The Rabbi Who Tricked Stalin

by Mordechai Landsberg

Rabbi Aaron was still seated immovable at the kitchen’s table. The boy rushed toward his father. Blooma pursued him, afraid the rein would be omitted from her hands. Raphael shouted ‘papa papa’, and put his head on Aaron’s knees. The Rabbi only put his right hand on the boy’s back, not even caressing him. Raphael had known, that his father should still disguise, as the Gepaunik Aliosha was said to trace his moves. ‘If this tall Gepaunik finds out that my papa is sane – we will remain here and be punished,’ the boy meditated, remembering what Blooma had told him…He kissed his father’s knees, and asked Blooma, who stayed beside him, to carry him up. As she did that- the boy kissed his father’s beard and eyes, and smiled at him. He saw that Rabbi Aaron’s eyes were wet, and understood that he still restrained himself from weeping from joy; so he told him:

  “Papa, we will drive by train together, d’you know? I’ve never travelled by train. Good Asliosha told me, that we’ll both see Moscow!”

  Then Natalya got close to Rabbi and pretendedd – for Aliosh’as eyes - a ‘renewed meeting’. Rabbi Aaron felt that she was slightly calmed and relented. ‘She would not revenge me now,’ he said to himself. ‘She threatened that before, being so enraged . . .I am really an egotist, but all I have done was for Heaven’s sake.’

  Now Natalya stood next to him, and caressed his beard.

  She said: “All will be fine, my dear husband. Don’t worry about me. Stalin will release me soon. You’ll appeal to him from abroad.”

  Blooma tapped the Rabbi by his shoulder, and said to all:

  “The Rabbi can take with him some books,” and Tall Aliosha nodded.

  “One is already in the backbag.” Said Aliosha, ”It is the book that Rabbi used to wave in the asylum, maybe praying by that. He was turning a page after page every twenty seconds. Really maniacly.”

  “It is Psalms book, that we had brought him,” said Natalya.

  “Raf’l has told me,” reckoned Blooma, “about another book that the Rabbi had liked very much.”

  “It’s the Talmud, called Bobea Metsiea,” said the the boy.

  “D’you know where is it?” Aliosha asked, and added, “we can take it with us, too. ..if it wouldn’t be too heavy.”

  “Yes, take it with us.” said the boy, “My papa was used to tell me, that I will study it also one day.”

  Blooma went to Rabbi’s room and searched the books in his bookcase. She found one of the Talmud books, grabbed it in her hands and brought it to Aliosha. He put it into the back bag.

  Aliosha looked suddenly at Natalya, then at the Rabbi’s wet eyes.

  “Well, I think we can move,” he said, and tapped the Rabbi on his back, to indicate him that the time has come. He grabbed his elbow with one hand - raised the heavy backbag and strapped it to his broad shoulders. Then he took the boy’s reins from Natalya’s palms. All were approaching the entry door, and Natalya opened it. The Rabbi followed her, and Aliosha and the boy with Blooma were the last to get out.

  At that moment – a car’s harsh noise was heard. Two persons came to the courtyards’ gate and entered it. Antonov and Dwarf Avrum walked forward. Both were facing Natalya, whose face became pale.

  “Comrade Hittin Besarobina Natalya, good day.” Antonov said, and saw that she was scared of him.

  “I bring you a good messag this time,” he reckoned with a sardonic smile.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, still not hoping - but for the worst.

  Blooma pushed her hip by her elbow. Raf’l and Tall Aliosha were looking at each other. Rabbi mumbled something, with a flicker of gaze at the Gepau men. Only he could feel that there was hope, but he had remained immovable, Sphinx expression on his face.

  “Aliosha, there is a change in our plan,” said Antonov.

  Natalya looked at Blooma, whose fingers nervously smoothed the boy’s cheeks.

  “I’ve just been ordered to let also Rabbi’s wife - go abroad with him, and with the boy.”

  “Oh, thank you...thank God.” Natalya said, and held herself strong.

  She rushed to Rabbi Aaron and embraced him and kissed his beard, and he remained immovable.

  “Bravo! Bravo to Stalin, our greatest leader,” shouted Blooma loudly and applauded.

  “It’s exactly what this woman says,” said Antonov emphatically, “This humanitarian gesture – meets our great Stalin’s humanistic attitude to all our citizens.”

  “Bravo again,” said Blooma, and this time Natalya joined her.

  “One moment,” said Gepau’s Dwarf Avrum, “I have to finalise our release procedure. Let me check again the bag that you carry, Aliosha.”

  Aliosha unloaded his back-bag and threw it to Avrum, who kneeled on the grassy ground of the courtyard. He pulled out some of the Rabbi’s and kid’s underwear there, then an additonal shirt. He took out the big Talmud book.

  Then he pulled a knife out of his scabbard, and said:

  “I am a Yevrey like you.” He said, “I know from experience, that Jews - Yevreys - are used to put something inside book covers. Let me see…”

  He tore the leather cover of the Talmud book, his fingers fubling and searching there inside. In a second he found something - a hundred Dollars ‘Golden paper’ currency.

  “Who has put this in and glued the cover?” He roared, “The Rabbi himself? When he was still sane?”

  Antonov snatched the money from him.

  “A nice present to Gepau for the good job that we have done. But we won’t suit any of you now,” said Antonov to his apalled audience, “on other circumstances you should have been arrested.”

  His lips wore his usual derisive smile, and he indicated his employee Avrum- to move out. They both left Rabbi’ s courtyard.

  Aliosha gathered all the articles, put them back into the bag, which he girded again on his shoulders.

  “We have to move,” he told Natalya, who ran inside, packing some of her dresses for the long way. When she came out, she handed the front door’s key to Aliosha.

  The tall guy gave the boy’s reins to Natalya, and with his right hand pulled Rabbi forward, towards the gate.

  The Hittin family members were looking last time - at their grey hut, and at the cherry tree in front of it. The boy recalled that once – a nightingale coop had been hanging there. He also remembered some song that the bird had learned from him to sing:

  “Poy Kolinka Poy, Port Artur Uzhe niet voy,”(=Cry Kolinka= Tsar Nikolay!) Port Arthur isn’t yours any more.” The Tsar lost that port to the Japanese in the war of 1905. A song remained out of that event, and the bird learned it by heart from one of his previous owners..

  Natalya opened the door when she heard the Gepau vehicle drive away. She searched outside to be sure the secret police had not left behind any spy. When she came back she looked at the Rabbi, and heard him wisper:

  “I must remain mad! And you have to find some workplace again, Natalya. I am sure they won’t send me back to asylum, because my whole case is now too complicated for Antonov. He will wait for an order from Moscow what to do with us.”

  “Well,” said Natalya, ”And from now on, while we’re at home we should keep the door locked, and the windows shut. We want you, dear Aaron, to tell us about your suffering and strengthening in the mad-house asylum.”

  ”I’ll do that little by little, because my heart will beat strongly when I recollect the tortures. And I’ll tell it in whisper, because we still don’t know what trap the Gepau or police plan regarding me. They may try to listen through the wooden walls.”

  “I suppose,“ mocked Natalya, “that you enjoyed the idea there, of overcoming the bad guys’ tactics and their failure to prove that you’re sane.”

  “No,” shouted Raf’l in reproach, ”don’t talk like that, mom.”

  “It’s natural to enjoy a small victory,“ Natalya defended her opinion, “And you remember, Rabbi, what I had told you about my mother. She had been a theater actress in my chuildho
od. She told me that playing to be somebody else- is a very emotional and attractive adventure…”

  “No,” Rabbi Aaron opposed her, “In those days I only thought about my target, that my disguise would not be discovered.”

  Natalya prepared tea for all. Then she took the boy by his reins, and both walked to bring the message of their disaster to neighbor Blooma. She adviced Natalya to wait, maybe their delay at home was only tremporary.

  Just after they had walked out and disappeared, the Rabbi’s mind filled with doubts. Perhaps his wife was quite right. ‘I could not survive those hard events - had I the courage to look at all like a game, that God will make me win it. Certainly my poor son suffered more than myself, because his childish mind could not look at his hardship as I looked at mine. So he is the big hero here.”

  When Natalya came back with the boy, the Rabbi asked Raf’l if he had some moments of enjoyment in the orphanage .

  “Of course,” he answered, “And I learned to look at life there as a place full of fools and clowns. I saw a circus, you know? One day the orphanage manager brought to our courtyard a small circus group, including clowns with monkeys. Many of my cut-legs friends applauded and laughed. I was sorry that I could not use my hands then; I could only shout Bravo.”

  From now on Rabbi Aaron’s daily agenda was similar to that of the old days, when he had been with the Arts Gallery:

  He started to search another book of Talmud ‘BOBAE METSIAH’ and found a smaller volume, in which only the ‘concised contents’ of each Chapter was printed (It’s called : ‘Mishna’).

  The boy was very eager to listen to his father teachings him again about those Jewish old dicussions about: ‘Two men who find a dress’; and ‘damage caused to a house with two partners’ and ‘the one who emloys workers’ etc. Rabbi Aaron did not teach and read to the boy many of the Bible’s tales and prophecies, (so he thought, like many Rabbies even today) that these Biblic chapters are too poetic or politically complicated for a boy before Bar Mitsva.

  These were hard times, because the family Hittin was always afraid of some Gepau detective, who might knock suddenly at the door. He could break it before the Rabbi would move from his chair beside the boy and sit again like freezed on his chair, or his upper body dangling like a tree in automn.

  Natalya had to be at home for preparing the food for all. She would be awake early in the morning, prepare a light breakfet for herself the Rabbi, and soon feed the cuthands boy like a mother feeds her ywo years old baby: a spoon drawn close to his mouth, and waiting for hin to swallow the food.

  She had, of course, to prepare meal and feeed her son also at noon, and therefore would come back at one o’clock from her outside workplace. Then she would boil soup with some kosher hen’s meat. She would buy hens in the ‘cooperative Kolkhoz’ from somebody ready to risk himself to sell in the so called :Black Market. Rabbi would slaughter the hen at home, according to Jewish Halakha-tradition, and all would eat it and bless God for everything.

  From now on the Gepau Inspector, tall Aliosha, would come once a week to see if his ‘patient’ still exists and stays at home, according to the Gepau strict orders. First Aliosha would knock at the window, to hint the dwellers about his expexted avisit, and then knock at the door. He would come at noon, knowing that Natalya would open the locked door. Once his boss Antonov made a key-copy of the Rabbi’s lock, but Aliosha would not use it, as he refused to surprise the hut dwellers. He would let them be informed before he enters, and that fact made the Rabbi assume that he had something with Judaism.

  The Rabbi knew all the town’s news by listening to Natalya’s talk with Blooma, who was used to visit him frequently. Of course Natalya did not get back her old Job as social worker, that she had held before the delay of the family’s emigration. So she began working with Blooma in cleaning the offices of the Municipality and the Communist Party. A month after Hittin family had been re-united, Blooma had got a job of caretaker to the baby of the new Minsk Secret Police Head, and Natalya continued to toil in the rooms cleaning and floor washing the notable offices. Perhaps all that had been pushed and initiated by Elya, who was still in Minsk. He wanted to be sure that nobody would claim that two cleaners-women were too much for the task in the offices, so he was the man who recommended of Blooma as a devoted caretaker for babaies, despie the fact that she had herself a young child, who should yet be taken care daily. So after Blooma’s grown up son would return from learning in the regular communist school, the boy would join her in her workplace, Thre he would prepare his homework, read and and write.

  Elya took care that the earning of Natalya would be sufficient enough for feeding herself and the two ‘unempoyed poor males’ at home. Some merciful Jews, who remebered the Rabbi from the past, used also to help the family by bringing small gifts.

 

  the Soviet beaurocrasy worked very slowly. Being very loyal to his superiors in Moscow - Antonov sent a message about the ‘Dollars Treasure’ to the main Gepau office. The deputy Head of OGPU(Gepau) who read the telegram about the gold finding did not like what happened: For almost a month there had been rumors swarming in the air, that Stalin may fire Menjinsky, the Awful Head of Soviet secret police: This man had known too much about Stalin’s criminal secret orders to him – to organize misterious killings and arrests of thousand of people. So, in that particular period of 1933- nobody had been sure about his own job. Everybody in Minsk knew that Antonov had a very warm relationship with the ‘old’ secret police director, Menjinsky. Now many were worried, waiting in awe what will happen.

  At last it realy came about that Antonov’s enemies inside OGPU blamed him as counter-revolutionary. As an evidence and reason for that they spread the rumor about his ‘being criminally involved in the Golden Dollars case. The pure truth – so they blamed Antonov- was that he invented the story about the gold finding in Rabbi’s hut - while he himself was the owner of that golden treasure, which had been captured in the first days of the Russian Revolution. By that money Antonov intended to conspire against the Party with foreign people, and bribe some men inside the Gepau and Party to break down the Soviet State.

  So, when the new Soviet OGPU Super Director, a Jew named Genrich Yagouda, came to office in 1934, he decided to replace Antonov and by that the Rabbi’s deportation from Russia was delayed.

  When Antonov was replaced, his Deputyt Vronsky was happy, thinking he will win the job. But soon came two high officials to Minsk. They were nominated as an ‘Inquiry Team’ sent from Moscow regarding all OGPU activity and hierarchy in Misnk. They soon blamed the deputy of Antonov too, saying that Vronsky was trading in black market. So, in one dark night somebody secretly opened OGPU office and hided in the directors’ room a sack full with fresh dry ham. In the morning stormed a band, headed by the ‘special inquiry team’, pistols in hands - into the Minsk Secret Police office. They put chains on Antonov deputy’s hands. One of the ‘Inquiry Team’ ordered all the simple OGPU employees, even the shadowy ones, to meet in Antonov’s room. There the Team accused the deputy for ‘counter revolutionary’ forgery, and his fate was clear: There were rumors afterward that like Antonov himself in the former night, his deputy was set on a three wheels car. The driver suddenly turned the car to the riverside. He stopped it at the brink, and two new OGPU gangsters jumped from the vehicle and shot Vronsky in his neck-back. The corpse was carried to the river and drawn. Vronsky family, as well as OGPU and Party Leaders, were reported it had been a suicide.

  During all that time the Rabbi’s sister, Gittel, was waiting in America. But she soon understood that Hittin small family had been shut in Russia- for unknown reason, though she had been notified by an an official letter that she would soon see her dear relatives. After waiting a month she began writing letters again to Stalin, begging for her brother and his family. Nobody answered, and she didn’t know if the letters had reached the adressee.

  After two years of searching help in full darkness,
a short telegram was sent from Moscow to the Russian consulat in NY, telling that ‘Rabbi Aarron’s case has been taken care again. A decision would be soon made by the Leader of the Soviet State, Secretary Stalin.’

  At that time, in 1935, Stalin’s Regime finished the dictator’s ‘Show Trials’ plotted by his new greneration of obedient servants - against his still living enemies from the past, the Jews Zinoviev, Kameniev and others. They were at first summoned to Soviet court, and the verdict was ten years of prison. At that time it seemed that the results of these trials brought back self-confidence and calm to the dictator’s mind. For a while he paused from prosecuting his past enemies, and could now handle letters coming to his office from inside the country and from abroad. He would read them personally and provide solution to problems raised. So, one day - the seventh letter sent to Stalin’s Office from Gittel found its way to Stalin’s Secretariat. The clercks decided this time to show the letter of ‘implore for mercy’ to the dictator, and he wrote on the margin: “Deport immediately this lazy family. Let the Capitalists see that we are not only hunting heads.”

  All along the year 1935 The Rabbi heard from Natalya about the arrests and ‘show trials’of many of Stalin’s ex-comrades. He whispered: “there will be found more enemies, I’m sure about that. This time Stalin will kill much more innocents. He cannot rule without spreading fear in his peoples hearts.”

  Rabbi’s thought became a reality a year later (it happened after he and his family had already been deported abroad): In 1936 The Era of Execution came to Moscow: Even quite loyal men to Stalin at that time were arrested, as the dictator had already planned ‘a new strategy’: Satanic grand massacre of all old revolutionaries. and nomination of younger officials, ‘future loyal young personalities’ like robots, both inside his Party and Soviet State Institutes. Since mid-1936 there were perpetual show trials in Moscow. The Prosecutor was young Mr. Andrey Vishinsky, who accused Lenin’s and Stalin’s most fervent assistants or adversaries in the past– to be Troskists, cosmoplitans and enemies of communism. All these veterans confessed publicly about their plot against the communist regime and were shot to death.

  CHAPTER 48