by Leon Silver
He was used to death, as all long-term soldiers were, but not like this. Unlike death on the battlefield, these deaths were choreographed – a systematic slaughter. In his room, unshaven, unwashed, unable to eat, Tolek remembered the Correspondent’s words after they’d met the freed Russian prisoners in Iraq: ‘We may die in the battlefield in the next campaign, with full stomachs and a weapon in our hands. Better than living like slaves, in filth and degradation, controlled through terror and hunger into a sense of hopelessness where human dignity is permanently dead.’ Better than being herded naked into gas chambers then burned in ovens. Whole families, villages, towns. A whole nation.
Out of the hollow eyes of the Modena Speakers came a form of life Tolek didn’t recognise. Could these people ever live again? The freed POWs in the Middle East had guarded their precious pieces of bread fanatically. The freed death-camp Jews had nothing to guard but their stories. They carried them in cloth satchels by their sides as the freed Russian Poles had carried their stale bread. Yet these were not satchels of survival; they were chronicles of death. The Modena Speakers had dipped into their story satchels and seeded grief with wide sweeps like exhausted farmers. Their stories had settled over the four soldiers like heavy dust.
Tolek Naftali Klings had felt it settle in his lungs and burn.
* * *
Everything changed for Tolek after meeting the Modena Speakers. Six years of war and he and all the other Polish-Jewish soldiers had fought for no one, nothing.
Klara’s yellowing telegram transformed from a magical symbol of hope to a sickening relic. Even after the testimonies of Lieb and Chaim, Tolek had still harboured a spark of hope. He had believed those two candles must still be burning in the Klings’ menorah. These two men had seen so much misery – maybe they were mistaken. They’d got the names wrong, or the locations. Somehow Klara and Juliusz had been skipped over, hidden, miraculously survived. The church saved them. That photograph in his breast pocket was still alive. He was going back to Bóbrki to seek the truth for himself.
In Milan, just before he picked up his forged papers, Tolek received a telegram from Ijio. His brother asked for a loan of money to get to Milan and also a statement from his Tolek, giving his address and guaranteeing that Ijio would not be homeless, but would live with him, so that Ijio could get a permit to enter Italy.
This was what Tolek had been waiting for. He immediately cabled back, sending twice as much money as Ijio had requested, plus the lodging guarantee note, and asking his brother to phone him urgently before he made any move. Tolek gave him the phone number of his favourite café in the Galleria, and said he would wait all of next week between ten and eleven every morning at that number.
Each day, Tolek waited, heart in mouth, unable to concentrate on the lucrative business deals. Finally, on the third day, he was called to the café’s phone by the waiter. He rocked the table as he jumped up, spilling his and the other businessman’s coffee. He apologised, stuffed some money into the waiter’s hand and rushed to the phone.
For a moment a flashback of ringing Klara in haste at the start of the war from his solicitor’s office rendered him speechless.
‘Ijio…’
‘Tolek! TOLEK!’ Ijio yelled. ‘Is it really you? I just can’t believe I am actually speaking to you after all these years – my brother.’
They began to cry.
‘Ijio, my brother… Are you all right?’
‘Yes, yes, Tolek, I am. I’m making plans to see you soon in Milan. Thanks so much for the money, I will pay it back…’
‘Nonsense, nonsense… Listen, Ijio, I am coming to Bóbrki, can you meet me there? Money is not a problem –’
Ijio, not crying any longer, interrupted: ‘You are travelling to Bóbrki?’ He sounded incredulous.
‘Yes, I’ve got leave, I need to see Klara and Juliusz. I can’t stand it any more. Then I’ll come back to the army until I’m demilitarised. Meet me there, Ijio, then we’ll come back together to Milan.’
Ijio’s silence was louder than yelling, so powerful it gave Tolek an instant headache.
‘Tolek… Tolek, my dearest brother…’ Ijio had begun to cry again. ‘Listen to me. I was there, Tolek. I was in Bóbrki, following the Ruskies after the war. I am so sorry to tell you, Tolek, my brother, I thought you knew. I am so sad to tell you. Our beloved Klara and Juliusz were both lined up against the wall and shot by the Nazis, together with three other women and two children.’
Ijio fell silent. Then he said, ‘You and I are the only two family survivors.’
After hanging up, Tolek lifted his eyes to the Galleria’s ceiling. The noisy café disappeared from his consciousness.
‘Eliezer!’ Tolek shouted, red-faced. ‘My wife and son murdered… Where was my mazldik nshmh when I needed it? My wife and son were my soul.’
Memories swept through him: Juliusz as a cheeky baby, sucking on Klara’s breast in bed, Tolek, down on his knees begins sucking on the other breast, Klara and Juliusz bursting into giggles.
Sunday in summer, family out for stroll, toddler Juliusz hanging on to both parents’ arms, at Tolek’s raised eyebrows signal, they lift Juliusz to swing in the air, again and again and again, the laughter of the three of them bonding them forever.
Klara’s Óči čjórnye – black eyes, passionate eyes, burning and beautiful eyes – holding Tolek captive, engrossed, riveted during the time they spent in the Lwów hotel room double bed the day before he enlisted.
For the next week, Tolek stayed in his room and said the Kaddish for his wife and son morning and night. Kippah on his head, wrapped in his tallith, he didn’t sleep, wash or shave, ate only bread and drank only water. The anxiety of six years rose and drowned him. Again and again he tried to work out where he was and what he had been doing when his terrified wife and son were lined up against the wall and shot. Was he walking, fighting, drinking, talking, laughing…? Why hadn’t he been with them? How could he have not felt the bullets hit his chest, tearing him to pieces? He cursed himself – if he had been fighting for the Polish fatherland at the very same moment his wife and son were murdered…
He was not the same man who had left the railway station so long ago. That man had died with his wife and son.
19 Terror strikes
It wasn’t until a year later that Tolek was officially discharged from the army in a town called Predappio, Mussolini’s birthplace. The Polish Army gave him a discharge certificate, a civilian suit, a shirt, hat, tie and a brown pair of shoes; an outfit similar to the law clerk clothes he was drafted in. He was also given a savings certificate for 200 British pounds. The Polish Army shook hands with Tolek Naftali Klings and wished him luck. After almost seven years, Tolek felt used and discarded.
As a sentimental gesture of farewell, Tolek hugged the Remington typewriter. It was the only time that day when his eyes were wet. The admin captain had stabbed a finger at Tolek, calling him ‘the Miracle Typist’, the moniker that had stuck with him as long as he had been a soldier. Now he eased down the typewriter’s solid cardboard cover – the brown colour rubbed and scraped off at the edges from being lugged from camp to camp – and locked it with the small, dangling metal key.
The Miracle Typist was over. All those years since 1 September 1939, since his twenty-ninth birthday, had been such a waste. There was nothing from his pre-war life left to reclaim.
* * *
Over the year while Tolek waited to be discharged, he spent the occasional evening with the opera singer Bruna Petrone’s family. After the disastrous news from Ijio, the family were extremely kind and empathic to him and he saw more and more of Bruna. They went out, talked, ate, talked, drank, talked, walked and talked some more. Spending time with Bruna proved ‘time out’, a psychological rest.
The new Tolek needed to start fresh. Hope had to come from somewhere. It came from a warm operatic voice that expressed the war’s devastation, but always finished with optimism and bright eyes. A reasonable future foundation. The new Tole
k married Bruna, the Catholic girl who’d sung opera with Benjamin. They were wed by the Morrevalle mayor in a simple civil ceremony, after Tolek swore a statutory declaration that he was a war widower. A few of his army friends – Poles and Jews – came as his closest ‘family’. Benjamin and Captain Kasprowicz gave him away. The Italians waved their arms to demonstrate their affection and Tolek hugged back, got drunk, sang Jewish songs and even broke a glass underfoot.
Tolek’s new in-laws took the newlyweds out for a wedding dinner. Benjamin commandeered the piano and Bruna sang, locking eyes with Tolek, promising a new beginning. There was no reception hall, no painted palm trees with swinging lanterns. No crooning young Jews with beards and sidelocks, no wailing fiddle or thundering piano accordion, no hub of Klings men romping in a circle, heads thrown back to heaven. No crazy, twitching Eliezer conjuring predictions or heaping blessings on the groom. As it was, Tolek had totally lost trust in Eliezer. This time, Tolek told himself, he would have to make it on his own.
Ijio kept sending telegrams outlining personal complications but assuring Tolek he would arrive in Milan as soon as possible. He finally made it to Milan soon after Tolek married Bruna. Worried that Tolek would get a shock if he suddenly saw his brother, Bruna kept Ijio inside their first-floor apartment. There they waited for her new husband to come home for lunch from work in the Gallerias.
Coming down the street, Tolek saw his wife waving her arms and shouting from the balcony: ‘Tuo fratello, tuo fratello…’ Your brother, your brother…
The minute Tolek understood, he ran to their building, charging up the stairs, while his brother ran down. They collapsed into each other’s arms on the stairs, and Ijio fainted. Neighbours came to help carry him back to the apartment. The two brothers sat, holding hands, Ijio in the tattered DP clothing and patched-up shoes, Tolek in a smart Milanese suit, shirt, tie and polished brown shoes.
Bruna brewed coffee on the stovetop, her melodic Italian easing the communication flow. From his law clerk days, Tolek had a penchant for languages and he had quickly picked up enough Italian to get by.
‘I was here this morning moving some furniture around with Juliana, my neighbour from upstairs, when I heard a hesitant knock on the door. I answered, and it was your brother, for sure, staring at me and at the piece of paper he had in his hand with our address. Hah, no mistaking the family resemblance. He has the same moon face and eyes as you.
‘I started talking in Italian and Ijio in a mixture of languages, which I could not understand. I took him by the arm into our lounge room. He was shaking very badly. We stood, looking at each other, talking irrationally, until we just started laughing.’ She turned to the two brothers. They were still clutching hands for dear life.
‘Juliana also started laughing. The three of us stood in the centre of the room, just there, laughing until tears were running down our cheeks. Juliana knows a few words in Yugoslav. She tried to explain to Ijio that you were out – “Tolek, at work, in the piazza” – and would be home at lunchtime.
‘When we calmed down, I assured Juliana that it was all right for her to leave me alone with this strange foreign man.’ Bruna stopped and caught her husband’s eye over her new brother-in-law’s shoulder. ‘I drew a clock face showing twelve noon, and we just sat and stared until you came.’
The next day, Tolek bought Ijio a brand new outfit and asked the shop to dispose of the old clothes. Then the two smartly dressed brothers, hat brims cocked slightly downwards, walked arm in arm through the crowded Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. The hubbub of business surrounded them, shops and cafés packed with people. Tolek’s customers. The two men were certainly brothers, Ijio, scrawny and balding, now looked the older. The last two candles in the Klings’ menorah, trying hard to reinvigorate the flames.
‘Until I got your telegram, which followed me from the refugee centre in Budapest, I was sure I was the sole survivor of our family. After we spoke on the telephone, I was going to come right away but I had started a relationship with a woman in Budapest. I tried to get her to come with me, but she insisted on staying home, waiting on her missing parents and siblings to come back from a concentration camp.’ Ijio shook his head at the paved Galleria floor. ‘I survived by following the retreating Russians from Bóbrki. The biggest danger was the Ukrainian gangs scouting the roads for Jews to kill. I was hiding all day, sleeping in fields, I was freezing – so starving I ate grass. I was chased by savage barking dogs and shot while running. Once I made it into Russia, I spent the rest of the war as a cook in a labour camp in Siberia.’
Tolek nodded, clutching his brother’s arm.
‘During the Russian occupation, Klara got me a job as a cook in the Russian soldiers’ canteen. I showed officers at the labour camp my work certificate so they knew all about me. It probably saved my life or I would’ve starved.’
Klara… Klara… Tolek remembered reading Klara’s letter at the Hungarian internment camp, telling him that she was employed by the Russians. How much hope they still had then. Six candles still burning bright.
A tap on Tolek’s shoulder, recalling him to the present. A half-veiled man opened his coat to reveal watches of all kinds sewn into the lining. Gold, silver, other metals. Tolek shook his head and they walked on.
‘I told you on the telephone that when I made it back to Bóbrki, I spent the first two days walking around trying to find out what happened to Mamme, Klara and Juliusz. On the second day I was arrested by a Russian captain from one of the street patrols. He sat me down in his jeep, leaned into my face and warned me to leave right then, or the anti-Semites would kill me. Then he gave me two names of returned Bóbrki Jews murdered since they got back. One of them was Doov Fleischer – you remember him? I went to school with Doov. They bashed Doov up at night, left him on the street with head split open. He died in hospital.’
Tolek squeezed his brother’s shoulder and waited till he stopped sobbing.
‘I saw the first pogrom in Lwów after the Russians left.’ Ijio swallowed hard. ‘I hid in your boss’s office, watching it from the window. Men and boys, laughing, were chasing men, women and children down the street and beating them with clubs. These poor people were screaming for their lives, yet no one helped. The police stood by, smiling.’
Two carabinieri, the Italian domestic police – in their fancy black and red uniforms and capes with large red and blue feather dusters sticking out of their caps – nodded to Tolek, who smiled and saluted slightly.
‘One woman right below me, maybe forty, swollen face, bleeding from the nose… they tore her clothes off, left her in a white slip. She was screaming, begging, waving her arms. They beat her to the ground, then stood around in a circle and kept hitting her until she stopped moving. Her white slip covered in blood. The crowd stood around, cheering and clapping.
‘Schrenzel knew her. Mrs Moskovitch. She had five children. All were killed. Four thousand of us Jews were murdered in that first pogrom alone. After that, like an alley cat, like a sewer rat, I sneaked my way out of Galicia and into Russia.’
They reached the end of the Galleria and walked out into Piazza della Scala, the opulent piazza with the opera house looming opposite.
No, this was too much, too open. It was too nice a day, too much fresh air, too many kids on bikes, laughing and shouting to each other. They needed the seclusion of the Galleria. They turned around and went back in.
‘When the Ruskis left after June 1941, Nazis fenced off the ghetto in Zamarstynów in Lwów and crammed more than 200,000 of our people into it. I can’t describe the conditions, the hunger and dirt. Thousands died from starvation and disease and were shot daily by the guards. The children –’ Ijio had to stop and take a deep breath. ‘By the time the ghetto was liquidated in June 1943, more than half were dead, the rest sent in cattle trucks to Bełżec and Janowska concentration camps.’
All Tolek could see were the Modena Speakers’ moving lips.
They stopped for a coffee. As soon as the waiter had left, ano
ther enterprising businessman sat down uninvited at their table. He opened the flap of a small leather case. Inside were rows upon rows of gold coins. Tolek patted the man’s shoulder sympathetically, but shook his head.
‘As soon as I arrived home,’ Ijio continued, ‘I went to our hotel. It was open, occupied by our neighbors the Dabrowski and Kozlowski families. They wouldn’t meet my eyes.’ He gave a sardonic laugh then shook his head. ‘It was a hot day and they offered me a beer. I felt like spitting in their faces. I walked through the upstairs, the downstairs, our home, saw us there, living, a family… they trailed behind me like rear guards. I rolled a ball across the billiard table… red ball in the corner right pocket.’ Ijio waved a hand to dismiss the image.
Tolek cried silently into his cupped hands. The image of his younger, innocent brother bent over the billiard table, legs spread wide, saying exactly that, father and two brothers standing, chalking their cues, laughing. The gambler brother that bore no resemblance at all to the Ijio sitting opposite him now.
Tolek held his breath. He couldn’t listen to much more. He just couldn’t.
‘With no insulin, Tatte died in October 1940. Mamme was caught in the street, rounded up and shot in a paddock in July 1941.’
Mamme, collecting his shorn locks after his haircut. Rocking her baby grandson after his birth, eyes aglow, saying his name for the first time: Juliusz.
‘You remember Blazej and Alicja Mazur?’
Tolek nodded, of course he did. That was almost an insult. Fair enough, the older brother had been all over the world, but it had only been seven years. Maybe Ijio thought that the war years had blanked out his memory.
‘Blazej and Alicja hid Klara and Juliusz when the ghetto was declared in 1941. Hid them in their house, in the cellar for a year and a half. Once the ghetto was liquidated, the Nazis were fanatical about finding Jews hidden by Poles. There were quite a lot – many of the Poles were decent people. When they found them, they shot them and the Poles who had hidden them. They offered a money reward. Many were “sold” by neighbours.’