Journeys with My Mother (5 page)

When it came to conjuring images of my grandparents, my reading of fairytales came in handy. So my stooping grandmothers' heads were covered in kerchiefs, tied babushka-like under their chins; my grey-bearded grandfathers, leaning over their walking sticks, were old and kindly.

After I visited the death camp in Majdanek with my school, my grandparents acquired the unearthly presence of the long-dead; I preferred not to know how or where they saw the last days of their lives.

So it is comforting to know that they had a life before they died, that Hersz was a real person, loved the circus and, just like me, enjoyed piping hot, strong aromatic tea, a great deal of it; that Henoch, my paternal grandfather, gave my mother a gold watch and taught her a few Russian phrases, which helped us in our escape from Warsaw. Missing from the picture is their faith, their rituals, their immersion in an old and rich culture that shaped and defined all my predecessors' lives.

I do not blame my parents for absenting themselves from their Jewish past. Their life and mine had a different trajectory, their experiences an entirely different flavour. They hoped that if I were ignorant of being Jewish, I would never feel stigmatised, would avoid hatred. And worse than hatred – the contempt in which Jews were held.

I am glad to be marked with familial features, carrying my ancestral genes, sharing the idiosyncrasies of my people, even though a deep connection with my tribe has been lost. But this disconnection doesn't really bother me. The truth is, I have no wish to be part of any diaspora claiming my identity, which is for me to shape.

As serendipity would have it, over the years I have accumulated a respectable collection of old family photographs which I owe to my father's uncles and cousins who, having the presence of mind to leave Poland in the twenties and thirties, kept them in the safety of their drawers. Now my predecessors, though still enigmatic, have a worldly appearance.

An image of Babcia Luba, on my father's side, came my way only recently. Three years ago my brother, who lives in Lausanne, told me about it. On the subject of how the photograph had turned up, he was hazy and I, on the other side of the phone line, found it hard to believe it could be a picture of our grandmother and her brood. ‘How do you know it is them?' I kept on asking, careful not to be swayed by hope. Once I had the photograph in my hand, however, I recognised my very young father, even his siblings, as if I had known them ever since childhood. My heart gave a lurch – I was looking at my family.

Here, my never-before-seen grandmother is surrounded by her seven children – my father, the oldest, is about fifteen; the youngest is one and a half at the most – each one spruced up for the occasion. But not my grandmother. She looks as if she had come out of the kitchen only a moment before sitting down for the photo. She does not wear a headscarf or a wig, or any jewels. Her simplicity is touching. None of them smile; only little Róża – Różyczka – bedecked with an enormous bow in her hair and another, equally large, at the front of her dress, seems to feel the sense of occasion and beams timidly. Oskar – I can only guess that he is the one in the sailor's top – looks wistfully ahead, his head tilted. (It is hard to imagine him as the self-assured, reckless young man who acted as a courier between the Warsaw Ghetto and the partisans. Even more difficult to accept is his slow death at the hands of his torturers who attempted to extract the names of others.)

There is another photograph I like, that of my paternal great-grandfather, Izaak Leib. Corpulent and jovial, a
kaszket
pulled low over his large head, his eyes – light in colour, alert – remind me of my father's blue eyes. I like to think that my father also got his playfulness from him. Izaak Leib does not give the impression of a person who would spend too much time praying or discussing the finer points of Torah. He was a tailor, not a scholar. Then again, he could have been a pious tailor.

The opposite could be said about Jankiel, my mother's grandfather. Frail, book in hand, he looks as if he had no joy in life. He, too, is dressed in a traditional Jewish kaftan, his beard untrimmed, confirming the futility of the Tzars' efforts to force Jews to dress like everyone else, to renounce their religion. At the time of my great-grandparents' birth – the mid-nineteenth century – Poland was partitioned, its eastern territories falling within the Russian Empire, its inhabitants without rights for self-determination and no civil or political freedoms. That is where my ancestors, at least those that I can account for, had the misfortune to live.

I am less lucky when it comes to retrieving mementos on my mother's side, for her numerous cousins left for France soon after the First World War. When the German army entered Paris in the Second World War, all but two of her relatives – men, by marriage – remained alive by fleeing Paris and, in some cases, France. One of the few surviving photographs is the one I have of Jankiel.

Twelve years after the war, in the autumn after my matriculation, my mother and I went to visit her French relatives. I was astounded to find an entire tribe of cousins, all from Grodzisk Mazowiecki, thirteen siblings, each married with children. I had never imagined families could be so big. They represented the full range of wealth and social standing, political leanings and religiosity. The oldest in the family was an orthodox Jew; another, by contrast, had turned to Jesus, eventually becoming a pastor. The rest, however, were satisfied with observing Jewish holidays, visiting the synagogue once a year on Yom Kippur.

Long before I got hold of the photograph of Jankiel to inspire me, I went to Grodzisk Mazowiecki, the town near Warsaw where he had lived for most of his life. I went there on an impulse, without preparation, with a friend who was not in the least interested in my uncertain quest. Predictably, nothing much was gained.

A few years later I went there again, alone and better prepared, which was just as well. It was hot, and meandering through an unfamiliar town in the full sun turns investigation into a chore.

Luckily, I was quick to locate the cultural centre and to find Łukasz Nowacki, a young man specialising in the history of Grodzisk's Jews. He and his colleagues worked to restore and remember the town's Jewish past. At the time, the centre's collection of Judaica was very small, and I was glad to add to it. Grodzisk dreaming is vital as almost nothing remains of the 500-year-long Jewish presence. What remains are the sites: where the synagogues once stood; the market where, in time-honoured tradition, spirited trading was the norm; a few houses in which Jews lived identified by Stars of David or the indentations left by a
mezuzah
.
⁵
It was in the marketplace, in front of St Anna church, where in February 1941, Jews were forced to assemble before being deported to the Warsaw Ghetto, then to Treblinka.
⁶
None of them, it seems, returned.

The Moscow–Vienna railway line, built in the mid-nineteenth century, runs through Grodzisk Mazowiecki. It promised development and prosperity to what was then a small village of no significance. The railway acted as a magnet, drawing Jews from many neighbouring communities.

It is possible that Jankiel's parents were caught up in the same trend. As the village grew into a town, some Jews became rich quickly. Despite the presence of the charismatic
rebbe
Elimech Szapiro, who settled in Grodzisk and established a powerful centre of Hasidism,
⁷
quite a few Jews assimilated.

Nothing, however, indicates that Jankiel wished to assimilate. He was a Cohen
⁸
and a Hassid, a man of undiluted faith who did not trim his beard, who danced for the joy of God and, I imagine, spoke to Him directly. At the time his photo was taken, Jankiel was widowed. My great-grandmother, Chana, suffered from poor health and had died long before the war.

With time, many Jews left overcrowded Grodzisk. By the 1930s, their number had dropped to a fraction of what it was previously. Jankiel must have felt alone; none of his children remained in Grodzisk. Three of his sons emigrated – to Belgium, America and Palestine; and Hersz, my grandfather, who had moved to Warsaw, was no longer alive.

Jankiel would have been troubled by many other things, of course: illness, money, or his granddaughters, especially Ola. He strongly disapproved of her living, unwed, with a hatless, beardless young man, a communist to boot, who'd broken out of the faith. Jankiel tried his best to warn Ola against this liaison: ‘This man will use you and then discard you like a squeezed lemon,' he cautioned. Had I known Jankiel, would I have loved him unconditionally, felt solicitous despite his religious strictures, his austerity and his resentment of my father?

When the war broke out, Jankiel was in Grodzisk alone. Like many people from the outlying provinces, he assumed that the capital would be a safer place to outlast what everyone hoped would be a short war. He moved in with his daughter-in-law Brana and her children.

But it soon became evident that his hopes were misguided. Warsaw was heavily bombarded, and conditions in the Nowolipki household, affected by fear and shortage of food, offered little comfort to the old man. At the first opportunity, he made his way back home. It must have been a traumatic and exhausting journey for someone his age: nothing functioned properly, and the tracks of the electric shuttle train were partly destroyed. From that point on, I know nothing of Jankiel's everyday struggle for survival. I can only assume that he shared the same misery as other Jews in Grodzisk. As in other towns, they were confined to the ghetto. Thousands of Jews were brought from surrounding villages and towns to live in a very small, already overcrowded area, making everyone's life unendurable. For a short time, the city council provided ration cards, allowing one to buy bread, salt, sometimes sugar and other products, if one was lucky. Then nothing. It was possible, if risky, to sneak out of the ghetto and sell some possessions to buy food. But following the confiscation of his dye workshop, what could Jankiel possibly sell?

After years of choosing not to contemplate how each of my predecessors died, now, when writing, I do allow myself to consider various possibilities. I would like to believe that Jankiel succumbed to illness or hunger before the ghetto was liquidated. Here he is, frozen in time, in the only existing photograph of him. Perhaps taken against his will.

There is a fragment from a book about Grodzisk.
⁹
The last death certificate was written in the Book of Births, Marriages and Death on 25 November 1940: ‘Ernest Abraham, son of Aron and Henrietta, born in Olbryck, at present living in Grodzisk, trader, died at twelve thirty.'

Over the page, there is just one more, this time an incomplete entry recording the end of Jews in Grodzisk: ‘It took place in the town of Grodzisk on the third of December, nineteen-hundred and forty at eleven thirty …' and there the account snaps, mid-sentence. We will never know the name of the dead. Perhaps the clerk was ordered to hurry, not to bother recording the name of that person – man, woman or child – who died on that day in early December, because it no longer mattered.

4

Zakroczym

Ola, her parents and sisters used to spend holidays in Zakroczym. In her memory, it remained an enchanting place of expansive river and sandbars. I have two photographs from that time. One and a half, to be exact, because only the portion of one remains. They were both taken on the same day in summer 1929.

The two couples, Ola and her little sister Reginka set off for a walk high above the river. In the photograph they sit close together, especially the couples. Of the couples I can only recognise Ewa, my mother's sister. She leans comfortably on a young man; there is a familiarity in her attitude; the man in question is not her future husband yet Ewa looks pregnant. I wonder if this is another family secret or simply a never told story. And if the complexities of our lives are at times impossible to unravel, how much more unfathomable are the events of the past. Nothing is certain, apart from their presence in Zakroczym in that summer of 1929.

The other photograph is just as intriguing, if only because of its missing part. Here only Ola and Reginka and a little of Ewa's arm are visible. My baby-faced mother is eighteen and Reginka – a scrawny duckling – is still to turn into a swan.

Zakroczym, it seems, was full of the Szlangs, at least three generations. Jankiel's brother, Isaak Szlang, a baker, as well as his sister lived there, together with their spouses and their children. Some, like Jankiel and my grandfather Hersz, were dyers, some bakers, and at least one, Bajmis Szlang, was a tailor.

In Zakroczym, Jews and Gentiles lived side by side. In worship, they were separate; in commerce, competitive. At times they were neighbourly, at others downright hostile. Prey to ignorance, prejudice and fear, each community kept to itself.

There was no symmetry, however, in the long history of grievances and harm inflicted on each other. In the early thirties, anti-Semitic riots continued for days. Local thugs attacked Jews and looted their property. It was the same in 1936 when gangs of youths threw stones at the synagogue and nearby houses, smashing windows and terrorising those inside. Only the children held a fascination with each others' rituals and customs and often became friends. At school they spoke Polish, learned French and German, and studied Polish history.

According to stories written by the town's pre-war inhabitants, Zakroczym had a surprisingly rich life. When, on the shortest night of the year, the midsummer night of Saint Jan, flower garlands were sailed on the river with candles burning, everybody went to see the spectacle. It was always a magic night, full of promise: the celebration of summer and love to come. And if, in the forest, one found a tiny blue flower of a fern, which is said to emanate light, one would be happy and rich beyond measure – so the old legend claimed. When the river froze over in winter, skating was the major attraction. In spring, people would come to hear the first cracking of the ice, to see it breaking slowly into big chunks before it moved unhurriedly towards the sea. Nature insinuated itself into people's lives, regardless of their religious denomination.