I Am Juden

by Stephen Uzzell

  The first storm of the season came that Wednesday afternoon, as unannounced as a knock at a darkened front door. ‘It will be like this until the spring now,’ Anton cautioned that evening as we warmed our bones at the hearth. Such ill-timed raids of wind and rain could spoil a hay crop in minutes or strip the head of ripening grain. And then, at the height of summer, there was always the threat of drought to rob the corn harvest. Not only were farmers at the mercy of an unforgiving Nature, but they had to contend with the constant threat of low prices, sickness, poor medical care, accidents and of course, the new and ever-growing encroachment of the Nazis.

  The process of Germanization had been underway for two years by this point, resettling ethnic Aryans from the far-flung Baltics in houses and farms in the occupied territories. Starting with the displacement of ‘foreigners’ in the Danzig corridor in 1939, hundreds of thousands of families like Anton’s had been expelled without warning, losing everything they owned. Many elderly and children had died en route or in makeshift transit camps like Potulice or Smukal or Torun. Finally this year, after Hitler’s vainglorious invasion of the Soviet Union, resettlement plans had been scaled back; the trains were now more urgently needed to transport soldiers and supplies to the Eastern Front. But the threat to Anton’s livelihood remained. There were fates to rival expulsion.

  A friend in Lublin had recently had his dairy farm declared as essential to the War Effort. Under close SS supervision, the farmer’s family had to toil for a week building and installing a mechanized milking station to fulfil the greedy new quota. Instead of feeding his children, the farmer was now catering for the German army. Anton had survived untouched thus far because he had cultivated good relationships with the head of the Belorussian gendarmerie, a heart-broken man whose wife had been deported to the Russians. In her absence the Belorussian had developed a deep fondness for Anton’s bracing pear brandy.

  If the work was hard for the men, it was doubly so for Hanna and Eva, who put in the longest hours of us all. When their morning chores were complete, mother and daughter set to work in the fields, and if by any miracle there was no planting or tilling to be done that day, they tended to the garden. The vegetable patch was a vital part of the farm’s production, saving money on the food budget and sustaining through times when income from crops or livestock was low. When the storm came that Wednesday, Eva retreated inside to make her own soap and used a broomstick handle to fish laundry out of a scalding hot tub into the wringer.

  To this back-breaking litany of labour, one more burden had recently been added: the daily supervision of her younger sisters. Radka and Barbora’s school had closed down over the summer, and was forbidden from re-opening. According to Nazi doctrine, the Slavic people did not need or deserve education. Limited elementary-level schooling was in place in some areas, where children were taught in non-Polish languages like German, or, if there were no teachers available, Russian. South of Lublin, there was nothing.

  So the children stayed home, adding to their older sister’s woes. Where was the mother of the family to be found, you ask? It was not that my cousin Hanna was neglectful – far from it. Onto the mother’s shoulders fell the unenviable task of feeding the family and all the extra field-hands who trooped down from the village, depositing children of their own into Eva’s custody. Hanna spent afternoons preparing elaborate recipes passed down from her grandmother on a tiny wooden stove upon which I would have struggled to poach an egg. The woman was a veritable conjuror of culinary delights. I had not eaten so well since I left home, forsaking my own mother’s cooking. A typical meal at the farm might have consisted of liver and caramelised onions, ham and cherries, carrots with apricots, creamed cabbage and gooseberry pie for dessert, all of it cultivated within a stone’s throw of the kitchen occluded window.

  The oldest daughter Eva did the best she could to keep the dispossessed brood entertained, but at eighteen years old, she had barely said goodbye to her own childhood, and was already working all hours God sent to merely keep the farm afloat from one day to the next. Now, with Barbora, Radka and the assorted waifs and strays from the village, there were often as many as ten miniature mischief-makers cartwheeling through the cluttered rooms, too young to be put to work and too old to be left unattended. Taking pity on Eva, I helped out where I could. But my own time was limited to the occasional sketching lesson after dinner when the girls had settled down, and in truth, such was their prodigy with pencils, it often felt like they were instructing me. Thankfully, my decade lecturing at the University of Kiel had not been in vain, and I knew my way around a bedtime story better than most.

  After we bid the girls goodnight, Eva and I would linger in the corridor outside their room, enjoying a few minutes of each other’s company before returning downstairs. I had taken to dropping certain improvisations into my bedtime stories, invoking Lubka the village seamstress’s habitual malapropisms, or describing the three little pigs in a manner that evoked a trio of Eva’s least favourite pint-sized charges from the village. It was a long time since either of us had anything to laugh at, and I was flattered by Eva’s attentions. But she was my host’s daughter, and less than half my age. I was not about to bring the house into ill-repute. However, I freely confess that my thoughts often lacked purity.

  On Friday a magnificent threshing machine arrived from a neighbouring farm, and brought with it a succession of excitable older boys from the village, although they remained outside with us and did not trouble Eva’s crèche. I observed the annual tradition from Anton’s side:

  First the corn sheaves were taken from the ricks and put into the threshing drum which separated the straw from the grain and chaff. I was amused to watch the village boys gather round the machine, armed with heavy sticks. Amused until the first startled rodent poked its head out from the nest it had made in the rick, only to be greeted by a large, oafish-looking boy who pointed and yelled, ‘Jew!’ Another boy swung his club through the air and mashed the mouse into a pancake of quivering pulp.

  ‘Jew!’

  Bang.

  ‘Jew!’

  Bang.

  The process of spotting and clubbing was repeated until the grass at our feet was stained red. Anton watched on with a look of grim forbearance. I understood that he was in no position to chastise the spotters for their ‘sport’, lest his own sympathies be called into question.

  When the second rick was loaded into the machine, I announced that Eva had requested my assistance with the canning of peaches for winter, and fled inside.

  The house’s younger children were forbidden from participating in such blood sports. But this didn’t stop them from clustering round the parlour window, intently spectating. One enterprising jug-ear was running a book on how many ‘Jews’ would be splattered from each rick. The winner received a choice of Eva’s coloured crayons in payment. Condoning the corruption of childhood through gambling did not sit well with my conscience, but on the other hand, I had rarely seen the brood in such a state of mesmerised transcendence. Eva was enjoying a rare pot of tea at the kitchen table. I did not wish to encroach on her solitude, but she insisted on offering me a cup as I passed.

  ‘You look like you could do with one,’ she said. ‘Are you coming down with something?’

  ‘I feel somewhat soothed by your company.’

  ‘Then you must sit a while.’

  ‘I believe I can manage that.’

  ‘Good.’

  I helped myself to fresh cream and filled my cup with brown tea. Stirring in sugar-cubes, I lost myself in the dissipating swirl, and was startled to feel my fingers being gently squeezed. Eva patted the back of my hand and then withdrew, folding her arm primly on the table.

  ‘You were supervising the threshing machine, weren’t you?’

  ‘There was little supervision required,’ I said. ‘Everybody seemed to know exactly what to do.’

  ‘It’s wicked,’ she said, ‘how our children are steeped in hatred from such an age. I myself will tak
e no part in it. I won’t even touch the corn anymore.’

  ‘Boys will be boys,’ I offered glumly. ‘It is the same where I come from.’

  ‘Didn’t we all used to get along, once upon a time?’

  ‘In the Book of Genesis, perhaps,’ I allowed. ‘My parents remember the pogroms of last century, and that was under the Russians.’

  ‘It’s a contagion. Sometimes I think the whole continent’s lost its mind.’

  ‘For each who acts that way, there are others who behave decently. Where there is life, there is hope.’

  ‘You obviously don’t know Lublin.’

  ‘Can it be so bad?’

  Eva averted my gaze. ‘Father hasn’t told you.’

  I considered my words carefully. ‘I have seen the floor of the milking barn, if that is what you speak of.’

  ‘Those two poor souls are all that’s left.’

  ‘There were more?’

  ‘This was always a Jewish village, until last summer. All the shopkeepers, artisans and tailors – gone. Overnight.’

  ‘To the labour camps?’

  ‘The lucky ones. Less than three weeks after the Germans arrived, our mayor and the village gendarmerie ordered all Jews to be rounded up. They were divided into groups and the elderly ones were taken to a barn that had been cleared for the purpose, clubbed to death then thrown into a pit in the field.’

  Later that afternoon as dusk turned to dark, I returned from a long walk around the farm’s perimeter, ostensibly to check on the cows. I could hear the family preparing for dinner as I approached the house, and saw Anton’s boots neatly arranged on the back step.

  Before I could join the family, there came a furtive rustling from inside the milking barn. I stopped, suspecting thievery. But here was nothing much to steal, except for the two brothers hidden in the bunker. I crept back to the barn, saw a lamp extinguish through a gap in the wood, and stopped on the other side of the door.

  Flattening myself against the wall, I watched Anton emerge from the house, wearing his cardigan and slippers, every inch the hard-pressed farmer who had thought the day’s chores done, only to remember one more. At the end of his arm swung a large metal can. I wondered what kind of work would not wait until morning. I was about to step out and ask when my host stopped five metres in front of the barn doors, unscrewed the cap, lifted the can and doused the earth with clear liquid. In this manner, he began retreating to the corner, splashing a trail along the base of the far wall, receding into the night. But the smell he left behind was unmistakable: gasoline.

  For some unearthly reason he was going to burn his Jews alive!

  With two minutes before Anton completed his circuit and threw a flame to his handiwork, I ran inside the barn and pulled the doors shut with a soft click, entombing myself in its depthless black. I could not risk lighting the lamp. Racing to the centre of the floor, I clattered into the milking stool, hoofed away swathes of straw and groped around on my hands and knees until I found the handle, and the solid nugget of metal that encased it. I pulled with all my might but of course it was no good: the padlock would not budge.

  The trapdoor opened less than an inch. If I had a crowbar, I could pry it until the hinges ripped asunder. But I had no crowbar. All I could see was the silhouette of a pitch-fork resting against the far wall. I was contemplating using it to try and stab my way through the trap when the barn door creaked open.

  ‘Is somebody in here?’ Anton hissed, pallid in the moonlight. ‘Cousin Dani, is that you?’

  ‘Give me the key to the padlock,’ I said. ‘Or else burn the three of us together.’

  ‘Have you lost your mind? God damn it.’ In all my hours at Anton’s side, I had not once heard him curse. ‘Will you get out here so we can please talk.’

  ‘You may speak to us all if you have anything to say.’

  The two prisoners beneath my feet had not made a sound thus far.

  Anton replied with a vigorous shake of the head that I now understand as an expression of sheer exasperation. Wide-eyed and mute, he jabbed a finger to the ground I stood on, then brought both hands up to the side of his head, placing the palms flat across his ears.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ he said, after his gestures failed to elicit my response. ‘Close the door when you decide you’ve had enough.’

  And with that, he withdrew.

  I waited for the shake of his match-box, the rasping pull across the sandpaper, the sizzle of sulphur, the shower of sparks and detonating whoosh as the trail of gas lit up like a landing strip. But none of it materialised. Instead, I heard the farmhouse door open across the yard and Persha welcome her master back with an excited yelp.

  After a further minute, I began to feel a little foolish. I had no idea what I’d witnessed, but it was no longer looking like a prelude to a torching. Rather sheepishly, I left the barn and trod the familiar path to the farmhouse back door.

  Anton was at the kitchen sink, scrubbing his hands with soap. I called my greetings to the dinner table about to begin their prayers and joined father at the taps.

  ‘Evening cousin,’ he said, as if we had not spoken for several hours.

  ‘Good evening.’

  ‘I’ll be damned if I can get this stink off.’ He raised a knuckle to his nose, sniffed, winced, then plunged his hand back into the water.

  I nodded dumbly, an act that required no guile on my behalf.

  Leaning into my shoulder, Anton spoke so as to not disturb the prayers. ‘Had a tip-off the Gestapo are in the area, looking for Jews. Gasoline’s about the only thing that throws their bloodhounds off the scent. Right.’ Satisfied with his hand’s cleanliness at last, he dried himself on the towel and stepped away from the sink. ‘All yours.’

  The farm was on tenterhooks for the next two days, but the Gestapo did not come.

  By Saturday night, the immediate threat was deemed to have passed. Anton and family decided to keep up appearances by going into the village that evening, where they would enjoy a simple meal at Petr’s Inn and, if a musician happened to be passing through, the girls could dance the polka.

  In truth, Saturday night was to be my farewell party. Upon completing a week’s work, I had informed my host that I would be commencing my trek south on Monday. If I didn’t leave before the savage Polish winter bit, I believed I might have stayed in Lublin for the duration, so comfortable were the terms of my lodging. But for all Anton and Hana’s generosity, they were not my family.

  So that evening Dami joined his cousins aboard the horse and cart and we rode the winding lane through a backwater of dilapidated farms and storks nesting on the tops of telephone poles. Watching over us from the small hill was all that remained of the area’s Jews, in the sloping cemetery. There were no more bones left to bury.

  Through the pine woods on the distant right lay the drab village with a population of two hundred souls. The village had always been divided: Jews traded in the centre while the Poles cleaved to the edges, tilling the land. Now it was all one. The high street where the carpenters, shoemakers and tailors had built their sturdy nests was now home to an incredulity of cuckolds, resettled party-men who could not believe their luck, spilling out of the shabby day-bar as we passed, drunk and vulgar. I had seen the same walrus moustaches and pot-bellies in Wilno. These were men like the friends of Mr. Donelaitis who’d ganged up on Moshe’s friends for telling a harmless joke. Except these villagers had driven a whole block of families out of their houses, and beaten the elders to death like rats from the hayrick.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Anton called across the street as we secured the cart.

  A few of the drunks removed their hats in honour of our women. Most did not. One large moustachioed man in black holding court inside the bar to a circle of cronies seemed particularly struck by our arrival. I could feel his tracking gaze as we dismounted and shepherded our party onto the pavement, where Anton was approached by a young boy in a grey suit with knee-socks and shiny buckled shoes. After a brief negotiation
, a silver zloty was traded hands and in return the boy hopped up behind the horse and crossed his feet on the creature’s rump. It was only then that I recognized him as the scrubbed-up Jew-spotter from the day of the threshing machine.

  I was left to dwell on this while Anton and Hana exchanged greetings with the proprietor outside the inn. Petr was tall and thin and smelled of rosewater. A crescent of wispy white hair lay over his pink scalp, lifting like a frond in the evening breeze. He dropped to his knee to take Radka and Barbora’s hands as if he were receiving royalty. Too old for such blandishment, Eva remained at my side, introducing me after the girls had skipped in to their usual window table.

  ‘Why do you keep this one hidden in Germany?’ Petr said, running a sere fingertip over the vein on the back of my hand. ‘Such a handsome chap would set village heartbeats fluttering like a fox.’

  ‘That’s precisely why we keep him hidden,’ Anton said. ‘We’ve got enough work on our hands with the farm!’

  ‘Lublin‘s loss is truly the turnip’s gain,’ Petr said, examining my fingertips before releasing them. Despite my change in circumstances since the war, I had developed little in the way of calluses. My hands still bore the suspiciously manicured look of a man who’d spent his life lifting nothing heavier than the pages of a book.

  Inside the snug pine inn, Anton and Hanna sat at either end of the window table, with the two young girls between them against the glass, charitably leaving Eva and I the best view, overlooking the high street. Unfortunately, given the bar full of drunk Nazis opposite, I did not relish being a fish in a glass tank. Every time I raised my head, my eyes locked into the gaze of the tall man in black who’d been so preoccupied with our arrival.

  The restaurant filled up as I sought solace in my wine. By eight o’clock, all eight tables were replete. In addition to acting as the Maître D, Petr doubled as waiter and bus-boy. For all I knew, when he disappeared into the tiny kitchen, he donned the chef’s hat as well. There wasn’t another member of staff to be seen. Consequently, we weren’t excessively troubled by our host after the initial greeting, although when he did stop at our table between courses, it was behind my chair he invariably lingered.