East of Time

EAST OF TIME

Jacob G. Rosenberg

JACOB G. ROSENBERG was born in Lodz, Poland, the youngest member of a working-class family. After the Germans occupied Poland he was confined, with his parents, his two sisters and their little girls, to the Lodz Ghetto, from which they were eventually transported to Auschwitz. Except for one sister (who committed suicide a few days later) all the members of his family were gassed on the day of their arrival. He remained in Auschwitz for about two months, then spent the rest of the war in other concentration camps. In 1948 he emigrated to Australia with his wife Esther; their only child, Marcia, was born in Melbourne. Rosenberg's poems and stories have appeared both in Australia and overseas. He has published three books of poetry in English, as well as three earlier volumes of prose and poetry in Yiddish. This is his second book of prose in English.

ALSO BY JACOB G. ROSENBERG

Poetry and prose in Yiddish

Snow in Spring

Wooden Clogs Shod with Snow

Light — Shadow — Light

Poetry in English

My Father's Silence

Twilight Whisper

Elegy on Ghetto (
video
)

Behind the Moon

Prose in English

Lives and Embers

East of Time

Jacob G. Rosenberg

B
RANDL
& S
CHLESINGER

© Jacob G. Rosenberg, 2005

Cover
: Talmud students. Trnava, Czechoslovakia, 1937 © Roman Vishniac
Author photo © Shoshi Jacobs

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism, review, or as otherwise permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

First published by Brandl & Schlesinger Pty Ltd in 2005

This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Rosenberg, Jacob, 1922–.

East of time.

1st ed.

ISBN 1 876040 66 1

1. Rosenberg, Jacob, 1922–. 2. Jews – Poland – Lodz. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945) – Poland – Personal narratives. 4. World War, 1939–1945 – Personal narratives, Polish. I. Title.

940.5318092

Typeset in 10½ pt Legacy

Book design by András Berkes

For Marcia, with love

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to express my deep appreciation to my editor, Alex Skovron, who like a biblical scribe has led me through three collections of poetry and now two books of prose. I am convinced that thanks to him the gods of literature are watching over me.

My heartfelt gratitude to Professor Louis Waller and Professor Richard Freadman, and to Alex Miller, for giving so generously of their time, reading the manuscript, and offering valued comments and responses.

I want also to thank Bernard Hirsch for his scriptural counsel.

Finally, I am indebted yet again to my dear Esther, who constantly dispels my often self-imposed disenchantments.

 
Preface
 

East of Time
is a rendezvous of history and imagination, of realities and dreams, of hopes and disenchantments. The story is set in Łód
ź
(Lodz), city of the waterless river, the Łódka, which in my time consisted largely of black mud from the town's industrial waste. Thanks to its mighty textile industry, the city was known as the Polish Manchester. My rendezvous spans a period from childhood to early maturity, a period when I witnessed the grand belief in a just new world overtaken, first, by the cataclysmic events of the 1930s, then incarcerated between the walls of the ghetto established in my town by the Germans, and finally silenced at Auschwitz.

The anecdotes, incidents and characters that appear throughout these pages come directly from my memories — although some names have been changed, and occasionally I have succumbed to the storyteller's prerogative (and delight) in a measure of embellishment, not to say invention. The narrative is broadly if not slavishly chronological, with brief excursions where appropriate into the future or the past. The touchstone of these reminiscences — their informing spirit — is the desire and determination of an entire community to remain human, even at the last frontier of life.

The short verses quoted here and there are the songs and poems of the people of my world — an intimate, inseparable part of the
human landscape of the times, and a defiant response to the adversities of daily existence.

As for the many individuals who populate this book, most, with one or two exceptions, are now dead, murdered during those years of darkness. Some readers may question my purpose in summoning up all these names, but the need to recall them is strong within me; perhaps it is the scriptural influence, or maybe the voice of my forefathers, to whom the mentioning of names was a sacred duty.

J.G.R
.

 
Bona Fides
 

I was born to the east of time, in the city of a waterless river, in a one-room palace. My parents were millionaires: father was a textile weaver of dreams, mother was a spinner. My two sisters and I shuttled between the threads of their colourful yarns.

With the break of dawn my father and mother rushed off to work (if there was work), my sisters to school, and I to the nearby kindergarten. I was always the first one there. Alone in the big playroom, I watched the dance of shadows, touched the terror of emptiness, and listened to the drumming of the loose windowpanes in the wind.

At the age of seven I became a student at the unique Vladimir Medem school, a private establishment owned by an ideology, that of the socialist Bund. But a fee still had to be paid, so father forever went about in second-hand suits and shoes — education for his children took precedence. At the school I was taught Yiddish and Polish, history, geography, mathematics, algebra, astronomy, and (most important) how to be a
mensch
. I passed well in most subjects but the last, in which my marks were low.

My teachers were mentors by day, librarians at dusk, and camp-leaders during our holidays. I loved them all, especially
Miss Joskowicz, a tall blonde who taught us Polish history, which I was very fond of. And although I was attentive to every word that emerged through her wholesome cherry lips, I never quite gained the grades I deserved. My father couldn't understand why. How could I explain to this straitlaced weaver, with dreams so different from mine, that between me and the subject I adored stood my beautiful teacher's majestic bosom, for which I was ready to give up not only the Polish kings but the royalty of the whole wide world?