Jewels and Ashes (23 page)

Some time towards the end of May 1943, Shapiro hurried to my parents' Wellington flat. Ashen-faced and trembling, he clutched Yiddish journals he had just received by mail from New York. The Warsaw ghetto was burning. A revolt had erupted on April 19th, the first night of Passover. The journals also reported the suicide of Shmuel Artur Zygelboim, in London, on May 11th. As Bund representative of the Polish government-in-exile, he had become aware, via couriers and underground contacts, of the fate of his people. European Jewry was on the brink of annihilation. Every day they were being railed en masse to death factories. He had tried to convince British media and politicians. He had contacted the Foreign Office. He had met with US envoys. Bomb Auschwitz, he had pleaded. Save the remnants, he had begged. But the tale he told seemed too incredible. And those who believed him claimed that little could be done; their aircraft and personnel were required elsewhere. As a last resort, Zygelboim had taken his own life and left a note with his grim tidings. Perhaps with his death, he concluded, he would be able to arouse the ‘conscience of humanity'.

He was soon forgotten, except by the likes of Shapiro, who now stood in a Wellington flat, anxiously reading aloud Zygelboim's last testament. As he listened, father was overcome by a sense of dread. What had been but a vague apprehension could no longer be denied. ‘Over there', in the world he had left behind, his dearest friends and kin were dying; while here, under southern skies, he moved free as a bird. Every day, to and from work, his bus emerged from rolling hills into sudden views of sparkling seas. As Shapiro read, one thought echoed within father: I am of the living, while they, Bishke and Sheine, once devoted to my every need, are in Gehenna, and all that I once knew is on fire.

Shmuel Artur Zygelboim had been an integral part of my childhood folklore, a principal actor in a world of rebels, fighters and defiant souls who hurled themselves against the enemy with audacious abandon. The refugees who became my storytellers brought with them a universe of fire. Figures darted through the flames. One grabbed a grenade in mid-air and hurled it back at his executioner; another blocked the entrance of a bunker and was riddled with bullets. Children smuggled arms through sewers. Women jumped from collapsing buildings, screaming last words of defiance. I listened wide-eyed. The tales entered my dreams. They were enshrined in song. We sang them in choirs, at memorial services, at summer camps, at Yiddish school concerts:

Birds are coming, close your eyes my child,

They circle your cot in a world gone wild.

God has locked the doors and everywhere is night,

It awaits my child, in terror and fright.

Father draws distinctions between the dreams which emerge at night and what he calls ‘living dreams'. Such dreams, he explains, are sparked when fully awake. They are memories triggered in the present to form something new — a poem, an insight, an original idea. Take his latkes, for example. The recipe had come from his mother, Sheine. She would beat together grated potatoes and eggs, shredded onions and flour. Father follows the same formula, to which he adds raisins, perhaps almonds, something of his own imagining. The latkes thereby become a ‘living dream', a live reflection of the past. As such they transcend mere nostalgia, he is at pains to stress.

In Bialystok, Sheine's latkes had been very popular among his friends. They ate them with great relish on their many picnics in local meadows and forest clearings. To this day there are in Melbourne former Bialystoker, survivors, who mention Sheine's latkes and find themselves dreaming of summers in Bialystok. The streets burned and melted underfoot. Heat waves could persist for days on end. The air was thick, the earth perspiring with heat. ‘We longed for a drink', recalls father. Every well was an oasis, and he came to know the location of obscure springs in the forests.

Father has always preferred the immediate reward, the moment of heaven on earth, however brief, to the promise of an afterlife. So he took to the forests whenever he had the chance; after work he would often stroll from the city to the family dacha in Zwierziniec. He walked as night descended. The air was vibrant with the chatter of insects and bats. He glimpsed the stars between trees and, as he describes the scene, he suddenly pauses. Ah yes, he recalls, there was a Yiddish poet who in the 1930s travelled the Australian deserts and observed that the new moon rose in a reverse crescent to its counterpart in northern skies. Now that is a perfect example of a ‘living dream', adds father, beaming with the pure delight of a child; and again he stresses, this is not a mere wallowing in the past, but a poetic jewel, an original image, a new moon rising over ancient worlds.

Lag ba-Omer is celebrated on the thirty-third day after Passover. Legend has it that in the first century of the common era, while in revolt against the Roman occupation, 24 000 disciples of Rabbi Akiva died of plague because they did not sufficiently honour one another. On Lag ba-Omer the plague ceased. The period of mourning was over. Music and marriage were again permitted. And on Lag ba-Omer 1943, in accordance with custom, over thirty couples were married in the Bialystok ghetto.

Perhaps the fate of Bialystok has become my ‘living dream'. The more I delve, the further I travel across Polish landscapes and into the tales of my elders, the more I seem to be moving in an hallucination, a warp in time and space, a netherworld in which slaves scurry about, clinging to life as the summer heat beats down upon them. And within that heat I catch dazzling glimpses of resilience. In the summer of 1943 there are love affairs in the ghetto, women daring to be pregnant. The underground operates with increasing audacity. Experiments are carried out in munitions workshops hidden in cellars and bunkers. Guns are smuggled in loaves of bread, under dresses and coats, or hurled over ghetto fences at pre-arranged locations. Resistance cells are formed to defend factories and streets. Partisans steal out to set up forest bases. Young women powder their faces, rouge their lips, disguise themselves as gentiles, and rent rooms on the Aryan side. With forged papers they obtain menial jobs in Nazi homes and offices, while acting as secret couriers between ghetto and forest. Underground radios report the fall of Mussolini. Children march around the courtyards proclaiming the news. Ghetto gardens are in bloom, tomatoes growing fat. Factory orders are flowing in from Berlin and Koenigsberg. The ghetto inmates are producing, preparing, sharpening their survival skills as the eastern front edges closer.

In back alleys, drooping over walls, bunches of red cherries glistened like rubies in the summer sun. Street boys would steal by to snatch their fill. For relief they took to the forests and strung up hammocks between trees. Father sways with the memory of the hammocks and the redness of dawns and dusks. Red permeated everything. It covered fields of corn and shoots of grain. It streaked through windows and doorways, seeped into courtyards and lanes.

And it occurs to father that, no matter how hot it became, Bishke remained outside, between dawn and dusk, pausing only when he noticed one of his sons approaching. In an instant he would forget the business, his livelihood, the heat. He would open a newspaper and point excitedly to an article: ‘Have a look! Read this! It's written just for you!' He loved finding something of relevance for them to read. Even on Sabbath afternoons, during his hours of rest, he would read aloud to Sheine the latest episodes of serialised novels — ‘soap operas for the masses', father calls them. And he confides that, to this day, he regrets his former tendency to look critically upon his Bishke, the news vendor, the eccentric, the small Yidl who dashed through the streets like a man possessed. It was only much later, well after he had left, that he came to realise Bishke plied his trade simply because he was trying to provide for his family, to make ends meet. ‘So explain', says father, ‘why did he and so many like him, have to come to such an end? Why do people have so much hatred for those they don't even know?'

In July, Gestapo commissions inspected the ghetto with alarming frequency. The fate of Bialystok was again being debated in Reich headquarters. Odilo Globocnik, SS commandant of Lublin, a ruthless pioneer and advocate of the Final Solution, arrived to co-ordinate plans. Secret meetings were held in Branitski palace. The February Aktions and the Warsaw uprising were analysed to learn from past errors.

By August the signs were ominous. German clients collected unrepaired watches from ghetto jewellers. Factory orders were being cancelled. Gestapo bosses Friedl, Dibus, and Klein were seen checking ghetto fences. Unfamiliar troops and detachments of SS men roamed the city streets.

Wehrmacht officers and Judenrat leaders tried to assure nervous workers that there was nothing to fear. On Sunday, August 15, the ghetto was quiet. That evening many of its 40 000 inmates went to bed with a glimmer of hope. Perhaps the rumours of impending Aktions were unfounded.

Who remains in the ghetto on August 15th? Uncle Isaac? Aunt Etel? Uncles Motl and Hershl? A Probutski? A Zabludowski? A Liberman? A Malamud? I have been sucked into the hunt. I scour lists of names, devour eye-witness accounts, sit in libraries, sift through archives, rummage through cupboards. And however scant, there are revelations. Take, for instance, a board of three-ply, two feet square — a still life. It had always been in the house, but I had never seen it. Perhaps it had been hidden, or neglected. Or kept out of sight. Perhaps I had glimpsed it in a dark corner and taken no notice. It was father who eventually brought it to me. He had received it in 1936, when he left Bialystok. It was a present he was to deliver to his wife, in New Zealand, painted by her youngest brother Hershl.

The three-ply has cracked in the sunlight. The board is warped. Yet the oils have held fast. I adjust it on my desk, exposed. The fruit are fully ripened; the colours remain strong. Against a backdrop of pale emerald stands a straw basket with apples, a pear, a bunch of dark grapes. Beside the basket lie three plums, a pineapple, green leaves. Rising above, behind the basket, is a slim crimson vase. The flowers are chrysanthemums: white, yellow, pink. The brushstrokes are bold. The fruit is thick to the touch; painted when Hershl was about twenty-one.

What can mother tell me about Hershl? ‘He was talented', she replies, and falls silent. She too has become a still life. The kitchen clock ticks. She clutches a shawl around her shoulders. She nods her head gently, backwards and forwards. Her lips loosen. She begins to smile: ‘He used to sleep in late. So we had to rouse him from his dreams, my sisters and I.'

I want to know more. ‘What more is there to tell?', replies mother. ‘He was a quiet boy. Became a house painter. Gave his wages to the family. Spent many hours drawing. Did no one any harm.' She lapses back into stillness. Yet he must have been special. He gained a namesake. Of the three brothers, the eldest is named after Bishke, I after Aron Yankev, and the third after Hershl. ‘Why Hershl?', I ask mother. Her answer is simple. Matter-of-fact. Obvious. ‘Because he was the youngest. And he did no one any harm.'

August 15, 1986. Zabia Square, site of the ghetto cemetery, is deserted, except for old men who sit on park benches under a mild afternoon sun. Dogs sniff about the stone monument that stands in the square. A van with loud speakers comes to a halt nearby. A bus arrives conveying former Bialystoker who live in Warsaw. People now outnumber dogs. The local Party boss and mayor of Bialystok alight from chauffer-driven cars. Their bodyguards remain by them throughout the ceremony, motionless, their eyes cold and impassive. Short speeches are made. Words evaporate in the stillness. A queue forms in front of the monument. One by one we come forward to lay wreaths. Chrysanthemums, marigolds, and ferns predominate. A small crowd of bystanders looks on, caught in passing, neutral observers of a subdued ritual. It is all over within an hour, a pantomime performed by survivors locked into remembrances of the day the ghetto began to burn.

On Sunday, August 15, 1943, a full moon rose over Bialystok on a warm summer night. Soon after midnight the ghetto was encircled. An inner cordon armed with light automatic weapons stood close to the fence. A second cordon with machine guns formed behind them. An outer circle of cavalry and artillery completed the three-pincer movement. The Judenrat offices were commandeered as campaign headquarters. Electric wires were strewn through the streets, and field telephones installed. Couriers on motorcycles stood by to circulate orders. All escape routes had been blocked, the operation meticulously planned.

At 2 a.m. residents near the ghetto fences were awoken by the tread of Nazi boots. The news spread quickly. Thousands emerged from sleep into a world gripped by fear. Neighbours milled in the darkness, frantically asking each other: ‘Is this the end'?

By 4 a.m., SS posters plastered the walls. In the red light of dawn the message was clear: All were to assemble by nine o'clock, in Ulitza Jurowietzka and the Judenrat gardens. They were to bring hand luggage. From there they would be transported, with all factory equipment, by train to Lublin. Those who disobeyed would be shot immediately. Move quickly. Do not resist.

‘Do not dwell upon the past', father warns. He rebels against nostalgia, against dreams and even sleep itself. ‘A waste of time', he declares. When his energy begins to sag he reminds himself: focus on your daily tasks. Adhere to routine. Use everything in your power to keep moving — even that terrifying refrain, so familiar to loved ones in their final hours:
‘Raus! Raus! Juden raus!'
He imagines it deliberately, sometimes, in the early mornings, as he lies in bed, trying to emerge from strange dreams and temporary paralysis. ‘
Raus! Raus! Juden raus!
' He brings to mind the infamous words, to drive himself into another day of existence. Even such a dreaded command can be put to use, father insists, and transformed into a tool for survival.

‘Raus! Raus! Juden raus!'
In a swarming mass they move, through corridors and courtyards, clutching pillows, eiderdowns, coats and furs, their last treasured possessions, weighed down by blankets and packs, stumbling and struggling to arrive on time, to avoid being beaten; they surge over bridges, across the Biale, like a herd of cattle, towards an enclave of narrow streets and lanes, unpaved and lined with wooden cottages, vacant blocks and vegetable gardens. The Nazi plan is simple, effective: to have the residents out in the open, far removed from the protection of solid factories and tenements.