by Mark Kurzem
The taxi took me to the outskirts of the city, where it stopped outside a building. I hurriedly paid and made my way to the entrance. I cursed. It was a department store. Anxiously I hailed another taxi and frantically stabbed at the paper on which the address Miss Slavits had dictated to me was written.
“Yes, yes.” He took off wildly into the traffic.
I looked at my watch. It was now nearly four. I urged the driver to hurry. He floored the accelerator, and the car surged forward as if it were about to take off into the air.
Within minutes the taxi screeched to a dramatic stop outside a drab concrete building. A sign on the facade indicated that this was the archive. I sprinted up the steps that led to the entrance.
I quickly glanced again at my watch: 4:15. I tried the door but it was locked. I pushed my face flat against the glass and peered inside. At first glance, the dark, vast, cavernous space appeared to be deserted. However, as my eyes grew accustomed to the dim lighting, I could just make out a bulky silhouette at a desk. It stirred slightly, giving me a start.
I tried the door again. The creature inside did not react. I tapped on the glass.
I hammered on the glass with my fist, and the silhouette rose slowly from behind the desk and moved laboriously toward me. I could see now that the person was extremely squat, as wide as he or she was tall. This impression did not alter as the figure reached the other side of the glass barrier. Now I could see, however, that it was an elderly woman, dressed in a paramilitary uniform. It was her turn to push her face up against the glass pane and to scrutinize me with her filmy eyes.
“Miss Slavits,” I shouted, my face close to hers.
She showed no immediate sign of letting me in. Her eyes sharpened as she appraised me. After several moments she seemed satisfied and opened the door. She began to shuffle slowly back to her desk, indicating that I should follow her, which I did. The guard eased herself back into her chair.
“Miss Slavits,” I repeated.
Without even the slightest glance in my direction, she thrust the visitors’ book and pen under my nose. After a bored, cursory glance at my signature and without looking up, she pointed her finger at a door on the far side of the room. I entered a darkened corridor, where I was greeted by a captivating young woman.
“Mr. Kurzem?” she said. Miss Slavits’s English was gentle and melodic. “My office is this way.”
We made our way through a maze of dark corridors. As we did so, Miss Slavits told me about three reels of film she’d unearthed since we spoke. “They were in a dust-covered shoe box at the back of a filing cabinet,” she explained, slightly embarrassed. “They may have been there for decades. I’m sorry that I did not find them earlier. I haven’t seen them yet, and there is no description of the contents except for the words ‘Latvian countryside.’ That could mean anything, but it may be worth looking.” She gave me a sympathetic smile.
“Can we view the footage now?” I asked. In truth I didn’t hold out much hope that I would find my father’s film. I imagined that much of Latvia’s infrastructure had been destroyed by the Nazis as they retreated.
“Certainly,” she replied and led me to a neighboring viewing room.
It took several seconds for my eyes to adjust to the brightness of the fluorescent lights. We both donned bright pink dust coats in a limp gesture toward film preservation and sat down before an archaic Steenbeck footage machine.
“I should warn you that the condition of the films may be very poor,” she said, gingerly removing the first reel from the box.
She gently loaded the spool onto the machine and began to pump a pedal so that the film jerked along frame by frame. For a moment I stared at a blank screen before black-and-white images appeared. The reel’s quality had deteriorated considerably, so that I could barely make out the images of soldiers marching across a field. The commentary in German, which seemed to be describing the experiences of German soldiers in Latvia, was largely drowned out by the crackle of static.
Miss Slavits let the reel run to its end to be certain. I shook my head. “The next one?” Miss Slavits asked. I nodded.
The second reel, too, contained images of German soldiers on patrol in the Latvian countryside. I watched it through to the end. By then a cloud of disappointment had descended upon me. I sat in silence as Miss Slavits loaded the final reel.
The first images that appeared on screen seemed to be much the same as those on the previous reels—German soldiers marching. I didn’t see the point of sitting through more of the same thing. Filled with gloom, I rose and, without waiting for Miss Slavits to turn off the machine, began to remove my dust coat. At that precise moment, with my back to the screen, I heard the words of the German narrator: “And now we are outside Riga.” I spun around to face the screen and snapped at Miss Slavits to let the reel continue. She was taken aback but managed to reverse the footage several frames to where the commentary had begun.
This time I saw the images that had accompanied the words. There was Carnikava, shot from its front gate, where my father and I had stood only hours before. It was in much better condition and bathed in sunshine, not a bit ominous.
As the German narration continued, accompanied by happy children’s music in the background, the camera cut to a close-up of the steps leading up to the front door. As the voice began to describe the presence of a young soldier at Carnikava, the doors to the house burst open and a throng of children dashed down the steps and into the sunshine. Among them was a boy, no more than eight or nine years old, in uniform. My breath stopped for an instant. I recognized his face immediately. It was my father. He bore a remarkable resemblance to my nephew James: an identical smile and a double cowlick of hair framing his face.
“It’s him…my father,” I said in a hoarse tone.
Miss Slavits stopped the projector. “You must sit down,” she said, giving me a concerned look.
“I’m fine,” I protested, taking a deep breath and easing myself back into my chair. “I don’t want to see any more. My father should see it first. Can I bring him?”
“Now?”
“Of course.”
“We are closing very soon,” she said, looking at her watch. “I’m sorry. Tomorrow?”
“We’re leaving first thing in the morning,” I explained. “Back to London.”
Miss Slavits was silent for a moment. Then she spoke. “From what I have just seen,” she said slowly, “your father was a very special boy.”
I was unsure of the inflection in her voice, so I shrugged. “My father can come now?” I asked in a bewildered voice, pushing my case.
Miss Slavits considered my request for several moments. Then she nodded her head sympathetically.
“Can I use your telephone?”
“From my office,” she answered. “This way, please.”
The telephone rang in my parents’ hotel room. Before I had even begun to explain, my father started in on me. “I’ve been knocking on your door for the last hour. We’ve been worried sick,” he said, alarmed. “Where are you?”
I cut him off. “Can Mum hold the fort there?”
“What’s up?”
“Listen! I want you to write down this address and get here as soon as you can.”
“I’m just relaxing with a cup of tea—” my father started to grumble.
“Don’t argue, Dad,” I said irritably.
“First tell me what’s going on,” he said.
I ignored his demand. “Get a taxi!” I insisted.
“I’m on my way,” he said. The line clicked as my father hung up.
I turned to Miss Slavits. “My father will be here very soon,” I promised her.
I waited in the dark entrance hall. My footsteps echoed as I paced back and forth near the glass doors. About twenty minutes later a taxi swung into the driveway. I watched as my father got out of the car looking disoriented. As he moved toward the entrance he noticed me on the other side of the glass door. I held it open for him.
“Where are we? Stalin’s tomb?” he joked.
“Just follow me, Dad.” I led my father to the projection room where Miss Slavits was waiting for us. I introduced them.
“You must be very excited,” Miss Slavits said, unaware that I’d revealed nothing to my father. Suddenly it dawned on him. “You’ve found the film?” he exclaimed, his eyes bright with excitement.
Before I could respond, Miss Slavits cut in. “One moment. You must wear a jacket,” she remembered, going to the closet. When Miss Slavits reappeared with another pink dust coat, I led my father over to the projector and positioned his chair directly in front of the screen. With a nod I indicated that she should restart the machine.
I could just make out my father’s features in the glare of the screen. He was spellbound. I turned my attention back to the footage and watched my father march across the lawn in front of the holiday house with the other children following behind—a Jewish boy-soldier with a group of Aryan children under his command—as the narrator’s voice barks out in German the story of the “boy in uniform,” “the child found by the Latvian SS legion who rescued him from the dangers of the front.”
Then the footage jumps abruptly to a new scene. My father is now blindfolded and surrounded by the other children: the stooge in a game of blindman’s bluff. The boy is spun around and around and then left staggering and groping as he tries to catch the perpetrators. And then I noticed something even more unnerving—on the perimeter of the circle of children, I momentarily caught sight of Jekabs Dzenis smiling benignly at them.
The scene shifts to the seaside, where all the bright, happy Aryan children in their swimming costumes frolic on the beach as if in some Germanic naturist ritual. Among them is my father, bare-chested like the others, doing handstands on the sand. The screen gives another hiccup and reveals an image of the children at dinnertime. The camera focuses on my father, who struggles to use his knife and fork properly. But the camera does not linger there for very long: soon it is bedtime, and as lullaby music plays in the background, the face of a sleepy kitten appears on-screen. A nurse then appears and tucks in the sleepy little children. The narrator informs us that all is well in the world for them.
The footage ended abruptly, and the screen went blank. “That is all. Just over two minutes of footage,” I heard Miss Slavits say.
I continued to stare ahead, relieved that she’d not yet turned on the lights. What had just been revealed to me seemed somehow too intimate, and I was reluctant to engage with my father. Then I heard Miss Slavits ask him if he wanted to view it again. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my father nod his head vigorously.
A still from the propaganda film.
Miss Slavits rewound the film, and then suddenly we found ourselves back in Carnikava, my father springing down the stairs with his Aryan playmates. When the footage came to an end again, we remained seated in the darkness. Nobody said a word. Miss Slavits spoke first. “What do you think?” she asked gently.
My father was overcome with emotion and unable to utter a word. I heard him blow his nose. Then he said, “Who would have believed it?”
After that he lapsed into silence again.
We took leave of Miss Slavits outside the archive. Once our taxi was on the main road heading toward the center of Riga, my father leaned back in his seat. He was exhausted, but his body seemed electrified by what he’d just seen.
“It was as I told you, wasn’t it?” he said. “Only a shame that more footage did not survive. Still, there was enough to prove I wasn’t lying.” My father closed his eyes. I wondered whether he was sleeping or replaying the footage in his mind’s eye.
I let him be and gazed out the window as the taxi made its way past the Freedom Monument on Brivibas iela. What a mockery the film made of Latvia’s flirtation with Nazism. They’d made a Jewish boy into a symbol of racial purity.
I was roused from my thoughts by the sound of my father shouting frantically to the driver to stop. His eyes were bulbous and panicked, as if he were suffocating. The car screeched to a halt, and my father sprang out and onto the sidewalk. Shocked, I followed him, tossing money for the fare to the driver.
On the sidewalk I gripped my father by the arm and shook him until he gasped as if breath had been knocked violently into him. He jerked away from me. Passersby stared at us.
“Dad! Are you all right?” I cried out. “Speak to me.”
My father gave a weak nod. He looked around but seemed unable to take in his surroundings.
“Let’s find somewhere to sit down,” I suggested.
On the opposite corner of an intersection I spied a brightly painted café. We crossed over to it. Neither of us could have been more surprised at what we found—it was a Jewish café with a large blue Star of David painted on its window. An eager waiter greeted us and guided us to a table by the window.
The café was empty and had a forlorn atmosphere that was somehow accentuated rather than diminished by its bright blue and yellow interior and the artificial grapevine suspended from its ceiling.
The menu listed my father’s favorite foods—blinis, latkes, and, most loved of all, cabbage rolls. “Have something to eat,” I suggested. “It’ll give you some strength.”
My father shook his head. “A cup of tea will be fine.”
The waiter had been hovering expectantly.
“Two teas, please,” my father said.
“Nothing to eat?”
“No.”
The waiter’s face dropped. As he went to fetch our tea, he snapped his fingers grandly in the air, and from out of nowhere there appeared a violinist who wouldn’t have been out of place in a production of Fiddler on the Roof. The man looked embarrassed as he burst into a lively tune.
“That music is giving me a headache,” my father said tetchily.
The waiter returned with our tea and my father greedily snatched at his cup. He quickly stirred in three teaspoons of sugar and then took a sip. “Not enough sugar!” he exclaimed, making a sour face. My father had always had an exceptional sweet tooth. I watched him add yet more sugar. He took another sip.
“Better?” I asked.
“So-so,” he replied.
My father now seemed less restless, almost contemplative, with his hands loosely clasped in front of him. He looked around him. “It’s harder than I thought,” he said, avoiding eye contact. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, looking at me for reassurance. “But I feel guilty that I ended up on the wrong side with the people who were doing evil to others.”
“You’re not guilty of anything,” I insisted, but my words fell on deaf ears.
“Why did they keep me alive?” he said to himself.
“They used you, Dad,” I said, my anger toward these men growing. “They exploited you for their own purposes. You were a good-luck charm”—I searched for other words—“a prisoner of war.”
A knot of confused feelings had began to unravel, and he spoke: “I was a prisoner…a frightened child…but nobody could see the bars around me, except perhaps Commander Lobe. He must’ve known what he was putting me through.
“I was a pet that was being trained. There was nothing I could do to change my situation. All the time everybody reminded me of how lucky I was to be alive, and how grateful I should be to Latvia. I always had to show my gratitude to them. I had to do the right thing for them. I always made sure that everybody was happy and pleased with me. What would have happened if I’d disobeyed them? But inside I didn’t accept it. I knew that I was not one of them, and I never would be.” Exhausted, my father fell silent.
The Latvian soldiers had “rescued” him from the forest, but they’d stolen him from himself. I thought back to the film and its background of happy children’s music suggesting the life of a mascot was nothing but an innocent game, while offscreen he was constantly terrorized by the threat of death.
My father rose suddenly, telling me to take care of the bill. It seemed that he’d had enough.
EPILOGUE
Following my parents’ return to Australia I spoke to them regularly by telephone. As far as I could gather, they had slipped back into their normal routine.
On one occasion when I spoke with my father, he told me how pleased he was to be home.
“You don’t think of Belarus as home?” I asked.
“Of course not!” he replied somewhat indignantly. “I’m an Aussie.”
With surprising candor he expressed gratitude for his life in Australia, telling me that his early vagabond days there—as an elephant boy and a roustabout in a traveling circus, as well as his itinerant existence in the remote outback—had helped him to bury and forget his past. And in spite of his own intensity, or perhaps because of it, my father enjoyed the laid-back ethos of “she’ll be right, mate” prized by so many Australians.
Back in Oxford, as I absorbed the experiences of the past months, I found I had further questions about my father’s story as well as recent events. But while I spent hours in pursuit of answers I became increasingly frustrated by dead ends.
Not long after his return to Melbourne, my father received a letter from Erick Galperin informing him that Anya Katz had died after a short illness and that Volodya, blind and not able to fully care for himself, had been admitted to a state-care facility, where he died some months later.
As far as I knew, there were no other witnesses who could cast more light on my father’s story, and without the elderly couple’s reminiscences my desire to learn more about my father’s early life and that of his parents was thwarted. Erick continued to claim he knew little of his family’s history.
My research into my father’s life in Riga and on patrol with the soldiers proved equally frustrating.