in every sentence of this book, as though Ruth is right here in the room telling me everything that happened to her. Now her story will live on for generations in her own words.

  Silence is dangerous, Ruth tells us. If you don’t tell your own story, someone else will tell it for you—and maybe not the way you’d like it to be told. This book, and the decades Ruth has spent telling people her story in schools and gathering places around the world, is a testament to the power of speaking up, speaking out, and speaking your own truth.

  Alan Gratz

  Asheville, NC

  2019

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Map

  Prologue: Remembering

  1. Escaping Death

  2. The Ghetto

  3. Hidden

  4. Liberation

  5. Surprises

  6. Good-Bye, Lvov

  7. Friends

  8. Good-Bye, Lala

  9. Munich

  10. Stuck at Home

  11. Meeting Jack

  12. Living in Limbo

  13. Good News and Bad News

  14. A New Year

  15. Good-Bye, Germany

  16. On Board

  17. America, Here We Come

  18. Welcome to New York

  19. That Place Called Brooklyn

  20. The New American Me

  21. A Lesson in Fun

  22. Lonely No More

  23. Finding Home

  24. Graduation, and Beyond

  Epilogue: My Destiny

  A Special Note from Ruth Gruener

  Photographs

  Sneak Peek at Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  IT WAS A LATE morning in the spring of 2018, and I was standing in a classroom in front of a group of eighth-grade students. I was there to tell them about my life. I am a Holocaust survivor. As a Jewish person born in Poland in the 1930s, I bore witness to the Nazis’ attempt to eradicate all the Jews of Europe during World War II. At the start of 1939, there were about seven million Jewish people living in Central and Eastern Europe. By the war’s end in 1945, an estimated six million of them had been killed, many in concentration camps like Bergen-Belsen and Dachau, and in death camps such as Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

  I survived the Holocaust because I was hidden by non-Jewish families who risked their lives to save the lives of others.

  Though that part of my life happened many years ago, the memories are still fresh. I have made it one of my life’s missions to tell my story, and to speak about the importance of tolerance, so that the atrocities of the past do not happen again. I travel across the country, speaking to students and teachers, at schools and synagogues, and meeting people from all different backgrounds. I also work as a gallery educator at the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City. There, I give tours to groups of people and tell them my story too.

  Whenever I talk to young people about my experiences, I find that all my memories from the past come back even stronger—my memories of suffering during the Holocaust, as well as the hope and joy and struggles that followed when the war ended and my family and I immigrated to America.

  That spring day, standing in front of the eighth graders, I realized I wanted to write a memoir about what happened to me during the war but also about what happened when I came out of hiding—and slowly but surely, began to come back to life.

  I hope that my story will help people understand the importance of remembering, and of treating each other with kindness and humanity.

  I SUPPOSE IT’S FITTING that I’ve had seven names, considering how many times I’ve had to restart my life.

  On my birth certificate, I’m Aurelia Czeslava Gamzer. My Hebrew name is Rachel Tcharne, which I was given to honor both my late grandmother and great-aunt. During my early childhood, I was called Rela (short for Aurelia), then Relunia, then Lunia, and finally, Luncia, my favorite nickname, which stuck.

  Luncia Gamzer was my name throughout my childhood and adolescence. Many years later, in a new country, my name would change again—to Ruth Gruener. But, of course, I didn’t know it then.

  I was born on a warm August morning in the early 1930s, in a house on Wolynska Street in the city of Lvov, which at that time was part of Poland. When I was six weeks old, I caught pneumonia and almost died. I was unconscious, but the doctor revived me by dunking me in basins of cold and warm water. That was the first time I escaped death. It would not be the last.

  I was a happy child, with wavy brown hair cut in a short bob just under my ears and wide, bright hazel eyes. I didn’t have any siblings, but I had lots of friends who lived nearby. We’d meet up to play tag or jump rope, and we’d stay out until our mothers called us in to dinner. I loved to dance and play songs on
my pink toy piano and pick out ice cream from the chocolate shop, called Sarotina, that my parents, Barbara and Isaac Gamzer, owned. We were Jewish, and I knew that made us different from many of our neighbors who celebrated Christmas while we observed holidays like Hanukkah and Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year). Still, I always felt at home in Lvov.

  But the world around me was changing fast. A tyrant named Adolf Hitler had taken over as the leader of Germany. Hitler blamed all of Germany’s problems on Jewish people. He was determined to conquer all of Europe and make it Judenrein—free of Jews. In November 1938 in Germany, more than 8,000 Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were ransacked. Jewish people were beaten and shot in public places, and many were taken away to camps. This became known as Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass.

  I was five years old when Germany invaded Poland, marking the beginning of World War II. I’ll never forget the morning that the German army marched into Lvov. Air raid sirens blared, followed by the sound of military planes and the smell of diesel fuel. Then came the whine of falling bombs and explosions.

  “What is that noise?” I asked my father, confused and frightened. “I’m scared.”

  “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said, and swooped me up in his arms. “But we need to hurry.”

  Tatu (“Father” in Polish) held me against his chest while he bounded down the stairs with Mama right behind us. Down in the cellar, I was terrified, but my father calmed me by telling me stories; he said that in heaven, there was a village where dolls could talk and walk on their own. I was transfixed; at that young age, I loved dolls, and the idea of seeing them walk and talk made me feel much less afraid. If I had to go to heaven, I reasoned, maybe it would be all right.

  We spent days in the cellar until the bombing stopped. We came out of the cellar to learn that the Russian army had successfully fought off the Germans and entered Lvov. Life under the Russians was difficult. But in 1941, things got much, much worse. The German army came back to fight again, and this time, they won.

  Under the German occupation, the calculated mass extermination of the more than 200,000 Jews in Lvov began. It’s remarkable how clearly you can see the truth in hindsight but not as it’s happening in the moment.

  First, there were small changes in the city. Suddenly, Jews were not allowed to go to school, so I had to stay home, not quite understanding why. Also, Jewish people had to wear white armbands with a blue Star of David, so we could be easily identified. Having a dirty armband could get you in trouble, so my mother opted for the plastic cuff kind that easily wiped clean. The Star of David was such a beautiful symbol—one traditionally worn by Jews to signify God’s protection—and the Nazis’ use of it tainted its meaning. I hated wearing my armband, but I knew I had to have it on whenever I went outside.

  It was all so strange. Why were we being persecuted, just for being Jewish? Only a short time ago, we had been equals in our community. So many of our non-Jewish neighbors, who had once respected us and been kind to us, were being brainwashed into turning against us. I could see it in the nasty, disapproving looks they shot us on the street and could feel it like a chill in the air.

  And it felt like there was nothing we could do.

  Every day it seemed there was a new rule. Jewish families were told to gather all their gold and silver and bring it to the synagogue to be confiscated. I looked on sadly as my mother took the silver candlesticks off our mantel. I knew they had belonged to my great-grandmother, and we’d used them to light the Shabbos candles every Friday night. Shabbos is the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest, which begins on Friday evening and lasts until Saturday evening. The beginning of Shabbos is marked by lighting candles and saying prayers over challah bread and wine. It’s such a sweet, peaceful time, but now it felt as if we were losing some of that peace.

  Next, we were told to turn in our furs. I remember my mother removing the gray fur lining from my favorite dark red winter coat and hat, and I felt a pang of sadness. It was only a coat and hat, but I was starting to understand that things were changing in a terrible way. After the fur went the furniture. The Nazis would break into people’s homes and carry whatever they wanted—tables and chairs—onto trucks waiting in the street.

  Jewish businesses were forced to close, so my parents had to shutter their chocolate shop, which was a terrible blow. We began to run out of money for food, so we resorted to eating boiled potatoes.

  One afternoon, as my mother was boiling potatoes for dinner, a German soldier burst through the door. My mother gasped at the sight of him, and my eyes got wide and I froze completely still.

  “Give me all your gold and silver. Now!” he barked at my mother. “And you better not tell me you don’t have any, because I know you must have saved some somewhere.”

  “But we’ve already given it all up,” my mother pleaded. “We have nothing left.”

  The soldier stomped over to me, and he smelled like a mix of cologne, cigarettes, and liquor. I thought for sure he would kill me, but before I even knew what was happening, he reached his hands into the two pockets of my skirt to see if there was anything hidden. When he realized there wasn’t, he turned to my mother.

  “Fine,” he said. “Give me that pot on the stove. It must be worth quite a bit.”

  I watched my mother put the half-boiled potatoes on a plate and wash the pot for the soldier. When he left, my mother said that she’d heard the Germans needed metal for war materials.

  Soon the hum of anxiety turned to cold, raw fear. Our lives became harder. Scarier. I began to hear whispers about burning synagogues and about Nazis randomly stopping people on the street to ask for identification papers. If those people were Jewish, the Nazis would shoot them.

  Then came a new rule: All Jews were ordered to live in one section of the city—an area my parents and I lived in already. But that meant we had to share our apartment with other families. Having to give up my room was another thing that made my life feel much less normal.

  “But they’re strangers!” I cried to my parents. “And why my room? Where will I put my dresses?” I knew I sounded spoiled, but I didn’t care.

  “Because we have no choice, Luncia,” Tatu said, trying to calm me down. He ran his hand through his dark brown hair and crinkled his kind brow. “I’ll run a rope across the corner of the room. You can hang your clothes there. On the plus side, you’ll get to look at your dresses all the time.”

  Tatu always found a way to put a positive spin on things. At least, he did when he spoke to me. At night, when my parents thought I was sleeping, I would hear them whispering to each other.

  “The Nazis are never going to stop until they’ve taken everything,” Tatu said. “First all our possessions, then our home—and maybe even our lives.” That last part chilled me to the bone.

  Soon after, there came rumors of an akzia, which is the Polish word for “deportation.” Jews would be loaded onto trucks and train cars, then taken away to camps—and killed.

  The first akzia was for children.

  The other child living in our apartment was a boy named Henio, who was older than me but scrawny, with dirty-blond hair that stuck up every which way. Henio acted like a big brother, and I came to love having him in my home.

  For days we knew the akzia was going to happen, but we didn’t know exactly when. Tatu built me and Henio a hiding place by taking off the bathroom door and pushing a large wardrobe in front of it. Tatu cut a hole in the back of the wardrobe big enough for me and Henio to fit through. My mother hung clothes inside to cover the opening.

  The morning of the akzia, we were woken up by the shrieks of women and children outside. There was no time to think. Feeling dizzy and nauseous, I quickly climbed through the wardrobe with Henio. The two of us crouched inside the bathroom, holding hands with our eyes squeezed shut tight. I bit down hard on a piece of cloth to prevent my teeth from chattering out of nerves.

  Suddenly, we heard the heavy boots of a Nazi soldier inside our apartm
ent. Terror gripped me. I heard the soldier’s booming voice ask my parents a question in Polish, and I realized he was asking them about their daughter. Their daughter! Me. That’s when it hit me: There was a photograph of me as a young child, in pajamas, hanging on the wall. Because of that picture, the soldier would realize that there was a child who lived in the apartment.

  But then I heard Tatu answer in a strong, emotional voice: “She was already taken away.” A lie, told to protect me.

  “You had a pretty little girl,” the Nazi replied. Had. Past tense. So he assumed I was dead.

  I hoped he would leave after that, but he didn’t. Henio and I froze as we heard his boots approaching our hiding place. He shone his flashlight toward the back of the wardrobe, and I held my breath. I was sure the Nazi would see that there was a hiding spot there—that we were in there. And I’m not sure why, but the soldier didn’t investigate further. He turned his flashlight around and left the apartment.

  Once again, I had avoided certain death. I was safe. But for how much longer?

  I LAY ALONE ON the floor of the office where my father worked. It was impossible to stay warm. No matter how I tried to bury myself in my clothes, some part of my body was exposed to the frigid air. The condensation of my breath hung above me as I exhaled. There was no way I could sleep.

  Spending the night alone in an empty office had not been part of the plan. But then again, everything that had happened over the past year was unexpected. Unimaginable, actually.

  All the Jewish people in Lvov—including my family, of course—had been forced to move to the ghetto, a rural area on the outskirts of the city. My parents and I had to say good-bye to Henio and his parents, who were also going to the ghetto—we never saw them again. We borrowed a wheelbarrow and put in a few pieces of clothing, a pot, and some dishes—all we could bring with us to move.

  The ghetto was dingy and gray, full of stray cats and dogs and people on the sidewalks begging for food. My family and I were lucky to at least be able to live in a small room. But food in the ghetto was scarce, and we were constantly hungry.