‘Is it possible to exile an exile?’ I put in.
‘There, you see with whom we are dealing!’ stormed Squareface. ‘He mocks all that is holy in our collective. Last month we could not afford to buy more than one bag of sugar. Since this was not enough for the whole commune, I suggested that we should divide it up among our hard-working leadership, which indirectly includes him too.’ (This was presumably because I held regular Yiddish literary evenings in the collective.) ‘You should read the editorial this ingrate wrote in response to my proposal.’ He snatched a sheet of paper off the desk. It was from our monthly bulletin-board, of which I was editor. ‘Listen to this:
‘After the Great War, the city of Lodz received from the Central Government a gift of ten bags of sugar. The city’s antisemitic councillors immediately suggested an internal sweet deal, but a Bund representative within our local parliament, Israel Lichtensztajn, protested. “It is our human duty,” he argued, “to distribute the sugar only amongst pregnant women and the sick.” Naturally, for his audacity he was pelted with rotten tomatoes and called a fool.’
Here the Cool One sighed again and turned to our comrade economist and judge. ‘What he wrote is undeniably a matter of public record,’ he stated silkily.
‘Yes, yes, I know that — but he virtually implies that I’m an antisemite! By hook or by crook I’ll have him expelled from our commune. For the good of the many, surely we must weed out the occasional one.’
‘We can’t really do that,’ his colleague replied. He knew very well that I was in contact with prewar friends in America who, along with Joint, had a decisive influence over the channelling of funds for running institutions such as ours.
Suddenly one of the other functionaries spoke up. ‘Then at least let him admit his guilt, and promise to change his ways and moderate his claims.’
The Cool One beckoned at me to approach the desk and, his superior smile still frozen to his face, whispered: ‘What about it, comrade? Why don’t you just agree, and leave the rest to me.’
‘Never!’ I answered. ‘I’ll never do that!’
And I walked out of the room.
A couple of weeks later, perhaps through the strategic intervention of the cool inquisitor, Esther and I received our long-awaited landing permit to enter Australia.
Journey with my Mother
I found myself walking beside my mother as she pushed a cart through the night. The cart swayed like a drunkard on our cobbled street.
‘Son,’ she said, ‘the last moments in the gas chamber were beyond the most horrible imaginings. I don’t know if I have the right to tell you how it was, but on the other hand you ought to know. You’re entitled to know about your family’s end, even though your father always said, Leave the dead alone and they’ll leave you alone.
‘Suddenly we were there together, totally naked — can you picture this, my son? Your father, mother, your sister Ida and your two little nieces, Frumetl and Chayale, and all our friends, neighbours, and so many people we’d never even seen before — all in one tight knot of naked flesh, all struggling for a morsel of breath. And above us two men, gazing eagerly through a skylight, diligently taking notes.
‘Poor little Frumetl, just six years old — she cried Mummy, Mummy! But how could she understand that her mother, your sister Pola, had been sent to the right when we arrived — though she would die soon enough by throwing herself on the electric fence. I lifted her child up, high as I could, but to my shame Frumetl fell from my grasp and was trampled. Then God in His great mercy, though not quickly enough, filled the chamber with gas, and your father, the old blasphemer, tilted his head back as if to swallow all the gas in one gulp, and shouted with his last choking breath, Hear O Israel, our God never was, our God is Death... Death!
‘Of course, I couldn’t agree with him. In fact, the Almighty in His mercy made sure that four-year-old Chayale expired like a quiet bird, in the arms of your dying sister Ida. If I wasn’t the daughter of a melamed I would dare to say that they died in a Christian pose.
‘You know, there is a strong rumour among the ashes that it wasn’t so bad. At the end, I mean — that it lasted no more than fifteen minutes at most. Don’t you believe them. It lasted fifteen years, a hundred years! They must have already forgotten the screams, the crazed struggles, the way we tore at each other, sank our nails into the faces of our loved ones. Oh my son, that torment of losing one’s mind was the sweetest horror of our dying... I have to tell you all this in a whisper. That old shtetl foreboding — don’t say anything to anger the goyim — is still very much alive among us dead Jews.
‘Last night I dug deep into the ashes and, to my joy, found one of Frumetl’s blond locks; they must have neglected to shave it from her sweet little head. I buried it in secret, avoiding the eyes of the guards — every single hair must be delivered to Germany’s bedding factories, to ensure sweet dreams for her beloved daughters. Remember how your father once praised that country’s cultured past, and how he blamed language for our disaster, how (as he put it) that limping skunk Goebbels had contaminated Goethe’s tongue and created an obscenely different Germany from the one he had known? Oh, how wise and how naive your dear father was. Now he fears for his ashen existence, because the local villagers come here often and shovel heaps of our extinguished lives into tin buckets. They prize us highly. We make excellent fertilizer, and first-class feed for their swine...
‘Shh, be still now — I can hear the wheelbarrows, the clatter of buckets, they’ve come to collect again. And before you leave me, my son, tell me how it is over there.’
‘After the carnage, all Europe stood with bowed heads over your open graves. But in the end...’
‘Hush, watch your lips. We are surrounded by an army of owls, sentries in disguise. Pass by them softly, on tiptoe. The road out of night is paved with pain. Good luck, I will pray that you make it.’
Out of the Blue
From the day we received our landing permit until the day of departure our time was fraught with tension. Letters from an uncle of Esther’s kept arriving almost daily: he wanted us to come to America and he tried every trick in the book over there, without success. But life didn’t stand still and before long it was time to say goodbye. Many photos were taken in which the now smiling Squareface took centre-stage.
Finally, on a February morning in 1948, we boarded the steam train that would carry us from Rome, out along the green Italian coast, and up through the forever snowcapped Alps. And I realized with a shudder that I would shortly be back in the vicinity of Ebensee, amid the beautiful mountainous surroundings which had shielded that heinous concentration camp from God’s eye. Yes, I thought, beauty can be cruel; or, in the best of times, indifferent.
As our train puffed, in a cloud of white smoke, into the city of Siena, a gloved hand slid open the door of our compartment and there stood Squareface himself — the very one who had desired to throw Esther and me to the dogs of Rome.
‘Where did you come from?’ I asked, my displeasure obvious.
‘Next door, comrade,’ he replied politely. ‘Are you not glad to see me?’
‘Not really.’ I could feel Esther’s unease beside me.
‘So you’re still hurt about the collective. But think — fate might easily have reversed our roles.’
‘No, never.’
‘Well, just listen to me, please. I have been delegated to talk to you and it has to be now, since I must disembark at the border.’ He sat down on the bench opposite. ‘You are travelling towards a new life, a new world. Needless to say, I wish you the best of luck, so let’s let bygones be bygones. I hope that, as a party man, you understand that everything I did was for the good of the collective. And you, as a good socialist, have to pass this on to our comrades in Melbourne. You know how dependent we are on outside financial support. Tell them about the positive work we are doing here. Don’t dwell on the mistakes of some. I’m sure you understand that there are times when a leader has to sacrifice an indivi
dual for the good of the many.’
‘You know,’ I told him, ‘you almost sound convincing.’
‘Oh, please,’ said the passionate commissar. ‘Just hear me out and you’ll see that I mean you well. Besides, I hope you’re aware that, on my recommendation, you could be admitted into Melbourne’s Bundist leadership.’
I was losing my patience. ‘Look, comrade, I’ve learnt to be cautious of those in authority. They can appear as friends when it’s to their advantage, but they don’t stand by you in times of distress.’
‘So what is your answer?’
‘You’ve just heard it. The only other thing I can tell you is that we are almost at the French border, and, as you yourself have pointed out, you must relieve us of your gracious company.’
At Sea
In the middle of March, at Marseilles, we boarded the 7000-ton Egyptian vessel Misr (aptly named, as it turned out), bound for Australia. The ship had been a wartime carrier of cattle to and from South America, but had a few small cabins on the upper deck. Esther knitted her brows and was hesitant to embark when we were told that — despite our voyage having been paid for by the aforementioned uncle of hers who had gone to the USA before the war — we were not to be given one of the cabins. ‘This is terrible,’ she said. ‘We’re all being separated again.’
We ended up sleeping in huge adjoining holds, each containing hundreds of strangers.
During my boyhood I had dreamed of becoming a sailor, just like one of Jules Verne’s intrepid heroes. Yet no sooner had I crossed the gangway onto the ship, moored firmly but rocking from side to side, than I became violently seasick. So much for the idea of ever joining a crew!
Then, once the Misr reached the open sea, and devilish winds began to obstruct our voyage, challenging our captain’s authority, and huge waves tossed our vessel about like a ball of wool, and people stared at one another with fear and prayers on their lips, I thought of the biblical tale of Jonah: ‘But the Lord cast a mighty wind upon the sea, and such a great tempest came upon the sea that the ship was in danger of breaking up.’
However, instead of a divine response to our prayers (‘In my trouble I called to the Lord, and He answered me’) we received, through the loudspeaker, the one and only song that the Misr possessed in its musical arsenal:
Kiss me sweet, kiss me simple,
Kiss me on my little dimple,
Kiss me night, kiss me morning,
Kiss me underneath the awning.
And to my surprise, this nonsensical ditty worked no less effectively than any command from the Lord!
Just prior to entering the Suez Canal we were told about a registration procedure for all passengers which was to take place on the lower deck before lunch. Esther and I made our way there and joined the queue. Behind a wooden desk sat a serious but obsequious-looking man, immaculately dressed in a black double-breasted suit, white shirt and blood-red tie. Next to him was a frilly-haired, over-confident blonde, well made up and wearing a sleeveless white dress. When we reached the desk and gave our names, her sing-song voice rang out: ‘Catholics?’
‘What do you mean, Catholics?’ asked my astonished wife. ‘We are Jewish!’
‘Well, on my list you’re pencilled in as Catholics.’
‘Madam,’ I replied, ‘one cannot be a Jew as well as a Catholic. We are Jews, we went through the war as Jews, and we intend to begin our new life as Jews!’
The blonde’s companion whispered into her ear: ‘Just cross out Religion.’
‘But we’ve got too many Jews on board,’ she protested. (We later learnt that according to the current agreement, Jews were to comprise no more than 25 percent of the passengers on any ship.)
‘Madam,’ I cut in, ‘no matter how few we are, to some people we will always be too many.’
Late in the afternoon, sitting on a chair on the ship’s nearly deserted lower deck and gazing out at the marvellous sunset, I heard footsteps. Soon there stood before me a tall gentle-looking man with a dignified smile on his thin lips.
‘My name is Anton Rakow,’ he said. ‘Actually, Amshel Rakowicz. May I join you? I’d like to have a talk.’
He seemed open and friendly enough, so I welcomed him with a wave of the hand.
‘I was next in the line when you made a stand about your Jewishness. I’m Jewish too. We were the only Jewish family in a little town near Rostov in the Caucasus. We lived like Marranos. On Friday evenings my mother lit candles in a discreet little side-room, and some nights my father taught me Yiddish and Talmud in a basement under our house, by the flame of a kerosene lamp. I admire your and your wife’s religious assertiveness.’
‘But I am not religious,’ I responded. ‘Not at all.’
‘Then how come you declare yourself so resolutely Jewish?’
‘The one has little to do with the other.’
‘So, don’t you observe the basic laws at all?’
‘I do, but in a different way. As a matter of fact, my wife Esther comes from a profoundly traditional home, and I from a secular, free environment. We had a civil marriage, perhaps because we had no one to invite. You see, our parents, siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins were all murdered by the Germans. Even so, after three months of living in sin, so to speak, it was I who insisted on having a ceremony in accordance with the law of Moses and Israel.’
‘That’s remarkable, really remarkable,’ Anton exclaimed. ‘It shows how deeply such things are ingrained in us.’
Then, quite unexpectedly, my curious new acquaintance asked: ‘Do you believe in God?’
I was taken aback. ‘This is a very direct question.’ I paused to compose my words. ‘There are people who may not believe in a God that dwells in heaven, yet conduct their affairs as though they have a God in their heart. I envy such people, my friend, because they are the most noble, most authentic human beings on earth. And if there were a God in heaven, they would be His very chosen.’
Anton Rakow
Rakow, who was thirty-two, turned out to be a wise and upright man, prone to irony. He was also something of a poet — the friendship between Stalin and Hitler he dubbed ‘the Mephistophelean tango’. He became a permanent fixture at our dining table. When we learnt that Anton had been a member of Rokossovsky’s army, had fought the Germans at Stalingrad, marched across war-torn Russia and Poland into Berlin, and was among those who hoisted the red flag over the Nazis’ Reichstag, he grew in our eyes to the stature of a living legend.
‘Do you know,’ Anton asked us, ‘why the clatter of a soldier’s gun in battle is the sweetest music to his ears? Because it means he’s still alive!’ But when he began his tale of blood-shed and destruction, of his parents’ and siblings’ demise, how they were locked up in their own little house and burned alive, his irony would desert him. Then, like any other camp survivor, he told stories that would tear you apart.
Soon after we entered the Indian Ocean we heard that a man from the upper deck had taken his own life. Apparently he had received a cable informing him that all his plans had miscarried, and he just couldn’t take another setback. Individual tragedies, Anton commented, are much harder to live through than collective misfortunes. ‘There is a devastating loneliness in a solitary affliction,’ he said. ‘A man, especially one who is married with a child, is not a free prince any more. His life is not a personal orchard where he can do as he likes, even destroy the fruit he has grown.’
‘Please,’ Esther replied, ‘we don’t know these things, they belong to the darker side of our thinking. The deed is done and no amount of philosophy can change the past.’
‘I’m curious, Anton,’ I ventured, ‘how you would judge the following case. In August 1945, three months after hostilities in Europe ceased, America in its benevolence decided to open her gates to fifty orphans who had made it through the war, and there was this little Jewish man who had spent years in hiding with his daughter who was now six. Without a second thought, he made sure his child would qualify!’
Rakow
fell silent. I could sense his anguish. ‘What an insane deed,’ he said at last. ‘And how will this little girl go through life now?’
‘Anton, there is no room here for judging, for seeking logic,’ said Esther. ‘Every person carries some sort of secret. My relationship with my own father taught me that.’
One unbearably hot afternoon, as our ship forged its way south across the oceanic cosmos like a lost planet, Anton — drenched in sunlight, mopping the sweat from his forehead — reopened our gloomy dialogue with an almost care-less ease.
‘In 1920 my father’s fanatically religious brother,’ he began, ‘ran away from the Bolsheviks to Shanghai. He died soon after, but his son — my cousin and my only living relative — sent me a permit after the war to enter Australia, a country I know only from school geography and stamp-collecting. Yet my cousin reassured me that I’d love it there, that I would live the life I’d always aspired to.’
‘Why should you doubt that?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. Ever since I lost my home I’ve been haunted by a story — you may have heard it too — about the fate of the man who, according to Chinese legend, was condemned by a king to exile in a foreign land, where he must live as a stranger among the local inhabitants and forget his past, his language, even his name. When he died he was buried not as himself but as someone else.’
‘I understand the meaning of your fable, Anton, but that is not your situation. Woe to the man who has no home to go to. For what is freedom if there is no one to await your coming? Even so, one cannot afford the luxury of disenchantment. Long faces are the privilege of the well-to-do.’
A day or two before Passover we docked at Fremantle. We were welcomed by David Abzac, representing the Jewish welfare society in Melbourne. He was tallish and effervescent, and seemed an optimistic man of enormous vitality and benign wit. He had brought on board a supply of matzos and kosher wine, and when evening fell our shipboard Jewish community, festively attired, sat down to celebrate our everlasting Exodus.
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