The Forgotten Page 9

  Gaunt and weak, Malkiel left Bangkok. On the flight to New York he wrote the first article.

  “You did well to go there,” Elhanan told his son. “Do you want to know why? Because no one bothered to help us when we needed it.”

  That night he read his piece to Tamar, who said nothing for a long moment, and then thanked him in her own way.

  A child swept away by a tempest. A young waif jolted by tragic, inexorable events. A disoriented youth, lost and bewildered, singled out by fate.

  When hostilities began in 1939, Elhanan was thirteen years old. An only son, he divided his time between his yeshiva studies and his father’s office at a lumber company. At home, his mother, still young and elegant, represented Western culture: she kept up with the artistic life of the capital, while her husband read only religious works. It was a close and happy family. The two servants followed instructions: they were never to turn away a beggar without offering him shelter and a meal, and they were to show him warmth and understanding. “Even if he doesn’t deserve it?” asked Piroshka, the cook.

  “I don’t know of any human being who doesn’t deserve a crust of bread and some change,” was the blunt reply of Elhanan’s father, Malkiel. “We never know. The nameless beggar may be the prophet Elijah himself, a vagabond Lamed-vovnik, one of the Just, a rabbi in exile.”

  Elhanan once broke into the conversation. “And if the beggar in question is someone we know?”

  His father smiled proudly. “A good question, my son. But remember that in every beggar there is an element of the unknown.”

  It was a turbulent and tormented year. Czechoslovakia was torn apart. Poland was attacked, bombarded, dismembered. Then came Romania’s turn. Soon the small town of Biserica Alba reverted to its Hungarian name, Feherfalu. Overnight they would have to change the names of streets, schools, shops, cinemas. At school the students were forced to learn songs to the greater glory of Horthy Miklós. And yesterday’s idol, King Karol II? Banished and repudiated.

  The situation was almost stable for the Jews. Previously threatened by the Romanian anti-Semites of the Iron Guard, they were now threatened by Hungarian anti-Semites of the Nyilas movement. So? You can learn to live with anything, especially the worst.

  After the fall of Poland, Jewish refugees appeared in the little town. Not surprising: the town was perfectly situated for people who wanted to cross the border illegally. A crossroads of four or five countries, it absorbed foreigners because everybody here spoke all their languages. Austrians, Slovaks, Czechs, Poles—Elhanan’s father took care of them all with a devotion that preachers everywhere mentioned in their sermons. “Look at Malkiel Rosenbaum. He is the embodiment of the rare virtue Ahavat Israel, which signifies Jewish solidarity and compassion.” He found lodgings for them, documents, work; he helped them flee to other towns and other havens. Many refugees headed for Romania, Turkey, Palestine came through Biserica Alba, now Feherfalu.

  In memory: 1941, Sukkoth, the Feast of Tabernacles. Malkiel brought home a guest for the evening meal. Elhanan was struck by the stranger’s pallor and gauntness. A threadbare raincoat shrouded his hunched shoulders. Through thick lenses his myopic eyes gazed at the middle distance, as if to capture an evil omen. The night was pleasant, yet he had his collar turned up and he shivered. Elhanan’s father asked him about the situation in Poland. “Bad, sir, very bad,” replied the visitor, and his lips tightened. But how? Tell us more. The visitor refused to go into detail. “We haven’t enough time,” he said. “If I start I’ll never stop. But I must say good-bye soon, as you know; my train leaves at eleven.” His Yiddish was Germanic, his tone fearful. After the meal and the customary chants, he said, “You’ve been a great help to me. How can I thank you? Yes, I know how. I will give you a piece of advice; follow it. Do not linger in this country; the enemy will rise up here, too; don’t wait; take your family and go; as soon as possible and as far as possible. Take pity on your son and his mother; take pity on yourself.” He shook Malkiel’s hand, wished Elhanan and his mother a courteous good night, and walked out into the sleeping town.

  For a long moment the three Rosenbaums were speechless. Father took hold of himself. “It is fear speaking through his mouth. He has surely been through a terrible time, and he sees the enemy everywhere.”

  Mother was not so sure. “I don’t know.… And if it was the truth? If he was right when he said we should go?”

  Father raised his voice, a sure sign that he was upset. “Go? Go where?” Sitting in the succa, they thought it over. A gentle breeze whispered along the roof. In the neighboring succa people were singing, celebrating the holiday with exuberance. “And you, Elhanan, what do you think?” asked Father.

  “He frightened me.”

  “Me too,” said Malkiel.

  Elhanan cried out: “Look! The stranger forgot his briefcase!”

  To lighten the mood Malkiel said, “Maybe he’s an absent-minded professor. Go on, son. Run to the station and give it back to him.”

  Elhanan snatched up the briefcase, which he found rather heavy, and rushed to the station. Their guest was seated on a bench in the waiting room. “Sir, sir, look, you forgot this!”

  Expressionless, the stranger raised his head, took the briefcase, set it down beside him and murmured a vague thank you.

  Obviously, thought Elhanan, he has other things on his mind. The boy said good night and turned to go home, when the stranger called him back: “Sit down.” Elhanan sat. “Can you guess what’s in this briefcase?” No, Elhanan had no idea. “Look, then.” The stranger opened the case, and Elhanan almost fainted: it was full of gold coins. “That is my whole fortune,” said the stranger tonelessly. “That is all I have left.”

  Elhanan could not understand. “Then how could you have forgotten it?”

  The stranger shrugged. “You’ll understand someday. You’ll understand that a fortune doesn’t mean much in times like these.”

  Elhanan glanced at his watch. It was still early; the train would not be in for half an hour. Go back home? He preferred to keep this refugee company, this man who suddenly broke into a smile and said, “It’s funny. When you handed me my briefcase I was foolish enough to wonder just how happy I was, and I had to admit that the taste in my mouth was not the taste of joy.” Aside from the ticket agent dozing behind his counter, they were alone in the waiting room. “Nevertheless,” said this stranger in thick glasses, “I owe you a little present. I’m going to tell you some stories. Real-life stories. You can go home and tell them to your parents.”

  That night the train was late.

  Rumor raged through the town like a pack of wild dogs and roused the local Jews from their lethargy: it was said that all those who had disappeared were already dead.

  This was in 1941. The Hungarian government had ordered the expulsion to Galicia of all “foreigners,” meaning all Jews, who could not prove their Hungarian citizenship.

  All massacred, rumor said. Buried in mass graves dug by the victims themselves. Children, too? Yes, children, too. And their parents. And their grandparents, and each in the presence of the other.

  In Feherfalu they said, Impossible. Things like this don’t happen in the twentieth century.

  But in 1941 the impossible was possible. Some people believed it. All the more because the rumor had started with a Hungarian officer just returned from Galicia. His outfit was bivouacked near Kolomey. Some of the soldiers had seen the massacre from a distance, and with their own eyes had seen the killers lining up the victims at the edge of the ditches; they had heard the crackle of machine-gun fire. Similar scenes near Stanislav. Are you sure? I’m sure, said rumor, adding hair-raising details: none of the victims wept, and some went to their death in silence, impelled by a strange feeling of dignity and defiance.

  “You will remember those massacres,” said Elhanan to his son.

  “Will you promise me to remember them especially?”

  “Why do you insist on especially?”

  “Because … I�
��ll explain it to you. History itself is often unfair to its victims. Some were luckier than others. Consider those at Kolomey and Stanislav. Nobody’s erected a monument to their memory. Few scholars devoted their research to them, while there is a literature about all the others. The Jews killed at Stanislav and Kolomey were second-class victims, and they deserve better. You agree?”

  “I’ll remember, Father. I promise you that.”

  “You’ll say aloud that they were among the first that the enemy engulfed in night?”

  “I will say it.”

  “You will repeat it as often as possible?”

  “I will repeat it.”

  “You will not let oblivion humiliate them day after day?”

  “I will not permit it, Father.”

  “Remember, my son. Without even knowing it, I must have walked across their graves.”

  An urgent meeting took place at the home of the community’s president. Another at the chief rabbi’s house. The first was devoted to practical problems: financial and political steps to be taken, should the rumors prove true. The second was of a strictly religious nature: if those who vanished had been put to death, how could it be verified, so that those who survived could properly mourn them? The two groups arrived at the same conclusion: send someone to Galicia to investigate.

  A Hungarian officer, Major Bartoldy, agreed—in return for a whopping bribe—to escort an emissary as far as Stanislav and bring him back. Elhanan was chosen, first because his uncle lived there, and then because he spoke perfect Hungarian. And also because he seemed older than he was: in uniform he would easily pass for the szazados’s orderly.

  Of course Elhanan’s mother objected. “If he leaves I’ll never see him again, may God not punish me for those words!”

  Her husband reassured her. “Under the protection of a major in the Royal Hungarian Army, Elhanan is not in much danger.”

  Their departure was set for a Sunday between Easter and Shavuoth, the Holiday of Weeks. Before donning his uniform, Elhanan had to see his sidelocks clipped off, and it was a mournful loss: he was proud of those peyot, which he curled around his fingers while he plumbed a difficult passage of the Talmud. “Consider it a sacrifice,” his father said. “On the day of judgment,” said the chief rabbi, “your peyot will be weighed in the balance along with your good deeds.”

  At ten in the morning Major Bartoldy and his orderly took their places in a staff car, a convertible. Elhanan’s mother wiped her eyes while his father ran through his instructions once more: questions to ask his uncle, messages for the local rabbi, the code to set up for an eventual correspondence, with the major as go-between. “I don’t believe I’ve left anything out, my son. May the God of our fathers watch over you.” Brusquely he embraced the boy. His heart heavy with foreboding, Elhanan closed his eyes so as not to see his parents grow small in the distance and then vanish.

  The car passed Christians on their way to church. A cloudless sky. Trees in leaf and blossoms. Farewell, Biserica Alba—pardon: Feherfalu. See you soon, Father and Mother. Good-bye, my childhood. I am no longer a boy; I must be strong and not give way to emotion. I am a major’s orderly. A soldier. A soldier does not give way to emotion, even when saying good-bye.

  With a stolid driver at the wheel, the car traversed fields and mountains, towns and hamlets. Children in their Sunday best were playing hide-and-seek. Girls with flowers in their hair acted haughty to attract their beaux’ attention. Old men in straw hats dozed before their huts. To the strains of a fiddle, a blind man sang a heartrending doina. Here and there a Jew on foot or in a ramshackle cart glanced up, curious about the car raising a cloud of fine dust. Greet him? Elhanan wondered. Too risky. A Hungarian soldier, and an orderly at that, does not greet Jews. It is up to the Jews to salute. A crazy notion made him smile: I ought to salute myself.

  About one in the afternoon they reached the border. The duty noncom, at strict attention, saluted this officer, who quizzed him condescendingly: “Everything all right?” Yes, sir, everything was all right. If the noncom had any questions about the orderly, he kept them to himself. They raised the barrier. The car started up again and roared through Galicia’s disquieting countryside. At dusk they stopped before a two-story building on the main square in Stanislav. The major’s rooms were on the second floor. “You’ll sleep in the hallway,” he told Elhanan. “Tomorrow you’ll go see your uncle. You have his address?” Elhanan knew it by heart. “You’re crazy, boy. Your uncle does not live there anymore. I know this town. You’ll find him in the ghetto with the rest of the Jews. Didn’t you know that?” No, Elhanan did not know that. No one in Feherfalu knew it. At any rate, no one had said anything about it. Was it a forbidden topic? Taboo? From time to time, in the synagogue, one would speak of the fate of the Warsaw ghetto, that was all. A ghetto so close to Feherfalu? Unthinkable. “All right,” said the major. “We’ll wait for tomorrow and find a way to slip you into the ghetto.”

  Elhanan slept badly on the floor; his uniform bothered him. And the word “ghetto” ran through his head like pain through a wound. Just what was a ghetto? He remembered tales of the medieval ghettos. Tomorrow he would enter the Middle Ages. And then?

  He woke early in the morning and washed at a tap; he saw that the driver was still asleep and took advantage of that to run up to the attic, wear his phylacteries and say his prayers. Fact is, he thought, I’m taking unnecessary risks. I’ll be in the ghetto in a little while and can find a synagogue there. The ghetto: he was impatient to be there.

  The major had to report to his unit, camped outside town. Elhanan went along with him. Adjacent to the main encampment was another, smaller and dingier, where the uniformed Jewish laborers, the munkaszolgálat, lived. They were not permitted to bear arms and were made to dig ditches, build roads, chop down trees and cook. A yellow band on the left arm distinguished them from the Hungarian soldiers. Hearing Yiddish spoken, Elhanan greeted a tall fellow with a frank and jovial face. “Who are you?” the man asked. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you wearing an armband?” Elhanan told of his odyssey and his problem: how was he going to find a way into the ghetto? He had to make his way inside; that was of the first importance. He was on a mission. “I know I seem young, but in wartime young people are old.” “Go on,” said the big fellow, whose nickname was Itzik the Long. Elhanan didn’t understand: go on about what? “I like the way you talk. Go on.” Embarrassed, Elhanan got mixed up, repeated himself, pulled himself together. “Yes indeed, you’re still young,” said Itzik. Their eyes met, and a friendship sprang up: a hard and free friendship of which only lucid men and desperately courageous children are capable. “Don’t worry about it,” Itzik the Long said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’re on a mission? Then I’ll help you accomplish it.” “But how can you—how can I—” Itzik laughed. “It’s easy. You’ll see. I’ll take you in tonight.” They would meet just off the main square, at six in the evening, sharp.

  Informed, the major congratulated his orderly’s resourcefulness. “I’m giving you two days’ leave,” he said. “Be back Wednesday morning at the very latest. That’s an order. If you’re not here on time, I’ll go back to Hungary without you.” Elhanan understood.

  Itzik the Long knew a secret passage connecting the ghetto and the town. They were in no danger as they used it. No one saw them slipping into the shadows.

  The ghetto: a caldron of humanity. Hard to push your way through, hard to see anything in this mob. Hard to talk, with the stench of sweat in your throat. Hard to make out faces, suffering had distorted them so. All the aimless strollers walked with the same jerky gait, and all the mothers were lamenting their children’s fate, and all the orphans were chanting the same complaint. How to find an address, an apartment, a person? Luckily Elhanan’s guide knew a member of the Jewish Council. The council member knew someone who often saw the young emissary’s uncle. The uncle was dressed in rags and living in an overcrowded room. He greeted his nephew as a savior: “Is it you, is it real
ly you, son of my brother? Let me touch you; come here and let me look at you; it’s really you. How’s my brother? What’s he living on? How are the Hungarian Jews getting along?” Amid a crowd of “tenants,” uncle and nephew conversed as if alone together. Late in the evening someone cried, “Go do your talking somewhere else; we want to sleep!” They slipped out to the yard and went on with their desperate talk. “Tell me the truth, Uncle,” Elhanan said. “Are the Germans really murdering the Jews? Is there really no hope? Are all the exits closed?” His uncle could only sob, “Yes, yes.” And Elhanan could not console him.

  He spent all the next day in the ghetto, his uncle acting as guide. Elhanan wanted to see everything. Remember it all. The system carefully laid out by their oppressor. The function of the Jewish Council, the activities of the Jewish police, the needs of the Jewish aid committee. What must they do to survive for another week, another night? What were the limits of solidarity and the frontiers of death? At fifteen Elhanan knew more about life and fate than most men of seventy-six. I will have to tell it all, he thought. Yes; all of it. My memory must store it all away. Yes; all of it. It’s vital, it’s essential. If I tell the story well, if I report it faithfully, the Jews of my town will be saved. And my father will be proud of me. I will have accomplished my mission.

  His second night in the ghetto was as dramatic as the first. His uncle took him to visit a clandestine yeshiva, where students were teaching scripture to young children who had escaped the roundups. And an attic where mystics were calling upon divine names and numbers to hasten their deliverance. And a basement apartment where boys and girls were debating armed resistance. This, too, I must remember, thought Elhanan, begging heaven to stimulate his memory and its powers: every word is important, every sign may be a matter of life and death. Father will ask questions, and I must not let him down, I must not bring shame upon him. “Uncle,” he asked, “will you do me a favor?” Of course. “Ask me about what I’ve seen and heard. Ask me in detail.” They spent all Tuesday night reviewing the report that Elhanan, this young emissary in the uniform of a Hungarian soldier, was going to make to the anguished community of Biserica Alba now Feherfalu by the grace and order of the Fuhrer.