“I still think I can do it.”
26
Soon after they had moved to New York City, Jack and Eve took in a Midnight Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the moment he stepped inside it took him back to the first time he ever visited a church. The Church of the Virgin Mary in Lodz. That was the day he had met Father Kasinski. The little boy who knew only the ghetto had been awed by the great open space, the beautiful stained-glass windows, and the faces of the disciples staring back at him. But even that glorious church was nothing compared to St. Patrick’s. This palace had enormous stone columns climbing up to the heights with huge chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.
Christine’s family was in New York to spend Easter with Jack and Eve. Sitting next to her great-grandfather in the mammoth cathedral, Christine couldn’t get her mind off the sheer enormity and detail of the place. She wanted to know everything. When it was built. How long it took. The dimensions of the sanctuary.
Jack told her that work was suspended during the Civil War. The cornerstone was laid on the Feast of the Assumption – August 15, 1858 – and for years afterward nothing happened because Americans were too busy killing themselves. That was how he put it. Work resumed in 1865 and the church eventually opened in 1879. Over the next one hundred and fifty years a number of renovations and improvements took place.
“Christ the Lord has risen,” said the archbishop presiding over the mass on this Easter Sunday. He spoke of the increased attendance during the past week and of the extra crowds who came on Ash Wednesday before prodding those present as to where they were the other fifty-one weeks of the year. It made Christine chuckle. There were references to the Crucifixion, burial and resurrection from the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. When it was done and the crowds began to spill out, Christine had her arm around Jack.
Jack was her link to the most insane madness the world had ever seen, but his scars were revealed to her only in glimpses. There was the time at the train station in Kitchener when the sounds took him back to his arrival at Auschwitz, and then the time at the Confession box. That, too, was in Kitchener. The family had gathered for a Sunday morning service, and when it was over the line for Confession formed.
“Got anything to confess, Jack?” Christine said. She stepped into the box and shut the door behind her. A few minutes later, she came out. “That was good. I got some things off my chest. Now it’s your turn.”
Jack was reluctant.
“Go ahead,” she said.
He stepped in and closed the door. Not thirty seconds went by before she heard him screaming and pounding from the inside. She pushed the door open and found him sweating. She asked him what was wrong.
“I had my back against the wall. There was no room to move in there.”
“You were screaming.”
“I was trapped.”
He said it had been like that ever since he was a boy. It had been like that in school and sometimes even in his own bedroom. He didn’t like feeling trapped. Now here in St. Patrick’s Christine was thinking about that time at the confession box. She hadn’t taken Jack to Confession since then and wouldn’t do it today. When the Easter service was finished, they went back to Jack’s home on the Upper East Side. A brownstone.
“Jack, have I ever told you how lucky you make me feel? Because I know you never had the things that I have. Like my family around me all the time. What was it like for you?”
“Lonely.”
“But people took you in. They cared for you.”
“The family that raised me treated me like a son but I wasn’t their son and I knew perfectly well why they took me. They felt sorry for me. Everyone was sorry for me because I was an orphan. Every morning I would wake up thinking they’d all be gone and the house would be empty.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought they were going to leave me.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because everyone left me.”
“That was different.”
“Not to a little boy it wasn’t. Even when I got married I thought your great-grandma was going to leave me.”
“No!”
“It’s true. I did. It was hard for me to think someone would really stay with me. You have to understand, Christine. I was just a little boy when all this happened. My earliest memories were the ghetto and Auschwitz. One day my parents were with me and the next day they weren’t. They were gone. Just like that and I was all alone.”
“Jack.”
“I never saw them again. That’s why it was so lonely. You see, it’s lonely when the only thing you have of your family, the one and only thing you can hang onto, are thoughts.”
Kitchener, Ontario 1947
27
The teacher’s name was Miss Tacini and the ‘c’ was soft. Ta-seeni. But when Jack tried saying it, it came out Ta-cheeni. He was having trouble with English because his tongue didn’t work like an English tongue. In Polish, a ‘c’ was always ‘ch,’ but there was no always in this language. It was bad enough being with students two years younger; they had put him back two grades upon his arrival.
“Good morning, Jack. How are you today?” she would say to him and he would reply “Good mor-neeng Mees Ta-cheeni.” Immediately, the chuckles and heckles would begin.
Jack was different from the other children, but then he had always been different. When he was a little boy, he wasn’t even supposed to be there. He was hidden. A Jew born in the ghetto of a Polish city that was suddenly German. Then, when he and his cousins were discovered, they were sent to a camp to die, only Jack didn’t die. He survived. Two years in an orphanage in Holland and he got sponsored by the Jewish Congress and came to Canada where he was adopted by a family in Kitchener. Their name was Fisher.
Jack was eight years old, but all the other children in his Grade 1 class were six. Language shouldn’t have been an issue for him since he was more advanced than any of them – he could speak Polish and German, and was more than capable in Dutch – but here everyone spoke English. It was the only language that mattered.
Two years after the war ended, on November 11th, a discussion came up in class. It was Remembrance Day in countries of the British Commonwealth. Miss Tacini asked the children what they knew about the war and for all of them the responses were in terms of their parents or older siblings.
“My Daddy’s younger brother was a soldier.”
“My Mom worked in a factory.”
“My sister always listened to the news on the radio.”
Then it was Jack’s turn. He was older, his memories more ingrained.
“I lived in the ghetto. We barely had enough to eat.”
Someone asked what the ghetto was.
“It was where they kept Jews. My parents had to hide me because the Germans would have killed me if they found us.”
“Now now, Jack,” Miss Tacini said.
“Why would they have killed you?” a boy asked.
“The Germans killed all the Jews. They starved us to death or they burned us in ovens or they put us in gas chambers.”
Miss Tacini held her hands up. “Jack, we’re not going to talk about such things.”
“He asked me.”
“I know but we’re talking about soldiers. We’re not talking about things like that.”
“But that’s what happened. I was born in a ghetto then we went to Auschwitz and my parents were killed. Everyone was killed there. They were murdered.”
There were gasps from the other children.
“Jack, I’m telling you again that we are not to talk about such things. We don’t want to hear about things like that. Do you understand?”
The little girl next to Jack nudged him on the shoulder. “Is it true?” she said.
Miss Tacini overheard and shook her head. “No, of course not.”
“He’s making it up?” the girl said.
“I’m afraid he is.”
Jack was about to say something when she put her
finger across her lips, a sign to hush up, and she meant business.
“Now,” she said, “does anyone know why we have Remembrance Day on November 11th?”
No one knew.
“That was the day the war ended but not the war just past. I’m talking about the Great War. World War I. It ended on November 11th, 1918 and ever since then we have celebrated Remembrance Day on this day and there’s something else you may not know. Did you know that the city where we live … Kitchener … used to be called something else?”
No one knew.
“It was called Berlin. Berlin is a big city in Germany. Canada was one of the countries that fought against Germany in World War I and during the war someone decided to change the name to Kitchener.”
Jack raised his hand. Miss Tacini was reluctant to let him speak again.
“What is it, Jack? I hope you’re not going to …”
“Kitchener used to be called Berlin?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Of course I’m sure. I’ve lived here all my life. Why the look on your face?”
Jack couldn’t speak. His brain, his whole body, was suddenly numb. He decided right then and there what he would do. When school was over, he would go straight to the train station. Not home.
Berlin was the biggest city in Germany and the center of the Third Reich. It was also where he was supposed to meet his parents. That is what his father had told him. When they were on the train to Auschwitz, his father said they would meet at the train station in Berlin if they got separated. It would be their point of contact. The train station in Berlin. That is where they would meet, at Track No. 1. Later, he was told that both his parents, along with his Aunt Gerda and his cousins Zivia and Romek, all perished in the gas chambers. But he was only five years old and it made no sense that the most important people in his life would leave him just like that. Gas chamber or no gas chamber.
He never forgot what his father said to him.
Jack’s regular bus arrived. He asked the driver how to get to the train station and the driver said to cross the street and take another bus in the opposite direction, then switch to yet another bus and head downtown. Jack did as he was told. The terminal was on Weber Street West, immediately south of Breithaupt.
“This is it,” the driver of the second bus said. “You catching a train?”
“I’m meeting my parents,” Jack said with a confident smile.
“There’s only two tracks so it won’t be hard to find them. Where are they coming from?”
“Berlin. I mean I’m meeting them in Berlin. At the station.”
“Kid, Berlin is in Germany.”
“Didn’t Kitchener used to be called Berlin?”
“Yes a long time ago. Is that what you mean?”
Jack said it was.
“Good luck. I hope you find them.”
The terminal was busy with scores of men in business suits and hats. Most of them were carrying briefcases or luggage. There were few women. As the bus driver said, the terminal had only two tracks, so Jack marched to a bench by Track No. 1 and sat down. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. An hour went by, and two trains came and went. When the first one arrived, Jack got up and searched as the passengers scrambled off the train. He eyeballed every one of them. It was a mad rush. If his parents were on this one, he didn’t want to miss them, so he climbed up on the bench to see better but no luck. It was the same with the second train.
The Fisher family always had dinner at six o’clock. Of course, they were expecting him after school, but he didn’t phone and he didn’t leave a message. What on earth would he tell them? That he was meeting his real mother and father and had to leave them now? That he was grateful for all they had done, but he had to be with his parents? Surely they could understand that.
Another train arrived at six-fifteen and, like before, there was a flurry as people rushed through the doors. Everyone was in a hurry. At seven, after yet another train left the platform, a porter in uniform approached him.
“Are you lost, son?” he said.
“No sir.”
“You waiting for someone?”
“I’m waiting for my parents.”
“What train are they on?”
“I don’t know. All I know is I’m supposed to meet them here.”
Jack looked up at the porter. “Kitchener used to be called Berlin, didn’t it?” he said.
“Yes. A long time ago. What’s that got to do with it?”
“My father told me to meet them at the station in Berlin. That’s here. Isn’t it?”
The porter put his hands on his knees, his eyes level with Jack’s. “What’s your name, son?”
“Jack Fisher.”
“Where do you live?”
Jack gave him the address.
“How old are you?”
“Eight.”
“Do your parents know you’re here?”
“They told me to meet them.”
“I see. So nobody’s at home then?”
Jack didn’t say anything.
“When did they tell you to meet them here?”
Jack mumbled under his breath.
“I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”
“I said three years ago.”
“Three years ago? What do you mean?”
Jack didn’t know how to begin.
“Does anyone know you’re here?”
Jack shook his head.
“Somebody must be worried about you.”
“Kitchener used to be called Berlin, didn’t it?”
“Yes but what’s that got to do with anything? It’s not Berlin now. It hasn’t been for a long time.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Must be thirty years.”
“Thirty years?”
“That’s right. It’s been Kitchener for a long time. Since long before you were born.”
Jack was thinking.
“You got a phone number at that house you live in?” the porter said.
Jack said he did. He gave him the number.
“I’m going to call. You stay right here. All right?”
“Do you know when the next train is coming?”
The porter checked his watch. “In twenty minutes but it’s not coming from Berlin I can tell you that.”
“If you don’t mind I’d like to wait. Just to make sure. I’m not bothering anyone, am I?”
“No you’re not bothering anyone but I think somebody must be worried about you and I’m going to straighten that out right now. You stay here.”
The porter left to make the call. There was one more train coming before Jack would have to go home. One more train. Maybe that was the one.
Auschwitz, August 1944
28
Jacob’s Uncle Israel was always dead. He didn’t know what he looked like or how old he was, only that he was dead. It was the only thing Jacob ever knew about him. Shmuel Zelinsky was dead, too, but Jacob didn’t know that when he saw him covered in newspapers in the lane on Bazarowa Street or Basargasse as the Germans called it. But he knew he was dead when he saw his body thrown onto the truck the next day. If he had any doubt what it meant, it became abundantly clear the day he saw a man shot for walking on the sidewalk instead of in the gutter. The man was warned and kept walking defiantly, so they shot him and he crumpled like one of those pillowcases Jacob and Shimek filled with apples when they returned from the Aryan side. Blood poured from a hole in the man’s head as he lay in the gutter where he was supposed to be. But in the boxcar death got even closer.
Jacob was with his mother and father, his Aunt Gerda, and his cousins Zivia and Romek. They had been loaded onto the train at Lodz with countless others. Huddled on the floor next to his mother, Jacob didn’t know how many people were in that car. All of them were Jews and they were packed so tight no one could move.
The stench was terrible, even worse than the sewers had been. Once t
he doors slid shut and the train started to move, he could smell it right away. Shit. It was everywhere. They had been given one open bucket for everyone in the car, maybe a hundred people, but when the bucket overflowed there was nowhere to go, so they went in their pants, they went on the floor or they went on the person next to them. It didn’t help that the air was thin and hot, and you couldn’t breathe. Children cried and women moaned and the old collapsed with no place to fall and everyone was scared because they all knew about Chelmno.
After a few hours, an old woman died and then an old man died. “Another one,” someone mumbled. They were sitting in the boxcar with corpses, and the longer the journey the more corpses there were. The smell kept getting worse and worse. At one point the train stopped, the doors opened, and two Germans with rags over their noses appeared. They wanted to get rid of the dead. “Verfluchte Juden,” they said. Someone pointed to the bodies and a voice cried out about them being tossed from the train, but one step inside the car was enough. The two Germans turned around and shut the door behind them.
A narrow slit was the only way to see outside, but not for the children. There were only five or six of them – Jacob, Zivia and Romek, and perhaps another three – but it was hard to tell because all the people looked alike after awhile. It was one huge mass of brown and stink and vomit and shit, and no one wanted to move because you might touch one of them even when you were one of them yourself.
It seemed forever in that boxcar. Finally, after two days, maybe three, the train screeched to a halt. There was the sound of dogs barking, loud banging on the doors, and voices screaming “Heraus! Heraus!” The doors slid open and a man in striped clothes, little more than a skeleton, jumped into the car. “Hast du gold? Hast du gold?” He was asking for gold in Yiddish and someone said he was crazy, but Jacob had gold. He hid the Russian coin Father Kasinski gave him in the heel of his shoe. The chervonets. Maybe if he gave this man his gold coin he could get something to eat. He raised his hand and started to holler, but nobody heard him or noticed him.
The Last Witness Page 17