The Puppet Boy of Warsaw (11 page)

This was the beginning of a terrible routine: I would steal myself away from our apartment with the excuse of a puppet show somewhere in the ghetto, meet Max at the
Wache
and cross to the Aryan side. Mother never again asked about the bread, but took it from me and wrapped it in newspaper to keep it fresh.

As the weeks and months passed, another ugly incident occurred, its memory biting me some nights like a snake. It became quite a popular pastime for the Germans to wander into the ghetto in their leisure time and take photographs for their private albums, like snapshots from an outing to a foreign country. I’d seen them occasionally snap away at our shops, our only tram or the sad market. But now whole film teams visited the ghetto, setting up scenes to depict the glorious life of the Jews – yet another dirty lie with which to fool the world.

They forced people at gunpoint to sit around tables laden with crystalware and water-filled carafes, pretending to merrily enjoy food that the Germans dished up. But no one ever got more than a morsel to eat and, once the filming had finished, the food vanished.

Next door, they transformed a filthy room into a makeshift school. The rats had forbidden all schooling in the ghetto, but for this film they stuck a group of children in decent clothes and told them: ‘Pretend this is your teacher. Look smart and eager.
Macht schon.
You’ll get bread.
Brot
.’

They filled a hospital ward with the best-looking patients, pinned pictures on the walls and had nurses attend to everyone with medicine and bandages in abundance. While typhoid swept through the ghetto and thousands were dying from lack of food and medicine, the rats showed the world just how well the Jews were living in their ghetto. And maybe the world believed them.

One day while I hunted for some vegetables in the market I stumbled across a group of children queuing at a soup kitchen, dressed in dirty rags and thin as twigs. Instead of trousers one boy had simply tied pieces of fabric around his bare legs with a piece of string. The children shuffled along, staring straight ahead, not even talking to each other. I joined the wretched group, then pulled the fool out of my pocket and stretched out my arm. The puppet dangled in front of the boy queuing ahead of me.

‘Well, hello, and what is your name?’ The boy turned and stared at me as if I’d slapped him. I smiled. Out came the monkey, who had no fear of jumping all over the children, and soon, as the queue moved slowly along, a little crowd had formed around me, eagerly following my little play. The boy finally smiled, exposing a gaping hole where his front teeth should have been. That’s when I saw them arrive: three men in suits and hats, carrying a large camera and tripod, accompanied by a soldier.

‘Hey, you.’

I tried to ignore him, but I knew he meant me.

‘Come here.’

For a moment they debated among themselves.

‘Let’s get this boy a proper audience. Come on.’ As before, I knew this was a
Befehl –
a command, not a request.

‘
Komm
.’ They led me along small streets and then, turning a corner, I found myself in Leszno Street.

‘Here.’ They pointed to the small theatre where I had seen my first puppet show with Grandfather.

‘
Jetzt zeig uns mal was
.’

That afternoon they forced me to put on a puppet show for their lying camera. And rather than emaciated children with big glassy eyes and hunger-swollen bellies, they hand-picked the audience for a jolly performance.

‘
Lachen! Hier, in die Kamera
.’ The cameraman told me to come out from behind the curtain and grin into the camera, showing the world just how gloriously we entertained ourselves behind the ghetto walls. I trudged home like a beaten dog.

These were the days of Mika the ghetto puppeteer, when no one, except Ellie, knew of my double life: Mika, entertaining the children, yet feeding the monster that would eat them all. I couldn’t sleep and in the mornings I looked at myself in the mirror with disgust.

Slowly, though, the seed planted by my visions of fighting the rats grew. It wouldn’t be long before things took a different turn.

I
t was Ellie who came up with the idea late one night when everyone else was asleep. I had been putting on shows for the soldiers for months now but at least Ellie and I still worked together at other times and we had just finished preparing a new puppet show. Ellie sat on a small chair, with the crocodile draped over her hand. She looked at me, but said nothing. Despite the dim light I could see her eyes, full of fire and something else. When her voice dropped a few notes and she started whispering even though no one could hear us, I started to worry.

‘Mika, I’ve thought of something. Please just listen, don’t say anything yet and let me finish.’

Was she going to suggest I let myself be fed alive to the lions?

‘You have the protection of a German soldier now; they know you at the
Wache
and they know you have a whole troupe of puppets in your coat. They actually trust you and there is nothing suspicious about you: you’re just a harmless Jewish boy who entertains them after work.’ She leaned in closer.

‘Think about it. You could actually use this, smuggle something back from the other side or out from here under your fabulous coat. Do you know how many people risk their lives every day, to smuggle medicine and food? Even children do it.’ She spoke as fast as a train.

‘But Ellie, I am just glad to get back home in one piece. Do you have any idea how brutal they are? Do you want to get me killed?’

‘Of course not, but maybe this is something we can use to our advantage. I can’t go on like this, Mika.’

‘There is no we, Ellie, it’s just me, me alone and the puppets – me and the damn soldiers. That’s it. There’s no one to protect me.’ My heart thumped as if I was right there with the soldiers. She had no idea what it was like.

‘I wish I could go. We’re all starving here anyway, so what’s the difference? A quick bullet or a long-drawn-out death, it’s just a matter of time. We’re all going to die here.’ Ellie got up and paced around the little workshop like a caged panther.

‘If I could, I’d hide on the other side until this whole bloody war is over. Take as many children with me as I could.’ She sat down again and grabbed both my hands. Hers were hot and sweaty.

‘You know, the other day when you were out, I dropped by the children’s hospital. I wanted to make myself useful; I’m going crazy here in the house. Mika, it was awful. They’ve nothing: no food, hardly any medicine or bandages, even bedlinen is rare. I saw some children lying on newspaper and the nurse told me they now stuff newspaper into the covers. The little ones looked so wretched, sunken eyes with dark circles under them. They just stared at me from their beds. And so thin! What if you could smuggle in some medicine from the other side? Or even smuggle out a child? I heard that people are doing this. There’s food over there. The children could be hidden.’

Goose bumps spread up my arms, then across my whole body. I was no hero – and yet I admit it, I felt excited too. Ellie had touched something in me, an idea that might give me back some self-respect. Could this be the remedy for my shame, something that could turn my wretched situation into an opportunity?

Still, my pounding heart reminded me I was also scared out of my wits. We’d all heard of young people who had been taken to the Pawiak prison then turned up days later, dead and mutilated, in a dark alley. Age provided no protection from the Gestapo, nor from any Nazis.

‘You’re crazy, Ellie, how am I supposed to do this? Max is always right next to me. He collects me and brings me back. All I have is the damn coat.’

‘But you are the Puppet Boy. They know you have a coat full of puppets, they won’t search you – and if they do, it has to be only the puppets they find. You can conjure something with all your pockets. You know, like a magician. It’s about distraction and timing.’ Distraction and timing? Ellie had a nerve. She was also right.

‘It’s too dangerous, Ellie; really, I don’t want to hear anything more about it.’ Something shut down in me and I tried to change the subject.

‘But you must come with me to the hospital.’ I should have known Ellie wouldn’t give up that easily. ‘You’ll see for yourself.’

‘I’ve already seen the orphanage, thank you very much, and I see more misery than I can stomach every day in the streets, isn’t that enough?’

‘No, Mika. We must put on a show for them. It’s different there. A lot of children die every day. They’re just kids – sometimes three to a bed.’

My resistance collapsed. Ellie had won and I gave in.

And so, a few months after my first performance on the Aryan side, Ellie and I left for the Jewish Children’s Hospital in Sienna Street. Like the orphanage, the building was three storeys high with a grand staircase leading to different floors and wards. The nurses moved around like ants, as if their busyness could cover up the lack of resources. Seeing the nurses dressed immaculately in starched white uniforms helped us, for a brief moment, to forget that this hospital sat in the middle of the ghetto – until the stench hit us: no uniform could mask the smell of illness and death, of open wounds and human excrement.

The matron, a tall figure with a stern expression and a deep voice, her greying hair pinched back in a bun, commanded the nurses around her, continuously scribbling with a small stump of a pencil on a clipboard which jutted out at a sharp angle beneath her left breast. Ellie approached her.

‘Matron, you might remember me from my visit last week. I have brought my friend Mika; he’s the puppeteer I mentioned to you. We’ve come to entertain the children.’ Ellie sounded very adult and efficient.

The matron looked at me and a small smile spread across her face.

‘Ah, welcome, young man.’

‘We’d like to start with the sickest children first,’ Ellie continued. Another smile washed over the matron’s pale face.

‘Well, they’re all fairly ill; we never know who will make it through the night. But some little ones surprise us and hang on for quite a while. I suggest you start on the TB ward – third floor to the right. Most of the children there have been in hospital for a very long time.’ With this she spun around to attend to a nurse who had been waiting. The matron’s voice sounded coarse and despite a warm smile her authority intimidated me.

We wound our way up the marble staircase. With each floor my heart sank. How much more sickness, poverty and suffering could I witness? Little did I know how those children would surprise us.

The TB ward had about twenty beds squeezed tightly next to each other in one small room. A wood burner stood forlorn in the middle, giving off hardly any heat. The loose plaster on the walls had crumbled, leaving little heaps of white debris on the floor, but as if to assert that colour and life still existed, drawings were pinned up everywhere: simple sketches scribbled with coloured pencils of gardens, houses, butterflies, animals or people holding hands; one fine realistic drawing depicted a nurse bending over a child. At the back of the room one drawing in particular caught my eye: a dark, dense sketch filled with nervous criss-crossing strokes, showing a ghetto street crowded with indistinguishable, faceless characters, like ghosts. Only one figure stood out: a woman with friendly features, wearing a cheery, colourful dress.

The bed next to the drawing belonged to a boy who turned out to be fifteen, like me, yet he must have been half my weight. His cheeks were sunken but he smiled when I approached him. He introduced himself as Kalim.

Like those of most of the children on this ward, Kalim’s eyes burned, but this was not from the ravaging fever but from a place deep inside him that was still painfully alive. A place that clung on to life despite the knowledge that he would not recover.

‘Hello, Kalim, I’m Mika and this is Ellie. We are puppeteers. Is this your drawing?’

Kalim nodded.

‘It’s great. What is it about?’

‘Oh, that’s my mother,’ Kalim said, becoming animated. ‘One day I’ll see her again. Maybe you know her? She has brown hair and brown eyes and often wears this beautiful flowery dress. She hasn’t been here for a while now, so I’m asking all visitors if they have seen her. We live in Leszno Street, opposite the café. She’s called Stefania. Stefania Goldstein.’

We didn’t know his mother; the ghetto moulded us all into a single grey mass, a murky river that rolled through the dirty streets, swelling more and more every day with the debris of so many lives. Somewhere in this river floated Kalim’s mother. Maybe she had starved in her apartment, or lay dead in her bed. Maybe she had gone mad – it happened more and more. Just the other day one of our neighbours had run out of the house, naked and screaming. Thank God none of the soldiers was around at that moment, and her daughter was able to drag the woman back in.

I felt wretched, standing among the children’s beds, but the ones who could get out of bed immediately surrounded us, while the others shouted, all demanding to see the puppets. And so here we were again, making up one little play after another. Just as we’d seen in the orphanage, the children desperately wanted to play with the puppets on their own little hands, creating their own stories. What a shrieking, lively crowd.

We also visited other wards: the general ward, the one for what were termed ‘internal’ diseases, but we always returned to the TB ward.

It was a special place where the children knew each other well and there was a real sense of camaraderie and mutual support. Their last stop – for no one would ever leave this ward.

One afternoon Kalim told us that he used to play the violin, but it had been sold for two loaves of bread when he still lived with his mother and brother in Leszno. That’s when I remembered the tiny violin which had slept in the depths of the coat since those first days after they shot Grandfather. When I pulled it out, Kalim’s face lit up, and within minutes the small room had filled with a sweet and cheerful melody. This boy played so delicately and with such passion on this tiny instrument, charming everyone around him. I joined in with the little flute while others sang and beat improvised drums. Ellie and some of the children danced to the music, and for one afternoon we were a colourful troupe.