Sunrise West (9 page)

I recall an evening when I sat with Zakhor and watched him moving his almost voiceless lips; yet I could hear his every word. ‘I saw a doctor today, a lady doctor,' he was saying, ‘a tiny little woman in a white starched blouse and a face like a wrinkled apple with a pair of beady, mercantile eyes. “You have six months to live,” she told me nonchalantly. “I
can
lengthen your life with injections, but you must see me twice a week.” “But doctor,” I said, “I have no money.” To which she replied: “Young man, my job is to look after your health, not your bank account.” I became very agitated, jumped up from my chair, called her heartless and arrogant. But the woman sat there unruffled. “Doctors don't have to be admirable people,” she said.'

This might strike the reader as a sad joke, but it's not. As it turned out, Zakhor lived, while the little doctor unexpectedly passed on. Survivors harboured an inherent dislike for doctors: there were many cases where, in order to gain favours for themselves, camp doctors had reported their patients to the authorities — which was as good as a ticket to the gas chambers.

One day we went to a public baths in a nearby town. As we undressed I noticed that three toes were missing from Zakhor's left foot. ‘I lost them in Gross-Rosen, during roadmaking,' he explained apologetically. ‘For days I had to stand barefoot in freezing mud, and though it was almost
spring it wouldn't stop snowing. As you can see, nature is quite indifferent to human suffering.'

I nodded, looking away, but Moshe was not finished yet. ‘I believe,' he resumed, ‘that Vincent Van Gogh understood nature's indifference to pain better than any other painter. You just need to look at his nervous landscapes, his flowers. Perhaps, in a way, he was also an inmate, a condemned ghetto-dweller — which made him rebel, in the face of the human anguish within him and all around him, not only against collaborating with the prettiness of nature, but against its very apathy and silence.'

 

 
Pinocchio
 

Time had eaten up much of May; most of the former prisoners were preparing to leave, or had already left, for their respective national homes. At dusk we sat around watching the embers of our smouldering youth. Moshe whispered, ‘Where to, Zakhor, where to?' Perhaps to feed his depressed mood, he began to mouth the words of a Polish miners' song — one which our former German masters had forbidden on pain of death:

We will never see the sun again,

God's luminous feast;

We are condemned to die far away

From our homeland in the east.

But before long we heard that illegal emigration to Palestine was being organized. It was time to leave Austria. At the start of June we boarded a goods train for Italy and headed south.

It was early on this journey that I met up with Majer Ceprow, my sister Ida's husband, a short man with a talent for acting. Moshe Zakhor, who had once been Maximilian Zacharski, was not overjoyed. ‘A brother-in-law,' he maintained, ‘is just that, a brother-in-law.'

‘Meaning?' I asked.

‘Meaning that if your sibling is dead, the “in-
law
” does not apply.'

‘Maybe,' I said, ‘but at a time when all your dear ones lie murdered, he is not just family but a real link to the past.'

The goods train that ferried us across the border was welcomed by scores of Italians. At Bolzano there were orchestras, choirs and speeches, but no food: things were in perfect disarray. Oddly, however, commerce had not stopped thriving. In June the days are beautiful in the north of Italy, but the nights are brutally cold — and were especially so for our two hundred or so travelling camp survivors.

As we pushed deeper into the country our hunger became unbearable, but we had no money to buy food and no commodities to trade. My leather belt, which I had ‘organized' in Mozart's city, Salzburg, during our brief stopover there — camp inmates were terrific organizers — fetched a loaf of bread, but that didn't last more than an hour. Majer came up with a brilliant idea. ‘I'll exchange my woollen trousers for some cotton shorts,' he said (shorts were quite fashionable during the warm Italian months),
‘and for the balance, we'll purchase some provisions.' Moshe and I agreed wholeheartedly to Majer's offer and I was delegated to conclude the deal.

So on our next stop, early in the morning, while Majer waited sheepishly in a dim corner of the carriage in his underpants, I took the merchandise and set off for the local market. After making a number of time-consuming enquiries, wandering from stall to stall, I learnt that such precious wares were handled exclusively by a man known as Pinocchio — not for the length of his nose but, as I was to discover later, because of its instinct for sniffing out a shady deal. After a thorough inspection of my garment he offered 2500 lire plus a pair of white linen shorts. It sounded auspicious, so I promptly agreed.

In the afternoon, radiant with happy anticipation, I finally ran back to my friends to tell them of my unbelievable achievement. But I was in for a shock. The white shorts turned out to be a pair of underpants. On top of that, when we opened the packet of 100-lire bills we discovered that only the top one was genuine!

 

 
Italy
 

The days grew brighter. The Jewish Brigade, attached to the British army and made up of Jews from Palestine, took over our passage and all at once there was food, laughter, songs in Yiddish and Hebrew, even in Polish and Russian. On one of our stops we were transferred from the goods train into open trucks escorted by British motorized units. I watched
in amazement how hungrily our convoy swallowed up Mussolini's excellent highways. What still puzzles me is that amid the songs and happy squabbling, no one spoke of the past — it was as if there had never been a past.

From my camp experience I could perhaps venture to say, with Pascal, that the mind has a soul of its own, and the soul has a mind of its own, and they protect each other. The mind protects the soul from shutting down and the soul protects the mind from going mad. To reminisce, to long for the past when on the threshold of a new life, is a heart-wrenching and dangerous exercise — one that almost forestalled our forefathers' biblical Exodus from reaching the promised land. Our own exodus from the jaws of hell was no different. Fate had deprived us of our youth, so instead of harking back we sang rebelliously against our lot.

Moshe became greatly excited when we were told we would be stopping for the night in Shakespeare's city of love and discord, the land of Montagues and Capulets. He pointed out that Verona was the home of the thirteenth-century Talmudic scholar Eliezer ben Samuel, grandfather of the philosopher and physician Hillel ben Samuel; and home also to my namesake Levi ben Gershon, who had produced the great Midrashic collection,
Tanhuma
. Even the poet Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome, who introduced the sonnet into Hebrew poetry, was believed to have sojourned in Verona. I was astonished by Moshe's knowledge and his marvellous memory!

As we pulled into that illustrious city, my friend's face was shining. ‘Listen,' he implored me. ‘Can you not almost
hear Romeo's lovestruck voice? Or Mercutio's challenge to Tybalt, and then the bloody clash of swords...?'

At daybreak, after a hefty slice of corn-bread and a mug of hot coffee, we resumed our journey towards the southeast. And although I had not been brought up in the spirit of Zion, the songs and their stirring melodies — sung by a few hundred Jews who had been miraculously saved from the gas chambers — enthused me nevertheless with hopes of a new beginning, a new life in Palestine. But no sooner had we begun to move than our escorts let us know that we were being shadowed by a motorized squad of the NKVD, the Soviet security police. Our songs froze on our lips. The leader of our transport, an officer of the Jewish Brigade, was undaunted. Placing himself at the head of our cavalcade, he ordered the drivers to stop their vehicles. Our pursuers soon drew level with us. Quietly but confidently — after all, Italy was not Soviet territory — he approached the Russians, saluted smartly, and asked why they were following us.

‘We suspect,' came the reply, ‘that the people you are ferrying down to the sea are being kidnapped.'

‘Well,' said the officer, ‘you're at liberty to interrogate each and every one of them. If you find any individuals who wish to return to the land of their birth, they will be free to do so without hindrance.'

The Russians dismounted from their motorcycles and began to inspect the convoy. When they reached our vehicle, a young Yiddish-speaking Russian woman, apparently the leader of the mission, began to question Zakhor. ‘Why are you running away from the place where your ancestors dwelt for a thousand years?' she asked him.

‘Why? Because nobody waits for me back there,' Moshe answered nervously. ‘All my family, my friends, teachers, neighbours, acquaintances — all are dead. Murdered.'

‘Yes, I know, I know,' the petite blonde shot back in Yiddish. ‘But your earth is still there!'

Moshe nodded sadly. ‘Our earth? — our earth was the word. For two thousand years we Jews have dwelt in the word. And when they destroyed our word, we withdrew into the crevices of our letters. And when they melted down our letters, we retreated into a dot — yes, a dot... You, of all your comrades, should understand the meaning of
pintele Yid
, the Jewish spark.'

‘I think I do,' said the woman from the NKVD, clearly moved and suddenly subdued. ‘But let me tell you. Where you're going, there will be no room for your kind of word, no room at all.'

‘Maybe so, and it will make me very sad. But let me tell
you
what a wise man called Voltaire once said:
In order to think, one must first of all live
.'

 

 
Dina