My parents went to my great Uncle Dave's funeral in New York leaving me with Hessel and Ida on their farm.  They were a perfect choice for babysitters because Hessel and Ida were very good friends of my parents, and they didn’t have children of their own to care for.  I loved to go to Hessel and Ida's because Ida baked the biggest and softest sponge cake in Vineland, New Jersey and Hessel would hug me to death.  I also got to play with Lady,  their German shepherd.  If all of this was not enough to amuse me, I could watch my favorite shows on a brand new 1960 console TV. 

After my parents left for New York, I played all day with kids from neighboring farms.  It was cold and windy, but the weather was perfect for a game of  “Combat."  I loved that show because the American soldiers were my heroes.  When we would pick parts to play, I always wanted to be Sgt. Saunders because I had a better idea of why Saunders and his men fought so hard.  To the other kids, mostly Italian families who were farmers in Vineland for generations, it was just a game.  For me, it was a mission fueled with details that I would overhear from the adults when they didn't know I was listening.  Playing “Combat” in the field behind the chicken coops was fun and rewarding.  The ending was always the same: Sgt. Saunders wins with no casualties and the Germans die en masse.  So with great pride I would take up my machine gun-shaped branch and spray the air with imaginary bullets, making “da-da-da-da” sound effects that wiped out entire Nazi platoons.

For dinner, Ida prepared her usual feast of chicken soup with homemade luckshen (noodles), baked chicken with the crunchiest brown skin, and lots of mashed potatoes laced with gribbenes (fried onions).  Ida would scoop up heaping ladles of the potatoes and slam-dunk them onto every plate.  All servings were accompanied with a pleading, "Ess, ess, ess" (Eat, eat, eat!).  And for desert, Ida cut a slice of sponge cake for me the size of a small dictionary.   

As desert was served, the doorbell rang.  Hessel went to greet his guests, other Holocaust survivors who had become chicken farmers in the new world.  Ida immediately began to add more plates to serve them food.  I looked around at the new arrivals and observed that there were no children to play with.  Anticipating conversations that did not involve Popeye or the Three Stooges, Lady and I removed ourselves from the kitchen to watch TV in the living room. 

I was amused for a while watching Haley Mills in Pollyanna on Walt Disney.  The movie was fine, but I could hear the conversation in Yiddish heating up around the kitchen table.  The topic was always the same, but the tone alternated between clearly audible to whispers.  I heard spoons twirling home made varennes (preserves) into glasses of strong tea and my leckech (sponge cake) being devoured by the other guests.  Mr. and Mrs. Katz talked alot and ate alot, but kept their voices soft.  They were the first to start whispering when they realized a klaineh kind (small child) was in the living room only two short rooms away from the kitchen.  Mr. Notke (which was actually his first name, but I always referred to him as “Mr.”) was also there that night.  Unlike the Katzes, Mr. Notke didn’t seem to realize or care that a 5-year-old might overhear the conversation. 

Mr. Notke interjected bad-word Yiddish adjectives that referred to private parts of men and women into every one of his angry sentences.  His ranting usually earned him a “Notke, the kindd will hear" plea from the others at the table.  As usual, Mr. Notke banged the table with his fist.  He yelled about Nazis, Jewish ghettos, and the murder of his 9-month old son -

…Notke and his family hide from the Nazis in their closet hide-out of two months, Nazis break into the closet, an officer grabs the baby out of a pleading mother's arms, and tosses him, like a rag, from a fourth floor window…

Ida didn’t offer many details about herself during the war.  She was too busy serving food and cleaning up after all of her guests.  Ida was a bit deaf, and I never knew if she wasn't able to hear or didn't want to hear the conversations at the table.  Over the years, bits and pieces of her life leaked out.  I learned how Ida lost her hearing because of a typhus epidemic in the concentration camp as well as a more than occasional beating from a sadistic guard.  The Katzes always whispered, and I was never quite sure what their story was all about -

…the ghetto is liquidated, bullets spray the area, corpses are  piled on top of each other, Nazi soldiers smoke cigarette inspecting their handiwork as one says to the other, "Shame, what a pretty girl - let's go eat."  Pretty girl watches them walk away, waits until dark, then crawls out of the mass grave into nearby woods…

Hessel spent the war as a POW because he was in the Lithuanian calvary, with a horse and everything.  I thought he looked so strong and dashing on his horse, and loved to look at the pictures from der hame (home) that he managed to salvage.  In 1939, two months after Hitler invaded Poland, the Nazis captured what was left of Hessel's unit.  As a luke-warm ally to Germany, Lithuania insisted that her Jewish soldiers be treated equally regardless of religion.  Germany luke-warmly agreed, and Hessel spent the war in barracks just like the ones I saw on "Hogan's Heroes."  I was convinced that Hessel could easily outsmart the likes of Sgt. Shultz, Colonel Klink, and the other TV Nazis.  Hessel even had pictures of his fellow POWs posing with their guards.  As I grew older, stories of slave labor and  starvation would bleed over every one of Hessel's crinkled pictures.  But when I was 5, everyone in the picture looked just fine. 

Discussing the war was a typical evening event in Vineland for Hessel and Ida and their friends.  No matter what else was happening - chicken prices going up, egg prices going down - all roads ended up in Poland between 1939-1945.  Endless discussions about friends and family who were lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to have survived the Nazis and those who were murdered were told over and over.  A koyl in kop (bullet to the head), nakedeh in der grub (naked people in a mass grave), and the Partisan's song  Zog nit kaymolt as du gayst dem letzter veg  (Never say you have gone on the last road) filtered in and out of my ears.  That's why killing krauts (a word Vic Morrow on "Combat" taught me) was more than just a game.  To me, it was coming to the aid of Ida and Hessel and Mr. Notke’s baby son. 

The war stories in the kitchen continued.  Lady slept soundly on the floor and was apparently  spared having to endure the opera singer on the Ed Sullivan Show.  I was getting cranky because Topo Gigio, my favorite entertainer, was not on Ed Sullivan, and the adults ignored me.  I wanted my parents and wanted them now, so I started crying and went into the kitchen.

My arrival annoyed Mr. Notke because he had to stop talking about the war.  In fact, he tried to ignore the whimpering until Mrs. Katz yelled out, “Notke, zie shtill, da kindd veint.”  I thought he was mean to keep talking while I cried., but I never understood how it tore at his soul to hear a child cry because a crying child was the last image he had of his son.  Ida stood up from the table and ran over to ask what was wrong.  She tried her best asking, “Vilst epes essen?"  (want something to eat?).  As far as Ida was concerned, if you had food and shelter there was nothing to cry about.  But what I wanted was my “mommy and daddy NOW.”  Ida tried to explain to me that my parents were in New York and couldn’t come get me until tomorrow.  I didn’t care!  I insisted that I wanted my parents NOW.   

"No, it's snowing - we cannot take you home," Ida chided. 

"Can't Mr. Marcucci drive me home in his truck?" I asked. 

"No, the neighbors are sleeping and it's too late.  Go to sleep."  Ida yelled.

After going through two, maybe three rounds of negotiations of what I wanted and what Ida could deliver, she lost her temper and gave me a patch in tuches (whack on the butt).  It really didn’t hurt, but it was not what I needed to cheer me up.  All I wanted in the entire world at that moment were my parents.  Ida’s solution was a spanking.  

Hessel came running and swooped me up into his big arms and assured me that all would be OK.  As he ran over, I felt some justice was served towards Ida because Hessel yelled and called her a bahama (cow) for spanking a child.  Mr. and Mrs. Katz politely said good night and went home.  Mr. Notke not-so politely left and told Hessel he would call him in the morning to discuss buying more chickens for the farm. 

Ida started cleaning up the table, and Hessel carried me to my room.  The guest bedroom was mostly blue.  Round satin and lace pillows lined the top of the bed like a row of soldiers.  Lily-white plastic dolls, with bright blue eyes and stiff eyelashes that moved up and down, were sewn waist-high into the center of each pillow.  The pillows transformed the dolls into princess draped in billowy dresses.  Hessel carefully moved each pillow off the bed with his left hand while holding me propped on his hip with his right hand.  Ida would tolerate no willy-nilly tossing of pillows, and Hessel knew it.  Once the pillow dolls were aligned on the floor, Hessel pulled down the puffy blue bedspread and tucked me into bed.  I was about to cry again and Hessel decided a preventive step was in order.  He lay down next to me and softly sang a Polish lullaby.  I didn't understand a word, but he was so caring trying to help me forget that I wanted to go home. 

Since the Polish lullaby didn't do the trick, Hessel decided to tell me a story.  Dr. Seuss was not in Hessel's repertoire of children's tales.  He survived the war because he learned to improvise.  So he told me that tomorrow my parents would come back and all would be well.  In fact, he promised if I tried to sleep we would get up early in the morning and pick strawberries that grew wild along the edge of the farm.  I thought a minute about Hessel's proposal.  It sounded pleasant - get up, grab a bucket, take Lady out to the back of the farm, and pick strawberries.  Then that slight detail about snow popped into my head.

"What are you talking about?  Strawberries don't grow in February," I said getting more angry than teary.  Hessel tried to back-pedal, but it was too late. 

"You know what, Hessel? You're a bad story teller."   

He smiled, apologized, gave me a big gezunt in kopp (bless you child) hug, and told me what a smart child I was.  He explained, again, how it wasn't possible to go home or get my parents.  So, he just talked about animals.  He told me all about wolves and how they howl at night.  The wolf stories seemed to have worked because the next thing I knew morning arrived with Ida's clanging of pans in the kitchen.  I smelled latkes (pancakes) drenched in butter.  Ida knew I loved to spread sour cream on the paper-thin crepes and roll them up like a log.  Oh, how she qvelled  (beamed with pride) when I devoured an entire plate of my latkes.  The key to my heart was food, and the key to Ida's heart was eating her food.   

Forty years have passed since I stayed with Hessel and Ida for the weekend.  To this day, no more than 10 minutes pass before Ida or Hessel or both of them retell their version of that weekend to me or to anyone that is within listening range.  "You can never fool a child," Hessel says as he begins the strawberries in February saga.  They love to retell that story.  Ida laughs out loud because she gave me a patch in tuches that made me cry, and Hessel laughs because he saved me from Ida’s spanking and concluded that he was a lousy storyteller.  I listen to them and smile as if I am hearing the story for the very first time.

This is a short story by Molly Gloubcow - A Megillah family member. You can reach Molly at MollyGolubcow@hotmail.com.