“Pleasure to meet you,” he says, his voice much deeper than I expected.
We stand there a moment longer, then Marietta leans over and whispers, “Don’t tell Mother, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, and start off walking again. When I turn around a bit later, I see them, walking together in the other direction.
* * *
It’s not Shabbat, and even if it was I wouldn’t be going to the Old-New Synagogue, but that doesn’t mean I have anything against the walk Father and I used to take. Especially on a day like today. The trees are mostly bare, but the sun more than makes up for it, and the way it reflects off the river makes me want to whistle.
So I whistle, making up brand-new melodies I should really write down. Though I’d have to learn how to read music first to do that. But who cares? I keep whistling, patting the inside pocket of my jacket every once in a while to make sure the letter hasn’t disappeared somehow.
My eyes, of course, wander over to the castle, and then, even though I can’t really see it, the Stresovice neighborhood on the far side of it. It’s still hard to believe that’s where I wound up for a few weeks back in May. One minute Soviet tanks are rolling into the camp, and the next thing I know, that same evening I’m with Zdenek Taussig, one of the great soccer players from Room 1. The two of us, along with his whole family, are riding in a horse-drawn flatbed back to Prague.
Zdenek worked with a couple of old horses in Terezin, plowing fields, taking out garbage, and even moving dead bodies to the crematorium (because they didn’t bother to bury us back there). So as soon as the Soviets showed up, Zdenek took his horses and left, pulling his parents, his sister, and their meager possessions on a flatbed. Among those possessions were issues of the magazine Vedem, published by the boys in Room 1. Since Zdenek had been the only boy left in Room 1, he had buried the issues and then later dug them up. I hope someday people get to read them.
Mother, not wanting me in that rotten place a second longer, asked Zdenek’s father if I could go with them. He agreed. We traveled all night, the skinny horses clop-clopping along like we were just out for a fun moonlit ride. And then, if that weren’t crazy enough, Zdenek and I slept in some stables when we got to Prague. We did that for a few days until his family could find an apartment.
Only, little did Mother know that soon after I left, the whole camp would be quarantined because of typhoid. Thankfully, Zdenek’s family let me stay with them for a bunch of weeks until Mother and Marietta were finally allowed to leave Terezin. I guess it only makes sense that my two and a half unbelievable years in Terezin would have an ending as strange as that.
I reach the Cechuv Bridge and turn onto it. The wind blows stronger here, but I don’t mind, because I decide this is my new ritual. Whenever Franta sends me a letter, this is where I’ll read it.
So I walk halfway down the bridge, remembering how I used to secretly race people here when I was younger. But not anymore. Now it’s enough just to watch them. Driving their new cars or wearing their new hats or walking in their new shoes. I’m still getting used to it, Prague in 1945. Thankfully the Germans and the Allies didn’t bomb it.
I slowly walk until I get to the very middle, to the spot where you can’t tell which end is closer. Which also happens to be the spot offering the best view of the castle. A bunch of the Nesharim used to say that after the war we’d meet right here, on this very bridge. But I come here all the time, and haven’t seen any of the other boys yet. I’ll keep coming, even though I know it’s unlikely I’ll ever see any of them again. For people our age, transports meant gas.
Gas, then chimney. That’s how they killed us, and that’s how they got rid of our bodies. I don’t know why exactly, but I keep finding myself thinking that sentence for some reason: That’s how they killed us, and that’s how they got rid of our bodies. It just pops up in my head. And even so, part of me still can’t really believe it.
I carefully remove the envelope from my jacket, tear it open, remove the letter, and, holding it very carefully, stick the envelope in my back pocket.
Brno, December 14, 1945
Dear Misha!
I read your sincere, powerful letter. I believe I understood what you wrote, and deep in my heart I must admit I’m proud of what I achieved through all my hard work. Nesharim is much more than just a word, it’s an idea that survives among a group of friends, an idea that lives on in each one of you, the lucky survivors. But I must tell you, my dear Misha, that you are far from objective in your evaluation of our time in Terezin. You were relatively well off, you were happy to be among all your pals, so you didn’t worry so much.
But you mustn’t forget: Terezin was a concentration camp through whose gates entered fresh recruits, only to leave later, sentenced to their death. A place where people starved to death, were hanged, and were at the mercy of their oppressors’ every whim. By now I’m sure you know some of what went on there, so you know that our home was a small island of calm growth, a place where we forcefully turned our backs on reality and dedicated ourselves to our own interests and our own future with little regard for anything else.
Meanwhile, almost 35,000 people died in Terezin itself, while those who were transported away reached a destination from which very, very few returned. In this regard, I myself am incredibly lucky. I entered Auschwitz, but avoided the gas chambers.
Terezin, with its mighty walls and a beautiful view of the mountains in the distance, was a cruel and terrible place, even after the Nazis turned it into a show camp, a propaganda tool for the Red Cross. I am glad you didn’t feel your shackles to the extent so many others did, but when you write “How I wish those times with the Nesharim might return,” I must reply, “How I wish those times will never return.” I certainly hope you’ll have equally memorable and positive experiences again some day, only outside that bitter prison.
Are such experiences possible? Perhaps.
I imagine that in a summer camp, or even among a group of close friends, a similar environment might be created. Of course, young people like you will never again be linked together so closely and be so dependent on one another as you were back in Terezin. I remember the first weeks in our home, the lack of unity, the impossible variety of personalities, and the way the parents’ interference hindered our development. Back then nobody understood that the only way for Room 7 to discover its own needs and to develop its own interests would be by limiting parental involvement. This is how and why our solidarity grew.
These days parents bring their children to summer camp with only the interest of their own children in mind. They don’t trust even those people whose task it is to lead their children. Maybe new youth groups will soon emerge again, made up of individuals as dedicated as you yourself. It is such a pity, my boys could have done so many things, but as I tell myself every day, such thinking is in vain.
Eighty boys lived in Room 7 at one point or another. Eleven survived. Which compared to Terezin as a whole, is an incredible success story. And, of course, Terezin, compared to Auschwitz (and Terezin was little more than a holding pen for Auschwitz, as we all now know)—well, Misha, I’m not sure the two should even be compared.
The promise that we won’t forget—I hope you feel it in these lines. The best way to commit to fulfilling the Nesharim legacy would be to fulfill all the things I believed, and still believe, about you. You’re capable of all that and so much more, there’s no reason to think otherwise. And don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll manage to meet in person, sooner or later. I look forward to it, but fear it a little as well. I suppose I love the Nesharim a bit too much.
My dear Misha, the coming New Year will mean the end of a chapter in our great adventure. In front of us lies a wide-open space bursting with great possibilities and even greater responsibilities. Turn the page, it’s okay. It’s doesn’t mean you’re being disloyal, it doesn’t mean you’re forgetting the past. You’ll continue to remember, and as you do so you’ll summon the courage to face the rest of your
life. Because it’s true, life is a struggle.
Please promise me you won’t ever give up.
Best wishes for the New Year.
Yours,
Franta
P.S. Give my best regards to your mother and sister. I’ll be sure to let you know when I’m coming to Prague, where we’ll finally get to see one another again.
I read the letter two more times, hearing Franta’s voice in my head a little more clearly each time. I argue with him a little, but mainly as a way to slowly accept that once again just about everything he has to say is true.
When I finally look up, I’m a bit surprised to find myself standing in the middle of a bridge in the middle of Prague. For a moment I have no idea where to go or what to do. Both ends of the bridge are the same distance from me. There’s too much to do, too much to see, and I suddenly feel a strange, overwhelming obligation to live some sort of perfect life, one packed with heroic acts so incredible I can’t even begin to imagine what they might be.
I look out at the castle, listen to the birds, feel the wind on my face. It’s the same wind that’s sending ripples over the surface of the river. The late afternoon air is quite cold, but I don’t mind. Winter is coming, but I don’t mind that, either.
I take out the envelope, put the letter back inside, carefully return the envelope to my pocket, and start walking back home again. I’m almost six years behind in school, which is a lot to be behind when you’re already fifteen years old. So here’s my great, heroic plan: I’ll finish all my homework, every last bit of it, before dinner.
And after that, who knows?
Afterword by Todd Hasak-Lowy
WHENEVER I SEE A MOVIE that opens with the words “Based on a true story” or “Inspired by real events,” I always wonder: Just how true is this movie, really? If only a handful of events in the movie actually happened, would they still put those words on the screen? And if the movie is only “inspired” by real events, does that mean that the whole movie—from the hero to the setting to maybe even the climax—might be very, very different from the real person, setting, and climax that inspired them?
I wish movies answered these questions, because it matters whether or not something is true. If it didn’t, the people who make movies wouldn’t put those words on the screen to begin with. We watch, read, and listen to stories differently when we think they actually happened. I even think we value stories more if we believe they’re real, which is probably why people who make movies like to open them with “based on a true story” in the first place.
So how true is this book you just read? Is it merely “based” on a true story? Is it just “inspired” by real events?
I think it’s more than either of those. Much more, in fact. But to answer these questions fully, I need to explain how this book was written, and why I wrote it the way I did.
After I agreed to write Michael Gruenbaum’s story, I traveled from Chicago (where I live) to Boston (where Michael lives). We spent a couple of days together. He told me about his experiences back then and took me to meet a local couple who were in Terezin as well. I asked him a bunch of questions, recorded a lot of what he said, and left Boston with a stack of books and DVDs about Terezin and the Jews of Prague.
When I got back home, I started reading and watching the things Michael had given me. I bought additional books and tracked down additional movies. I began putting together a timeline of the key events in his story. I also sent Michael all sorts of questions—big questions and little questions, easy questions and impossible questions—that I didn’t think to ask him when we were together. I tried to figure out what kind of boy Michael might have been seventy years ago, going so far as putting together a questionnaire for Michael, where I asked him to rate himself on a one-to-ten scale about everything from how neat or sloppy he was as a kid (he rated himself seven, or pretty sloppy) to whether or not he was one, a follower, or ten, a leader (he gave himself a three on that one).
Unfortunately, there was a lot Michael didn’t remember about that time. Not because his memory isn’t so great in general, not at all. I imagine Michael didn’t remember so much in large part because these things happened a long, long time ago, when he was a boy. This makes sense, because, honestly, how much do you really remember about last summer? You probably remember certain days and certain moments, but you’ve probably forgotten a ton already too. I bet there are entire days you can’t recall anymore. Now imagine that last summer was actually seventy summers ago.
It’s possible, too, that Michael didn’t remember certain events because these experiences were so extremely unpleasant. Psychologists claim that people do this all the time. We forget difficult experiences in order to protect ourselves from the pain of remembering them. I have no idea if this is the case with Michael, and I never asked him if he thinks it is. But for whatever reasons, Michael couldn’t remember many things, and I soon understood that even if I wrote down every detail he did remember, I’d still only have maybe twenty or thirty pages of memories. That meant I’d have to fill in the gaps in his memory, either by consulting other sources (people, books, etc.) or elaborating on the fragments of his memories until they became full-fledged scenes.
A couple of weeks after I met Michael, I felt the time had come to start writing. I wasn’t sure yet when exactly the story would open, so I decided to write about the day Michael (along with his mother and sister) left Prague for Terezin. I chose this event because I knew this was one of the more surprising moments in Michael’s story. In contrast to what I figured anyone would feel about such a move, Michael recalls being relieved to leave his hometown for a concentration camp he knew almost nothing about. He felt this way because of how bad things had gotten for Jews in Prague. But when I sat down to write this scene, I was paralyzed. I was still trying to figure out who Michael the boy was, and even though I knew that he and his family—on that day—were walking from some collection center to the train (and carrying all the possessions they had left in a few bags), the whole scene still felt way too vague to me. I just couldn’t see it. What did the buildings they passed look like? What part of the city did they walk through? How big was the train station? I had no idea, and I started getting rather nervous that I wouldn’t be able to write anything worth reading until I answered these questions and a bunch more like them.
Then I got lucky. It just so happened that I was scheduled to go to London in a few weeks. I decided I would add a short trip to Prague, a city I had never before visited. And I would spend a day in Terezin as well, which is less than an hour from Prague by car. This might be one of the smartest decisions I’ve ever made. I walked all over Prague, visiting the places Michael lived, the synagogue he once attended, and that train station his family headed to on their way to Terezin. I even took the exact walk he and his father would take each week from the Holesovice neighborhood to the Old-New Synagogue across the river. And, fortunately for me, Terezin still looks a great deal like it looked back then. I took a ton of pictures, bought some maps, and jotted down my impressions. Suddenly the story began to come alive for me. Before I even left Prague, I started writing—over a plate of Czech dumplings in a restaurant across the street from where I would later imagine Michael sneaking out of the Ghetto to see a matinee—what became the opening scene of this book.
When I returned to Chicago, I consulted (as I continued to expand) my timeline, and simply began writing the chapters in the order they came. Often, in order to write a chapter, I had to ask Michael additional questions, read from this or that book, snoop around the Internet, or do some combination of all these things. My questions for Michael were now much more specific (“Do you remember if the Old Town Square was within the Jewish Ghetto?”), and sometimes these kinds of pointed questions actually helped him remember things he had forgotten for decades. The more books I read on Terezin, the more I learned about other books out there that could help me, including a diary kept by one of the other Nesharim (Pavel “Pajik” Weiner), which pro
ved crucial. As I sent Michael early drafts, once again he remembered certain incidents and events that he had not mentioned to me before. Michael would often forward questions he himself couldn’t answer to other people who had been in Terezin with him. Slowly my picture of Terezin came into sharper and sharper focus until I felt like a genuine expert on the subject.
On occasion there were still things I couldn’t reconstruct as much as I wished I could. For example, Michael and his family were placed on but somehow got off a transport just a few days before the decisive October twelfth transport. In some cases, especially if I felt something, in general, needed to be included, we made an educated guess (such as where Michael lived after Franta left and Room 7 was disbanded). But sometimes—like with that other transport—we didn’t include it at all, because there was just too much about it we didn’t know.
In the end, every chapter here is either the reconstruction of a specific, one-time event that really happened (Michael’s father being taken away by two SS officers, Michael being chased and tied up by boys in Prague, Michael seeing his best friend for the last time through the infirmary window) or the creation of a new scene that describes experiences Michael had on more than one occasion (working in the garden, playing soccer on the bashta, learning something from Franta). There isn’t a single significant event in this book that I made up just because I thought it might be interesting. Even Franta’s letter from the epilogue is real, though I should mention that I added a few details (facts about how many Nesharim and Jews in general survived Terezin) in order to work in some crucial information into this otherwise real document.
That being said, there were still many gaps I had to fill in. For instance, almost every word of dialogue in this book is re-created, something that is the case with just about any memoir. Though the names (and ultimate fates) of all the Nesharim are real (with the exception of Jiri, whom I created myself, since Michael could no longer recall the name or identity of the actual friend he lost there), I had to supply large parts of their personalities and actions in order to bring the scenes with them to life. And there are thousands of other small details scattered all over the book that I had to provide so that this narrative would consistently have the kind of three-dimensionality Michael’s story required and deserved. But when I had to guess—what someone wore or ate or even said—I made an educated guess, and after all my research and discussion with Michael, I was pretty highly educated.
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