I met Rachel on the first day of her arrival in Berlin in the summer of 1946. She came on the last truck the Bricha had sent from Stettin, Poland, to Germany. The truck brought her and about 40 other fleeing Holocaust survivors to Weisensee, the French Sector, for a delousing procedure and to await transfer to a Displaced Persons camp in the American sector of Berlin.

I was there to welcome the group and to give the children a Hershey bar as they hopped off the truck. When Rachel's turn came she stretched out her hand expecting a chocolate bar. But I didn't give it to her, telling her she wasn't a child.

She was 18 years old and she was the one whom, 15 months later, I would ask to marry me.

During those 15 months, Rachel and I saw each other in the Chaplain's Center, where she participated in the weekly meetings of the Teachers Association which I had organized. During all this time, I had never "dated" her, but in August of 1947, I proposed to her.

She said "yes," but her parents questioned whether she knew enough about me. "Perhaps you fell in love with the uniform," they ventured.

I was in uniform, subject to military orders. And, that week, those orders assigned me to the Zone Austria Command in Salzburg. I appealed to Judge Louis Levinthal, (who, with a simulated rank of Major General, was the advisor on Jewish Affairs to General Lucius D. Clay) to cancel those orders because I wanted to remain in Berlin to be with Rachel. But to no avail.

So from Austria for the next two months I maintained daily contact with her via the telephone. During one of those conversations, the military censor (at that time, all phone calls were censored) interrupted our Hebrew conversation, asking whether this was "an official military call."

"Yes," I replied, "I am a chaplain arranging for a marriage for an officer in the U.S. Army."

Somehow, after several months and despite my uniform, Rachel's parents agreed to the allow their pretty 19-year-old daughter to marry me. In discussing the details of the wedding in Berlin, the problem of seating and feeding hundreds of the invited guests seemed insoluble. When I suggested a buffet dinner, explaining that tables laden with food would be set up where guests would serve themselves, her father recoiled at my suggestion.

"At my daughter's wedding people should line up for food, like an ‘oni bapesach,' a poor man at the door begging for food?'"

This was but the first of many East meets West problems.

The next was at the wedding, held at an estate where the JDC housed its personnel. I asked Corporal Wernick to stand outside Rachel's dressing room to make sure that people wouldn't disturb her. The corporal took his orders seriously. That afternoon he stood at attention, garbed in parade dress, rifle at the ready, and with white gloves (of course) he guarded the room. The crisis: Rachel's mother came to help her daughter but the corporal refused entry. Another East meets West problem.

And, under the chupa there were three rabbis: two from the DP camps and one the American chaplain, my successor in Berlin. As the chaplain began to read the opening prayer in English, the rabbis stopped him, prohibiting him from interrupting the religious service. East meets West?

Despite the buffet, the corporal, and the English prayers, the wedding was a success. Rachel was "given away" by her parents, and I by Judge Levinthal.

We left Berlin the following day and spent a seven-day honeymoon crossing the Alps in my Jeep on our way to my assignment in Austria. During these seven days, I heard Rachel's story.

Survival in Siberia

First a bit of history. Before the outbreak of World War II, the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement provided for the dismemberment of Poland. Germany would get the western part of Poland and the USSR the eastern part. On September 17, 1939, after the collapse of Poland, Russian troops marched in to occupy Rachel's town, Yanov, and immediately proceeded to establish its communist regime. This meant that hundreds of "undesirables" (people who could not be trusted in a communist society) were transferred to Siberia. There is no record of how many Jews from Yanov, which originally had a Jewish population of about 3,000, were exiled to Siberia nor is there a record of how many died there.

Rachel was 12 years old in 1941 when two Russian soldiers stormed her home at midnight, taking her parents, her brother and her to the train station where they were locked into a box car. Rachel's family prepared for this moment. Because her father was the town's Zionist leader and an enterprising business man, the family was slated for exile in Siberia and prepared for their eventual exile by packing food and clothing for the exile.

As the train pulled out of the station, they saw German planes strafing the town. The Nazis had broken their pact with Russia; their tanks occupied Rachel's town, where the Jews who remained in Yanov were exterminated.

Rachel's family thus escaped the Germans, but they knew that danger lay ahead of them. For four weeks they were squeezed in with about 70 other Jews in the box car. rumbling to Siberia, with no food and no water. They survived only because they were able to trade at various train stops the extra clothing they had prudently taken with them.

The Siberian winter was already at its height when the train stopped at a God-forsaken place; Rachel's family, together with six other families, had to walk several kilometers to the nearest village. But upon arriving there good news greeted them: All Polish emigres were given an amnesty -- because of a pact Russia had reached with the Polish government, Polish citizens were granted residence rights in the USSR.

"Residence rights were granted, but no provisions were provided for living space," Rachel told me.

So, for the next four years, Rachel's family moved from one corner of the Soviet Union to the next -- Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, as far as the Chinese border -- to remain alive. Death and disease were rampant wherever they found shelter. Their hope was to reach Iran, from where they could hopefully make their way to Palestine. But another danger loomed on the horizon: a Soviet order to all Polish citizens to enlist in the Army.

"That would have made us subject to Russian law, which would bar us from ever getting to Palestine," Rachel explained.

The only way to remain in Russia and not be subjected to military draft was to find employment. The seven Jewish families, who had stayed together throughout their exile, were able to convince a factory to hire them even though they had no experience in machinery or factory work.

Fear of exposure and sickness stalked them throughout their four-year stay in the Soviet Union, but, Rachel can recall one episode which brought cheer to this small group of survivors.

"One day as the men were hiding in the factory," Rachel said, "an Uzbek policeman came to our hut asking for my father. I told him I did not know where he was. The policeman, with a bayonet slung over his shoulder, took me to the police station and reported to his superior that I was alone in the house. The Police Chief, a typical Uzbek with a fu man chu mustache, dressed in quilted pants and jacket, sat on a pile of blankets and asked where my father can be reached. Before replying, I heard a child's voice chanting the Ma Nishtanah. I jerked my head to a corner of the room and smiled. I saw the chanting boy sitting on the lap of his grandfather. The Police Chief, realizing that I understood the ceremony, ordered the policeman out of the station.

‘Do you know what he is singing?' he asked. I replied that not only did I know his song but that I understood the Hebrew he was chanting.

"When I told him we were Jewish and that there were other Jewish exiles in my group, he asked how we would celebrate Passover, which was only a week away. I replied, somewhat defiantly, that we would be lucky if we had a piece of bread to eat. The officer got up, walked to a closet in the rear of the room and returned with an arms-load of matzah and a bottle of wine. As I parted with my newly-won Passover food, he gave me a Bible which was our proud possession throughout our exile."

Rachel ends her story explaining that the Uzbek police captain was part of the Buchara Jewish community who, even under Soviet domination, managed to maintain their Jewishness and ultimately reached Israel.

When World War II ended, Rachel's family was not allowed to leave the USSR, but in 1946 the government changed its tactics. The exiles were urged to return to Poland, hoping that they would help establish Russia's control in the forthcoming election.

In Poland, they heard reports of the Kilece pogrom, in which 44 Jews who returned to their city to reclaim their property were killed. The family decided against returning to Yanov. Instead, they aimlessly roved through European towns, still seeking a means of getting to Palestine. In one of these towns, the Bricha picked them up and clandestinely transported them to the American sector in Berlin. They remained in Displaced Persons camps from the summer of 1946 to the fall of 1948, when they finally made their way to Israel.

Rachel, who didn't get the chocolate bar from me in Berlin, remained with me as my wife in Austria. However, when we arrived in Linz, two MPs met me to inform me of my next "assignment:" they told me I was under house-arrest and ordered me to return to Salzburg to await further orders. Rachel remained alone in Linz while I returned that night to my BOQ (Bachelors Officers Quarters) in Salzburg.

But that's another story...one for my next column.

You can contact the author at ibbar@aol.com.