The Street Sweeper (24 page)

‘They all Jews?’

‘No. I was like a leader of a group of boys, all of them Polish, not Jews, except me.’

‘You’re Polish too though, right?’

‘You are black, Mr Lamont, yes?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘You are American too, yes?’

‘Gotcha.’

‘Listen and remember. When was I born?

‘Nineteen twenty-two.’

‘What day, what month? Remember me. There is no one else like me, and your Dr Washington thinks I have cancer so you have to remember. I will test you. I was born 15 December 1922 in the town of Olkusz. Say it!’

‘Fifteenth December 1922.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘No, you
have
to remember, Mr Lamont. Otherwise what are we talking?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I was born 15 December 1922 in the town of Olkusz. It’s a little town what is near Krakow but when I was four years old we moved to Zabkowice. Say it: Olkusz.’

‘Ol-kooz.’

‘Say Zabkowice.’

‘Zab-kov-itz-ay.’

‘My father?’

‘Your father was a butcher. Sold meat on credit in hard times. Went bankrupt. You were the leader of a gang, the others were all Polish, you were the only Jew. You got no trouble, as a Jew, I mean?’

‘Others did, yes. Not me. Maybe sometimes. If anyone called me a Jew I hit them. I was strong. There was one boy from the area. I remember his face. I can see it. A boy from the area but not really in the group, with hair like it was so straight from a ruler making angles, sharp angles on the ears; I remember him. He wanted trouble; called me dirty Jew so I hit him. He cried in front of the other boys and that was that for him.

‘I was working in a stone yard when the Germans invaded Poland to start the war.’

‘Stone yard, you mean … like a quarry?’

‘Yes, a quarry. I had work there. When they set up the ghetto it was 1942.’

‘What do you mean a ghetto … for Jews?’

‘You know what is a ghetto, Mr Lamont?’

‘Yeah.’

‘When the Nazis invaded, sooner or later they set up ghettos all over Poland for the Jews. Jews were expelled from the villages and towns and sent to the nearest ghetto. My family was sent with the other Jewish families from around the area to Dabrowa Gornicza. You say it: Dabrowa Gornicza.’

‘Dab-rov-a Gor-nitch-a.’

‘We were in the ghetto at Dabrowa Gornicza and I had a special pass what let me come and go from the ghetto.’

‘How come you got that pass?’

‘Because I was chosen to work outside the ghetto in construction. There was a lot of building going on at the time and the Nazis needed labour. They used the Jews as slave labour. You see, they were settling that part of Poland, the west, with Germans. From Germany German people and families along with the soldiers were coming. They called them
Volksdeutsche
. For the
Volksdeutsche
they needed buildings, houses, roads, renovations to old buildings and they used Jews what came from the nearest ghetto to where they were. I was lucky and took my chances with a pass that let me leave the ghetto every day to work in the construction.

‘Leading out of the ghetto from the street where my family lived in the ghetto in Dabrowa Gornicza there was a street where was an SA
man living there with his wife in a house they were building. I saw them and I saw the man every day when I went off to work.’

‘What do you mean, “an SA man”?’

‘SA means
Sturmabteilung
, Storm Troopers. It was a German paramilitary organisation. Each day when I went off to work and I would see him I would say hello, good morning and things like this to him. Even though he saw me with the yellow star he would still answer back, good morning. I said it in German.’

‘What do you mean the yellow star?’

‘They made all Jews wear the Jewish Star of David, a yellow one sewn onto your clothing. If you were caught without it you could be shot where you stood.

‘Because of my work permit for the construction works I heard things from outside the ghetto and I heard many things before other people. Lots of things were said. You couldn’t always believe them. I heard that when Jews left the ghetto they didn’t always go to another ghetto. Sometimes they were sent to be killed. I wasn’t sure so I didn’t want to tell my parents what I’d heard. What for would I tell them when it might not be true? I heard that they were going to be moving the Jews of Dabrowa Gornicza to a ghetto in Sosnowiec. You can say it.’

‘Sos-nov-ietz.’

*

It was six o’clock the following evening when Charles and Adam resumed their conversation. ‘The more I think about it the angrier at him I get,’ Charles said. ‘He really has no right –’

‘Angry?’

‘Adam, the sweet old man is taking advantage of you, of your situation. He knows you’re not in good shape professionally and he thinks this is his chance.’

‘Charlie, what are you talking about? The more
I
think about it the more I think it might be worth a
little
time at least.’

‘You can’t be serious? All my professional life he’s been trying to get me to use my education and then later also my position to explore the
role of black World War II veterans and now he’s trying it on you because he thinks you’re his best chance.’

‘But he might be onto something. People know that when black World War II veterans came home to the Jim Crow south they weren’t going to take it any more. They weren’t going to say “Yes, sir, yes, ma’am”, they weren’t going to be addressed as “boy”, they weren’t going to be addressed by their first names when they had to address white people as “Mister” and “Missus”. They weren’t any longer going to step off the sidewalk when a white man went past. These are all small acts of resistance that veterans introduced. Their experience in the war gave them the courage for it that they hadn’t had before. Look, Charlie, I don’t know of any study by anyone that actually links black soldiers’ specific experience abroad with their post-war civil rights activities back home. If I can get the people who were there on the ground, including at the liberation of concentration camps, if I can put together a map of exactly where black soldiers were … it might well be the first piece in making that concrete link. Charlie, you might remember, I copped flak, at least from certain quarters and quite wrongly in my opinion, for studying the role of lawyers because lawyers don’t constitute a social movement. But what we’re talking about now is a social movement, a classic example of one. Maybe I can do it, get the black soldiers there and bring them home, then show what they did back home.’

‘Adam, I’m telling you, don’t get involved with this.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘Okay, first and foremost, the subject is a veritable minefield. There was a PBS documentary made around the early ‘90s on the role of black soldiers at the liberation of Dachau. Did you know about this? As a consequence of the documentary all sorts of people came out of the woodwork saying there were no black troops at the liberation of Dachau. The military records are said not to back up the claim.’

‘Charlie, since when did you take the official government line as the beginning and end of anything? I’ve started looking at this and one is entitled to start asking questions about the accuracy of the records. There are obvious reasons why the records might not tell the whole story. Even
without bias the records might distort the truth. Did you know black outfits were frequently split up and “lent out” to other outfits? Take the 761st, for example; it was often referred to as a “bastard outfit” because it didn’t seem to belong to anyone. This meant that nobody “officially” knew where they were at any given time so, of course, no formal record of their service would be complete.’

‘Adam, whether or not they were there, the topic, especially the Dachau example, aroused intense passions, not to mention the attention of some virulent racists, who seemed to feel the need to protect the record of the military as though having black troops there somehow tarnishes the US Army’s record. Adam, it’s a minefield.’

‘Isn’t this precisely the sort of topic we should be researching?’

‘Who’s “we”?’

‘Historians.’

‘Adam, is that what you’re looking for – controversy, or maybe some kind of glory? You want to be a hero or do you want to be a scholar? And anyway, have you ever considered the consequences of concluding that black troops were
not
there?’

‘Are you suggesting there are some conclusions only a black historian can reach?’

‘For God’s sake, Adam, I’m trying to protect you! Can’t you see that?’

‘Does this mean that you’ve already formed a view? You think black soldiers weren’t there.’

Adam knew that it was possible for William to see him as his last chance to get something written about the specific role of black veterans in the civil rights movement, for it to be controversial and for the suggestion to be offered as both a measure of hope and as a legitimate scholarly idea. There was nothing inherently wrong with all these purposes being served simultaneously. But he couldn’t help feeling a little disturbed by William’s failing to mention the PBS documentary and the surrounding controversy. Adam turned over in his mind the pros and cons of raising this with William. On the one hand it might put the old man on the spot. On the other hand to deny William the opportunity to explain the omission would be to deny him the intellectual respect he would accord a
younger man. He was still mulling this over when William called him and, though he hadn’t reached any firm decision, he found himself succumbing to a childlike lack of restraint and asking with a hint of complaint how William had kept the saga of the early ‘90s PBS documentary from him. Then before he knew what he was saying and before giving William a chance to respond, he added as a younger brother might that Charles had been trying to dissuade him from taking up the topic.

‘I was going to tell you about that documentary, of course I was,’ William told him. ‘You were going to find it within minutes of starting your research anyway so what would be the point of keeping it from you? But it’s not the first thing I wanted you to know, that’s true. We don’t know who it was who apparently definitively dismissed the claim that black soldiers were part of the liberation of Dachau. I certainly don’t know who it was and Charlie’s never given me a satisfactory answer as to their identity and that’s ‘cause he doesn’t know and could not be bothered looking into it.

‘And, yes, it’s also true that I
have
been trying to get Charlie to write about this. For years, frankly, I’ve been trying to get him to write about it. I don’t mind admitting that. What’s wrong with that? My son is a highly respected historian and my generation is dying out. One could say, given his position and what I, and other black men of my generation lived through, that I have an obligation to at least try to get him to write about it. He holds a privileged position in a society where black men are still over-represented in most of the negative statistics and under-represented in most of the positive ones. More than 50 per cent of black men in this country don’t finish high school and, of that more than 50 per cent, 72 per cent are unemployed. They’ve got no pride, no hope and very few positive role models. They should know what men like my friend did, black men of my generation. The world should know what we did. But Charlie’s not going to tell anyone. He’s got a block on this, a mental block when it comes to this.

‘Now take this story for instance. My friend is a black veteran who, among other things, served his country at the risk of his own life, liberating victims of one of the worst regimes that has ever existed, and ever since then people have been saying he wasn’t there. Don’t you see what
this is, Adam? This is what happened when the invisible man went to war! But my son is a historian of the Reconstruction and he doesn’t want to rock any boats now that he’s risen to the top.’

‘William, I think you’re being a bit hard on Charlie. I completely agree that the role and experience of black servicemen abroad and at home are worthy and under-researched topics but they fall more into the realm of twentieth-century political history. That’s my area, not Charlie’s. At least it was what I took to
calling
my area.’

‘So you’re still interested?’

‘I’ll certainly talk to your friend in Boston.’

‘That’s great, Adam! You’re a good boy. You won’t regret this. I’ve left a couple of messages for him but he hasn’t returned the call. I hope he’s all right. At our age …’

Later that day William’s friend did return the call, which led to William calling Adam again. This time though he sounded deflated. William’s friend in Boston did not want to speak to Adam or to anyone.

‘He’s tired, he’s old and he’s not well,’ William explained. ‘He suffered racism as a kid at home before the war, risked his life in a segregated army fighting Nazism in Europe, came home to fight the civil rights battles we fought and now he just wants to be left alone. He can no longer bear the indignity of having to prove anything to anyone. He said he’s given all the interviews he’s ever going to give about any aspect of his life. He thinks the controversy generated by the PBS documentary has taken years off his life. I can well imagine it has, Adam. He feels as though, even after all these years, nothing much has been achieved. The Supreme Court decision didn’t exactly make him want to get up and do the quick-step, either.’

‘There was nothing you could say?’

‘Adam, how well do you know me? Don’t you think I tried? I told him all about you, that you weren’t just anybody, told him you were Jake’s son.’

‘Jake’s son,’ Adam said almost to himself.

‘He liked the sound of you, really he did but … he’s just done fighting. He’s not well. So I’m afraid if you’re still inclined to run with this you’re going to have to rely on the interviews he’s already given.
He said he could get his daughter to send them or at least a reference to them through the internet.’

‘Email?’

‘Yeah, he said she’s got email. He doesn’t want to be bothered with computers. Said he gave up trying to program the TiVo. Want to read the interviews?’