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In The Ghetto with My Mother

By Erika Eckstut

One day my mother asked me to take off my yellow star because we had to go to the country. We lived in a ghetto, and we were not supposed to leave. If we were caught on the outside we could be killed and they also might kill other people in the ghetto for good measure. But both my mother and I had blue eyes and blonde hair and spoke German fluently and therefore did not think that we would be discovered as Jews from the ghetto.

Without asking any questions, I took off the star and waited for Mother to get ready. She wore my father’s winter coat, which was very nice with a fur collar. We walked for a long time without stopping. After a while, my mother started to explain that Grandmother was very ill and that she wanted to get a chicken for her. I wondered how she was going to get a chicken. How would we carry it?

After a long time, we came to a farm where we saw a lot of chickens. My mother approached the farmer and told him she would like to buy one. She wanted to pay for the chicken with money, but the farmer did not want money. He only wanted her coat. She agreed under two conditions: one, that he would kill the chicken, and two, that he would clean it. The farmer agreed. He killed and cleaned the chicken and gave it to my mother. She in turn gave him my father’s coat. I could not believe that we had a chicken and that mother had given away the coat.

On the way home I asked my mother if she was cold and she said, no, she was not cold. When we finally arrived back in the ghetto, she washed the chicken and placed it in a pot on the portable stove. I watched my mother cook and did not say a word. She made soup from the chicken and gave it to Grandmother. Grandmother wanted to know who had killed the chicken because she was very religious.My mother said without blinking, “The Shokhet [ritual slaughterer].” I could not believe what she had said.

My father saw the look on my face and took me aside and asked me what was wrong. I said that Mother had lied to Grandmother. I told him I saw who killed the chicken and it was the farmer. My father said he knew that Mother had lied to Grandmother. He said Grandmother was very ill, and she would not eat the soup unless a Shokhet had killed the chicken. He said if God saw what Mother did, he would understand that the lie was to save Grandmother from starving to death.

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