by Ehud Diskin
The driver was happy to give me and Nelka a ride. He dropped us at a taxi station in Tel Aviv.
The taxi driver who drove us to Jerusalem suggested the Amdursky Hotel on Ben Yehuda Street, mentioning that it was located very centrally. I got rooms for Nelka and myself, and the hotel’s reception desk connected us with a realtor. After a two-day search, the realtor found a place for Nelka in the Geula neighborhood and an apartment for me in Kerem Avraham. The streets there were named for the Twelve Prophets and, while not affluent, seemed quiet and discreet. The apartment was small and dingy, but it suited my needs, and I immediately decided to rent it.
The gray Jerusalem sky sat well with the gloomy mood of Kerem Avraham, a neighborhood of dreary one- and two-story stone homes with cypress and pine trees growing in many of the courtyards. Most of the neighborhood’s residents were natives or had immigrated to the Land of Israel in the 1930s, though there were also some new arrivals from Central and Eastern Europe who had survived the Holocaust.
Most of the people struggled and worked hard to make ends meet. There were also teenagers and children who added a touch of joy to the neighborhood. For the most part, I tried to keep to myself, but some of the children captured my heart, and I’d occasionally join them for a game of soccer.
I often reflected on how fortunate these children were. They didn’t have to worry about murderous anti-Semitic neighbors raised from birth to hate Jews. True, the Arabs were far from friendly, and the British antagonized the Jews, but it was nothing like what the Jews of Europe had suffered at the hands of the Nazis.
I was still not fluent in Hebrew, although the rabbi in Minsk had done the best he could with me. I had put a great deal of effort in to improving my accent, and my relationships with the neighborhood children came in handy to this end.
I kept myself in good physical shape and exercised every morning. I’d start with a two-mile run, followed by weightlifting and calisthenics in my room. Three times a week I went to the YMCA, the only sports club in Jerusalem, where there was a pool, gymnasium, soccer field, and tennis courts. I swam in the pool and trained in the arts of boxing and judo.
Although I despised the British, I knew I had to learn English. The British Empire had been showing signs of weakness, but the United States had assumed its position as the world’s strongest power. As a result, English had become an important language to master, and I enrolled in an intensive English course at the YMCA.
I did most of my shopping at the Cohens’ grocery store, right across the street from my house. A so-called pure Sephardic Jew, Mr. Cohen enjoyed boasting that his family had lived in Jerusalem for six generations. His wife, on the other hand, was a yekke, a Jew of German descent. They were religious and childless.
Mr. Cohen looked like a long and somber cucumber. His small eyes were hidden behind black-framed glasses, and I never once saw even the hint of a smile on his face. Mrs. Cohen was a short, plump woman with round, chubby cheeks, and her hair was always covered by some colorful headscarf. She perpetually had a fearful and suspicious look in her eyes, and whenever I tried to speak with her, I got the sense that there was something she didn’t like about me.
ONE MORNING, SHORTLY AFTER I arrived in Israel, I was shopping at Cohens’ when I saw a woman who captured my attention. I’m not sure what happened to me when I first laid eyes on her, but I suspect it was love at first sight. I marveled at her big green eyes, which expressed warmth and softness, along with a touch of sadness. And when my eyes wandered over her flowing blond hair and shapely body, I wanted desperately to take her in my arms and stay there for all eternity. I plucked up the courage and spoke to her.
“Do you live around here?” I asked.
“Yes, not too far from here,” she responded in a soft and pleasant voice.
I picked up on her Belarusian accent right away.
“I’m from Belarus, from Minsk,” I said in Belarusian.
“I’m from Novogrudok,” she replied in the same language.
Mr. Cohen, characteristically impatient and surly, angrily stared at us through his glasses. “If you want to speak in your strange language,” he scolded us, “I’d rather you did it outside the store.”
That wasn’t the only incident of its kind. Many of the Jews living in Israel felt that all Jews should be required to speak Hebrew, which until recently had been the language of the Bible and prayer only but had become an everyday language within just a few years.
Under different circumstances, I might have snapped at his rudeness, but he had given me the opportunity to invite the young woman outside. We stepped into the courtyard in front of the store, and I introduced myself. “I’m David Gabinsky.”
“In Belarus, they called me Rosa, but here I’m Shoshana,” she said.
The light outside offered me a clearer view of her—a shapely beauty of average height but with something fragile about her.
I asked her a few more polite questions, then, “Can I buy you a coffee?”
She gave me a shy smile. “Yes, thank you. How about Café Europa, in Zion Square? It’s near my job.”
I agreed, and we made plans to meet again in half an hour outside Cohens’ and walk together to the café.
I returned to my apartment and changed my clothes. Shoshana arrived at the store a few minutes after I did, looking even more beautiful with a streak of red lipstick accentuating the sensuality of her mouth. A brisk twenty-minute walk took us to Zion Square in the center of the city, the heart of the Jerusalem Triangle, tucked between Jaffa, Ben Yehuda, and King George streets.
When we got to the café, one of the waitresses ran to Shoshana and embraced her. “Good to see you,” she said in Hebrew, with a slight Hungarian accent.
Shoshana turned to me. “David, meet my good friend Eva. She’s my roommate.”
Eva was slim and of average height, with large breasts, curly red hair, and chestnut-brown eyes. She seated us at a table by the window and went back to work. I was surprised to notice that many of the diners were British soldiers and officers and that the menu was in English and German but not in Hebrew. I ordered coffee and apple strudel for the two of us.
As we began to talk, Shoshana told me that her entire family had perished in the Holocaust. She kept her eyes on the table, her hands knit together in front of her. A lock of blond hair fell across her face as she spoke. She was saved thanks to a family in the countryside that had given her a place to hide. Following the war, she had made her way to Israel with forged papers. After she talked for a while, she asked to hear my story. I didn’t want to reveal too much about myself, but I knew I had to tell her something.
“I fled Minsk and joined up with the partisans,” I said. “After the war, I managed to get here.”
She must have thought I wasn’t much of a talker, but she didn’t press for more.
“Do you work?” she asked.
“Not at the moment. I have some savings, and I’m living off that for now. And you?”
“I work as a waitress at Café Pinsk. They’re looking for a waiter, if you’re interested.”
“Maybe,” I said. “What’s it like?”
“The owner is a Jew from Pinsk. He lost his wife about a year ago, and they didn’t have children. He was smarter than our families and came to Israel in the early 1930s. Perhaps you can walk me there? I’ll introduce you to Max. If you want the job, I believe you can get it.”
I wasn’t thrilled by the idea of working as a waiter, but the job would keep me close to Shoshana. “Great, let’s go,” I said.
Pinsk sat on HaHistadrut Street, a small side road leading off Ben Yehuda. The outer wall was decorated with a mural of the Jerusalem skyline. When I stopped to examine it, Shoshana simply said, “I painted that.” I told her it was beautiful.
The restaurant wasn’t very big, but it boasted a long bar with a beautiful wooden counter. Fixed to the wall was a mirror that stretched the entire length of the bar. Dark wooden chairs and tables added a touch of elegance to th
e restaurant. Glass chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and the walls were adorned with several landscape paintings.
“Max isn’t an easy man, and he expects absolute obedience,” Shoshana said to me. “There’s no point in arguing with him, even if you’re right.”
She sat me down at one of the tables and brought me a glass of beer before calling Max over and introducing me to him. He looked as though he was in his fifties, a short man with white hair, a wrinkled face, and piercing blue eyes that reflected concern and uneasiness.
“Where are you from?” he asked me.
“I’m from Minsk,” I replied in Belarusian.
“We’re living in Israel,” he snapped. “If you want to work for me, that’s the last time I hear you speaking any language other than Hebrew or English.”
I switched to Hebrew, saying, “I don’t have any experience as a waiter, but I’m willing to learn the trade.”
“I’ll hire you on a trial basis. You start tomorrow. And remember—Hebrew only to the Jewish customers. And speak English to the British. Do you know that language?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I took an English class.”
“Okay, then. Be polite to our British customers. Some people are rude to them. I’m not one of those people. I have no interest in politics. All that concerns me is satisfying my customers—especially the British. They drink a lot more than my Jewish customers. That’s good for you too, because they’re more generous when it comes to tipping the waiters. See you tomorrow.”
I drank my beer and watched Shoshana waiting on tables. Then I noticed a British officer who was having a drink at the bar. His long-flushed face displayed a look of angry superiority. Had it not been for his uniform, he could’ve been one of the German officers who had persecuted us in the ghetto. My thoughts wandered again to the ghetto and my escape.
Thousands of Jews, mostly the elderly and children who were unable to work, were murdered in Minsk in August 1941. Those who remained were forced to work at factories, workshops, and construction companies that served the German war effort. With just one public faucet in the entire ghetto, we were severely short of water. Conditions were atrocious and unsanitary. Electricity was forbidden, so we had to make do with kerosene lamps and candles.
Hardest of all was the shortage of food. We weren’t allowed to prepare food in our homes, and all our meals came from the few public kitchens that operated in the ghetto. Those who didn’t work received a daily portion of watered-down soup, five ounces of bread, a third of an ounce of margarine, and a few grains of salt. Because my father was a member of the Judenrat, our family received slightly larger portions, but we were among the very few who did. The poor nutrition took its toll, weakening the ghetto’s residents and accelerating the outbreak of disease. We had no medication, and dozens died every day from scurvy, dysentery, typhus, and starvation.
In November 1941, seven transports carrying Jews from cities in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia arrived in Minsk, and these Jews were all forced into the ghetto. On November 7, we had the first aktzia in Minsk, a systematic roundup and deportation of Jews to forced-labor camps or mass extermination. In the early hours of the morning, the Nazis surrounded several streets in the ghetto, loading all the residents into vehicles and taking them outside the city. The soldiers ordered the Jews to dig trenches and then shot them. Their bodies were unceremoniously dumped into the trenches and covered with a layer of dirt.
The second aktzia took place on November 20. The Jews were again led out of the city; this time, they were forced to walk into the valley of death. I hid on the roof of our house and watched that terrible march, organized by the auxiliary police forces, mostly Ukrainians and Latvians. My heart broke when I saw my friend Yehuda and his family walking to their execution.
Some twenty thousand Jews were murdered in the two operations, and my family knew we were living on borrowed time. At the end of February 1942, the Germans announced a third aktzia and ordered the Judenrat to provide five thousand Jews for “relocation.” We all knew what that meant.
“My son, you are young and strong, and you have a chance of surviving if you escape this place,” my father said to me on the day we learned of the third aktzia. “I must stay here—I am duty-bound to assist the ghetto’s remaining Jews, including your brother and sister and their families.”
I didn’t feel good about abandoning my parents, but my father kept insisting that I leave. When the Jewish resistance operating in the ghetto instructed all those who could escape to do so, I decided to join the partisans. My father pulled some strings to get me food, warm clothing, and wire cutters.
He also managed to get a gun—a Soviet-made TT pistol—and a magazine with a half-dozen cartridges. He drew me a map and told me to make my way to the Koidanov Forest, where I would join up with a group of partisans under the leadership of Shalom Zurin.
The night before the third aktzia began, my mother readied my knapsack, filling it with anything and everything she could get her hands on to keep me going for two full days. When it came time to leave, the three of us held hands and wept. My father looked at me with large, sad eyes. “Be safe, my son. I hope you make it—and perhaps we will see each other again someday.”
I gave my tearful mother one last tight embrace and left the house. I was nearly overcome with sadness, knowing it was probably the last time I would see them. With tears in my eyes, I crept down the darkened street and then crawled under the fence at the midpoint between two watchtowers, cutting through the barbed wire in my path with the cutters my father had given me.
It was March 1, 1942—two days before the Purim holiday. The night was cold and damp. As I hurried through the streets outside the ghetto, I stroked the pistol in my coat pocket. I had never fired a gun before, but I doubted that would be true for much longer.
3
“AND ALL AROUND US HORROR AND THE SHADOW OF DEATH”
(FROM “UNKNOWN SOLDIERS,” A POEM BY AVRAHAM STERN, 1932)
I was lost in my memories, sitting at the table in Café Pinsk, when Shoshana tapped me on the shoulder.
“I’m off at eleven,” she said. “Do you want to wait for me and walk home together?”
Of course I waited for her, and when her shift ended, we headed back to Kerem Avraham. As we walked up Chancellor Street, we noticed a young man posting leaflets. Shoshana and I glanced at one another, both aware he was likely from one of the Jewish underground organizations.
All at once, two British policemen rounded the corner and started beating him with their clubs. I felt anger rise inside me, and I moved to help him, but Shoshana grabbed my arm.
“Don’t,” she said. “You’ll only get yourself arrested too.”
Before I could argue, she added, “If you want to fight the British, there are better ways to do it.”
A British military vehicle arrived on the scene. Soldiers jumped out, handcuffed the young man, and threw him inside. My blood boiled as we walked away. I remembered what we had gone through in Minsk. The British authorities weren’t killing people indiscriminately, but the Jews here still didn’t have the freedom they deserved. The experience left me frustrated—as I’m not the type to stand by and do nothing—but I realized Shoshana was right.
“What did you mean back there, about better ways to fight the British?” I asked as we continued walking.
“Let’s discuss it later,” she replied, “in private. Perhaps tomorrow?”
I nodded, unwilling to press her, and walked her home.
“Let us meet tomorrow outside of the Cohens’ store before work,” she suggested.
“I’ll be there,” I said and leaned in to kiss her.
She turned her head, and I could only peck her on the cheek.
The next day at noon, we met at the Cohens’ store and walked to Café Pinsk. After our arrival, I began waiting tables. The customers kept me running back and forth for hours as I catered to their petty demands. “The chicken you’ve served me isn’t hot enough!”
one British officer scolded me loudly. “Why didn’t you bring it to the table the moment it came out of the oven?”
It took every ounce of strength I had not to throw the plate of chicken at his head and deliver a few punches to his rosy face. But I summoned the will to promise that it wouldn’t happen again. Shoshana flashed me a quick smile when I apologized. Had she known just how much I wanted to break every bone in that arrogant Brit’s body, she might not have been so happy.
The entire evening, Max paced around the restaurant like a cranky military commander, constantly checking whether Shoshana and I were attending the tables and asking customers if they needed anything. Occasionally, he’d head into the kitchen to pester the chef and examine the dishes. I thanked God when the shift came to a close. Feeling mentally and physically drained, I walked through the streets of Jerusalem with Shoshana, then exchanged yet another brief, cold kiss with her at her door.
On the second day, the job was a little easier. I knew what to expect and made fewer mistakes. Max offered no praise, but at least he didn’t hassle me as much. It was a Friday night, and the restaurant was packed with British soldiers and policemen who ate and drank heavily. They talked loudly of girls and parties but also about their work. I heard one soldier mouthing off about the Jewish underground organizations. “They should all be hanged, every last one of them,” he said.
One particularly self-important British police officer spent the whole evening bragging to his companions about all the activists he’d caught. I was shocked to see Max strike up a conversation with him.
“These underground movements are nothing but trouble,” I heard Max say as I lingered at the next table. “If you need any help, you let me know. But please keep this between us.”