THE HEALING FRUIT
AGGIE AND ZINA'S ESCAPE FROM NAZI OCCUPIED EASTERN EUROPE
By Anthony F. Ambrosini


* * * * * *

(1943)
Aggie held her daughters hand tightly. She glanced over at Zina and saw her eyes fluttering and beads of sweat forming on her forehead. She was burning up. 'Help!'� she cried. 'Help me! Someone please, my daughter is ill, she may be dying!'� However there was no help to be found. All of the passengers aboard, crowded together as farm animals on a cattle car, were fighting their own battles, their own struggle for survival. They were merely another mother and daughter, one of dozens, maybe hundreds, on an immigrant ship from Eastern Europe on their way to a new life in America. The only men aboard were the captain, a crew of about eight men, which included three German soldiers, as far as they could tell, but who really cared, and three old men in their eighties or nineties, one priest and a young man of about twenty who was mentally retarded . The only thing on the passengers' minds was to leave Europe and find a safe haven for themselves and their families. A woman in her forties reached over to Aggie with a moist rag to dab her daughter's brow. 'Freuline is your girl sick?'� asked the woman. 'I am not a German responded Aggie, I am a Baltic Jew'�.

* * * * * *

Escape from Europe during World War II was not limited to only the Jews. Nazi Germany was hell-bent on persecution of others as well. This included the Baltic region and the educated professionals who resided there. Aggie, a nurse and her husband Vlad, a peace officer and a lawyer, were separated soon after the occupation of their town in 1942. Aggie would not see, Vlad for the next six years. She and Zina, unknowingly were on the verge of a life changing journey of uncertainty that would last for much longer than anyone dared to imagine.


* * * * * *

Hours passed, days, weeks. No questions were answered, only the hope that all would turn out well. Zina's pink dress and beige jacket were stained with soot and wet from water splashing into the boat. Her feet were cold. She managed to lose the fever, but developed sores on the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet, most probably from blisters that were not healed. Nourishment was at a minimum. The only daily staple was crusty bread and a siv of water. For Zina though there was a treat, a special treat. One of the German soldiers on board had taken a liking to Aggie and would bring her daughter, Zina, a piece of fruit every other day. Sometimes an apple or a pear, or whatever was available. Oh, how she looked forward to the day of fruit. Was there a price that Aggie would later have to pay? Or would Zina? This became known to Zina as the healing fruit. Her mother told her that this fruit contained vitamins and minerals and would keep her healthy until they laid land in their new home.

* * * * * *

(2005)
As I sat in Miss Aggie's living room, staring into the 93 years old woman's crystal clear sky blue eyes and watching her nervously writhe her wrinkled hands together, I was not prepared to hear the horrors that she was about to reveal. The word nightmare had been invented for the events that she was about to tell me of. This was a true story of survival. At the point of desperation, an automatic energy takes over, that is unexplainably strong. The will to live, to survive and to thrive in the face of disaster, death and turmoil is a strength not known to all but a necessity to those who have come through it and lived to tell. For Aggie, it became a piece of history, her history, where her survival was both blessed in what it was and cursed by the knowledge of the brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews that she left behind, those that did not make it. Those who died.

* * * * * *

Miss Aggie offered me an apple. I didn't say anything but I thought it ironic, since I was there writing a story about 'the healing fruit'�. Only then did I notice fruit all over the room. There were fruit bowls on the coffee table and the dining table as well. The painting on the wall above the sofa was a display of oranges and bananas in a green dish. The drapery had cherries along the edge of the seams and the tablecloth was watermelons and seeds on a checkered backdrop. 'Miss Aggie'� I said, 'Do you know I'm calling this story The Healing Fruit?'� She told me that Zina had told her that and she thought it was an appropriate title. I felt glad to have her approval.

* * * * * *

(Aggie)
'I was a nurse; I worked in a local hospital near the Baltic Sea. There were patients there from all three Baltic countries, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. My two older sisters were nurses as well; my one brother was a doctor and the other a police officer near the border. My parents were farmers, very successful farmers. We had money. Our family was respected in the community. Daddy made sure we all had an education and would be professionals. Nobody ever thought about war, until we were thrust into it'�. I watched her eyes as she spoke, I couldn't help but look away as they filled with tears and yet she did not shed a one. 'I need to nap now dear man'� she said to me. 'Come back later when Zina gets home and we'll talk more.'� As I rose to leave, she reached out to me and I took her hand for only a brief moment. 'Rest now Miss Aggie,'� I said to her, 'I'll be back tomorrow.'�

* * * * * *

I decided to go off to the public library to do some research about the time period she was telling me about. I wanted to know more about the politics at the time, the mechanism of war and the country's attitude toward immigrant refugees. I wanted Aggie to see that I knew what I was talking about and be able to ask her and Zina some intelligent questions. At the library, I was overwhelmed by the voluminous amount of information that was available concerning World War II, Nazi occupied Eastern Europe and the Holocaust. Although I new some facts about that time period, there was so much I had never heard of, so much that was so hard to believe. The amount of pain, suffrage and death was enormous! I made a list in my notebook of questions that I wanted to remember to ask Aggie and Zina about, such as what countries they passed through on their journey and how they were treated along the way. How they survived with so little? If they ever were on the verge of giving up hope?

* * * * *I *

My next visit to the mother-daughter home that the two widows shared was a particularly emotional one. When I arrived, Zina let me in and seated me in her small but tastefully furnished living room. On the coffee table were a photo album and what looked like a scrapbook. She excused herself to prepare tea and a snack and told me to start looking through her photo album. These were the only photos that were salvaged after the war. Aggie had not fled with them, they were sent to her several years later by relatives who found them and kept them safe for her. As I opened the album I immediately recognized the first photo to be a young Aggie. Although I had only known her as a woman in her nineties and that these pictures were black and white, there was no mistaking the chiseled nose and brightness of her eyes that was apparent even in black and white. She was standing in a field, her long peasant skirt blowing in the wind. In the background, were two horses grazing and further back yet a large farmhouse. I continued to study that photo for several minutes until Zina came back into the room. Why haven't you looked at the album?'� Zina asked. 'I was waiting for you, because I have questions, I explained.'� We spent the next forty five minutes together going through the photo album. There were less than half a dozen photos of Aggie as a young girl and teenager, a few more of Zina in her youth, and other family members from the 'old country.'� An aunt, some cousins; I especially liked the one photo in the album of Miss Aggie's wedding day. She stood with her new husband Vlad, both with very serious expressions on their faces, holding hands on a small stage covered with flowers. She wore a long laced dress and had a sort veil on her head and he was in a dark suit with a corsage on his lapel. In the lower left hand corner of the photo in faded ink was written 1935.

* * * * * * *

The ringing of the dinner bell startled me. 'Don't be alarmed, it's only Aggie, she rings the bell when she wakes up'� said Zina. 'I wouldn't hear her otherwise. Let me go upstairs and get her ready to talk to you'� When Zina went upstairs I started looking through the scrapbook. The first page held a pale blue hair ribbon that said Zene-13 metu.
I found out that Zene was the foreign spelling of Zina and metu meant 'years old.'� The scrapbook contained handmade cards and notes that were written in a foreign language. There were clippings from newspapers and what I believed to be recipes. In the back of the scrapbook were Xerox copies of green cards and legal papers. Zina returned in about fifteen minutes and told me she was going to bring Aggie tea and crackers and then I could go up and speak to her.

* * * * * * *

Miss Aggie was sitting in her rocking chair when I walked into her large bedroom suite. There was a partition in the room that separated the bedroom area from a sitting area, with her rocker and a small sofa against the far wall facing the window. In one corner was an old secretary's desk with the shelves folded down. On it was an assortment of photos, all of which were in different size sterling silver frames. Some of the photos were old black and white pictures, others were more recent and in color. On the coffee table between her rocker and the sofa was, to no surprise, a bowl of fruit; grapes, apricots and small dark Italian plums. She motioned for me to sit down on the sofa as she lifted her feet from the rocker floor onto a low footstool. 'Ask me whatever you want to know'� she began. 'My memory is pretty good for an old lady.'� She said. I replied, 'There is so much I would like to know, but most of all, instead of all the details, I want to know how you felt, how you dealt with what you were facing and what and where the inner strength that got you through it came from'�

* * * * * * *

(Miss Aggie)
'When I was married in 1935, I was a nurse and my husband Vlad was just installed as a legal barrister in our town of Kleipeda. He had been a peace officer until then. We had a beautiful home and a large portion of land. Vlad wanted children right away, but I didn't want to stop working and wanted to wait. Zene was born in 1939. She was our first and only child. I stopped working at the main hospital in Kaunas, which was 45 miles away, and started as a part time nurse in our hometown clinic after she was 6 month old. Everything in life was so simple, so normal, and we were so happy. When news of the war started circulating, we first thought that we were safe in Kleipeda and had no intentions of leaving. In less than two years, we heard that the town not 200 miles from us had been set afire and the people evacuated; those who had not escaped. Vlad made arrangements for Zene and I to travel to Austria, to one of his co-workers friends place in Vienna where we were promised shelter and refuge. We traveled with another woman and her two young sons. Along the way, over the next three years, we spent time in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and eventually wound up in northern Germany where we boarded a ship to America. When we left home I originally thought or at least was hoping that we would return after a short time, but it was not to be. I left everything behind and left with two suitcases and as much money as I could get my hands on. Vlad stayed behind and was to join us later. He wanted to stay and help the poor less fortunate and went with the militia; he wound up spending three years in Siberia for this good intention. I was so fortunate that I had been educated and spoke five languages fluently, including Russian and German, which saved our lives on more than one occasion. Many of my friends and family never made it out of there. Either they refused to leave because they didn't believe that something so terrible was going to happen, or else they just didn't have the financial means and network of people to do it. We were of the lucky ones. Many did die.'� I asked 'Did you know anyone in the United States?'� Miss Aggie paused and turned to the desk, 'Do you see that picture in the middle of the desk? The one of the priest? He is my second cousin, from my father's side of the family, the catholic side. His parents came here long before the war, for trade purposes, and they never came back. Father Jonas was the one who picked us up upon on arrival at Boston Harbor and started to help us gain footing in America.'� We lived at the church rectory for almost a year and he found work for me at the pickle factory. It was hard for me, of all the languages that I had known, English was not one of them. It wouldn't be for two more long years until I found Vlad, or should I say, he found us. We were living on top of a garage near the pickle factory when word came that Vlad had arrived in New York. He wanted us to join him there because he had been promised a job by a man he met on the ship whose family owned a machine shop that made parts for electrical appliances. Zene was not going to school yet, she was learning English from the nuns in Father Jonas' parish church. We hadn't acquired much, just some clothing and basics that were needed to live. The following week we took a train to New York City.'�

* * * * * * * *

The following day I made arrangements to talk to Zina. Her story was less detailed because she had been so young when the events took place. She told me something quite sweet though. She said she remembered the experience to be similar for her as it was for the young boy in the movie 'Life is Beautiful'�. That film was about a young boy who with his father is imprisoned in a concentration camp but the father pretends that they are on an adventure. He tells the boy that all of the horrible things that they are subjected to throughout the film are for a contest. and the winner at the end receives a fabulous prize. Zina told me that like the movie, Aggie tried to make light of all the hardships they were going through and protected her from the fear and uncertainty that they were facing. Zina vividly remembers the soldier that would bring her the assorted pieces of fruit because she says she looked forward to it all the time. She also remembers that toward the end of their time in Germany, she was living in a basement, sleeping inside a potato sack on a cold dry floor and hiding from the militia, when they came searching for refugees. She had to be very quiet, like Anne Frank when hiding in the attic. I was too young to be frightened; anyway, I wasn't the type of child that cried at the drop of a bucket, I was a feisty girl.

* * * * * * * *

After reuniting with Vlad and settling in a section of New York, known as Greenpoint, life began to take shape. For Aggie and Vlad times were tough, because not knowing the English language, they were forced into menial positions and factory type work. They saved every penny. When Zina was in her sophomore year at high school she started dating an Italian guy she met in science class. He was to become her future husband and father of her three sons. That same year, Aggie lost two fingers on faulty machinery at the factory she was working at. She settled for a nice sum of money, which helped put Zina through college. Vito, Zinas husband, came from a wealthy family and they bought a home in Long Island, near the Long Island Sound. Zina became a child psychologist and Vito had a fleet of private cabs. The three sons grew up in an upper middle class environment and never really understood the hardships mother and grandma went through. It was almost the American dream, coming true. Especially for Zina. After Vlad passed on, Aggie lived with Zina and her family. Once the boys grew up and moved away, with families of their own, and Vito died suddenly of a heart attack, Zina sold the estate and bought a small mother-daughter home closer to the city. For Aggie, her Eastern European roots and homeland always remain close to her heart and the passage of time has calmed her into accepting life on life's terms. 'The future belongs to the young'�, she once said, but her story belongs to us all.

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