A Chosen Few (56 page)

Her first child, born when Antwerp was barely behind the combat lines, had married an English dentist and moved to Israel. The second had married a French doctor and moved to Israel. In all, four of her children had married professionals and moved to Israel. Mechilem was the only Silberman left in Europe.

That was how the Jewish population of Antwerp remained at about the same size—large families where most left but a few brought in a mate and stayed. Mechilem’s wife came from England. The important thing was that traditional Orthodox Judaism remained in the world. Still, it was difficult for Antwerp Jews to see their children leave. Harry Biron was an Antwerp Jew who raised his two daughters to be Zionists. When they went to Israel, he said, “We gave them the idealistic education of Israel, the dream. So they followed the dream. The education was right, but I would like them in Antwerp, preferably in a house just down the street.”

In 1986, Jozef Rottenberg sold his multimillion-dollar pharmaceutical company, which he had started after the war with a few employees, to an American multinational. The company had become large by Belgian standards, but he thought it would be too small to stand up to competition in a fully integrated European economy. His family’s dark, handsome, high-ceilinged Flemish house had a coatroom always filled with the hats and wraps of a half-dozen visitors, and the elegant little garden was littered with the toys and tricycles of grandchildren. Mordechai, the first postwar
Rottenberg, whose birth was celebrated on the streets of the diamond district, grew up to have the Rottenberg good looks and charisma. He worked for his father’s company, then after it was sold moved into cosmetics. He had one brother with an Antwerp diamond company, another in Vienna, one in Israel, two in New York, and a sister in England.

Mechilem Silberman was comfortable in the heart of the diamond district where they had always lived, with his shop full of antique silver that was too heavy and unsuitable for sudden flight. “If only he would do a little diamonds on the side,” Dwora said.

Mechilem wore a vest and a yarmulke with a hat over it, shaved the top of his head, and wore a frizzy blond beard. He did not want to be like his father, Hershl, who had seemed afraid, stayed cleanshaven, and taken his hat off when gentiles came in. But for all Mechilem’s apparent boldness, he confessed, “I’m not sure why, but I am not sure we are safe here.” And he admitted that if he went to a doctor or lawyer or bank director, he still took his hat off. His doctor always laughed about it, because none of his other Jewish patients did that anymore. Removing the fear would take one more generation. His children would not take off a hat. “Kids today would never do that. They aren’t ashamed of anything.” But it was different for Mechilem. When they were traveling, away from the world of the diamond district, and his children started speaking Yiddish in loud voices, Mechilem felt embarrassed and would tell them to speak English, his wife’s language—a good, neutral international language.

In 1988 a liberal synagogue, like those of the American Reform movement, was attempted in Antwerp, but it found few followers and soon died. Those who were not kosher or did not observe the Sabbath tried to keep it out of the sight of those who did. There were Jews in Antwerp who drove their cars on Saturday. But they would not drive down the Belgielei. It was believed that Jewish law made a distinction between nonobservance in private and flaunting in public.

“We’ve lost that golden middle way of my parents,” said Mechilem. “Everyone is getting either nonpracticing and modernized or Hasidic.” There was a consistent pattern. The survivor generation was clean-shaven and dressed normally but with a hat; the postwar generation wore vests and beards and their children were in full regalia. Sam Perl, an Orthodox Jew of the clean-shaven hat-wearing survivor generation, thought this impulse toward ever
more exotic dress was driven by fear of assimilation. “They are afraid they will come reaching over the other side of the world and they will be lost. It’s a weakness.” He blamed religious leaders for trying to keep the young traditional. “I tell you, the spiritual leaders think all this clothing and everything will keep them back. Keep them away from the street. But unfortunately, they are putting this into their heads as though it were a great principle, and it’s not true. Judaism is not just this. If you have to count only on the clothing, it’s very sad and very bad. If you don’t have a way to live life—Jews are becoming more and more extreme. I think there will be a reaction against this,” he said.

B
UT FAR MORE TROUBLING THINGS
were looming on the gray Antwerp horizon. The VMO, Flemish Military Order, host to the extreme right at Diksmuide, had been banned in the early 1980s and renamed itself the Vlaams Blok, the Flemish Bloc. It played down the SS service records of some within its ranks, and it prudently avoided anti-Semitic rhetoric—unless of course you drank beer with its members at Diksmuide. Their public speeches, like those of the German Republicans, Dutch Centrum, and French National Front, concentrated on the “immigrant problem”—the claim that the quality of life in the nation was being eroded by the presence of Moroccans, Turks, and Arabs. This approach seemed to settle much better with the general population than attacking Jews, a polemic that was associated with Nazis and occupation. In the general election of November 1991 the Vlaams Blok won 25 percent of the vote in Antwerp. This was a shock in a city where they had won only 1.9 percent in the previous election four years earlier, and where there were few notable conflicts between the general population and the highly visible Jewish four percent. The strongest negative feeling commonly expressed about Jews was that they were dangerous to be around because they could be targets. A swimming instructor said that people shied away from the pool on Sundays when the Orthodox Jewish children were offered instruction, because they feared that someone might attack the pool.

Palestinian attacks seemed fresher in Antwerp memories than the Holocaust. The Jewish Community was spending considerable money on security operations against possible future incidents. But it did not expect those attacks to come from the extreme right. The Community was still focused on Arabs. On a few occasions North
African juvenile delinquents had singled out Jews for physical attacks. But the Jews were disturbingly passive about the fact that a quarter of their city had voted for a racist right-wing party. When Mechilem Silberman said he did not feel entirely safe in Antwerp, he could not even name a reason why he felt that way. Sam Perl pointed out that Antwerp Jews had not had any problems with the extreme right. “They say that they have nothing against Jews. We are glad to hear it, but we don’t trust them.” Aside from this sad lack of solidarity with other minority groups that were being attacked by the extreme right—partly influenced by difficult relations between the Jews and some of the groups being victimized—there was a curious naive confidence among Antwerp Jews that the Flemish extremists would not dare turn against them. Perl said, “The Flemish are afraid to go out openly against us. If they go out openly against us, they will lose part of their votes.”

Part of the problem was that the Jews had once again become a happy and prosperous community, and strolling down the Belgielei on a Shabbat, it was possible to forget that there ever had been a Holocaust. Survivors did not want to remember, but they knew they could not let the rest of the world forget, and for this reason in the 1990s Perl began speaking about his experiences. He was not able to dismiss the historical revisionists with the same optimism with which he shrugged at the Flemish nationalists. People were being published who said it was all a lie, that the Holocaust had never happened, and that meant that Perl could no longer keep his nightmares to himself. In February 1993 he spoke for the first time about his Holocaust experiences, torture, and his two escapes from deportation. This was not an intimate conversation in his home but a lecture to forty students. “I feel that we have to come out and witness now. My story is nothing compared to those of the people who have been in Auschwitz. Nevertheless, I have my part also.”

Though he was born after the war, the Holocaust remained on Mechilem’s mind also. If nothing else, his mother would have kept it there. After the fall of Communism an influx of illegal Poles came into Belgium. Everyone in Antwerp was hiring Polish cleaning women. Mechilem saw a television interview with a Belgian official who, asked about all the illegal Poles in Belgium, said, “What can I do if the Jews keep giving them work?”

Mechilem told his wife, “I will mop myself, but I don’t want Poles in my house!” They hired a Yugoslavian. “I’m not sure if that’s better,” he said. People would come into his store with stories
about the Poles, how they would switch dishes or slip
traif
, unkosher food, into the pot. They did not trust Poles because they thought they still hated Jews. “They call us all rich and greedy,” someone said to Mechilem.

“And in Poland,” it was pointed out, “there are only a few Jews that haven’t been killed or driven off. And the Poles are still anti-Semites even without the Jews. They want to get those few.”

“See,” said Mechilem, “the Poles are greedy.”

A
ndré Journo fumbled impatiently with his cigar-trimmer and snipped the tip of his long hand-rolled Havana. He thrust it into his mouth and then took it out as though too exasperated to even smoke. “It’s shameful. Shameful, absolutely disgusting, no shame.”

It was the tenth anniversary of the gun attack on Goldenberg’s, a day that he had told countless reporters over the years, “We must always remember.” The first few years, journalists would work Rue des Rosiers, and when they got to him, he liked to say something about how the day must always be remembered. But this year, they weren’t even asking him. They had a television crew down at Goldenberg’s filming some special, and that was all. “It’s just shameful the way he’s exploiting that tragedy to get himself publicity. That is all I have to say.”

By 1990, the Marais had taken over the Pletzl. All that was left of the Pletzl was the Rue Pavée synagogue, a few
shtibls
, a center the Lubavitchers had set up on Rue des Rosiers, a few kosher butchers, some bookshops, Goldenberg’s, the several shops of the Journo family, and the three bakeries of the Finkelsztajn-Korcarz family. And there was one old-time barbershop, whose owners, being the only non-Jews in the neighborhood, had witnessed the roundups and deportations throughout the occupation.

These remnants were surrounded by the chic, the trendy, and
the American. In the 1980s, just as the refurbishing of the Marais was largely completed and ready to sell and Paris real estate prices had become inaccessible to most, the dollar became strong against the franc and Americans felt that they were getting bargains. The Marais became a neighborhood of gay bars and fashionable restaurants, where the language lingered halfway between French and English. Signs went up for “
le Brunch de Dimanche
,” where no one had even eaten Sunday breakfast before. Lingerie and jewelry shops replaced old Pletzl shops.

The Journos had expanded. In 1989, André’s father, Roger, died, and his mother decided to retire and sold the little grocery. André bought a bigger store, then expanded it into a store and restaurant. Another brother started a café across the street from Goldenberg’s, and another sister had a food store. They all lived on Rue des Rosiers and raised their children there. On Friday nights André closed his restaurant and shoved all the tables together into one long table set with roasted peppers, pickled vegetables, and challahs. More than a dozen Journos with their teenage children sat around and said the blessing for the candles and the wine, the men putting their paper napkins on their heads for the blessing. That was their only religious concession before they settled into the family Friday-night couscous. Outside, Orthodox Jews were scurrying to their
shtibls
, and young couples were strolling, looking for the newest restaurant, wondering what sort of silly party they were passing with the men all putting paper napkins on their heads.

André also had an art gallery with paintings of behatted Orthodox life that did not seem to attract much interest from the Orthodox but drew some tourists, who expected this kind of thing in the Pletzl. The gallery was in Finkelsztajn’s building, and the restaurant was directly across the street from Henri’s store. Henri, who had never really wanted to be a baker, now had family and employees and was functioning largely as a host. He greeted people at his store, especially old-time customers. He gossiped. He would find a day-old challah and put it in a bag, silently drift out in the street, and hand it to a beggar without ceremony. He wandered.

He had bought back the old bakery with the blue tiles at the corner of Rue des Ecouffes, and it was now run by his son Sacha. They had the kind of working relationship that Henri had enjoyed with his own father. When Sacha was 12 he had gone to a summer camp, where he fell in love with a girl, Florence, from the twentieth arrondissement. She was from a Jewish family, and her
mother’s grandfather had owned a shop selling religious articles on Rue des Rosiers. But the grandfather had been deported and killed, and after the war the family had settled into a more affluent part of Paris. After summer camp ended, Florence and Sacha did not see each other again, because they lived too far away for twelve-year-olds to visit each other, and their parents wouldn’t let them take the
métro
. That dewy, dry-throated, forever-and-ever twelve-year-old first love was left to fade.