The Time of the Uprooted (19 page)

“An hour after the doomed people had been taken away,” Bolek said, “I crawled under the barbed wire and back to the ghetto. I expected to find it empty, but instead the streets resembled a hive: Dazed, disoriented people were wandering every which way, searching for a relative, a friend. They would ask one another, ‘Have you seen . . .’ No, no one had. ‘Where are they taking them?’ No one knew. ‘To prison?’ Perhaps. ‘To a camp? To a village nearby?’ Possibly. ‘Will they be coming back soon?’ Surely. No one could conceive of what had really happened. Here and there, people were trying to look reassuring. But most could ill conceal their happiness, even though diminished by loss, at having escaped the roundup. I, too, was joining in such exchanges. I located my other brothers and sisters, and their children, including little Moishele. We had survived for the moment, but we did not rejoice. How could we? We were alive but walled in, and that denied us any pleasure in living.

“Some time later, I was contacted by a clandestine Zionist who was with the underground movement. This group, weakened by the recent roundup of several of its fighters, was recruiting intensively. I was reluctant at first. I expressed my doubts to one Zelig, who had been sent on a moonless night to sound me out. ‘You really believe you can fight the Germans? How many tanks do you have? And how many divisions? They have the best-equipped, most powerful army in the world. They’re arrogant and triumphant. They crushed Poland, humiliated France. They defeated a lot of armies, conquered a lot of nations, pushed the Red Army back to the outskirts of Moscow. And you think you can hold your own against them for a week, even a day? I swear, you’re out of your minds.’

“Zelig listened without reacting; then he spoke a single line, which hit me like a slap in the face: ‘And what about our Jewish honor?’

“I blurted out, ‘What’s Jewish honor got to do with it?’

“He had his answer ready: ‘It’s dishonorable to let the enemy do whatever he wants, torture and torment and kill at will, without showing any will to resist.’

“That made me angry. ‘In other words, according to you and your group, those they took away three weeks ago, my family among them, lived and died without honor? Explain to me what gives you the right to sit in judgment on them.’

“Perhaps Zelig was expecting such an outburst, for he did not appear to be offended. ‘You didn’t understand, because I didn’t express myself right. It’s not a question of their honor, but ours. There was nothing they could do, but we can do something, and it doesn’t much matter what. Not to defeat Hitler’s Germany—to hope for that would be lunacy—but to leave a mark, however faint, on our history.’

“I asked to think it over, but then I caught myself right away. What was there to think about? The danger? How could fighting in the resistance be any more dangerous than life in the ghetto? ‘All right, I’ve thought it over. Count me in.’

“My enlistment was sealed with a handshake.

“I often met with Zelig, the other members of our cell, and our commander, Abrasha. He’d been a soldier in the Polish army and was supposed to train us to handle weapons. Trouble was, we had no weapons, or very few. A few revolvers and grenades bought on the outside, some Molotov cocktails fabricated by two chemists from Kraków, all doled out sparingly and kept in ultrasecret hiding places.

“I won’t talk to you about ‘my’ resistance. I did nothing to garner glory. I believe we were wrong, in our ceremonies and commemorations after the war, to make such a contrast between victims and heroes. I agree with the witness who said that in those days ‘the heroes themselves were victims, and the victims were heroes.’

“But I wanted to see you today to talk about something else, about an episode that even today still weighs on my conscience.

“When I was back in the ghetto, I went straight to my parents’ home, hoping to find I don’t know what. Perhaps a letter, some sort of sign—from them to me. Nothing. A Bible on the table. A book of prayers open to the Lamentations of the Ninth Day of the Month of Av. On the bed, a coat my mother had forgotten. Hannele’s comb. At the first alarm, they must have reacted quickly, very quickly, hurrying to the underground shelter because every second counted. Once in the bunker, there would have been a lot to do: close the trapdoor, plug holes, arrange the furniture, settle down in silence. . . . By ghetto standards, it was a safe hiding place, far safer than those where Reuven and his family were. But that was just it: Since the bunker was so well concealed, how was it that the Germans discovered this hiding place, while so many others escaped their notice?

“A disturbing, troublesome question. I spent hours with what was left of my family and a few close friends going over all the possible explanations. Had someone in the shelter coughed or sneezed or made some wrong move at a time when you had to clench your teeth and your fists until they ached? Had a baby cried? We questioned neighbors and acquaintances; they knew nothing. One of them suggested the Germans might have been using some special instruments to tap the walls and detect the slightest sound emanating from the cellar or the attic. It seemed plausible to us; after all, they were past masters at that art, and they would resort to any means to track us down and eliminate us. In the end, it was the woman, the only one to escape, who gave us the answer. I ran into her by chance on the street, in front of the
Judenrat
housing office. She seemed in a daze. Since she now had no family, they had made her move out of her room to a smaller room, in the home of strangers. ‘I wonder why God spared me,’ she muttered when I spoke to her. ‘God has His reasons, and we’re too stupid to understand them,’ I responded, surprised at myself for using one of my father’s favorite lines. Since she seemed not to be listening, I persisted. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but you may be able to help me.’ She snorted derisively. ‘Me help you? I have nothing; I am nothing. How could I be of any use to you?’ I told her my parents were in the same transport with her. For the first time, her face showed a gleam of interest. ‘Who are you?’ she asked. I told her. ‘Oh, you’re the son of the rabbinical judge? Yes, yes. Oh, I saw your father. . . .’ And she repeated her account of his death. I told her I was baffled. How had his shelter been discovered? ‘I’ve questioned the neighbors, witnesses, but no one can clear it up for me.’ She looked me straight in the eye without changing expression. ‘It’s obvious,’ she said. ‘They were betrayed.’ I confess that for the moment I was stunned. What, someone gave them away? So there were informers in the ghetto? Jewish scoundrels who were helping the Germans? Jews so corrupted that they’d betray their own people to the Gestapo? I couldn’t bring myself to accept it. ‘You’re sure?’ I asked her. Yes, she was sure. ‘It’s the same man who betrayed us all,’ she said in an even tone.”

Bolek stopped, and Gamaliel respected his silence. I hope, he was thinking, that I’ll prove worthy of taking this testimony. And to commit it to my memory. And to protect it. For history, as they say. Is this not what Bolek wants? When he chose me, didn’t he say to himself that my profession is putting all things into words? Haven’t I spent a large part of my life putting sentences together? It’s been easy—up till now. To write fiction or research papers that, in any case, would not be published under my name. I was free to write anything, any old way, on any subject. Any standards I followed, any rules I obeyed, were mine alone to determine. But how can I write this story of speechless agony? My words are too worn-out, too impoverished, to convey the experience that Bolek lived through. Where could I look for the right words? How could I flush them out from where they’re hiding, when those I have are so tainted that they stick in my throat?

“I was astounded at the name of the person the woman identified as the informer,” Bolek went on, his voice tight. “Was I too young, too inexperienced? In the ghetto, everybody had lost their youth. Was I too naïve? With what I’d seen by then, I should have been inoculated against naïveté. And I’d grown up enough to know that in extreme situations man is capable of the best as well as the worst. I could have accepted it if the swine had turned out to be a petty thief— there were some in Davarowsk—or an ignoramus—we had them, too—or a pervert, or a man desperate to help his sick wife, or an assimilated intellectual, or an atheist, or even a bum. But the traitor belonged to a respected, well-to-do family. Who didn’t know the Horowitzes? They played a leading role in real estate, in business, in community affairs. Everyone respected Reb Leibish, the father, benefactor of the synagogue, who sat next to the rabbi by the sacred Ark. He presided over the association for the benefit of widows and orphans. His oldest daughter had married a well-known lawyer from Warsaw. His son . . . his son was the one who gave my parents away to the Germans. I know, you’ll ask me why he did it. To save his own skin? For notoriety? For power? Because it was an easy, if repulsive, way to rebel against his father? To make a show of independence, as today’s psychologists would have it? What really motivated him? What could have transformed this boy from a good family into a monster in the service of the enemy of his people? Was it a whim, a game? A moment of insanity? Had he been disappointed in love? I had no idea then, and today I still have no idea. And yet I asked him those questions. . . . I’ll explain later how it came about that I saw him—or rather, saw him again. Before the war, I’d see him now and then in the house of study or in the park. He was three years older than I, always well dressed and full of himself. He wouldn’t give me so much as a glance. In his eyes, I didn’t even exist. But . . . Well, let’s stick to the story. Back to the ghetto. My brothers and sisters were home with their children. My nieces and nephews were sitting on the floor, scared into silence. My sixteen-year-old sister, Sheindele, was off in never-never land, waiting for solace that would never come. Everyone was overwhelmed, on the verge of tears. ‘We shouldn’t have, we shouldn’t have,’ they were mumbling. Shouldn’t have what? Shouldn’t have left the parents in a separate hiding place? Should have stayed each in his own bunker instead of staying together? No one had the answers. Besides, what good would answers do? We promised that we’d never leave one another. And we started to say Kaddish.

“My new life occupied all my attention. I went out on many more nighttime adventures, as my commanders sent me on missions that no longer had anything to do with the black market. I was to contact certain Poles who might give me well-paid-for ‘presents’ for our movement. Sometimes I came back empty-handed, but then I would try again. There’s no denying I believed I was on a holy mission. One night, I was almost caught by a patrol. I was crawling back under the barbed wire and I didn’t notice a Polish policeman watching my usual escape route. ‘Empty out your pockets,’ he ordered. ‘Let’s see what you’re bringing back.’ He was looking for food. Had he found any, he would have turned me over to the Germans. But all I had on me was two handguns. ‘Stolen?’ he asked. ‘A gift,’ I said. Fortunately, he was also in the resistance, and he knew of the contacts between our two clandestine movements. He let me go.

“On those nights, I was as much impatient and worried as I was afraid of the enemy and wanting to fight them. Zelig, who had recruited me, was arrested by the Gestapo and shot. I took his place as head of our group. We held our meetings in a cellar, as did all the Jewish resistance groups. I led the discussions, in which we took up all the issues that we faced: questions of policy, strategy, supplies, underground hiding places, buying weapons, military operations. When should we come out in the open and take action? Should we wait and plan in minute detail an operation to be staged during a roundup, in order to kill as many enemy soldiers as possible, or should we attack as soon as a German showed up in the ghetto? Was it better to take action now—too soon? Or bide our time—too late? At the end of one of those meetings, I raised my hand and said, ‘I have a question that’s not on the agenda. It’s about traitors among us.’

“My comrades were astonished. They stared at me in disbelief. Didn’t they realize there was at least one informer in the ghetto?

“ ‘I know of one,’ I said, ‘but there may be others. They’re dangerous, and their presence here disgraces us.’

“Mendel, the tailor, was the first to pull himself together. ‘Hey, fellows, the kid is right,’ he burst out. ‘For all we know, Zelig fell in a trap the Germans set, thanks to one of their collaborators.’ Officially, I was his superior, but to him, I was still ‘the kid.’

“A porter sitting next to him, who would say ‘I dunno’ as part of every sentence, was rubbing his chin. ‘Well, I dunno . . . Once we start talking about traitors, I dunno, we’ll end up suspecting our best friends.’

“Another said, ‘But even so, we must—’

“But a girl cut him off. ‘No, we must not.’

“Should I identify the stool pigeon? I wondered. Give the name of the young Horowitz? I thought it better to wait. Around midnight, I brought the discussion to a close, saying, ‘I’ll make my report to Abrasha. After all, he’s our commanding officer.’

“Everyone agreed.

“How can I describe Abrasha to you? By his profession? Before the war, he was a
melamed,
a schoolteacher and a tutor. Medium height, but round-shouldered, so he looked shorter. An expressionless face. A fast talker. He had a habit of rocking back and forth while talking, as if he were exploring some ancient problem in the Talmud. To look at this seemingly peaceful, even serene person, you’d never have thought him capable of planning attacks on other human beings—except that in his eyes, the SS were no longer human. What impressed me about him was his way of listening. He was attentive to the smallest detail, and he never interrupted, always seeking to win the trust of the other person.

“I had requested an urgent meeting. Three days later, I met him in a small room. I could hear the mingled voices of children and adults coming from the next room. I wondered if they were his family’s.

“ ‘So what’s it about?’ he asked without preliminaries.

“I reported on the debate that had stirred up my group.