The World of Jeffery Eisenmesser
The Family Lumerman
America
This is what I know about two people I loved very much. How I miss them. How I loved them. Froim Lumerman and Rivka Lumerman were the grandparents of my child. They had survived the Nazi/German War against the Jews - barely. The Family lived in Tarnogrod, a small village in southwestern Poland. How long had they and their ancestral mishpucha lived there? I don’t know. (I do know that the synagogue service revealed Sephardic influences. They were undoubtedly Askenazi but perhaps some of their ancestors had fled Spain hundreds of years before , fled fanatical Ferdinand & Isabella and the bloodthirsty Holy Inquisition of the Church. Perhaps.) Ironically, after the War, they were compelled to flee Poland and live in a Displaced Persons camp run by the U.N. for about six years. Finally, the family, Froim/Rivka and the children, were granted permission to leave for Israel. Papers were in order, the crates packed. A day before departure, however, visas arrived from the United States. Amerika! They had mishpucha in New York and had had enough of war. They changed plans and came by ship to Jew York. I have always wondered what their thoughts & feelings were as they passed the Statue of Liberty, with the iconic poem written by a fellow Jew on its pedestal.
Froim worked for a nephew who owned a chain of grocery stores. Riwka worked as a seamstress. Somehow - I do not know or understand how -within less than ten years, they had provided for themselves and their four kinder, moved from an apartment on 2nd Avenue in a Manhattan neighborhood of Jews & Ukranians and purchased a private house in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. These were extraordinary people. I was always aware of that.
I married their daughter. I was attracted to her and to the story of The Family Lumerman, a family of Jewish heroes. I knew they were Holocaust survivors, but not much more. Every Shabbat, a vivacious group of Old Jews (younger than I, at 78, am now) would walk over, sit around the kitchen table and talk. Their talk was full of life, hand gestures, laughter and conversational sighs & pauses (lots of ”oys & oy veys!”). I was fascinated, but they spoke in Yiddish . I had only a little knowledge about their village life and their experiences. Froim, handsome and imposing, was a tall man even though he was bent by German lead still in his legs. I loved watching him and the others drink tea in a glass with a cube of sugar held between their teeth. They could have sat at the large dining room table, but they chose to sit huddled around a small kitchen table.
I remember sitting in the living room. The TV was on, but Froim wasn’t paying attention. He was engaged in conversation with someone. The film, A Knife in the Water, came on PBS. I happened to be looking at Froim, and was taken aback by what I saw. With the first sounds of Polish his large hands gripped the side of his chair, turning knuckles white! It didn’t have anything to do with what was being said. It was the unexpected sounds of Polish that had suddenly filled the room. Froim said nothing. He got up and left the room.
The story that follows is mainly based on an interview of Rivka. I was taking an article-writing course at The New School. It was 1979. Her husband was dead six years. Their daughter and I had been seperated for three. But Rivka the Beautiful, as she was called in Tarnogrod, had called me as soon as she had learned of our Split, and told me that nothing was to change between us. She cared for me and I for her. And we both loved the addition to the Family, he of tight blond curls & moxie, Elan Zohar Eisenmesser. Elan and I would go over on Friday night, Shabbat. She would make the Blessing, we would sing zemirot , eat the challah & the chicken, play tile-rummy and watch “Dallas”, Rivka’s favorite show. (It was understood that when “Dallas” came on everything else stopped.) How I miss those Friday nights! Oy . . .
Froim died in 1973, Rivka twelve years later. [Blessed be their memory.]
Tarnogrod
The Germans attacked and invaded Poland on September 1,1939. Soon enough, they came to Tarnegrod. Their diabolical and lethal modus operandi was to first identify the Juden. They set up a Judenrat ( Jewish Council). Froim came from a well-known/prominent family in the community, so he was appointed president of the Judenrat and charged with making up a List. Life got harder - and harder. The yellow badges were donned. Then - then - Froim was ordered to fill a Quota. He had to, based on the List, deliver a set number of Jews for transport by train at regular intervals. This was a turning point for Froim, a religious Jew. There is, I believe in the Talmud, an admonition that though the People are to obey the civil authorities/the community’s laws & regulations, there is one Exception: if an edict is intended to harm Jews, it is to be disobeyed. The Word had gotten back to Tarnegrod about the Camps. So Froim ran. He ran into the surrounding forest. Riwka and his two children were alone by themselves.
The Germans were not pleased. They came to the house several times in search of Froim. They beat Rivka repeatedly. The leather-bound religious books infuriated them. They ripped them to shreds. But they didn’t find Froim. One night, Riwka heard screaming outside. She smelled smoke. Running outside she saw her gentile neighbors on either side of her house. They were yelling at each other from their doorways. There was fire throughout the village. Initially, she couldn’t make sense of what was happening or what was being said by two women she had known all her life.
“We have to tell her!”
“No, we don’t.”
“We . . .”
“No!”
“Yes!” Turning to Rivka: “Judenrein!”
Rivaka understood. The Germans had had enough. No more incremental/lethal steps. No more escalating restrictions. No more need for badges. And no more need for Quotas. (The time had come for the final cleansing, the Final Solution. All Juden were to be killed or rounded up, packed on trains and transported. The End.) Rivka, who I had always known in many ways as the quintessential Jewish Mother, froze/panicked. She ran towards the forest in the dark of night.She ran and ran. Then she stopped and turned around. When she reached her house, she grabbed the sleeping girl and boy. Tucking each under an arm, she ran. Behind her the screaming got louder, the flames higher. There were gunshots. But she had to stop. The now fully awakened and frightened children had grown too heavy. She could run with both no more. She had to make a choice, Sophie's Choice. At that moment, Froim appeared. He had come running as soon as he saw and heard. In the dark of night he could have easily missed them, but he didn’t. He picked up a child and they ran together. They ran into the forest. There they stayed for about three (3!) years. Initially, hiding and on-the-run, hiding and on-the-run. Slowly/cautiously they came across and connected with other Jews. They transformed into Partisans.
Froim went out on raids. He was captured twice. He escaped twice. Once, with German shepherds placed on the perimeter of a transit camp, he covertly took a piece of a flat board and spent days honing an end into a point. When the time for escape came and a dog, mouth agape, jumped at him, he took the board, now a stake, and thrust it into the animal's mouth. I'm not certain. It may have been during this escape that he was shot at and wounded. (Bullet fragments were embedded and irretrievable. They were the source of chronic blood poisoning and probably shortened his life.)
During most of the time they were in hiding and fighting and surviving, the children were with them. Sometimes, however, the boy was taken in by a Polish family. Irving was blond and blue-eyed. He easily passed, but his sister, Fran, was brown-eyed, of a darker complexion - obviously a Jew. She stayed with her parents.
The most frightening time, and there were so many, was near the end of the German occupation. The Russians were approaching from the East. In the distant West the Allies were advancing. The end was in sight, but Rivka was pregnant. She went into labor. Froim had to get a skilled midwife. There was one, a Polish woman, nearby in a village. He had to leave the relative safety of the forest and go into the village. He had no choice. So he did, knowing that there was a good chance he would not return. Poles were killing Jews, finishing the Germans’ unfinished business. It turned out, however, that the midwife was a good woman. She followed Froim into the forest.
The baby became my wife/my son’s mother. It could so easily have gone the another way. It often did.
The War ended. The Germans were gone and the family came out of the forest. They returned to Tarnegrod and found that most Jews were gone. Gone. Their houses had been occupied by Poles. It was a bold and dangerous act for a Jew to knock on the door and claim rightful possession to his house. Some had the door slammed in their face. Others were killed at- their -threshold. One day during Easter Time, the family again heard screaming in the village. A man was running outside screaming that his son was missing. Kidnapped! The Blood Libel. (Recipe for this ancient accusation: Hide a Christian child. Claim that the child has been kidnapped by the Jews who have cut the child’s throat, drained and collected the blood - the secret ingredient of Passover matzah. Of course, the Goyim, already historically angered/deluded and eternally unforgiving about the Crucifixion, respond. A pogrom follows. Jews are attacked, many are killed. After, the child appears. Things go back to normal.) Froim knew he didn’t have much time. Fortunately, a nephew who had fled to the Soviet Union and become an Intelligence officer, was stationed in a Soviet garrison nearby. Froim again found himself running for his and his family’s life. He found his nephew. They got into a truck with soldiers and sped to Tarnogrod. It didn’t take long for the father and others to disclose the whereabouts of the hidden child. The soldiers were persuasive. The accusers were packed into the truck and driven away.
The Family Lumerman had had enough, enough of the killing field of Poland, enough of Europe. Ironically, they traveled to a United Nations camp in Germany. There was barbed wire around the camp. For a while, starving Germans would come to the wire begging for food.Historical Irony - you cannot make History up! I wish I knew more to tell. I wish I had continued asking questions. Truth-to- tell, I tried. I asked some relatives, fellow landsmen. They didn’t want to talk. Enough!