by Leon Silver
Silence.
‘The Mazurs’ neighbours – the Gadzinskis – remember them?’
Tolek nodded, gripping his brother’s arm hard.
‘They hid, I think, seven Jews, parents and children. They were sold out and the Gadzinskis were taken away and shot with the Jews.’ Ijio took another deep breath. ‘On one black, raining night, Alicja Mazur snuck Klara and Juliusz into the church… When I went back I saw Blazej and Alicja. Hugged them. Thanked them. Cried with them. Old Blazej clutched me to him. Alicja could not meet my eyes. She kept saying: “How could our people do this to your people?” ’
‘They are decent people, the Mazurs. Mamme and Tatte were close friends with them,’ Tolek said. ‘They babysat me from when I was born.’
Ijio nodded. ‘That’s another thing the Russian captain warned me about. “Stop talking to Poles that hid Jews. Their windows will be smashed and they will be beaten up by gangs.”
‘I talked to the priest who hid Klara and Juliusz, risking his own life. He told me that his own people, Tolek, our Polish neighbours, our restaurant customers – including Dabrowski and Kozlowski – sold them, betrayed them to the Germans, then stood back and watched and cheered when they were shot, just outside the church.’
The coffees arrived, accompanied by biscotti. Could they eat while speaking of their lost family? They moved the sweets aside. A passer-by scooped them up like a seagull at a beach.
‘This priest – believe this, Tolek – grey with grief, clutched my hands.’ Ijio demonstrated, grabbing his brother’s hands. ‘Real tears were running down his face as he told me how he’d hidden seven Jews, including Klara and Juliusz, for more than a year, in a secret part of the cellar under the church, waiting for the Germans to leave. Many of the church parishioners helped, carrying down food and water and clothing. The priest led me into the church cellar where they lived. Seven people, including three children, all families of Polish-Jewish soldiers.’
Ijio mumbled the names. One of them was Batya Hertzcovitch and her son Itskhok.
‘Esig Hertzcovitch,’ Tolek muttered, ‘against the advice of our commanding officer, left the army in Stryj, September ’39, changed to civilian clothes and escaped back home.’
Ijio shook his head. ‘He never made it home, Tolek.’
Ijio forced himself to say the rest of the names. One of the women was Golda Fischer, the wife of Bernard, the released Polish soldier and Russian prisoner who had kissed Tolek’s cheek as a message from Klara. Golda was pregnant when she sent Bernard off to war at the station. Their daughter, Malka, was five when shot. The fourth woman was Rivkah Brummer; her husband Victor had also fought for the fatherland.
The brothers needed a rest. Putting the names of dear friends to these betrayed victims was just too much to bear. They drank the coffee, looking into their cups like fortune tellers and seeing the faces of the murdered women and children.
Eventually Ijio continued. ‘The priest said that for fifteen months these seven people lived in the dark, never saw the sun, never breathed fresh air. Children were gagged when services were conducted. Then the Germans were leaving and, any day now, those people could be let out, set free.’
Tolek imagined Juliusz trying to draw stick figures in the dark. Would he still be drawing them at seven?
Ijio looked away. ‘Clutching my hands, in that dark hellhole, the priest leaned into my face and declared that he didn’t do it on his own. He told me again that a few parishioners – real Christians – helped hide the Jews.’
Tolek signalled for another coffee. A business partner approached, but before he could sit down Tolek turned him away. A young, heavily made-up woman casually stopped at their table, opened her coat to display an off-the-shoulder dress and hiked up her eyebrows. Tolek shook his head.
‘I was glad when we went back up into the sunshine and could breathe again. A few minutes in that hole was too much. Imagine more than a year there… Outside, that’s when the priest said that he had to tell me that a member of his own church community gave them up to the retreating Germans. Sold the seven people for 500 zlote each. This priest had clutched the three children, hanging on until they were dragged away from him by the soldiers. “These are Polish children of Polish soldiers fighting and dying for our freedom,” he yelled at the cheering crowds as the Jews were lined up to be shot, mothers hugging terrified children to protect them from the bullets.’
Tolek trembled as Ijio got up, dropped to his knees and grabbed his older brother’s hand. ‘The priest sank to his knees in front of the church, begging my forgiveness for his people.’
Klara’s palm was clutching the back of Tolek’s neck, bending his head down for a kiss. Little Juliusz –
Tolek wiped his face and pulled his brother towards him. They hugged. Seven years only. This wild, billiards- and poker-playing boy was now grey-faced, his body shaking like an old man’s.
They remained in the busy café as Tolek told Ijio of his experience in the forest the day they had crossed to Hungary. He didn’t get much of a reaction.
‘You’re not shocked, Ijio?’
Ijio shook his head but didn’t speak straight away. ‘You were fresh from home, Tolek… I’ve seen pogroms and atrocities on the road through Galicia… I hid up a tree and saw a family robbed, raped and murdered, then thrown in a river… And much, much more.’
Tolek took from his suit pocket Jan’s White Eagle Kaddish article. He unfolded it and placed it on the table between the coffee cups. Ijio put on wire-rimmed glasses to read it. Occasionally, he looked up at Tolek.
When he finished, he said: ‘Poland will never forget her loyal Jewish sons…’ After a moment he added, ‘But some Poles stood and watched and cheered while the Germans murdered your wife and son.’
Tolek moved the newspaper over and read out: ‘The disputes between us and the Jews have not been settled yet.’
‘It has, in every way, Tolek,’ Ijio said. ‘After the war there were more pogroms in Bóbrki, Kraków and Stryj. After the Russians left, thousands were killed in the streets or rounded up and shot in the woods. Buried in mass graves. I love you dearly, Tolek, and Bruna is a good partner for you, but I’m leaving Europe for the USA as soon as possible. I’ve written to our cousin in New York, Gertrude Klings – remember? Daughter of William and Frieda Klings, born 1919 – same age as… Lonek.’
Yes, Lonek. Tolek had wet eyes again.
‘My dear Tolek.’ Ijio clutched his hands across the table. ‘I can’t live in the European graveyard one day longer. I would advise you, Tolek, to do the same.’
‘Every 30 June, wherever I was, I lit a candle and drank l’chaim on Klara’s birthday. Also every 4 July, Juliusz’s birthday. In the desert, the trenches, the mountains, the snow. Against all hope, I trusted that the flickering candle and drinks would keep them alive.’ He paused, shaking his head slighty to himself in loneliness. ‘Now I will light a yahrzeit candle to their memory on Yom Kippur.’
‘We are the only remaining flames in the Klings’ menorah,’ Ijio murmured.
On Sunday mornings, Tolek would bring baby Juliusz and breakfast into the bed he shared with Klara, and they’d sing silly songs together. Tolek would undo his pyjama top and let the boy crawl all over him, watching the sweetness glowing in Klara’s eyes. Tatte… Tatte… Tatte.
A few days later, at the Milan central railway station, Tolek said a tearful goodbye to Ijio. Bruna had said her farewell to Ijio at home. The brothers were crying. Similar to the farewells at the Lwów station seven years earlier. Except there was no Polish soldier easing out his bayonet.
Ijio spent the rest of his life in New York, a city he loved and adopted as his own. The war years left their mark and Ijio never married. He did visit Tolek’s family in Melbourne several times and the family reciprocated with visits to New York. There was much laughter at his strong New York accent and glowing accounts of Saks Fifth Avenue. Ijio Klings died in 1988 at the age of seventy-five.
20 Starting a new lif
e
The new Klings couple became involved in several business ventures with Italian partners. From Germany they imported Groz-Beckert needles for all types of knitting machines. German ball bearings were also in huge demand, especially the number five size, used for dynamos to power bicycle lights. They imported watches from Switzerland and exported them to Palestine.
‘It doesn’t bother you to deal with the Germans?’ Bruna delicately asked.
‘It sure does, but it’s our only source of income.’
Tolek was classified as a ‘stateless person’ – Italy wasn’t giving out citizenships – which made travelling across Europe for business difficult. Exit visas were easy enough to obtain, but re-entry visas sometimes took days, weeks or months.
Then on the news they saw that a fresh pogrom in Poland had killed many Jews. Ijio’s words came back to life: nothing had changed. On 4 July 1946, in the city of Kielce, Jews were again accused of kidnapping a boy. Polish soldiers, police officers and civilians killed forty-two Jews and wounded more than forty others. Witnesses reported cries of ‘How did you Jews escape the gas ovens? We’ll finish the job.’
As a decorated member of the Carpathian Brigade, having fought with the British Eighth Army, Tolek had the option of going to England and claiming British citizenship. But he didn’t like the English much, too formal, and obsessed with class. They hardly ever laughed. Since Tolek now had a wife to support and he liked the Italians, they stayed in Milan, working out their options.
The Australians Tolek had met in Africa stayed firmly in his mind. The ‘rats’ and ‘diggers’, the aircrews drinking in the NAAFI during the desert sandstorms. G’day, sport. Have a beer, mate. The young Australian Jew from Melbourne, RAAF bomber navigator Joe Levy, whom Tolek had met in the English servicemen’s pub in Haifa. So loud and confident – so different from Polish Jews – that Tolek asked him if he knew what the Star of David meant. Tolek still laughed at the memories. No Jews had deserted the Australian Army in Palestine, Joe had told him.
Australia must be quite a place, Tolek thought, as a plan formed.
Then there was that day the Jewish chaplain from the Australian Army, Rabbi Captain Robert Cohen, walked into the Polish Army’s administration tent, demanding the CO assemble all the Jewish soldiers in the Polish battalion. How could a Jew of any rank be so self-confident? Tolek still prized the prayer books, kippah and tallith the rabbi had given them, compliments of the Australian Army… and the memory of that Erev Yom Kippur feast in the desert featuring chicken soup and knotted challah.
Tolek recounted all this to Bruna, telling her, ‘I want to take you to the land that these brave people came from. Australia has to be a blessed country, the best in the world, to have produced such happy people. Tesora, this country is our destiny.’
By 1947, the new Tolek – who had a strong penchant for languages and, with Bruna’s tutoring, had learned Italian fast – fitted in perfectly into his new life. With their Italian partners, the Klings had a striving import/export business. They lived in a large, comfortable apartment, and went to the opera and to classical music performances. They had a sizeable group of friends and gave parties at home, celebrating postwar life to its fullest.
Tolek felt that Bruna was a strong support in his rehabilitation. She was warm and often talked with her husband about what had happened. Tolek appreciated her efforts to draw him out and not let the past become buried inside him. She was interested in his pre-war life, his family, his first wife and his son. Bruna made Tolek feel that their life now was an extension of his previous life. That his first family lived through them. Some evenings, Bruna sang opera in their apartment with the balcony doors open to the courtyard. Their eyes connected as she sang and they were at peace.
Then the jackpot – Bruna got pregnant. She was in her late thirties, so the pregnancy was another miracle for those times. Tolek paced the hospital’s waiting room smoking one cigarette after another, chanting to himself, ‘I shouldn’t have gone back, I couldn’t have gone back. Esig Hertzcovitch never made it. I would’ve never made it past the enemy within. This baby is the proof.’
At the back of Tolek’s mind was the family downstairs in the pub, Klara upstairs with doctor and midwife, yelling, Tatte and his three sons anxiously gazing at the vodka bottle, waiting for that mazel tov drink.
As Tolek paced, chain smoking, the Italian doctor rushed out from the delivery room. ‘Complications, Signore Klings, shall we save mother or child?’
Again? He was to lose a wife or child again?
‘Mother!’ Tolek couldn’t face life without Bruna’s embrace.
Later the doctor came out again, smiling. ‘We were lucky, we saved both, mother and daughter – both well. Congratulations, father, you have a beautiful daughter.’ He took one of Tolek’s cigarettes and hastily smoked it halfway before going back in.
Weeks later, in their Milan apartment, swaying gently with his daughter as he fed her in the rocking chair, Tolek wondered if Goldenstein would have made it to safety with the extra baggage of two additional passengers. Could he have rescued Klara and Juliusz from Poland’s clutches and brought them back for a reunion? Or would they have perished along the way with the other victims, hunted down by savage dogs? His new daughter gazed up at him, watching his crinkled brow as though trying to read her father’s mind.
‘You’re the newest candle in the Klings’ family menorah, bambina. But it’s no longer Tatte and Mamme. It’s now Mamma and Pappa. I’d better get used to that.’
His daughter let out a big belch, belying her size. She agreed!
* * *
Tolek had kept up correspondence with ex-Polish soldiers in London. He knew that Jan Bielatowicz had got his wife Irena out of Poland and she had joined him in London. Wherever she had lived in Poland, protected by the law, she had survived the Russians and Germans then Russians again. No such safety for Klara and his family. Tolek had heard from other ex-soldiers that Jan, while working for Polish newspapers, was writing the history of the Carpathian Brigade from the notes he made with Tolek. All ex-soldiers would receive a copy without charge. Tolek wrote to Jan asking for a copy. A soldier’s credentials could be handy in any future country.
Eventually, Tolek received a letter back from Jan.
30.7.49
Jan Bielatowicz
London N.W.3
Dear Tolek,
Thank you very much for your letter. I got your address from Misio and I’ve been thinking of writing to you for many years. Unfortunately, life in England is quite different than anywhere else in Europe and you can’t imagine how subdued and tired one feels here.
I have heard quite a bit about you: I know you have been managing quite well, you lead a happy family life and you are a happy father. I’m very happy for you, my dear old commrade in arms.
Do you remember that I still owe you one pound you had lent me before leaving for Tobruk? Or was it more than that? I will always (most probably till the end of my days) remember the many pleasant moments we had spent together. And so I thank you for getting in touch with me. But I must warn you that I dislike writing letters and sometimes it takes me quite a long time to answer back.
As far as my private life is concerned, my wife and I work and live quietly in London (both of us work). Our jobs provide us with a comfortable income although no one in London is too well off.
Generally speaking almost everyone here has managed to settle down. Antoni Dusza has just got married to a friend from Poland. The Kasprowiczs work and are very happy. The Habers have a few problems now; Arthur found himself a job but has not been paid yet. But when the money starts flowing in they will be richer than anyone else. Their child grows fast and healthy. Zosia is a happy mother. Bronek Ritterman is a father too and works in Manchester.
Gustek will most probably go to Palestine. Artek Haber’s brother and his family arrived from Italy.
Life in England is not too bad and everyone with initiative can do quite well, much easier here
than elsewhere. Almost fifty per cent of our old friends who stayed in England keep meeting in London. Rubi Herzbaum ‘the Silesian’ lives near London. I keep in touch with Korbas (he works in a civil camp), with Mroczkowski (he is purchasing a house in Nottingham) with Czekalkowski; we are very friendly with Stolarczyk. Genio Szwejk married an English girl and has a son. The Stelmaszynskis are going to buy a house in London.
I will send you the book shortly. All the soldiers from the Third Battalion get it free of charge. That would be all for now. Dear Tolek, give my best regards to your wife and if one day we are on holidays in Italy we’ll come to see you. This year I intend to go to France. I would be very happy to hear from you again and I’ll try to answer all your questions.
Best regards from my wife (she has heard a lot about you from myself
And our common friends).
Signed: Jasiek.2
Tolek brooded on the letter. So much for Jan’s harping about the Polish Jews not blending in to Polish life. Was he assimilating? It appeared that he had no intention of becoming an Englishman. Hadn’t Anglicised his unpronounceable name or his un-English habits. Fraternising with Polish groups… he probably ate Polish sausage and dill cucumbers! Most likely he would never even take up cricket. Had there been any pogroms in London against this aberrant Polish tribe? Were they chased down the streets, beaten and bleeding, by laughing locals with the police standing by, enjoying the show?
Putting down Jan’s letter to reread the crinkled Kaddish article in The White Eagle, Tolek now felt that the Correspondent’s letter was just another cover up. He had known about the concentration camps and pogroms while writing that article so he placed a bet on both sides. The war had been drawing to an end. The Polish Government in exile was well aware of what went on in Poland, of some of their own population’s cooperation in the destruction of their Jewish citizens, seizing their chance at ethnic cleansing. The government had decided that they needed a strong external Jewish lobby – none were left internally – to help establish a durable postwar Poland and to wrestle Poland out of Russia’s grasp. The Jews had a robust political influence in England and the USA. Outlining the Polish-Jewish military connection and praising the fighting Polish Jews might have persuaded the Western Jews to help ward off Stalin’s designs on postwar Poland, but everyone knew the Allies had agreed that Poland would go to the Russians.