East of Time (33 page)

Spring 1943. Europe's socialism was sinking into an abyss of iniquity, with the German and Austrian socialist parties fully integrated into the Nazi movement. Yet we Bundists in the ghetto of the waterless river had not begun to question our beliefs, not even when to our horror we learnt that the waterside workers in faraway New Zealand had gone on strike,
refusing (after their government had rejected their demands for a pay rise) to load some armour destined for the war effort against the Axis. We were hurt but did not judge — nothing could shake our belief that the solidarity of the free world would in the end prevail.

On May Day, I arrived at work earlier than usual and secretly (so I thought) chalked a big zero on the daily production-target board. I was denounced and summoned to the office of the factory director, Kohen. ‘Saboteur, saboteur!' he yelled, shaking his fist into my face. ‘I'll teach you!' Although Kohen was also an officer in the ghetto police, he had recently been warned by my co-workers that if he didn't control his cruel excesses he would be taken care of. Kohen was a known funk. I've heard somewhere that the rattlesnake is essentially a coward, its rattle acting as a cover for its dread.

A day or so later, at around midnight, there was an alarming knock on our door, followed by the sound of a familiar voice. It belonged to Motele Hoizer, my party's secret messenger. ‘Hurry,' he urged, ‘there's no time to lose, they're coming to get you. Your parents must hide too; they're taking hostages.'

Mother looked distraught. As we dressed, father remarked to Motele: ‘To find a hiding-place in a prison is like finding sanity in an asylum, and we live in both.'

‘Please,' Motele replied, ‘there's no time for philosophy. It's only for one night. We have received reliable information that this is the last transport, for the time being.' And almost at once he was off into the dark again, to return to his own home.

Adjacent to our room lived a quiet eighteen-year-old student, Zev. His parents had been killed four years ago in an airraid, and his sick sister had been thrown out of a hospital window into a waiting German truck for dispatch to the gas
chambers of Chelmno. Zev lived alone. We told him we would hide in the disused attic on the top floor of the building. ‘Fine, just go!' he hissed. ‘Run for your lives.'

Shortly afterwards we heard, from our attic hideout, the impudent clatter of police boots — and Zev's screams. ‘I don't know where they are!' he cried. ‘I don't know anything, and I'm not going, I'm not going!' The policemen gave him a merciless beating, but Zev stood his ground and they left empty-handed. A few minutes later he stumbled up the stairs and found us. He was bleeding all over. ‘Don't come back yet,' he whispered. ‘You don't know how cunning they are.'

For a while the four of us stood there together in the dark, hugging each other. Mother kissed Zev, and he cried. I don't think it was because of the beating. Zev was alone: he had no one to kiss him.

Next evening Motele brought news that the Russian armies on the eastern front were pressing their former ally hard, in Africa the Germans were in retreat, and there was serious talk about a second front in the west. The war was surely drawing to an end, yet this seemed to make little impression on the behaviour of the Kohens and their ilk — ‘patricians of our circus state', as father put it, who still looked upon our puppet chairman with an air of reverence and admiration.

On the other hand, although our ghetto continued to be emptied of its Jews, we Bundists never lost faith in socialism — and in Schiller.

 

 The Merchant
in Ghetto
 

Kalman, the man I had befriended in the queue while waiting for our daily bread allocation, had come from a different town. He told me about the lively cultural life of his home ghetto,
which had a small underground library, several reading circles and a semi-legal theatre condoned by the authorities. A particular event he related to me during one of our meetings has all the elements of legend, and maybe a legend is what it is. Yet there are few nobilities or cruelties in fiction that can equal the realities of my time. Here is Kalman's account, more or less as I remember it.

One dull Monday morning a black Mercedes made its way through the practically deserted ghetto streets, and pulled up softly in front of the theatre. The chauffeur jumped out smartly, swung open the rear door with gusto, and stood to attention as his superior, a man in his mid-fifties wearing a trim green-grey uniform, emerged from the car.

He was welcomed on the pavement by Moish Kawa, the stage director, who reverently bowed his head and led the German censor, Hans Hoffmann, to his tiny office. Depositing a parcel of food on the manuscript-cluttered desk, Hans, who was well aware of Moish's erudition, and of the irony of the bow, remarked: ‘I like you, Moish. You are a compulsive communicator, like all good artists.'

‘Thanks, Herr Hoffmann, but you give me too much credit,' the other replied. ‘An artist-poet, more than any other person, has a responsibility to reflect justice and decency, and above all to oppose evil.'

‘Quite so.'

‘One of my teachers, the poet Broderzon, once delivered a lecture based on an old tale. A simple man was strolling with the prophet Elijah when he noticed in the distance a group of Jews passionately engrossed in prayer. “Tell me, Elijah,” he asked, “will these men have a share in the world to come?” “No,” the prophet replied. Further on, they spotted two strange figures with top-hats and colourful canes. “These two,” said Elijah, “will be entitled to a share in the world to come — they
are comedians, actors, entertainers. As such, they are bringers of hope, joy and laughter to a downcast humanity.” That, my teacher concluded, is the ideal of true theatrical art.'

Hoffmann was smiling. ‘You were blessed with a fine teacher, Moish. I agree wholeheartedly with his philosophy.'

‘If that's the case,' said the director to the censor, who took an interest in Moish's family life, regularly bringing food and medicine for his family; ‘if that's the case — and you know there is nothing personal in my question — then tell me, good sir, why are your people, who are so soaked in culture, in great theatre and poetry and sublime music, doing such unspeakable things to us?'

Hoffmann nodded sadly, then answered in a whisper, lest the very walls hear and betray him. ‘Obedience is inherent in my people's makeup — obedience to authority, which one must not dare to question. And according to the teaching of that authority, your crime is your birth. Luther drummed it into our psyche. It is written in the sixteenth chapter of John, verse 6:
If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and withers; and men gather the branches, and throw them into the fire, and they are burned
.'

‘I'm impressed. But how do
you
feel about that, Herr Hoffmann?'

‘I think it's wrong, though I'm a devoted Christian... But I did not come today, my friend, to discuss religion. I've brought you a strict order from my superior, a playwright who thinks of himself as an artist of the first rank. He wants you to stage his version of
Der Kaufmann in Venedig
. He plans to invite many high dignitaries and military officials to the opening. You see, our playwright is convinced that the Jews bribed “that shopkeeper Shakespeare”, as he puts it (our Führer says the English are a nation of shopkeepers), to insert a Jewish speech into the play. In order to right this wrong, he has rewritten some of Shylock's
lines.' Hoffmann pulled a manuscript from his briefcase and quickly located the relevant page. ‘Here we are.'

Moish read through the proposed changes to Shylock's celebrated speech (‘Hath not a Jew eyes?') in the third act. After a prolonged silence, he said: ‘My dear Herr Hoffmann, to do this would be a betrayal of my lifelong belief in theatre, and of the philosophy you so wholeheartedly endorsed just now.'

The German fell back in his chair. ‘You know what this means, don't you? Your refusal could spell your end. And for me... well, to fail at my age is not a very good affidavit for one's future. Think what you are doing by refusing.'

But the director remained steadfast. Hoffmann left, never to be seen again, and
The Merchant
was never staged in that ghetto. Yet Moish Kawa, with his perceptive Semitic eyes, miraculously made it through the war. He spent many years searching for his benefactor, who was reputed to have once been a superb Horatio in Max Reinhardt's
Hamlet
, at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1909. But all his searching came to naught. Finally, it dawned on him that Hans Hoffmann was possibly none other than one of those strange figures in Broderzon's tale, who, for carrying a spark of light during a season of darkest despair, had doubtless been promoted to the domain of the world to come.

 

 
Vestibule
 

In the shadow of death, some people dream of bread while others argue metaphysics.

Aron Wolman, one of my mentors in the ghetto, was a man in his early forties, tiny of stature but deep of voice, with a penetrating gaze. ‘There are many ways of reading, of interpreting
our scripture, of musing upon our folklore,' he remarked one day, closing those gleaming eyes of his, perhaps to protect some inner vision. ‘It is told that Abram smashed his father's clay idols to pieces, then placed the stick he had used into the hands of the oldest god. When asked by his angry father, Terah, “What have you done?”, Abram answered: “It wasn't me, father — your chief god did this.”'

Aron smiled, though hunger was reverberating in his stomach. (He ate only once a day, just a morsel of bread; the rest, whatever there was, he gave to his young teenage daughter, who was dying of tuberculosis.) ‘Abram's deed,' he went on, ‘can be seen as the first human rebellion against paganism, the first proclamation of the one and only invisible God... Invisibility!' his deep voice rang out emphatically. ‘What a mighty contribution to a loftier monotheism—'

There was a sharp whistle, followed by shots, cries, a scream. ‘
Raus, raus, alle Juden!
' Abruptly, Aron's face was drained of all colour. But without losing his composure he switched off the light, walked towards the door and attached to it a note with a single word printed in red ink:
TYPHUS
. Then he came quietly back to his seat.