September Starlings (76 page)

I do have some vivid memories. They are so strong that they are threatening to take me over, so I must explain to you some details. My life has been difficult and I find myself talking aloud sometimes, as if I am re-entering the times that were most terrifying. Your terror must be precluded. I shall go gently with you, but it is vital that you understand the place and the time into which I seem to be disappearing. Do not fret if I begin to rant, because I am speaking to ghosts or to people whose powers have been taken away. Do not pity me, do not weep.

Perhaps these revelations are a form of self-indulgence, a cleansing of conscience. As you are aware, I am now a Catholic, but my past was so cluttered and confused that I had to apply to Rome for absolution. Because of the unique situation, I was granted time with the Holy Father, who prayed for me and intervened on my behalf. I am now forgiven, though I still tremble at the thought of Judgement Day. I am tired now, so I shall continue tomorrow when I hope to have a clearer picture.

We walked on the beach this morning, my love. That silly dog wagged his tail so hard that it seemed ready to drop off. I am good today. I remember that we had Alpen for breakfast and chicken with green salad for lunch. How I wish that every day could be like this! You wore that old blue coat and the green wellies, got a speck of sand in your eye.

Where to begin? I shall give no names, or perhaps I may decide to append false names to some of the characters in what is intended to be an accurate account. This is an attempt to help you make sense of who and what I am. I was born on the island of Corfu in 1918. My family fished, kept a few animals, helped in the olive groves occasionally. I had several uncles and aunts on the island, some Jewish, some Greek Orthodox, as my mother was Jewish and my father was a Christian.

My father had one brother in Athens, so I moved to the mainland and was apprenticed to my uncle at the age of fourteen. It was he who taught me the arts of gem-cutting and polishing, jewellery design and manufacture. I remained in Athens until 1938, in which year I gained my qualifications as a fully fledged jeweller. As my father had become ill, I went home to Mother, because my brothers, who were fishermen, could not spare sufficient time to tend my parents. Fishermen are at the mercy of the tides; I was elected chief nurse and goat-farmer. My father died on Christmas Day in 1938.

The day of Papa’s death is so clear to me, clearer than the view from Benaura’s window. My three brothers were drinking Mother’s wine and singing Christmas songs. The gentle woman was hurt because her sons were drunk as they celebrated the birth of Christ. She did not object to our Christianity, but
there should have been no singing while her husband lay dying. I sat with my father. He was so happy to hear the lovely music that he died with a smile on his face. His joy and her sorrow have remained with me down the years. She berated them for carousing, yet the boys could not possibly have known that their father had chosen that moment to slip away. He had been ill for so long that we never knew how many more weeks or months he might linger. He died happily, because my brother’s voices were so beautiful. We were a melodic family, though I was the exception, since I have always been tone deaf.

This cat of yours is chasing my pen. I have never met a lazier animal, yet he taunts me when I need to concentrate and be quiet. Chewbacca is growing, is almost as big as the guard dogs. The guard dogs were German shepherds, but their intelligence had been directed along the evil path chosen by their masters. I digress, Laura. I must try to keep things in order, or you might become as confused as I am sometimes. The river is beautiful today, because the sky is clean.

I did not return to Athens. Our bit of land had been neglected during Papa’s decline. I did what I could, but the livestock were feeble and sick. When all but the cow had died, I built her up and sold her, then opened a little stall on the market. I sold jewellery made from shells, polished pebbles, cheap stones. Children became my labourers, their small fingers proving eminently suitable for assembling little brooches and necklaces for the young girls on the island. I achieved hardly any profit, but my brothers fished and made merry, brought home enough money and food for us to survive. My mother became old very quickly, always wore sombre clothes, seldom smiled. Do not let this happen to you, my Laura. Father was but a man, just as I am
but a man. Be strong, be calm and face the storm, find a lover who will keep you sheltered from the worst of the wind and rain.

The war began in 1939 and we were not much affected. Our island seemed too small and unimportant to play any part in a conflict that promised to swamp the whole of Europe. Corfu changed little, because it had not yet been targeted by masses of tourists. We ate, we slept, did our work and talked to sweethearts on the beach. Nothing could have prepared us for the horrors to come.

Preparing you is difficult. You have already heard of these things, must have read about them in history books. I sit here at my desk in a house on the edge of the Mersey, cannot imagine war. The river is flat, almost glassy, a tanker is strolling along the horizon like a snail in the heat. No rush, no hunger, no need. Liverpool suffered. It is hard to envisage the blackness, the fires, the roar of sirens along this battered coast. But wars do happen, I was there, I survived. I don’t need to use my powers of imagination, because I have the memory burned into my mind. And into my flesh. The burn mark on my arm was self-inflicted. As a half-Jew, I carried a number, but again I am going too fast, am beginning to wander off course.

The tanker was days ago, I think. Days, hours, minutes – these are all being swallowed up and I can no longer gauge the time, am unable to estimate how long I have been sitting here this morning. You have gone to the shops, I believe, have driven off in that little green car. I remember your dress – it is yellow. Have you noticed how I stare at you, how I hang on to your every word so that my responses might be appropriate?

At about six o’clock one morning in June 1942, the Nazis landed on Corfu. We had noticed for some time a slight antipathy towards Jews, as if some Christians did not want to support Jewish traders. Even before the evil had landed, its doctrine had begun to contaminate our shores. It was as if propaganda infiltrated via some osmotic process that infected the whole world. Some believed that the Jews had started the war simply by existing. Had the Jews not existed, then Adolf Hitler might have kept a rein on his insane temper. But in June 1942, the Christians came out to watch 1,500 Jews being marched off to a collection of decrepit vessels. The Nazis had actually promised to pay the Greek government for ‘selling’ Jews, had vowed to send Athens a share of looted possessions. Some of our islanders smiled as their neighbours were marched away.

We were overlooked that first time, even though we were half-Jewish, but we were taken a week later. My mother, who was very weak, was the first in our family to be hurled onto the boat. My brother and I stepped forward to protect her, but we were clubbed by the guards. I think my brother was bludgeoned to death and disposed of before we sailed. When I woke the first time, I was on a huge raft that was towed by a small German boat. There were only three guards on the raft, as the Nazis had worked out that terror and confusion are the most efficient gaolers. My eyes were full of blood that dripped from a gash in my head. I was unconscious for a long time, for days, became aware from time to time that I was no longer on the water, that I was travelling in an upright position wedged among a suffocating mass of people. I never saw my brothers or my mother after that journey of death. Many of us who stood in the cars were the dead who remained upright because of the congestion.

Laura, I hope that you will never have to read this. Today, I have been quite well, but I am wondering now where you are. When you came back from the shops that other time, your dress was not yellow. I remembered it being the colour of buttercups, but I think you were really in a grey or beige suit. How many days am I losing, how many hours? How long is it since this amnesia began and why does it not apply also to the time I write about?

I have told you about the journey, I think, about my family having disappeared. Now, I shall stick at this, because my behaviour is becoming noticeably odd. Did I go into hospital? Did I strike our friend Les? You are watching me, listening in the night. I must finish, I must win this race.

I was thin and I was in Poland. The camp was called Treblinka. Some things I shall never forget! We all had beards. Well, there were not very many of us left, but those who walked out of the train had several inches of growth on their faces. I can hear it now, hear it, smell it, almost touch it. It never goes, Laura, even in my confusion I can hear the cries of children, the screams of women. They were taken away, the young and the female. We were left to stand, dried out, hollow-eyed, dying of a thirst that had become a part of us.

There seemed to be hope for me and another Greek Jew. An aged interpreter spoke for us, conveyed to the guards that I was a qualified jeweller and that my companion was a graphic artist. We were separated from the rest. After the numbers were tattooed on our arms, we were pushed into a small hut where we could not sit down. In fact, the space was so cramped
that we almost took turns to breathe. Later on, we learned that this was a punishment cell where men were often abandoned to die slowly of thirst. After some hours, the door opened and we were given a scoop of brackish water. Nothing before or since has tasted as good as that drop of filthy water.

I keep reading this through, going back to the start so that I might remember what I have already written. It is so difficult. Memories from 50 years ago are bright and terrible, but I cannot recall what I wrote yesterday. Was it yesterday? I suppose it does not matter. You are worried, my darling. Are you concerned about me, are you ill? I must concentrate, must hurry. Time is not on our side, Laura.

I will call my companion Paul, as that was not his name. I have written Paul on my wrist so that I might see it when I glance down, might have a chance of remembering. There are people who are still alive – they might suffer if these papers are found. I must be careful to protect the cabal we became when the war was over.

Paul and I had the best of it. While others were tortured, murdered, disposed of, we slept in an office-cum-workshop with a good mattress and ample food. We were the elite. Paul and I received wedding rings, gemstone jewellery, all kinds of adornments. We were also given the terrible task of melting down gold fillings from the teeth of those who burned in the crematoria. Our workshop was near to the big furnaces as we, too, needed heat for our crucibles. We became deaf, Paul and I. We made fine ornaments to decorate the Reich. Paul designed to order, I broke jewellery, reconstructed it to order. And we ceased to hear the shouts of the guards, the
explosion of a flying bullet, the screams of the damned.

Laura, I did not suffer unduly, so do not upset yourself. My ambition was to stay alive until the end. I worked, I smiled, I bowed and scraped. We enjoyed a degree of freedom, were allotted clothes that were warm and decent, items that had been dragged from the backs of new prisoners. Feverishly, we strove to please our masters, taught them to look through the glass, educated them about the form, the cut, the colour of a diamond. Our anger was deep and cold, but we made no attempt to warm it. We wanted to survive. We vowed to live so that we could tell the world what had happened in Treblinka. Laura, the Jews paid for their own disposal, paid with jewels, furs, little mementoes from home. They paid for the privilege of being put to death.

Sometimes, there were no trains and our work slowed. The days without trains were the worst, as the Germans would use the lull to pick out and dispose of the weakest among us. Even so, we were safer than the rest. We stood at the small window of our workshop and watched the old interpreter being supported by stronger prisoners on his way to the gas chamber. Paul ran from my side. I heard him as he retched over the bucket that was our latrine, found him weeping next to our little furnace.

Because of the designs, Paul and I had an almost limitless supply of graph paper. We were both blessed with photographic memories, but his skill at portraiture was far superior to mine. Under the stove in our quarters, we hid a metal box that contained detailed drawings of many Nazis, the men whose atrocities we had observed from our window. It was
this collection that kept us going, because we were saving evidence that might prove useful after the war. I intended to avenge my mother, as I was certain that she had not survived the long journey from home. Paul needed to avenge the whole Jewish nation. His was the kind of fury that is lasting and dangerous, yet it is also justifiable.

There is rain today. The garden needs it, so do the birds. This morning, when I woke, you were standing over me. There is so much anguish in your face. Has someone told you about my problem, do I scream in the night? I have returned to my desk, am trying to pick up the threads of my story. I think I make the effort to come into the office every day, but I may be forgetting sometimes. Reading through takes a long time. I often need to go to the beginning more than once, as I am not absorbing what I read.

Rich Jews came, probably from Macedonia or Bulgaria. They were covered in furs and jewels, carried boxes of valuables. Paul and I, helpless and ashamed, received the gems and precious metals that would keep us alive. For Eva Braun, I made a swastika in gold and platinum studded with sapphires, diamonds, rubies. My hatred was melted into every carat.

There are good German people. There were good ones then, during the war. A young guard who had escaped active service because of a shrivelled arm became our friend, often bringing us cocoa and sugar, even bits of butter and chocolate. The lad was truly terrified of what was happening. From him we learned our German. We also learned how much he hated the camp. There were tears in his eyes on the days when mass genocide was accomplished via the ‘showers’. ‘Why is it happening?’ we asked him.
‘Why do your friends do these things to the prisoners?’ ‘Fear,’ he replied. ‘If we don’t do the job, we join the Jews in the ovens.’ How prophetic he was. When we had known him for quite some time, he was savaged to death by dogs belonging to a particularly crazy guard. We watched this happening, saw our young friend’s bloodied corpse when his nightmare finally ended. The Nazis must have seen his fear, no doubt felt threatened and weakened by his sanity. So he was ripped apart like a rag doll, tossed into an incinerator and burned like another piece of waste. Sometimes, I fear dogs. The cabal dealt with that guard, gave him a similar end, but I am wandering ahead again.