Too Many Men (48 page)

She took two of the dried apricots. “Thanks, Dad,” she said.

They were nearing the ghetto area. Ruth wondered what her father was thinking. Was he remembering the potato peels he and Rooshka had tried to turn into salad?
Salatka
they called it. Or was he remembering the decline in the availability of potato peels? It had happened on November 26, 1942, Edek had told her. The Department of Soup Kitchens had ordered a reduction in the potato content of the workshop soup. There had been a large delivery of cabbage, which had to be used up. The soup was tastier, but had less nutritional value. Edek had said that you could feel the difference. It was even harder to work hard on cabbage soup.

Was he remembering the day after the cabbage announcement when a rumor swept the ghetto that the straw-shoe workers were to be transferred to Poznan? The Germans thought it would be easier to transfer the Jews than to keep shipping the straw from Poznan. Edek had told Rooshka, who was working in the straw-shoe workshop at the time, that they would go into hiding if this order came through. They were not to be separated by anything, he had said.

The Mercedes turned left from Ogrodowa Street into Zachodnia Street.

Ruth had a map of the former ghetto with her. They were at the corner of Zachodnia and Podrzeczna Streets. Ruth knew that this intersection marked the entry into what had been the Lódz ghetto. There was nothing marking the spot. She told Edek where they were. “I do not recognize anything,” he said.

“All the buildings were demolished,” she said.

“I will show you where Mum and me did live for the first two years when we will drive past the street,” Edek said.

They passed Lutomierska Street where the old Jewish Cemetery of Lódz used to be. The first deportations from the ghetto had set out from this site. The cemetery was no longer there. The Nazis had destroyed it.

They had used the headstones and tombstones to build roads so that they could get to the rest of the Jews they had to kill more efficiently. A bit farT O O M A N Y M E N

[
3 0 5
]

ther on, on the corner of Rynek Baucki, there was a memorial plaque in memory of the Jewish and gypsy victims of Nazi war crimes. Ruth wondered how many Poles had looked at that plaque.

“Himmler came to the ghetto, one day,” Edek said.

“SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler?” said Ruth.

“Yes,” Edek said. “Himmler himself. I remember it was a Saturday. It was June 7, 1941. He came in a big black beautiful car. Probably a Mercedes. The car had a top what was open. Probably because it was summer.

I remember the licen plates what was on the car.”

Edek always dropped the
s
sound at the end of the word “license.” He always said “licen.” Why was she thinking about that? This was no time to be distracted by Edek’s or anyone else’s pronunciation.

“You saw Himmler?” Ruth said.

“Of course I did see Himmler,” Edek said. “Otherwise how could I tell you about his licen plates? I did never forget those licen plates. Instead of numbers, was an SS insignia and the number one.”

Ruth shook her head. She wondered if Himmler was the first person to have had personalized number plates. If he had, he had ushered in a craze. Half of most of the cars on the road in America now seemed to have personalized plates. Why was she having such banal thoughts?

Surely there was something more significant about Himmler’s visit to the Lódz ghetto than whether he had been a forerunner of a craze for personalized plates. She didn’t want to take this visit to Poland lightly. She wanted to take in as much as she could. She had been wanting to do this for so many years.

“I did always remember that day,” Edek said. “It was the same day that the Kripo, the criminal police, did kill a very nice boy who was living near to us, Elia Hersz. He was seventeen. He was a clever boy. He always did say to me and Mum that we did have to keep our spirits up. That this would not last long. It did not last too long for him. They killed him at nine o’clock at night. He was not supposed to go out at night. As a matter of fact nobody was allowed to go out of their house that whole day. I do not know why. Maybe they did not want Himmler to have to look at people what did not look so good.”

“You’d think that looking at ragged and diseased and malnourished Jews would have pepped Himmler up for the day,” Ruth said.

[
3 0 6
]

L I L Y B R E T T

“Who knows,” said Edek.

“Why were you out if there was a curfew?” Ruth said.

“Mum’s mother was very sick and Mum did want to send her some of her bread,” he said.

“So you took the bread?” said Ruth.

“I did take the bread,” Edek said.

They were at the intersection of Zgierska and Limanowskiego Streets.

These streets were major transport routes from the center of Lódz, to the north and the west. The intersection of these streets divided the ghetto into three parts. The parts were connected to each other by wooden bridges.

Ruth had looked at many photographs of poor Jews crossing that bridge.

Poor Jews. Why did those two words run together so naturally for her?

They were not two words the rest of the world coupled very often.

“I cannot recognize anything,” Edek said. He sounded distressed. “I did want to show you the places where Mum and me did live. I did know every street in the ghetto. Now I do not know where anything is.”

“That’s because they got rid of it all,” Ruth said. “They should have left it how it was. It could have been a walk-through museum. Far more effective than any exhibits you could label and encase in glass.”

“I want to show you where Mum and me did live,” Edek said.

“Drive very slowly,” Ruth said to the driver. Edek repeated that to the driver, in Polish. He slowed to a crawl.

They were in Czarnieckiego Street. Ruth knew that the ghetto’s central prison complex was at 14 Czarnieckiego Street. She knew that it had con-sisted of fourteen separate buildings. There was nothing of the prison left now. The street was full of the regulation Communist-inspired residential architecture.

“The prison used to be here,” Ruth said to Edek. Edek looked around him. He looked bewildered and confused. “We’re on Czarnieckiego Street,” Ruth said. “But there’s nothing left of the prison.”

“I do not recognize anything,” Edek said. He sounded quite flat.

Almost depressed.

Ruth wasn’t sure why the absence of anything recognizable from the Lódz ghetto was so upsetting to him. Maybe because so much of his past was impossible to locate. Impossible to believe. Impossible to understand.

T O O M A N Y M E N

[
3 0 7
]

Maybe with all of that uncertainty, you needed something to point at.

Something more concrete than horror.

“I am happy that the prison is not anymore here,” Edek said. “I have not such good memories of this prison.” Ruth didn’t know her father had had anything to do with the prison. There was so much she didn’t know.

No matter how much she read about the Lódz ghetto, she couldn’t read enough. Enough to understand what it was like. Enough to understand how it had happened. She could read about the ghetto forever, she thought, and it would never be enough.

She recalled reading about an order that had been issued in the ghetto on June 27, 1942. The order warned that all German officials in uniform and in plain clothes were to be greeted by residents of the ghetto with a salute. Ruth found it unbelievable that on February 16, 1944, when most of the Jews had died or been transported to Auschwitz, the Nazis were still issuing orders for Jews to salute. The 1944 order gave the Jews detailed instructions on what constituted a proper salute. Most of the Jews who were being required to salute could barely walk let alone salute.

The same day as the first order to Jews to salute had been posted, June 27, 1942, Hans Biebow, the commandant of the Lódz ghetto, lodged a formal objection to the wording of the death notices of Jews recorded by the Jewish elders of the ghetto. Biebow ordered that references to hunger, starvation, or swelling from hunger cease. From now on he wanted the cause of death, from hunger, to be listed as malnutrition. The pettiness of the requirements and orders never ceased to amaze Ruth. Nothing was too inconsequential or mundane or banal enough about Jews and their lives for the Germans to leave it alone. They had to tamper and add and subtract and play with Jews ceaselessly. They were never content.

Ruth had seen a photograph of Hans Biebow. He was a handsome young man. In the photograph he was relaxing in the ghetto, in an armchair, next to a table laden with oysters, clams, canapés, lobster, and sausages. This photograph was taken at the same time as Edek was picking up his twenty-kilogram ration of turnips for the winter. He’d had to stand in line in the cold for hours, to pick up the turnips. He had been so cold.

He had lost most of his weight, and was little more than skin and bones.

Then he had had to drag the already rotting sack behind him, all the way

[
3 0 8
]

L I L Y B R E T T

home. Halfway home the sack burst. Turnips went everywhere. He saved as many as he could. When he got home, he cried.

“Do you remember the story I did tell you about the turnips?” Edek said. Ruth was startled. “I was just thinking about that,” she said.

“Me too,” Edek said.

“There is nothing here, anymore,” Edek said.

“There never was,” Ruth said. They were both quiet.

“I do not think I can find where Mum and me did live,” Edek said.

“You first lived near the hospital on Lagiewnicka Street, didn’t you?”

Ruth said.

“You do remember everything,” Edek said. He looked pleased with Ruth for producing this detail.

“I remember your telling me about the day they emptied that hospital,”

Ruth said.

“It was September 1, 1942,” Edek said. “It was exactly seven o’clock. A big truck came and they did put all the patients on the truck. They was in a hurry, so they did throw some patients out of the windows of the hospital, onto the truck.” Ruth looked at Edek. His eyes had filled with tears. They should leave the ghetto area, Ruth decided. She had made her father cry enough for one day.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” she said.

“You did not do anything,” Edek said. He looked away. Ruth felt bad.

The idea of this trip hadn’t been to make her father feel bad.

“I don’t know why we’re here,” Ruth said.

“Some things are not so easy to know,” Edek said.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ruth said. “I’m ready to go to Kraków.”

“I am, too, ready to go somewhere else,” Edek said.

“Probably anywhere that isn’t Lódz,” said Ruth. “I’m finished with Lódz, myself.” Was that true? Or was that impossible? Would she never be able to be finished with Lódz? She didn’t know.

Edek told the driver to take them back to the hotel. Edek was quiet for the whole ride back. They pulled up outside the hotel. Even the Grand Victoria looked friendly and familiar, next to what used to be the Lódz ghetto.

“You want me to pack for you?” Ruth said to Edek.

“Are you crazy?” Edek said.

T O O M A N Y M E N

[
3 0 9
]

“That’s one of my least crazy suggestions,” Ruth said.

“I agree with that, to tell you the truth,” Edek said. “You got plenty more crazy ideas.” Ruth put her arm around her father. She gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“Thanks for doing this with me,” she said.

“I must be crazy,” he said. Ruth laughed.

“Let’s pack and meet downstairs,” she said.

Ruth packed slowly. Everything about her was weary. Her eyes, her limbs, her brain. She carried things, one at a time, to her suitcase. She was so glad she was leaving Lódz. She felt dirty. She didn’t have time for a shower. She looked for her perfume. Some perfume would freshen her up. She loved her perfume. She had been wearing the same perfume, Fracas by Robert Piguet, for years. She couldn’t find the perfume. Where could she have put it? She looked in the bathroom. She had already emptied the bathroom cupboard. The perfume wasn’t in the bathroom. She looked through her suitcase. The perfume wasn’t there. She felt annoyed with herself for misplacing the perfume. She hated it when she was careless.

She looked at a list she had made herself of things to pack in her smaller bag. The photographs from Kamedulska Street were on the top of the list.

She would die if she lost them, she thought. Then she realized how absurd that thought was. People didn’t die when they lost other people, let alone a few photographs. But she didn’t have the people to lose. She only had these photographs. She packed the envelope with the photographs carefully into her bag. She looked for the rolls of film she had bought. She had the new film in a bag with film she had already used. She wanted to take some photographs on the way to Kraków. She opened the bag. It contained only the used film.

Ruth was puzzled. She really must be losing it, going nuts, she thought.

She remembered putting four new rolls of film into this bag. Then it hit her.

Of course, the perfume and the new rolls of film had been stolen. She sat down on the lumpy bed and started to cry. She cried and cried. She felt stupid for crying over lost perfume and rolls of film. She knew she was crying for far more than that. She had to stop crying, she thought. She wiped her eyes. She finished packing.

[
3 1 0
]

L I L Y B R E T T

She called Edek. “Are you ready?” she said.

“I am nearly ready,” he said. “But I cannot find my razor blades. I did have a new packet. It had twelve razor blades. Those ones what you throw away.”

“Disposable razors,” Ruth said.

“I cannot find where I did put them,” Edek said.

“I think you might find them in the pocket of one of the employees of the hotel,” Ruth said.

“What?” said Edek.

“My perfume and some rolls of film for the camera are gone, too,” Ruth said. “They’ve been stolen.”

Edek started to laugh. “I did think I was going crazy,” he said.