‘I know what happened. Rosa, I know it all,’ Border whispered. ‘I can’t say anything. You want to blame me? You can. I never remarried. I lived alone. I tried to tell … what happened but they didn’t want to hear. No, not what happened to you. It’s true. I never said a word about what they did to you, but Rosa … she’s all I had. You were gone. It would have made no difference to you but for me … she was all I had. Rosa, it was wrong. Everything I did was wrong. But she lives and breathes. Do you know? That I took her away was wrong. But that’s why she’s alive. Tell me you agree.’ His mouth was dry. She didn’t answer but the voice did. He heard a man’s voice answering someone else’s question. Henry Border didn’t know where he was any more. He found it hard to breathe.
‘We were in the ghetto. There were four families sleeping in one room in makeshift beds or bunks one on top of the other. It was night.’
‘And what happened that particular night?’
‘They knocked on the door and then kicked it in and walked into the room where four couples were sleeping.’
‘Who did this?’
‘The SS. There were four of them, all of them armed. They …’
‘What is your full name?’
‘Rosa? Who’s there? Who keeps asking these questions? And who is answering them?’ Henry Border called out. No one answered. Perhaps no one could hear him over the sounds of MacDougal Street. Perhaps he only thought he was calling out. But the voice he heard, though slightly muffled like one of his wire recordings, was as real as anything he had ever heard. It was a man’s voice and it spoke again.
‘He used to wear a long coat and gloves. But he wore only one glove, the other glove he used to hold in his hand. He would come to see the pits, the new pits that were dug when the ovens couldn’t cope. Yes, I saw Eichmann many times in Auschwitz-Birkenau,’ said the voice from the new Admiral television set Henry Border’s daughter had bought him. Adolf Eichmann was on trial and the world had tuned in. Finally, it was listening.
‘Rosa?’
‘Please tell the court where you were born.’
‘I was born in Ciechanow, Poland.’
‘Where exactly is Ciechanow?’
‘It’s a little over thirty kilometres from the Polish border with East Germany.’
‘How many Jews were in Ciechanow at the start of the war?’
‘About six thousand.’
‘How many were transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau?’
‘From the ghetto, all of them.’
‘So how many came from the ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau?’
‘Six thousand minus those who died in the ghetto.’
‘Do you know how many Ciechanow Jews are alive today?’
‘As it happens, I am president of the Ciechanow Landsmannschaft so I do know this.’
‘And how many Ciechanow Jews are alive today?’
‘There are seventy-two men … and ten women.’
‘What is your full name?’ asked the presiding judge in Jerusalem.
‘Rosa?’ Henry Border tried to call out.
The breaths were loud, fast and shallow from the bed on the sixth floor walk-up. No one heard them, no one at all. Children squealed as they rode their bikes down on MacDougal Street. A baby cried in the apartment next door. Upstairs two people argued in three languages. From a parked car’s radio out on the street came Hank Ballard and the Midnighters’ ‘Let’s Go, Let’s Go, Let’s Go’. Elly Border had left the window open that morning before she went to work but her father was no longer warm.
‘What is your full name?’ asked the presiding judge in Jerusalem.
Hank Ballard sang from down on MacDougal Street, ‘There’s a thrill upon the hill. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.’ The wind teased the chiffon curtain. Longing to be out of there and free of the heaviness of this man, free of the illness that had confined him to bed, free of the guilt-sodden memories and hallucinations that churned with the real and ongoing lives of other people, it was tethered to the curtain rod and so it danced a prisoner’s dance. It flapped helplessly a few times at the sixth-floor window and then gave up. By that time nothing in the room stirred, nothing but the vibrations in the air that were the voices coming from the television set where Adolf Eichmann was on trial. Henry Border, once Chaim Broder, no longer moved at all, as far away in Jerusalem the question was asked, ‘What is your full name?’
‘Noah Lewental,’ the witness answered.
*
‘Hello, is this Dr Ayesha Washington?’ Adam Zignelik asked over the phone in his Morningside Heights apartment.
‘Yes, who’s this?’
‘Dr Washington, I’m Dr Zignelik, Adam Zignelik. I’m a historian … from the History Department at Columbia University.’ Adam told himself that there might be time later to clarify the true extent of his relationship with the History Department at Columbia, a relationship that was now itself history. Technically, within a minute of his first phone call, Adam had lied to her. But he’d called her at work, she sounded busy and since she might well become very important to him, he drew upon the name of the institution he’d worked at before it had found him wanting.
Adam had discovered that the 71st Infantry Division of the US Third Army, to which the black 761st Tank Battalion was at least at that time attached, had not been far from Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany around 29 April 1945, the time the camp had been liberated. Eventually he had been able to match the name remembered by one of Henry Border’s interviewees with the name of an African American captain in the 761st Tank Battalion. The captain’s name was James Washington. Adam Zignelik, now a freelance historian, was hoping that the woman on the other end of the phone speaking from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center was the captain’s relative.
‘I’m sorry to be taking up your time, especially in the middle of a work day, but to cut a long story short my research has led me to a World War II veteran named James Washington and I wondered whether you are related to him at all.’
‘James Washington?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s my grandfather.’
‘Your grandfather?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are we talking about Captain James Washington of the 761st Tank Battalion?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
It’s rare that relief and excitement can co-exist. Usually one so overpowers the other that we are aware of experiencing only one of them at any one time. Excitement permits a nervousness, even if joyous, that might be said to be the very antithesis of relief. Nonetheless, for a very brief moment, Adam Zignelik experienced them both and was aware of it. Whatever it might or might not be worth, his instincts, skill and perseverance had led him to a relative of the captain mentioned by Henry Border’s DP in the 1946 interview. But when he heard Dr Ayesha Washington say that not only was Captain James Washington of the 761st Tank Battalion her grandfather, but that he was still alive, it was excitement alone that he experienced. At best, he’d thought, there might be some written record of the man’s combat experiences, contemporaneous or otherwise. That the man might still be alive was more than he’d allowed himself to hope for. And he certainly hadn’t expected the enthusiasm he encountered from his granddaughter, the oncologist Ayesha Washington.
‘This will mean the world to him,’ she said, ‘Just your interest … He hasn’t been well and I think this will really … You want to talk to him, right?’
‘I do but … can I ask you about his cognitive capacity, his memory, his –’
‘He’s sharp as a tack. I have to watch what I say around him, he remembers everything.’
‘’Cause you said he’s not been well and I just wondered –’
‘It’s his hip,’ she shot back. ‘He needs surgery. It’s important, frankly it’s serious, but his mind is as good as it ever was. And he has a fine mind, Dr Zignelik.’
She made no attempt to hide her enthusiasm in a way that Adam could not have known she reserved for situations she c
onsidered of tremendous personal importance. Her professional demeanour permitted no hint of this kind of near exuberance. It was as though she was selling her grandfather to the historian. Nor could she have known the professional importance of her grandfather, the captain, to the man on the other end of the line. They agreed to meet before she’d mention Adam’s interest to her grandfather. She was concerned to avoid dashing the old man’s undoubted elation at the prospect of talking about his war-time experiences to a historian should anything go amiss. To accommodate her as much as possible, Adam told her he would be happy to meet her at her workplace during her lunch hour.
She seldom took a whole hour off for lunch but agreed immediately and, some short time later, the two of them met in person at the tiny Fresh Food Kitchen on 68th Street. There, over the din made by the overworked staff and the busy lunch crowd, Adam explained the possible importance to his work of her grandfather. He told her that he had unearthed a 1946 interview with a Holocaust survivor, which referred to being liberated by black troops and to an officer named Washington. Ayesha Washington had been very close to her grandfather all her life. Not only was he immensely proud of her, but she was all he had now. She, on her part, personally oversaw any medical treatment he needed, his financial needs and his living circumstances.
‘He talks about the war all the time. And he has talked about taking part in the liberation of a concentration camp.’
It was safe for her to tell her grandfather about the historian’s interest. Adam wasn’t going to go cold on this. He promised. Adam assured her that he would interview the captain after he had recovered from surgery, as soon as Ayesha Washington said he was ready.
‘Just the prospect of being interviewed will be enough to guarantee he pulls through. You see, no one ever wants to talk to him … not about that stuff.’
*
Ayesha Washington thought again of the man who had confronted her more than once on York Avenue outside Sloan-Kettering. She had to admit that she now did remember seeing that man, the street sweeper, visiting her former patient Henryk Mandelbrot. And he did seem to know a lot about him, certainly more than she’d known about him. Was it a con? If it was, it was certainly an elaborate one, and a highly unusual one. But what if he was telling the truth?
This man, who now swept the streets, had once worked at the hospital. If he had befriended the old man, swapped stories with him, if he had visited him after hours he would have been comforting the patient in his own time, time he wasn’t being paid for. Maybe the old man had given him the candelabrum. If their relationship had been as the former Building Services worker had described it, why couldn’t that have happened? And if it had happened, what a tremendous injustice it was for him to be accused of theft and fired because of it. But she wasn’t a lawyer, a private investigator, a police officer or an ethicist. She worked at the hospital but not in Human Resources. She had her own life. She had her own problems. Who had time for this kind of thing?
She asked herself this and then wondered what she meant by ‘this kind of thing’. She concluded a few seconds later that what she had really meant was ‘justice’ of some kind. So what she had, in fact, asked herself was ‘who had time for justice?’ and the fact that she had articulated this question, even if only privately to herself, jolted her. She caught a vague, elongated momentary glimpse of herself walking past a reflecting surface and, not wanting to be the sort of person who asked herself that question, reached into her pocket and took out the diary with Adam Zignelik’s name and number in it.
What did she owe the street sweeper? She happened to have in her pocket the name and number of a Columbia historian who it might be said owed her something. A call, a quick call made on a whim, who had time for these things?
Adam Zignelik had given her the number to his mobile phone because he didn’t want either of them dwelling on the fact that in truth his association with the History Department at Columbia was ending. She dialled his number and instead of answering with his name he just said, not recognising the number, ‘Hello.’
‘Is this Dr Zignelik?’ Ayesha Washington asked.
‘Yes, who’s this?’
‘Hi, Dr Zignelik. I’m sorry to bother you. It’s Ayesha Washington.’
‘Ayesha, hi. Is everything okay with your grandfather?’
‘Oh sure, he’s fine. We’re still going ahead with the surgery. Actually, he’s really excited to meet with you.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yeah, it’s kind of distracting him from the surgery so it’s … it’s good for his morale.’
‘Oh that’s great.’ A beat or two passed as he waited to find out why she was calling.
‘Actually, Dr Zignelik.’
‘Listen, if I can call you Ayesha, you have to call me Adam.’
‘Sure. Adam, I’m calling … This is going to sound weird but I might have the sudden need for a historian. I mean … I don’t even know if this is your area but there’s something, I don’t know if I could check this out myself but –’
‘What’s up?’
‘Do you have a minute?’
‘Sure.’
‘There’s a guy …’ She let out a breath. ‘God, where do I begin? Okay, I had a patient who died … an old man … And he was a Holocaust survivor.’
Over the phone she told him all she knew of the purported relationship between her late patient and the one-time Building Services employee, a man who now worked as part of the cleaning crew of the John Doe Fund’s Ready, Willing and Able team. She told him that the man had been fired by the hospital for the alleged theft of the old man’s menorah and that the man persists in saying that it had been a gift and that it wasn’t theft. He claimed that he and the patient had become friends over a period of months and as proof of their friendship he offers quite astoundingly specific details of the old man’s life story. If he’s now working with the John Doe Fund it means he’s either homeless or an ex-con, possibly both. She’d checked with the hospital and it had tried this man as a Building Services employee as part of a pilot program. If it was true that the menorah had been a gift and that this man in fairly desperate circumstances had been wrongly accused and in a sense convicted and punished, it would be a grave injustice. Adam had to agree.
‘The credibility of the claim by the former employee that he and the patient had become friends,’ Ayesha Washington went on, ‘ultimately rests on the authenticity of his account of the conversations he insists they had. What I thought was that perhaps I could ask you for an expert opinion as to whether the detailed knowledge of the Holocaust he apparently gained from them is historically accurate.’
‘I understand,’ Adam replied. ‘But this is the thing. Although my area is twentieth-century political history, I’ve tended to specialise in civil rights history. It’s true that I have lately, without any conscious decision on my part, developed a professional interest in the Holocaust. It’s connected with my interest in the armed services experiences of people like your grandfather. But I have to tell you, I’m not really an expert, not yet, anyway.’
‘Sure, I’m sorry, Adam. It’s pretty crazy and I don’t want to waste your time –’
‘No, you misunderstand me. I’ll do it. I’ll listen to him. I really owe you, of course I’ll do it. I’m just offering the caveat that there are plenty of people you could find who are more expert in this area than me. But what I do have going for me is that I owe you. And historians still make house calls. Where do you want me to go to meet this guy? I’ll tell you if I don’t feel qualified to attest to the accuracy of the man’s account of your patient’s story. I can always recommend other people more expert in the field.’
‘Adam, I already felt silly enough getting you involved in this, and we’ve already met.’
‘I assure you, it’s not a problem. You’re right, if he has intimate knowledge of the old man’s story then it does make it more likely they were friends, which makes it more likely he didn’t steal the menorah and shouldn�
�t have been fired.’
‘Thanks for this. I felt silly but I thought I had to do something –’
‘Ayesha, I owe you. So don’t think twice.’
She explained that she often saw the man, the street sweeper, on York Avenue near the hospital. She would look out for him and try to make an arrangement with him or at least get some kind of contact details for him. A few days later the Mayor of East 67th and York saw the young oncologist for the first time initiate a conversation with the street sweeper.
Some two weeks later, in the late afternoon when the sun had almost disappeared, an oncologist, a historian and a street sweeper crammed around a tiny table in the Fresh Food Kitchen on 68th Street to talk in depth about the war-time experiences of Henryk Mandelbrot. No one can accurately describe the effect on Adam Zignelik of hearing this African American street sweeper, whose broom and cart rested against the window of the eatery, describe life in the Sonderkommando. Sensing the importance of the opportunity, Lamont Williams told Ayesha Washington and Adam Zignelik everything he could remember and he remembered a lot. The old man had written it all down in Yiddish in a notebook but all Lamont had was his memory of Mandelbrot’s story. When he was finished Adam Zignelik was not immediately able to speak. ‘Did you say the old man had made a written record of this?’
‘That’s what he said but … I mean … I never saw it. Anyway, it wouldn’t be in English. Might be Yiddish, might be Polish. Mr Mandelbrot spoke a lot of languages but Yiddish was his first.’
‘Did you see these notes?’
‘No, he never brought them into the hospital. But his people would have found ’em. He said he’d put ’em where they’d find them after he died. So they should have found ’em by now.’
Adam rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. Then he spoke slowly and explained to both of them how it was only in the last six months that his work had taken him anywhere near this material but, from what he knew, it was almost impossible to account for Lamont’s knowledge other than by the man who had lived it having told him. He said that although he did not consider himself a real expert he felt confident enough to say that relatively few people on earth knew the details Lamont knew about the Sonderkommando, the work they did and the uprising they carried off.
The Street Sweeper Page 59