He Who Saves One Life
Halperin, Michael
HE WHO SAVES ONE LIFE MICHAEL HALPERIN [Passover, 1981, Tel Aviv, Israel Thirty people sit around the festive table on the first night of the Passover seder. Candles flicker in their silver...
...Stunned with what he saw, he realized the rumors were mere shadows of the truth...
...Alex made fast friends with some Russian officers who packed the family into a German truck and drove them to the city...
...This was the first of several devastating raids that made life,«a constant nightmare...
...in physics, and, later, David received his Doctorate in mathematics...
...By this time, he had married Mela and they decided that farming wasn't for them...
...Little, if any, medicine was available to Polish citizens...
...until the bed broke...
...If not, the property and the money will be useless...
...The cottontail slowly hopped over to check it out...
...Nevertheless, he didn't sleep...
...The incident is still vivid in Alex's memory...
...Shalom was five, but he looked like a three-year-old...
...Alex inspires trust...
...Shalom called out...
...and if Alex didn't get out, his children would revenge his death...
...Kowalski) admitted Yurek into the hospital, but Shalom had to remain in the apartment because of the danger that he might be identified...
...Mela was a little girl at the time, but she remembers that Alex's father always fought for unpopular causes...
...It was dangerous for a non-Jew to be inside the ghetto," Alex remembered, "so I wore a Jewish star on my arm...
...Alex dragged the man to the town doctor, demanding a certificate that he hadn't been circumcised...
...Alex digresses for a moment, his face clouding over...
...When the sun rose the Russians were already in town and the Germans had retreated...
...In a way it was a fortunate incident...
...He finally convinced his Jewish friends to bring him through one of the myriad tunnels burrowed beneath the walls...
...pWhy is this particular night different from all other nights...
...Dayenu...
...The Roslans weren't immune to that kind of spying...
...Disease-carrying rats scurried everywhere...
...Several years ago a young Ph.D...
...Would he ask her to murder her own children...
...And in one of those coincidences that would be edited out in fiction, they ran into Mela's brother, Vladek...
...The house reflects the character of its owners—warm and simple...
...The next day Alex returned to the arms of his family...
...Mary's case was mild...
...Galler...
...Instead, there's a fifth question...
...When Mela visited him he instructed her to take their savings and bribe the prison secretary in order to gain his freedom...
...They dragged Alex to prison, where he was scheduled to be executed for aiding both partisans and Jews...
...From 1939 to 1940, Alex played out his days as an ordinary merchant selling textiles on the free market...
...By 1939, Alex and Mela lived in Warsaw and had two children, Yurek and Mary...
...The next day she showed up with her husband who happened to be the Russian military governor of the area...
...In return they blackmailed the Jews for more money, threatening that otherwise they would turn the children over to the Nazis...
...Impressed by Roslan's honesty, he asked him what he wanted...
...Many of his customers were Jews...
...It was this iconoclastic enviwere only interested in men for slave labor, the grandfather, the children's father and his brothers escaped to the east...
...Later, Alex recalled that his mother thought he was dead...
...He recently completed a screenplay based on the Roslan story under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and with sponsorship of theJudah L. Magnes Memorial Museum in Berkeley, California...
...ronment that played such a large part in Alex's background...
...After their tour in the United States, Jacob and David returned to Israel...
...In spring, 1943, Galler brought the youngest brother, David, to the Roslans...
...He was frail and weak, having spent six months cramped in an attic space with no room to stand...
...Because Alex's personality was, and still is, vivacious, his humor infectious, his love of life contagious, and his honor and word his bond, the Jews inside the ghetto knew he was one of the few Poles they could trust...
...Fortune turned to misfortune when the armed forces of the Third Reich and the Soviet Union invaded Poland...
...From his father, Alex also understood that those who follow like sheep are soon led to the slaughter...
...Rumors circulated throughout Warsaw about the real meaning of the mass deportation and conditions behind the walls...
...The Jews inside knew that time was running out and they intended to make one last stand...
...Back in the house we talked...
...From his jail cell he heard and saw other prisoners cut down by machine guns in the courtyard...
...Fate took the Roslans by the hand in the form of Stanley Sokolski, an old friend who had been the chauffeur for a Jewish family prior to the Nazi invasion...
...Alex is alive, optimistic and bubbly...
...It was a time when neighbor turned against neighbor, when even close friends spoke warily to one another lest their words be misinterpreted...
...But me isn't finished...
...Despite Yurek's efforts, Shalom's condition worsened...
...One lonely day in 1947, Alex, Mela and Mary placed David and Jacob on a train for Portugal as they left on the first leg of their journey...
...And it was a lucky move...
...Alex refused to accept the same fate...
...On either iside of Nathan sit his nephews, Jacob and David Gilat...
...The Roslans had hidden from German bombers in the cellar of the building...
...Alex had a large family to feed...
...In 1943, Alex was busy running guns and ammunition to the Warsaw Ghetto...
...There was a movement in the bushes and a small, wild cottontail rabbit popped up his head...
...If we manage to get out of this Nazi hell you can pay me...
...I told her I didn't care to talk about money, but the boy...
...He recalls that many people were paid to take Jewish children...
...Alex reached under a plant and took out a dish filled with rabbit food...
...There was no way Jacob could use his own name—it was obviously Jewish...
...Jacob became a nuclear physicist and David is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Tel Aviv...
...At eight o'clock in the morning the place was empty...
...They were picking dead children off the road...
...He said it wouldn't make any difference...
...Yurek, although only about 11 years old, had his father's courage...
...Alex told him he wished to get to Berlin with his family...
...In Jacob's and [bavid's eyes, the Roslans are very special...
...I said, 'Yes, I have an appointment...
...I don't know with whom...
...Once he was cleared, everyone was safe...
...It was a way station, a tiny hamlet where they might wait out the war...
...After this episode, Alex built a hiding place for Jacob under the floor beneath the kitchen sink...
...It could have been the Gestapo," Alex explains...
...With entrepreneurial nerve he sold the material, buying food, clothes, guns and ammunition and returning them behind the walls...
...Very Polish and very safe...
...He had heard the same story in Warsaw and the Russians never arrived...
...Alex wanted to take the boys to Palestine himself, but the British refused to permit him passage...
...candidate from the University of California at Berkeley approached Rabbi Schulweis and related a story about a gentile couple who had saved him and his brother during World War Two...
...The Roslan story was first told to me almost casually, by Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California...
...After hearing the story, Alex insisted that the chauffeur get at least one of the children out...
...They were so skinny...
...Overnight, Alex saw friends and customers disappear...
...Miraculously, Jacob was spared for the time being...
...One day, the fearful owner of the home where they stayed ran to Alex with a report that some of the townspeople thought Alex was Jewish...
...There, he met the children's aunt, Hanka, who cautiously looked Alex over...
...Alex interrupted her: "After the war we'll talk about it...
...Bayonets ripped through the furniture while Jacob hid under the floorboards of the kitchen cabinet...
...The family for whom he worked had three children...
...A few months later, Dr...
...The boys were sent to a center for medical attention where they were fed and cared for while the Roslans were housed in a small Berlin apartment...
...But I didn't know what to do...
...Rifle butts slammed into walls...
...It was not the best of times...
...An epidemic of scarlet fever and typhoid ravaged the city while hospitals overflowed with people...
...Shocked, Mela stared at Vladek and told him they were like her own children...
...Wholesale destruction of the city by the Nazis had begun...
...Passover, 1981, Tel Aviv, Israel: The haggadah is read, but a new paragraph has been added by Jacob and David, both men in their forties: "Why is this particular night different from all other nights...
...Israel is far from the United States...
...And for two little boys the distances are enormous...
...No one knew where he was...
...The city of Warsaw had been blasted and bombed by the Nazis...
...Disappointed, Alex and Mela saw the dream of helping even one child evaporate—until one day when there was a knock on the door and they faced a suave, elegant gentleman dressed in a Tyrolian costume...
...Unfortunately, however, Vladek lacked Alex's courage...
...On the first day of the uprising, Yurek slipped out into the courtyard to get water—despite his parents' objections...
...Alex forcefully reminded him that the Russians stood poised on the east bank of the Vistula River, ready to invade...
...She's also the picture of the grandmother everyone wants...
...The next day a Soviet car and driver pulled up to their living quarters and all of them were whisked to Berlin in style...
...Although we had only spoken on the telephone, they invited me into their small home as if I were an old friend...
...The last table bore the caption Der A bbau der Polenstadt und der A ufbau der Deutsche Stadt (The Destruction of the Polish City and the Construction of the German City...
...I went home and told my wife we had to do something for the children...
...He took charge immediately and with his three brothers brought the farm back to a decent state of productivity...
...Shortly after Jacob came to live with them a neighbor visited the flat unannounced...
...They'll die anyway...
...I went to him and the little boy said to me, 'Maybe I'll feel better if you hold me.' So I picked him up and held him—and he died in my arms...
...Because I think I can help...
...Once there, they entered the British sector...
...Candles flicker in their silver holders casting a golden glow on the jhaggadahs spread out on the table of Sarah and Nathan Gutgeld...
...And it's only through the remarkable effort of Alex and Mela Roslan that we were saved...
...The Roslans welcomed the opportunity with open arms...
...Okay," Alex told Galler, "I'm ready to take the child...
...Sewage ran in the streets...
...The people and the partisans tore up streets and fought the Nazis with guns, pitchforks and clubs...
...The man could have been a Gestapo agent...
...This gave him some freedom of movement...
...The Roslans weren't immune to the epidemic...
...Jacob, David and the Roslans lost tokich with one another in body, though not in soul...
...My Jewish friend stopped me...
...Galler referred Alex to a certain Dr...
...The baker's son pulled Alex aside and told him not to go to sleep that night...
...Then luck played into their hands once more: a woman approached Alex with word that she might know the children's father, who lived in Palestine...
...A German sniper hiding in another building shot and killed the teenager...
...The Nazis came back to Warsaw with a vengeance, wiping out everything and everyone before them...
...A moment later, a door opened and Hanka appeared with Jacob...
...A number of years later, David attended Columbia University and re-established relations with the Roslans...
...Funds accumulated until one day at the end of July, 1944, the Gestapo raided the new flat...
...Galler brought the second brother to the Roslans...
...Jacob hid in the bedroom beneath a pile of blankets...
...I listened, questioned and heard how people become heroes...
...During the course of his sales he gave a woman a discount on some fabric...
...As usual, the methodical Germans filled the plan with all kinds of graphs and tables...
...The soldiers burst in with guns and rifles ready...
...then the man left abruptly...
...If you want Jews," she raged in a trembling voice, "look in my pockets, maybe they're in there...
...All eyes turn to the two guests at the table, Alex and Mela Roslan...
...He worked the black markets dealing in anything he could find...
...Despite the great risk involved, Alex was determined to go inside the ghetto...
...Neither the Roslans nor Galler had any money, so Alex took matters into his own hands and sold his apartment...
...Alex called him—and to this day continues to refer to Jacob as— "Genyek...
...Then, in 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto was built...
...The Roslans relaxed for the first time in years...
...It turned out to be Dr...
...Scarlet fever struck viciously at Yurek and Shalom...
...I didn't know who this was...
...On August 1, 1944, the Warsaw uprising began...
...Years later, Jacob and David came to the University of California at Berkeley, where Jacob received his Ph.D...
...I saw so many children, hungry and starving...
...And at precisely two the eastern front lit up as if a million flashbulbs had burst...
...I know the story and I saw what I saw in the ghetto...
...Both are In their early seventies, but alert, bright and vivacious...
...The Roslans corresponded with the father, confirming his identification...
...Jacob had his operation and lived, but the Roslans were forced to move to a derelict, bombed-out building...
...Once in the Roslan home, Mela, Mary and Yurek made Jacob feel part of their family...
...The next day, the prison secretary showed up in Alex's cell, gave back the money and told Alex it was impossible...
...Jacob joined them there, for a joyous reunion...
...He entered with a great deal of trepidation, sat down in the waiting room and was immediately confronted by a stranger who asked him if he were waiting for someone...
...In Alex Roslan's case, it apparently came from his father and grandfather...
...It seems that the father, the brothers and the grandfather had made their way through Russia down to Turkey and had spent the war years in Palestine...
...Between bombings and raids, Alex and Mela buried Yurek in a local cemetery, swearing to return one day and place a stone on his grave...
...Finally, he took another flat on a lower floor of the building and traded from there...
...From the time of their liberation in Poland through their stay in Berlin, the Roslans actively searched for the boys' relatives, using all the facilities of various Jewish organizations to no avail...
...A few weeks later, Jacob came down with scarlet fever...
...Once in this country, the boys searched for the Roslans and finally located them in Queens, New York...
...If one believes in miracles, then a miracle occurred...
...Outside, Alex showed me the small yard where he has planted fruit trees...
...Galler (using his forged papers as Dr...
...But before returning to Israel, Jacob and David and the Roslans had made a promise to each other: one day they would be together in Israel...
...In January 1945, Jacob walked home with Alex down the dirt road of the town...
...Galler, who had a forged Polish passport under the name Kowalski...
...His brothers bought his share and with a new bride and a little money he set off to make his fortune in the city...
...Galler disappeared and the boys' grandmother and Aunt Hanka were shipped to Auschwitz...
...Since no one knew them, the villagers assumed the children were his...
...Galler sent Alex to an apartment house one block from the ghetto...
...The children came around me and begged for a penny to buy some bread...
...And Yurek Roslan was killed...
...The neighbor insisted that Alex had a third child...
...The story so intrigued me that I spent the next three months tracking down leads until I found the Roslans Michael Halperin is a motion picture and television writer...
...From Warsaw they went to Lodz, the former textile capital of Poland, where Alex located a treasure trove of fabrics in an old factory, made a deal for them even though he was penniless, and ended up selling the whole load on the street market...
...They left Kaminsk by train and finally arrived in the winter of 1944 at a town between Siedlce and Treblinka...
...However, before the deal was consummated, Stanley was apprehended with contraband and he and six others were summarily executed by the Gestapo...
...Alex denied the allegation, but knew his neighbor wasn't satisfied...
...They stopped at the baker and bought a loaf of black bread...
...Because, just as our ancestors were slaves of pharoah.in E^ypt, we were like slaves of the Nazi regime in the Warsaw Ghetto...
...David and Jacob leaped on the small bed and jumped up and down shouting, "We're free...
...Unfortunately, the family was split apart by the authorities...
...Three years later the "dead son" returned to a farm that was almost destitute and kicked his stepfather off the place...
...When his mother made her daily visits he gave her the medicine and instructions for Shalom...
...Unfortunately, he couldn't go outside or even sit by a window for fear of being seen...
...Shortly after, the Gestapo raided the apartment when Mela was alone with Mary, Yurek and Jacob...
...The Russian agreed to help the Roslans...
...Still, at no time during this period were all four together at the same time...
...It was this maelstrom into which the Roslans moved...
...At last they came to the town of Kaminsk...
...She handed Alex the eight-year-old and informed him that when the war was over she would give him half of everything she owned...
...He got as far as the next village and went to work tending sheep and cattle...
...The youngest child, Shai Gilat, David's son, reads the Four Questions...
...Alex was about 12 years old when his father died...
...This was the Passover of the Ghetto Uprising...
...A year later, the Roslans left for the United States...
...He begged Mela and Alex to let Jacob and David go before they were caught...
...Alex didn't believe him...
...Over the next few months they walked mile after mile, always eluding the Germans, always in danger that an eager "patriot" would report the Jewish children...
...While Alex is reticent to discuss them, Mela recalls Alex's father vividly...
...We're free...
...In September 1939, there were fifty thousand dead and 12 percent of the buildings destroyed...
...Assuming the Nazis living near Tampa, Florida...
...Quickly, Alex and Mela packed up the children and headed back for Warsaw...
...So Alex ran away from home dreaming of becoming a great architect...
...Alex smiled as he remembered the conversation...
...Mela often takes a back seat to her husband, but in her own way is an amazing tower of strength—a good balance to Alex's ebullience...
...only an operation could save the boy's life...
...Alex continued the small talk for a few minutes...
...Stanley agreed to contact the children's uncle, Dr...
...He wasn't a religious man and preferred to be thought of as an atheist...
...He saved half of all his medicine and wrote down everything the nurses and doctors did for him...
...Just then, a horsecart came down the street...
...The Roslans, with their daughter and the two boys, made their way out of the city, joining an exodus of hundreds of thousands of others...
...The parents had been taken to 'farms.' But we knew what that meant...
...The populace of the city was overjoyed even though they faced a formidable foe...
...At two in the morning," he whispered, "the Russians will start the offensive...
...A few days later, Alex resumes, he went to another rendezvous x point, a factory abutting the gnetto...
...Time after time, clandestine goods were smuggled out of the ghetto into Alex's hands...
...The first thing she said was that she had no money to give me...
...The Nazi goal, according to an outline called Warschau, die Neue Deutsche Stadt (Warsaw, the New German City), was to obliterate the capital and in its place raise a strictly German city served by Polish slaves...
...The feisty lady told the Gestapo to leave at once...
...His mother remarried a man who, in Alex's words, "didn't like to work, slept until eleven in the morning, and let the farm go to hell...
...Masurik at the hospital who advised Alex that unless he bribed the hospital personnel Jacob might be reported...
Vol. 6 • July 1981 • No. 7
