The Thread (31 page)

At the end of June, a month or so after the arrest of the city’s chief rabbi, two smartly suited men arrived in Thessaloniki and paid a visit to two senior members of the Jewish community. One of them spoke enough Greek to make himself understood and they gathered that he had studied Ancient Greek at university. They introduced themselves politely as representatives of the Jewish Affairs Commission, which, they explained, had been set up to study world Jewry. The head of the Commission, Alfred Rosenberg, was a very cultured and educated man and wished them to gather any relevant documents or manuscripts and return them to the Commission’s headquarters in Frankfurt.

It sounded both plausible and academic, and even the name of the person who had established it sounded Jewish. The rabbis nodded, smiled and feigned great interest and approval of such a scheme. As the men from Frankfurt presented it, the idea certainly had an intellectual credibility.

‘So when will you start collecting?’ enquired one of the Jewish elders with interest.

‘Tomorrow, at dawn,’ replied the one with the slicked-down hair. Though his thin lips curled into a smile, his blue eyes remained cold. ‘And within the next week we hope to have completed the process of cataloguing and expect to have packed up everything we need. This does, of course, depend on the total co-operation of the Jewish community. And we are relying on you to ensure that.’

‘Of course,’ the Jewish community leaders both said in unison.

‘Shall we see you back here in the morning?’

They both nodded. They were standing in the synagogue that was home to some of the few treasures that had survived the fire over two decades earlier. While one of the Germans did most of the talking, his colleague had been walking about, scrutinising the synagogue. He paused in front of the Ark, the tall cupboard where the holy scriptures were kept.

‘I assume the Torah lives in this one,’ he said. ‘Any chance we could have a look inside?’ He ran his fingers with almost sensuous greed over the curtain that hung in front of it.

‘The key isn’t kept here,’ explained one of the rabbis. ‘But I’ll have it by tomorrow.’

As soon as the Germans had gone, they began to speak in low, hurried tones. Shortly afterwards they left the synagogue, and within fifteen minutes they were in Irini Street. It was now seven o’clock in the evening.

The moment he saw their bearded faces, drawn and anxious at the door, Saul Moreno felt a sense of dread that he had not experienced since the day the tanks had rolled into Thessaloniki.

‘We have to hide things. Not all of them. But some of them,’ explained one of the rabbis breathlessly.

‘Otherwise it will arouse suspicion, obviously,’ said the other.

The two of them were seated, while Saul Moreno paced up and down.

‘So what can I do? You aren’t asking me to hide things in the workshop?’

‘Not exactly …’

‘Because Germans are coming in almost every day. It would put my staff in great danger.’

‘Well, we’re not asking you to do that. We wouldn’t do that.’

‘And obviously we can’t hide all the scrolls. It would be impossible. But we need your help concealing a piece of manuscript and a fragment of one of the scrolls. And the curtain. We have to try,’ pleaded the younger man. ‘And you are the only people that can help us.’

Saul Moreno listened. He wanted to help very much. Nothing was greater than his duty to his synagogue, but he greatly feared endangering his wife, sons and all those good people who worked for him.

The rabbi had a battered leather suitcase with him.

‘Let me show you what we have. Then you can tell us if our idea is mad.’

Kyria Moreno was standing looking over her husband’s shoulder now and in the flickering candlelight they watched the rabbi open the case and begin to remove the contents. One thing at a time, he placed the contents on their table, as the Morenos watched, open-mouthed.

‘This is a fragment of the Torah scroll that’s believed to be the oldest surviving one in Thessaloniki.’

He then unfolded a familiar huge swathe of velvet.

It was the
parochet
, the curtain that was said to have been hanging in front of the Ark for hundreds of years and may not even have been new when it was brought over from Spain. The thread with which it was embroidered was tarnished now, but was pure gold.

‘I’ve sat and gazed at it so many times,’ said Saul. ‘It’s strange to see it in my own house.’

‘Look at the embroidery, Saul. Nobody could do that now. The workmanship is from another age.’

Roza ran her fingers over the relief pattern, with a mixture of reverence and admiration.

‘And these are some rabbinical teachings that were brought over from Spain. They are hard to decipher now. There is just one page that has survived. Ladino, look, written so lovingly.’

Finally, he took from the case a tallit. It was the finest, most fragile thing of all, a length of striped silk perhaps five hundred years old, with its compulsory tassels.

‘We think it might have belonged to someone who came over in that first boat from Spain,’ he said.

Nobody spoke as Saul Moreno surveyed the treasures and wondered where on earth they could hide them. Kyria Moreno eventually broke the silence.

‘Saul, we have to help. I think we can do it.’

‘How?’

‘We’re going to sew all night.’

Saul looked at her with some astonishment. Roza had known immediately what had to be done, even if her husband had been slow.

‘I know exactly how to do it,’ she said. ‘It will involve some puncture marks in the paper, but it can’t be helped.’

‘Your wife is right. We’ve got to allow some minor damage. If we don’t, we’ll lose them altogether.’

‘That’s why we came to you.’

‘Oh, there’s this too. I forgot.’

The older man unwrapped a pointer, a yad, that was run along the lines of the Torah instead of a finger, to avoid any damage to the holy writings. At the end of the silver pointer there was a tiny, perfect hand with outstretched forefinger.

‘It’s not as old as these other things. But we can’t let them take it.’

‘I don’t think there is anything we can do with that,’ said Kyria Moreno. ‘I think beneath your own floorboards might be the best place for it …’

Unusually, Kyrios Moreno allowed his wife to take over the situation. She clearly had a plan.

‘And you can take away the suitcase,’ she said. ‘Once we have done our work, we won’t be hiding anything. It will all be on display.’ She turned to her husband. ‘Can you get Isaac, please?’

Their elder son was upstairs but soon appeared.

‘Isaac, I want you to go next door. Bring Katerina and Eugenia here. And then I need you to do a quick run around the city. I need Allegra, Martha, Mercada, Sara, Hannah, Bella and Esther. Tell them all to meet here. Say it’s urgent. Saul, can you go to the workshop? These are the things we need.’

Even faster than she could speak, Roza was scribbling a list of the items she needed: various yardages of silk and padding, a score of different colours of thread, various lengths of braid.

The two synagogue elders were hastening away down the street when Katerina and Eugenia appeared on the threshold.

‘What’s happened?’ asked Eugenia with concern, looking around at the strange miscellany of objects. ‘Who were those men?’

Roza explained. Within fifteen minutes, the other women had arrived and soon they all knew what needed to be done. Roza had allocated individual tasks and had sketched out the designs that they should work to. Having spent the past fifty or so years of her life embroidering things for the synagogue, she was full of ideas for designs and patterns.

Eight of them were going to work on the quilt to conceal the
parochet
. In one night, they would make a quilt that would normally take several months. In the centre there would be an elaborate pattern of pomegranates and around the edges a pattern of stitches into which they would sew their own names in Ladino. As well as being a popular image for embroidery, with its symbolism of fertility and plenty, she was ‘planting’ a clue. In Ladino, the word for pomegranate was ‘
granada
’ and she wanted to reveal to anyone who possessed this knowledge that what lay beneath the layers of crimson satin had originally come from Spain, from Granada, to be precise.

It had to be spread across the Morenos’ bed to be worked on and this is where it would stay, covering the quilt that Kyria Moreno had been embroidering for her entire married life. Four of them worked on the central pattern, inspired by words from Exodus: ‘Thou shalt make pomegranates of blue and of purple and of scarlet … and bells of gold in between.’ Four of them worked on the edges, one on each side. The urgency of the task seemed to inspire them and their fingers worked fast and accurately.

Downstairs, Esther worked carefully on the concealment of the fragile tallit. The silk from which it was made was so fine, that it would not stand being pierced with a needle. She concealed it within two slightly larger pieces of quilted fabric and carefully stitched a seam around the perimeter. Round the edge, she embroidered what appeared to be an abstract pattern, but in reality it spelled out a few words she knew in Hebrew, telling the reader what was hidden inside. The swirls and curls of her design meant that no one would ever think of unpicking her elaborate stitching.

‘We need to do something different with these, Katerina,’ said Kyria Moreno. ‘Something so ordinary, that no one will even look at them twice.’

They both stood at the table, looking down at two frayed scraps of parchment.

‘What I would like you to do, my dear, is to imagine you are a child again. I hope it won’t be difficult, but you need to get the style right. I want you to embroider one picture that says “
Kalimera
” in big letters – you know the sort of thing, with the sun rising and a bird or a butterfly or some such thing in the sky. And then, a second one with “
Kalispera
”.’

‘With the moon and the stars?’

‘Yes! Exactly that. But don’t make them look like the work of a clumsy-fingered child,’ she said smilingly. ‘I’ve got to live with them on my walls!’

Katerina had done very similar pictures many years ago, under her mother’s instruction, and the memory came back sharply.

Her
Kalimera
was filled in with big loopy stitches, in a glossy, yellow thread, and
Kalispera
was in midnight blue. She enjoyed the simplicity of the task and smiled at the result. No one would be suspicious of something that was found on the wall of every Greek home. Even if they got stripped out of the frame, the precious pages they had to conceal would be encased inside a calico backing. It was normal to hide the untidy mess on the reverse side of the stitching.

Although there were a dozen people in this small house, there was uncanny silence. Their concentration was absolute, their clandestine activity urgent. They were saving the treasures that connected them with their past.

From time to time, Katerina glanced up at Esther Moreno. For the first time since she had known her, the elderly woman looked contented.

All night long they sewed without ceasing. Everything had to be finished by morning.

As was general practice with such traditional pieces, Katerina embroidered dates in the corner. On the first she put ‘1942’. Then, in the second she carelessly transposed the figures. ‘1492’ she wrote with her stitches. It was the date of the Sephardic expulsion from Spain. Anyone who knew the history of the Jews in Thessaloniki would spot this deliberate mistake.

Not so far away, the two Jewish elders waited at the synagogue. At seven thirty precisely, two representatives of the Commission walked in. Outside, two porters leaned against their handcarts smoking and chatting. They had been hired to transport the contents of the synagogue to the railway station.

Even though they were speaking between themselves in rapid German, it was obvious what one of them was saying. He had noticed that the curtain in front of the Torah Ark was missing and was shouting and gesticulating. One of the elders quickly produced the huge key that unlocked the slender door, and when the German saw what was inside he was immediately distracted. His expression changed to one of salivating interest. He reached in and pulled out one of the scrolls, wrapped in its
mappa
, its ancient velvet mantle, and held it lovingly, like a baby. Then he placed it on the desk nearby and carefully unrolled it. He ran his finger tips across the words as though they were in braille and then replaced it in the mantle. The other German started to carry things outside to the waiting porters.

The synagogue elders, who had prayed all night in order to prepare themselves for this quiet but terrible ransacking, stood silently by. They showed no emotion. It felt as though they were being stabbed a thousand times without being able to put up any defence.

Having cleared out the Ark, the Germans removed several dozen other books. Finally, they wrapped the menorah in the heavily embroidered cloth that covered the desk and carried it outside into the street, where they placed it on top of one of the carts. It was all done with surprising care. The second in command had meticulously and ostentatiously made a note of everything they had taken. Perhaps it was to give the impression that things would be returned. This charade was the only aspect of the operation that kept the elders from breaking down in unmanly tears.

The Germans’ task was complete. The synagogue was stripped bare.

There was a strange moment when the more senior figure offered his hand, as if he might want to shake those of the Jewish elders. Both of them instinctively took a step backwards.

‘
Danke schön und guten Morgen
,’ he said.

With those words, they set off down the street, the carts trundling noisily behind them.

Several dozen members of the congregation now emerged and stood in a group, with the two elders, watching the receding figures. As soon as the Germans were out of sight, they went inside the synagogue and began to pray.

Once the Commission had completed the task of stripping the Jews of their holy treasures and archives, the occupying forces more or less left them alone. They had already taken over the homes of most wealthy Jews, and had shut many businesses down.