Tzipporah Spiro (Part III)

As told to Mrs. Chaya Feigy Grossman

How long were you in the ghetto?

When word reached the ghetto of my grandparent’s fate, the Bobover Rebbe, Hy”d, instructed us not to take the same route. My parents found a non-Jewish man who took a liking to them. They gave him a large sum of money and arranged with him to get passports. He was able to get passports for my sister and I and my mother’s cousin, whose parents were killed around the same time as my grandparents. She was left with just one brother. My parents took this young girl in to stay with us and my grandfather’s brother took the young boy in to live with his family.

We were in the ghetto for a year, until we got passports. Our identity had to be changed. We now became three sisters who were supposedly from a previous marriage of my father. This man found passports from people who had died. My new name became Celina Wrobloski. We traveled with my father and my mother who was supposedly his new bride. Her name was changed to Maria Sloka.

My father felt that to travel by wagon was not safe, after he saw what happened to my grandparents. The Bobover Rebbe’s son, Harav Shlomo, zy”a, suggested that we hire a guide to take us over the border. My father didn’t have a beard. He donned a national hat with a feather so that he looked like a typical non-Jew. My mother colored her hair blonde. She did most of the speaking, being that she was able to converse fluently in Polish. Although my father spoke the Polish language well, he had a Jewish accent.

Please describe your journey with this non-Jewish guide.

When we left the ghetto, our guide warned us that if other people approached us along the way he would leave us. That is precisely what happened. Another family in the same situation met up with us and our guide left us. We continued walking, and when we parted from this family our guide returned to us.

Each person could take one bag along on the journey. We walked during the day and slept in the forests at night. We walked over large hills and creeks. At one point, I felt like I couldn’t continue. My father lifted me and carried me for a while. Our food consisted of berries growing wild along the way, and we drank from the streams of water. We traveled this way for three weeks, until we reached the train station. The train was to take us to the border between Poland and Hungary. With money that my father had hidden, we bought tickets to board the train to Hungary.

How did you proceed once the guide left you?

On the train we were approached by guards and my mother did all the talking; my father didn’t utter a word. When we arrived in Budapest my mother went to the Red Cross. At that time, they were helping refugees. We were very lucky; when we got there my mother met a lovely lady who took a liking to her. My mother explained to her that we were non-Jewish refugees and she was trying to find a place to stay with her husband and three step-children. The woman listened and then came up with an idea; she said, “I have a grandmother who lives on the outskirts of Budapest on the country side. Why don’t we send the children there, and we will tell the neighbors that these are great-grandchildren of my mother, and they just arrived from Poland.”

While in Budapest, the Bobover Rebbe had just arrived as well as the Belzer Rebbe, Harav Aharon, zy”a, and the Satmar Rebbe, Harav Yoel, zy”a. My father united with these Rabbanim, and they organized a girls’ school and later on, a cheder. We attended a Hungarian public school as well, where we learned language, grammar and mathematics.

We stayed with the grandmother for six months. Since it was situated near the airport, bombs began to fall, and it became too dangerous to remain there. The grandmother got in touch with her granddaughter Maria and informed her that it was no longer safe to live there.

Maria (who we began calling Tanta Maria) did inquiries and found a Catholic convent which was under Swedish auspices and supposedly very good. My parents took us over there. We acted strictly like goyim; we went to church every day. My sister would remind me and my cousin each night to say Krias Shema.

to be continued…

These survivors’ memoirs are being compiled by Project Witness.