by Yishai Sarid
Sometimes I got into the details of each step in the process, more than necessary, until the teachers or the commanders signaled to me that time was running out and that we had to move on. Then I would shake myself and say, “All right, let’s keep going,” and wonder why I behaved the way I did. For instance, I told them more than they needed to know about the haircutting process; how the Germans whipped the naked women into the haircutting room, ordered them to sit on stools. The Jewish barbers stood behind them, ordered to use only five clips for each woman in order to save time. The women’s heads bled with the violence of this urgent cutting, while all around Germans and Ukrainians whipped both the women and the barbers, urging them on. The barbers tossed the hair into suitcases on the floor, lest it be trampled. Each haircut lasted only a few seconds, after which the Jewish women were rushed to the path leading to the gas chambers. The young women in my groups were always astounded, their glossy, healthy hair flowing. I paused. How these stories riveted my twisted soul! I allowed the forest to sound its rustles, glanced at the pale sky over their heads, at the treetops, afraid to meet their eyes. “Come,” I said, and they followed me through a field of stones, wrapped in their flags.
Back on the bus, one of the teachers sat next to me. She had short hair and a small, doubtful smile. Ever since Eliezer the survivor had broken his hip, and Yohanan had collapsed in Auschwitz and was no longer able to take his place, I mostly sat alone on the bus.
“Thank you for your fascinating explanation,” she said. “You seem to be living those events.”
I told her I was trying my hardest, that sometimes I got carried away, and that I hoped I did all right.
“No, you were terrific, this entire tour,” she said. “Now, and back at the hotel when you talked about the Righteous Among the Nations. I can tell you really take this to heart.”
We were riding down the highway. Behind us phones beeped along to the soundtrack of Schindler’s List, which was being shown on the bus’s screens.
“It must be very difficult,” she said, then waited for me to respond.
I tried to assess her age. She might have been forty, even fifty, but no older than that. She was wearing a diamond wedding ring. She could have been my older sister, but not my mother. I was aching to speak to someone. During that time, the burden was accumulating. But her smile bothered me. It didn’t seem decent.
“I think you have to have more faith in the children,” she said. “They can tell when someone doubts them. It hurts. The most important thing for a child is to know they are trusted.”
“You’re right,” I told her. “I’m trying.”
“They’re excellent children,” the teacher said. By this point she was getting agitated. “In a few months’ time they’ll go to the military and we’ll be trusting them with our lives. They will be risking their own lives for ours. We have to have faith in them.”
“I’m sure they’ll make good soldiers,” I said.
My answer made her furious. “They’ll make more than just good soldiers.” She said, raising he voice a little. “They’re good people. Wise. Healthy. That’s how they should be treated. With love. They are our hope and our future.”
I didn’t argue.
“Look into their eyes,” she proposed, and put her cold hand on mine in a gesture of mercy. “That’s what I do. That’s how I connect to them.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll try, I’ll try harder. I want to love them, to connect to them, to not fear them. Truly, I do.”
I took a group from a yeshiva high school to Rabbi Moses Isserles’s synagogue in Kazimierz. It used to be the Jewish quarter of Krakow and is now full of nostalgia, demonstrated through restaurants featuring live performances from Polish klezmers, Judaica and holy book stores. This artificial longing used to move me, but after a few visits I grew tired of it. The real Jews, the ones who wanted to live, who haggled, who spoke Yiddish, who breathed air through their nostrils and exhaled it here on their streets, were not loved. I was glad to see these students with their yarmulkes wandering around here among the pillaged buildings. I felt a hankering to hear a prayer and hoped they would awaken the old synagogue to life. I couldn’t bear the Jewish backdrop of this town any longer.
They granted my wish, praying and singing, and I joined them for the bits I knew. For a moment, I felt uplifted. We walked out to the cemetery adjacent to the synagogue and I led them to Isserles’s grave. They were moved by it. The school principal spoke of Isserles’s greatness as a rabbinical judge and an adjudicator. I couldn’t tell you one thing Isserles did to promote humankind, but I kept my mouth shut.
There were no women in the group, and perhaps that’s why these students were quieter and more serious than other school kids. They said the Kaddish prayer in the rain. I showed them the nearby grave of Shmuel Bar Meshulam, who was the physician of the ancient kings of Poland and had come to Krakow from Milan with the entourage of Princess Bona Sforza, who married Sigismund I the Old, King of Poland, and lived with him at Wawel Castle. She only agreed to be examined by the Jewish doctor she’d brought with her from Italy. I took them to see a few other synagogues in the quarter. That was their request—to move among the shadows of Jews.
I listened to them singing and praying in the empty synagogues, closed my eyes, and swayed like them with devotion, trying to get carried away with them. But nothing rose from within my soul, and the image of God before my eyes resembled a tattered merchant who has gone bankrupt, his glasses sliding off his nose as he tries in vain to put order in the accounting ledgers strewn over his desk.
The next day, as we finished our visit to Auschwitz and were leaving the camp, they waved the Israeli flag, sang “Am Yisrael Chai” at the tops of their lungs, and danced with a decorated Torah Ark they passed from one person to the next. I walked over to their principal in a brief moment of respite and whispered, “This is where our people are buried, it isn’t right to dance.”
“We’re alive,” said the principal. “And our Torah lives. We have returned to our homeland, and therefore we dance in celebration of the grace of God. In the end, we won. You can argue with me about it for the rest of your life, it’ll be no good, my friend. This is what we believe. There is no room for despair. We are the future and the hope. Join us, come dance.” Thus said the yeshiva principal before he returned to the wild circle.
I returned to Israel urgently, having been summoned by Ruth. Ido was refusing to go back to kindergarten. Some boys were bullying him. He’d stayed home for almost a week. Ruth consulted with the teacher, but it was no good. The boys always managed to catch him in some remote corner and beat him up. The teacher spoke to them and spoke to them before finally giving up. I got on a flight as soon as the tour was over and arrived early in the morning, just as he woke up to go to school.
Ruth was trying to get him dressed, and he just stood there, his eyes extinguished, limp and humiliated. It was awful to see my child looking like this. I had brought him a small gift from Warsaw, but he had no reaction. “I’ll go to kindergarten with you today and I’ll take care of it,” I promised.
He got dressed with heavy movements and terrible helplessness. He wasn’t especially short or weak, but he couldn’t hit back, and these boys took advantage of that. I knew this because I used to be like him, but I had since realized: to gain any kind of social standing, man must be capable of killing.
The teacher was surprised to see me—I was a rare vision. “Daddy came with you, how fun,” she told Ido, who was gripping my arm, his eyes on the floor, and wouldn’t let go.
“Can I speak to you in private,” I said.
She said this wasn’t a convenient time, all the kids were just coming in and she had to greet them.
“We have to,” I insisted. “He’s being beaten. He doesn’t want to come here.” I was very tired from the flight, and morning ruckus ensued all around. I saw enemies in all the boys’ eyes, and accomplices in the girls’. We were standing on the sidelines while the teacher busied herse
lf with other children. I asked Ido to point out which kids had been hitting him. He signaled for me to duck down, whispered three names into my ear, and pointed them out. They were cheerful just like any other normal kids that morning, and their conscience didn’t seem to weigh on them at all. One of them had just said goodbye to his mother, so I walked over to talk to her. I asked her if she knew her son was hitting mine.
“What’s going on here?” she asked, baffled. “Since when do we talk this way around the children?” She turned to the teacher for help.
“Please,” said the teacher, “let me handle it. Not like this.”
Kindergarten was hostile territory, a ring of abuse. Ido showed me the hidden corner behind the mattresses where the kids had grabbed him and stepped on him, as well as the spot in the yard where they had hit him over the head and forced him to eat sand. I towered over that one boy, who finally looked scared, and shouted, “Don’t you dare touch my son!”
His mother screamed, puffing up like a wild turkey, but I didn’t care. The entire kindergarten railed around me. I didn’t know these parents, but now they knew me. I stayed with Ido for a long time, until things calmed down and he agreed to say goodbye. Force is the only way to resist force, and one must be prepared to kill.
Ruth waited for me at home. “I fixed it,” I told her when I got back. “They won’t lay a finger on him again.”
I took advantage of my brief stay in Israel to meet some survivors. I’d been searching for them everywhere, their absence standing out during the trips. I had a shortlist of potential candidates I’d received from you, and with help from your guidance department I called them to schedule some meetings. It turned out one of them had passed away. A child’s voice told me over the phone that his grandpa was dead and he’d received his old phone. I apologized. Of the others, I’d managed to schedule an immediate meeting with only one, who lived in Tel Aviv and sounded alert and eager to talk.
When I arrived at the meeting, I was greeted by a tan, fit old man, well-dressed, a small lapdog at his feet. Wow, this seemed promising. A good-looking woman came to say a polite hello before disappearing into one of the rooms. The apartment was pleasant and sunlit. I took a seat across from him and waited to hear his story.
“So you’re from Yad Vashem,” he said. “That’s right,” I confirmed.
“Funny to meet like this again,” he said, a hint of European accent in his voice. “I don’t remember meeting you before,” I told him.
“Not you, your predecessor,” he clarified. “Over fifty years ago. I was a young man back then. After meeting him, and a few other unpleasant events, I left the country. I only came back a few months ago. I got remarried and my wife wanted to live in Israel. I don’t think you can hurt me anymore. That’s why I called and suggested we talk. I wanted to meet you again very much.”
Why would we hurt this man? I wondered, waiting for his story. I began to introduce myself and the purpose of my visit, but, accustomed to giving orders, he signaled to me impatiently that there was no need. His young, healthy appearance was misleading. His eyes were full of ancient hostility.
“I had a fine life here in Israel. I had two children and had managed to get over what happened there. Until, one day, people pointed at me on the street. I was going to lunch, and they said I was a kapo. A criminal. Then the police took me in for questioning. And you helped them. People heard about it. You put it in the newspaper. I had to leave the country. I spent an entire lifetime in exile because of you. I thought you came here today to apologize, but I see no apology in your eyes.”
I told him that was an unfortunate story, but that I wasn’t familiar with the facts.
“The facts are,” he blurted, “that I was twenty years old and taken to dig tunnels in Gross-Rosen. We dug with our hands. They appointed me head of my shed because I was strong and never broke. All around me people died off like flies. They spent a month or two in the tunnels before they kicked the bucket, but in our shed things were a little better, because we had discipline and worked hard, and therefore got a little more food. Another quarter of potato per day could save a man. We were always on time to start work right at dawn and stood up straight during roll call, never giving them any reason to beat us, though it still happened on occasion. There were a few lazy people who created some problems, didn’t want to wake up in the morning, didn’t want to work, and were putting us all in danger. All I wanted was to buy us some time, get us a little more food, one day at a time, until it was over. I didn’t exactly have an easy go of it, either. They murdered my entire family. By the time they released us I weighed thirty-five kilos, half of what I weigh today. But I held on. I had to be harsh with the men who broke discipline, risking the rest of us. I had to beat them and give them less food. This wasn’t Switzerland, sir, it was hell. I’m sorry, but I survived because I was strong. It was thanks to my strength that I went back to living, eating, sleeping with women, going to the movies, making money. Doing everything free men do. And then these people point at me on the street. You reported me to the police, saying I was a bad kapo; that I collaborated with the Germans. Tell me, was there a single Jew who didn’t collaborate? The Judenrat? The snitches? All those Sonderkommandos? Did they not collaborate? Why don’t you do anything to them? All I did was take responsibility. I could have decided to worry only about myself and my little piece of bread. Instead, do you have any idea how many lives I saved?” He poured himself water with a trembling hand. His wife came out of one of the inner rooms.
It would be interesting to take a look at his file, I thought. I had to say something, it was the humane thing to do. “We see things differently these days,” I said, and could carry on no longer. His eyes were pleading. He was waiting for me to offer forgiveness, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know the facts. He may have suffered an injustice or he may have not. “Would you agree to speak to high school students?” I asked. “Would you be willing to tell them your story?”
He shook his head no. All his energy had drained out. Tears were in his eyes. The mask of youth had disintegrated.
“You’re cruel,” his wife told me, pointing me out the door.
That night, Ruth got Ido to speak. He confessed that ever since the visit I had paid to his kindergarten no one had hit him, but no one was willing to play with him, either.
I thought about the robust man I’d met that morning, who’d survived thanks to his strength, and then I thought about Ido, who couldn’t hit back.
He asked that I take him to kindergarten again the next day and stay there with him. I explained that I had to go back to my job, abroad, that people were waiting for me there.
“What’s your job, Dad?” he asked.
“He tells them about what happened,” Ruth offered.
“What happened?” Ido widened his eyes with worry.
“There was a monster that killed people,” I said.
“And you fight the monster?” he asked, excited.
“It’s already dead,” I tried to explain. “It’s a memory monster.”
Following my meeting with the survivor, I came up with the idea of creating an organized list of kapos. I even wrote you a memo about it, and at nights, in the hotel, I prepared an initial characterization of a computerized resource, including pictures. Most of the information already exists, but it’s scattered all over the place. Throughout the years, there has been an aversion to centralizing the information due to foreign and emotional considerations that are of no interest to a historian. I wrote to you that we would have to make some principle decisions regarding the definition of what makes a kapo, but without splitting hairs. A kapo is a kapo. For the sake of caution, we would need verification from several sources, and if evidence was lacking, the survivor would enjoy the benefit of the doubt.
“What do we need this for?” you asked in your response.
I said, “So we may know the truth; so we may enhance the difference between black and white.”
“There is no black and wh
ite in history,” you said, writing me off.
Your response seemed rash to me, but I decided to let it go. I didn’t want to anger you. As it turned out, my restraint was wise. Just a few days later, your head of computerization contacted me as per your recommendation, requesting my assistance with a death camp visualization project. He explained you’d been contacted by a company that develops virtual reality products and offered a collaboration, and that since Yad Vashem was seeking ways to reach a younger audience, you agreed.
“It’s a game,” I told your computer guy.
He protested. “What are you talking about? It isn’t a game, it’s a visualization. It’s educational.”
Yad Vashem wanted me to help the company with some problems that had come up during the development stage. Reverently, I asked if this was a volunteer job, and your guy said I should agree on a fee directly with the start-up company.
I wrote to them from Poland, and they offered a fraction of their shares in return. One day, they might be worth a lot of money. I think it was a quarter-percent of a share.
I agreed. I even boasted to Ruth about having received shares from a technology company. They paid for my flight, and in the brief respite between tour groups I visited their offices, in some new business district on the edge of Tel Aviv.