Being Jewish — then and now

Heading home on a crowded subway, I nodded hello to a neighbor of mine, a rabbi. When the doors closed at the 96th street station, a tall bald man with a swastika pin on his black coat’s lapel began cursing my neighbor. I wanted to yell STOP IT! But I didn’t utter a word. No one else spoke, either. Did he know some of us were also Jewish? I closed my eyes to block out the man’s words. 

I thought about how my father’s 16-year-old cousin hid that she was Jewish for 50 years. On a warm September day in 1944, she was with her mother and two younger sisters on the jam-packed transport train traveling to Auschwitz. My cousin talked them into jumping off the train when it slowed down at a curve even though they heard soldiers shooting.

I looked over at the rabbi, who was silently staring down at a woman with a young toddler as the tall bald man continued to curse him. Then, the man turned toward me.

“What are you looking at?” he asked.

Everyone stared at me. My cheeks became hot and I looked down. I’ve never hidden being Jewish and I wanted to shout at him, but I was silent. The train moved forward and then suddenly stopped again. I decided to get off when the train arrived at 103rd street, the next station.

My cousin blacked out after she jumped and Polish farmers found her. They took her to their home and she never saw her mother or sisters again. She was well cared for but didn’t want to put the farmers in danger for hiding her in their barn. When she decided to pretend she was Catholic and changed her name from Sala Rosenstrauch to Mary Brejkina, she left and worked in a slave labor camp.

The subway finally arrived at the stop and the man with the swastika pin got off. There was a collective sigh of relief. When my neighbor and I got off at our stop I joined him as we walked home.

“That was horrible,” I said.

“I’m used to it,” he shrugged.

A few weeks later, I decided to do some research about my father’s cousin. I never met her, but my older cousin Joan met her once in 1957. Mary’s true identity was never discovered in the slave labor camp and she married a Catholic Polish partisan in a German Displaced Persons Camp.