One winter night, I went to the Kosel dressed up in a warm
coat and hat. In my pocket were some shekels to distribute to
tzedoka.
A woman came to my chair and I put a shekel in her hand. But
suddenly I had second thoughts. "Are you really a Jewish
woman?" the words popped out of my mouth. She immediately
tried to put the shekel back in my hand, but my fist was
tightly closed. "They say that Arabs dress up as Jews just to
get some money," I explained apologetically.
She then spoke to me in perfect Yiddish. "If that is the
case, let me tell you who I am. I was born in Hungary. When I
was six years old, my father heard they were killing Jews
across the border and he told me to take a few clothes and a
nightgown and to bring along my doll with a few of her
clothes. That night we crossed over the bridge.
"My father found an old abandoned barn. He somehow found some
wood and built a wall inside that big barn. Between the false
wall and the building, he hid Jews. At night, he led them to
the bridge where other Jews were waiting to help them get to
safety.
"One day, Germans came storming into the barn. They started
moving my clothes and my doll, which lay on the floor next to
the false wall. I began to cry, `You're hurting my doll!
You're tearing my clothes.'
"And suddenly, the commander turned to his men and said, `You
won't find anything here,' and away they went."
I looked at this woman and luckily, I found my voice. "Now I
know why those words came out of my mouth when I just spoke
to you. I would never have heard your story otherwise."
The woman turned to leave me and I called after her, "Madame,
when you go to bed tonight and pull up your warm blanket,
please remember you made one old Jewish lady very happy."
[Ed. note: Mrs. Perlman, making her debut in YATED NEEMAN, is
in her late eighties (until 120) and has joined a creative
writers' workshop. She promises she has a hundred such
stories to tell. We wish her long, healthy life so that we
can get to those, and many more!]
