You know who is Krauthammer, the American journalist? he asked me.
Yes, I said, I did.
A Bolechower family! Shlomo cried triumphantly.
No kidding, I said.
He asked me if maybe this Krauthammer had gotten in touch with me when the article I’d written about our trip to Bolechow in 2001 had appeared.
No, I said, smiling, he hadn’t. I told him, however, that another well-known figure in American publishing, a man whose father had been born in Stryj, had contacted me after he’d heard about my first trip to Ukraine, two years earlier. Wieseltier, I said, when Shlomo asked me the name.
Ah! he said, I think yes, there was a family Wieseltier in Bolechow too.
I nodded and explained that this famous editor, Wieseltier, who lived in Washington, D.C., had told me that he knew for a fact that his mother’s family, called Backenroth, were connected to Bolechow, and that he also thought he had had relatives on his father’s side who had lived in Bolechow before the war, although he didn’t know their names. He had thought that maybe they owned a bakery, as his father had done in Stryj. Shlomo nodded again, and we agreed that Wieseltier was a rare name, not the kind you’d be likely to confuse with something else, or forget altogether. Of course I knew Wieseltier, Mrs. Begley had told me after I’d returned from Ukraine, he had the bakery. I knew the father, she added, knowing that I was likely to know of the son from an entirely different context. Then she had pushed a white bone china platter across the tablecloth toward me and said, Take another cookie, you think I’m going to eat them?
Look! Shlomo suddenly cried. He pointed out the window at a figure walking beside a camel. Bedouins!
We’re certainly not in Bolechow, I joked. I thought of my grandmother in 1956, with a camel and an Arab.
He asked me to tell him in more detail about the interviews I’d done in Australia. As I told him, as best I could remember, about each of the long conversations I’d had with everybody, he would nod slowly, relishing each story, each fact, although of course they were stories and facts that he himself knew well by now. At one point I asked if he’d ever heard the story that my mother had somehow heard, all those years ago: that her cousins had been raped before they’d been killed. They had four beautiful girls, they raped them all and killed them. Where had she heard this? I used to wonder; but when I finally asked my mother she said, I can’t remember anymore, there were so many terrible stories, I used to have nightmares. So as Shlomo and I drove toward Beer Sheva I asked him what he might know, might have heard. No one in Australia had had any specifics, I told him as the desert sizzled around us. He grimaced a little and shrugged sorrowfully. So many terrible things happened during the Aktionen, Shlomo said, it could be possible, sure. Could be. But to know for sure, it’s impossible as far as I know.
I nodded but didn’t say anything. Maybe it was better not to know some things.
After a pause he said, You know that also Regnier was there in Australia? Anatol Regnier was the author of Damals in Bolechow, the book that told the story of how Shlomo and his cousin Josef, how Jack and Bob and the rest, had survived. I thought of Meg Grossbard, telling me how strange she had found it that a German had called her one day, asking to talk about Bolechow; and of how she had refused to talk to him, refused to let her story be written down.
Yes, I replied to Shlomo, I know he was there. And then, continuing the unspoken thought that had risen in my mind, I said, half smiling, It’s different to write the story of people who survived, because there’s someone to interview, and they can tell you these amazing stories. As I said these words I thought of Mrs. Begley, who had once looked coldly at me and said, If you didn’t have an amazing story, you didn’t survive.
My problem, I went on to Shlomo, is that I want to write the story of people who didn’t survive. People who had no story, anymore.
Shlomo nodded and said, Aha, I see. He kept driving. You know, he said after a while, this Regnier, he’s a German, but he married a famous Israeli singer, a very big star, Nehama Hendel.
I apologized, said that I had never heard of her.
She’s very big in Israel, he told me. But she died a few years ago.
It suddenly occurred to me to ask Shlomo a question that had been on my mind for some time. My grandfather, I told him, used to sing me two songs when I was a little boy; I wondered if maybe they were songs from his own youth, songs his father or mother had sung to him. Bolechower songs.
How did they go? Shlomo asked.
Well, I said, somewhat embarrassed, the first one he used to sing to us at bedtime. And it was true: when we were little and my grandfather would be visiting, he’d sometimes come into our rooms when we were being put to bed and would sing this song, a song whose lyrics alone will, no doubt, seem quite odd, seem very flat on the page, much more so than, say, the lyrics of “Mayn Shtetele Belz,” “My Little Town of Belz,” which after all are rather sentimental. If I wanted to convey what was so special about the song my grandfather used to sing to us, I would have to do much more than transcribe the lyrics:
Oh why did you hit my Daniel,
My Daniel did nothing to you.
Next time you hit my Daniel,
I’ll call a policeman on you!
Hoo hoo!
I might, for instance, try to transcribe it slightly differently, so that it would be possible to get a sense of the rhythm of this song, which to me, when I was a child, was both soothing (because it was, ultimately, a promise of protection and retribution) and frightening (because it raised the incomprehensible notion that someone would want to hit me, a child). That transcription might look like this:
Oh WHY did you HI-it my DAN-iel,
My DAN-iel did nothing to YOU.
Next TIME you HI-it my DAN-iel,
I’ll CALL a po-LICE-man on YOU!
hoo-HOO!
But of course, even then there would be no way to convey the particular inflections of my grandfather’s almost vanished voice. (I say almost vanished, because my grandfather killed himself before the advent of videorecorders, and hence the only recording we have of his voice is the cassette tape I made of him in the summer of 1974 when he told us the story of how he’d run out of his house during a Russian attack without his shoes. Voices are among the things that vanish first, in the case of people who lived before a certain moment in the evolution of technology: no one will ever know, now, what Shmiel and his family sounded like.) To convey more than just the lyrics of this song, which I have sung, rather self-consciously, to my own children now, although I doubt they will sing it to theirs, I would have to try to approximate that special Bolechower pronunciation, like this:
Oh VAH-EE did you HI-itt my DEHN-iel,
My DEHN-iel ditt nuttink to YOU.
Next TIME you HI-itt my DEHN-iel,
ehl KOLL a poLICEman on YOU!
hoo-HOO!
And even then there is the tune, the sad, sepia, minor-key inflections that made me wonder, briefly, whether this was a translation of some old song of his childhood. Quite recently I asked my brother Andrew, who plays the piano so well, whether he remembered this tune of my grandfather’s, and when he said, Of course I do, I asked him to transcribe it for me. A week or so later I opened the file that he sent me and grinned when I saw that he’d titled it Oh Why Did You Hit My Andrew. When I mentioned this to him, he said, quite genuinely, It never occurred to me that he sang it to anyone else.
So I sang this song to Shlomo, as we drove south into the desert toward the Reinharz apartment, and he shook his head and said, No, I can’t say I have ever heard such a song.
I was disappointed. But there was another song I wanted to know about, another rather melancholy song, and perhaps it was because it was so sad that I, who know so little about popular music, thought it, too, might be a song from my grandfather’s lost childhood as the son of a family of butchers in a town a hundred years and four thousand miles away. I sang it, too, to Shlomo in the car:
I wi
sh, I wish, I wish in vain
I wish I were sixteen again.
Sixteen again I’ll never be
Till apples will grow on a cherry tree!
I didn’t bother putting in the accent this time: vish, my grandfather had said. I vish in wain. Till ehpples vill grrohh…Shlomo listened and made an apologetic face. I have never heard this song before neither, he said.
Oh well, I said. It’s no big deal. It’s just a song.
I looked out the window; the desert had turned into buildings.
Aha! Shlomo pointed. We are in Beer Sheva.
Oh Why Die You Hit My Andrew
WEARING A SLEEVELESS housedress covered with cheery flowers in various shades of blue, Malcia Reinharz was waiting for us on the landing in front of her door. As we walked up the concrete steps toward her she smiled broadly, exposing even rows of teeth. Hallo! she said in English. The voice was deep and had a pleasantly grained texture, like a clarinet. Her hair was pale auburn, and her long, full-cheeked, humorous face was almost girlishly animated.
Hallo Malcia! Shlomo said. He had told me that Malcia spoke good English; her husband did not, but Shlomo would translate for him. We walked inside. The apartment was darkened against the afternoon sun. Toward the rear, in front of windows whose shades had been drawn, was a cluster of comfortable furniture; at the front, just past the door, was a small dining table. Sitting at the table, his back to the kitchen wall, was Mr. Reinharz. I liked his face: oddly youthful, grave but friendly. He had the pleasingly old-fashioned look of a well-to-do farmer: he had on a crisp tan shirt, dark trousers, suspenders, and a tan golfer’s cap. He rose to shake our hands. Then Malcia gestured to us to sit down.
Please, Malcia said. First we will talk a bit, and then we will eat, it’s all right?
It’s all right, I said. Perfect.
The three of them chatted for a few minutes in Yiddish as I set up my tape recorder and video camera. Shlomo was explaining what would be happening; they nodded as he spoke. Then I was ready. When I talked, I tried to look at both of them, but since I knew that Malcia could understand me better than her husband did—and because there was something so appealing, so deliciously soft and available about her, qualities my mother’s mother had once had—I found myself speaking to her more. Still, I noticed how, during our long conversation that day, she and her husband would look at each other as we all talked, as if silently to confirm whatever they were being asked or whatever she was telling me for the two of them.
All right, I said, I’m going to start asking.
She nodded.
We didn’t know anything about Shmiel, or the wife, or the children, I said. So I’m going all over the world and talking to everyone who knew Shmiel, and from those conversations I’m trying to bring back something of Shmiel and the family. Because all we ever knew until now is that they were killed.
She closed her eyes. I know, she said.
And we want to know something better than that, I said.
Malcia nodded again and said, Oh, I know, I know them very well.
I was struck by the way she kept using the present tense when speaking of these dead: I know. I know them very well.
She said, Ask what you want. What you need.
OK, I said.
We started to talk. She told me that her family were all Bolechowers. Would she tell me what year she was born? I asked. She burst into a wide grin and said, I was born in Hungaria! In 1919! She seemed amused by the idea that I felt awkward about asking her how old she was. She explained, then, that she’d been born in Hungary while her parents were briefly staying there, but that they’d soon returned to the town and that, from the age of three months, she’d lived there. With her parents, she said, and her sister Gina, and her two brothers, David and Herman. She said, And nobody is living. I have only a picture of my younger brother.
She told me that she was married in 1940. Who today is married for such a long time, sixty-three years? Nobody! She burst out laughing and waved her hand, as if to dismiss the protestations of anyone who’d been married less than sixty-three years.
So you knew the Jägers when you were growing up? I asked.
I knew them very well, she replied, switching now into the past tense. It was Shmiel Jäger with his wife, she was a pretty wife. With pretty legs!
Wiss pretty lecks.
Malcia touched her heart with her left hand and then made a gesture of connoisseurship, like a maître d’ describing a particularly tasty specialty of the house.
Oh! she had legs—I have not seen such legs!
I smiled, and so did Shlomo.
And two pretty daughters, she went on. Lorka too had pretty legs!
She also? Shlomo asked, amused.
Yes. Malcia nodded.
I was more interested in another detail. Two pretty daughters. Everyone, it seemed, had a different memory of how many children Shmiel and Ester had had.
You knew only two of the girls? I asked.
Only two? As we talked, Malcia would listen silently and patiently, like an attentive student, with a grave expression on her long and alert face; but often as soon as I’d finished speaking her face would instantly register some strong reaction. Now, she was making an exaggerated face of incredulity.
There were four, I said.
Malcia looked at me. Four?! Four children he had?
I named them all. Lorka. Frydka. Ruchele. Bronia.
Four girls? she repeated. I showed her, then, the picture of Shmiel, Ester, and Bronia, but all she said was, Ja, Shmiel Jäger.
She put the picture down on the table and said, simply, Ai, Gott.
I know only that the oldest was Lorka, she continued after a moment, and the younger was Frydka. And we were often in touch. With Lorka—of course. She was a pretty girl. And Frydka, she was a bit higher from Lorka.
She placed one hand high in the air and I realized she meant taller. I let her keep talking. To me, all of this was much more than charming: as much as we’d learned thus far, still every scrap, every detail was precious. Ester had pretty legs. Frydka was taller than Lorka. We hadn’t known it before; now it was part of their story. Frydka was a very tall girl, taller than her older sister, I’d tell my family when I got back home…
Then she said, She was a heavy one, Frydka. A fighter, a fighter.
Here we go again, I thought to myself; it always ends up being about Frydka. A fighter? I said. What do you mean by that?
Malcia took a sip of wine. Ja. She was so robust!
She pronounced it ro-BOOST! and as she said it she put up two arms in a pugnacious pose, like a prizefighter.
Robust, I repeated. Well, I thought, she was a fighter.
But Lorka, Malcia went on, unaware of my preoccupations, was pretty. And she had two legs—!
Her voice trailed off and she looked heavenward, as if calling God to witness.
I showed her the picture of the whole family in 1934, the picture in which they were mourning for my great-grandmother, Taube. It means a dove. Suddenly Malcia looked up at me, beaming at some memory.
Shmiel Jäger was hiresh! Because I expected her to lapse into Yiddish or German whenever she couldn’t find an English word, I was confused, until I realized she was speaking Hebrew. As she said this word, hiresh, she pointed helpfully to her ear, much as my mother used to gesture and point when she spoke on the phone to my grandfather in Yiddish, which is how I learned much of my Yiddish.
Toip, Shlomo said. Deaf!
I know, I said.
You must to speak to him very loud, Malcia went on. Perhaps it was the vividness of this memory that made her slide, once again, into the present tense.
And he was a tall man? I prodded.
Yes, he was tall—a very nice man. And—he loved his wife! Malcia again made the face of someone calling God to witness. Au au au au! she exclaimed. He loved her so much!
I didn’t say anything. It is, after all, possible to keep referring to your wife as die liebe Ester, “dear Este
r,” out of habit or obligation; but now we knew. He loved his wife! If their children’s friends knew it, I thought, they must have been demonstrative with each other, this loving couple, Shmiel and Ester.
I showed her another picture.
Ya, duss ist Shmiel Jäger. She sighed. Shmiel Jäger, a very pretty man he was. A pretty man, a very handsome man!
Then she reached her hand into the air and said, High!
MALCIA MADE SURE that we all had wine in our glasses and went on reminiscing. I looked at the bottle. MURFATLER PINOT NOIR, the label said.
I used to go with my mother to buy meat in his shop, she said. And he gived my mother the bestest meat that he had! Together they were saying Du, because they went together in school.
After a moment I realized what she meant: that her mother and my great-uncle had used the informal German “you” instead of the formal. They were, after all, old school friends.
So you would have been close in age to Lorka, I said. She was maybe one year younger.
Yes, yes. We were not in the same class, but in the same school—there was not another school in Bolechow!
So did you play together?
Yes, yes, Malcia said. Then she hesitated for a moment and added, But she was—every time she was—
Groping for the word she wanted, she turned to Shlomo. Es tat ihr immer leid, she said, laughing impishly. In German it would have meant, She was always hurt, always sorry.
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million Page 40