What World is Left
Page 16
Besides, what can this man with his owl eyes do to me? I lost much in Theresienstadt: my innocence, my belief that all people were basically good. But now I have the heady sense that I have nothing left to lose. I don’t need to be afraid ever again—of anybody.
I’ve witnessed terrible things I’ll never forget, but I survived. Surely that means I can survive anything. Even this man’s rude remarks. Imagine him saying it’s “highly suspicious” that all five of us survived! The nerve of him. What can he possibly understand about what we’ve lived through?
I meet the officer’s eye. “What do you mean exactly,” I ask, “when you say it’s ‘highly suspicious’ that our family survived Theresienstadt?”
“Anneke,” Father whispers, “there’s no sense in getting upset.”
The officer shuffles some papers on his desk. Then he looks up at me again. “What I mean, young lady, is so few of you Jews survived, surely you did something, or perhaps your father did something, to ensure your safety.”
So the officer knows about the drawings Father made for the Nazis!
When Father flinches, I pat his elbow.
I have always needed Father, even in Theresienstadt when I was most angry with him. But this is the first time I’ve ever had the feeling that Father may need me.
I keep my eyes on the officer. “Do you also know about Father’s other drawings—the ones he hid—the ones that had they been discovered by the Nazis, Father would have been tortured...or killed?” Inside I’m a little shaky, but my voice is strong and steady. That gives me courage.
The officer jots something in his notebook.
But I still have more to say. “You’re quite right. Father kept us safe. He did whatever he had to do to protect us, just as I hope you would do for your children.” I notice some gray in the officer’s hair, near his temples. “And your grandchildren.”
On our way out of the building, I tell Father I am sorry.
Father’s face is still painfully thin. “For what, Anneke? For what?” I’m afraid he is about to cry.
This part is harder for me than standing up to the Dutch officer. It’s not that I’ve stopped questioning what Father did to keep us alive. In fact I think no matter how old I get, some part of me will always question what Father did to keep himself and us alive in Theresienstadt.
But something important has changed. Now I understand that Father really had no choice. And I know that he must live with that burden. Just as I shall live with it until I take my last breath on Earth.
I’m sorry if I have made things even harder for Father. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to let him know how I felt about what he was doing. I had to stand up for what I believed was right. I suppose I had to learn.
“I’m sorry for waiting too long to thank you.”
Father smiles. “Oh, Anneke,” he says, “you haven’t waited too long.”
His eyes look silvery blue in the sunlight. The swollen spot on his lip only makes him more handsome in my eyes. “How did that poet you like so much— Heine—put it? ‘Think what world...’”
I take Father’s hand and together, we recite the rest of the poem: “Think what world is left you still, And how lovely is that part.”
Father is right. And though Heine lived long before us, he knew it too. Even after all the senseless sorrow and suffering, there is still world left. I know I will never be able to forget all I saw and felt and lost in Theresienstadt, but there is still world left.
It will be up to me to find the loveliness.
What World is Left was inspired by the experiences of the author’s mother, who was taken from Holland to the concentration camp, Theresienstadt, where this portrait was drawn by the Czech artist, Petr Kien.
Author’s Note
A half-hour’s drive north of Prague in the Czech Republic is an old, dreary-looking town called Terezin. It has a café on its main square and one small bed-and-breakfast.
But this place is haunted by ghosts. During the Second World War, when Germany occupied what was then Czechoslovakia, Terezin was known by its German name, Theresienstadt. Originally built as a garrison town in 1780 by Emperor Joseph II, and named for his mother, Empress Maria Theresa, it was used as a concentration camp during the Nazi regime. Many prominent Jewish European artists and musicians were among those imprisoned here.
Terezin was designed to house seven thousand soldiers. But during the Holocaust, the town had nearly ten times as many inhabitants. It is estimated that at its most crowded, there were four prisoners per square meter.
And yet, seen from a certain perspective, the prisoners who were sent here—mostly Jews, but also political prisoners—were the lucky ones. Though more than thirty thousand prisoners died in Theresienstadt, most of malnutrition and typhus, the camp was not a death camp like Sobibor or Auschwitz-Birkenau. There were no gas chambers.
In those bleak days, the trick was to find some way—any way—to remain in Terezin. This despite the watery broth prisoners lined up for at lunch and supper; the bedbugs and the lice; and the inhuman hours spent at tedious, often backbreaking, work. That was because Theresienstadt’s inhabitants suspected— rightly—that to be sent on one of the frequent train transports east was worse.
Theresienstadt was also the scene of an elaborate hoax. In 1943, after the Danish Red Cross announced its plan to send a commission to visit the camp, the Nazi high command decided to gussy up the place. The work, known as the Embellishment, was carried out by prisoners, who built false storefronts, erected a monument and planted sapling poplars in the main square.
The Danish Red Cross commission was duped. As for the Nazis, they were so pleased with the success of their plan that, in 1944, they made a propaganda movie about the camp. Directed by Jewish German filmmaker Kurt Geron, the movie was called The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews. Its goal was to convince the world that Jews were prospering in the concentration camps.
My mother spent a little over two years in Theresienstadt. She, her two siblings and their parents survived thanks to my grandfather, Jo Spier, a Dutch artist who, among other tasks, made propaganda drawings for the Nazis. My mother was fourteen when she was sent to Theresienstadt; she was sixteen when the camp was liberated in 1945.
Until the winter of 2007, my mother never shared the story of her experience in Theresienstadt. But when the Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Quebec awarded me a grant to write a book based on my mother’s wartime experience, my mother courageously agreed to revisit her past and share it with me—and by extension, you.
What World is Left is a work of fiction inspired by true events. Several of the scenes in this book are based on stories my mother told me. Others were inspired by an illustrated book my grandfather published in Dutch shortly before his death, entitled Dat Alles Heeft Mijn Oog Gezien [All This My Eyes Have Seen] (Elsevier, 1978).
I have made every effort to be historically accurate throughout What World is Left, but the central characters and their inner struggles are entirely imagined. For me, both as a reader and a writer, fiction is a way to help me make sense of the world and the people in it.
Montreal, March, 2008
Selected Bibliography
The Artists of Terezin. By Gerald Green. Hawthorne Books, 1969.
Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry. By J. Presser. Trans. by Arnold Pomerans. Wayne State University Press, 1988.
Ghetto Theresienstadt. By Zdenek Lederer. Edward Goldston & Son Ltd., 1953.
I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and Poems from Theresienstadt Concentration Camp 1942-1944. Edited by Hana Volavkova. Schocken Books, 1993.
In Memory’s Kitchen: A Legacy From the Women of Terezin. Edited by Cara DeSilva. Trans. by Bianca Steiner Brown and David Stern. Jason Aronson, 1996.
Music in Terezin. By Joza Karas. Beaufort Books, 1985.
One Man’s Valor: Leo Baeck and the Holocaust. By Anne E. Neimark. E.P. Dutton, 1986.
Seeing Through “Paradise”: Artists and
the Terezin Concentration Camp. Massachusetts College of Art, 1991.
The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich. Translated by Laurence Kutler. Edited by Saul S. Friedman. University of Kentucky Press, 1992.
Theresienstadt: Hitler’s Gift to the Jews. Translated by Susan E. Cornyak-Spatz. Edited by Joel Shatzky. University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
University Over the Abyss: Lectures in Ghetto Theresienstadt 1942-1944. Verba Publishers, 2004.
Selected Websites
http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/ aa012599g.htm (A virtual tour of modern-day Terezin.)
www.holocaust-trc.org
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/netherlands (A virtual tour of Jewish history in the Netherlands.)
www.mhmc.ca (Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre)
www.pamatnik-terezin.cz (The website for the Terezin Memorial established in Terezin in 1947.)
www.ushmm.org (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
In addition to writing novels for young adults, Monique Polak teaches English and Humanities at Marianopolis College in Montreal and is a frequent contributor to the Montreal Gazette and other Canwest publications across the country. Monique, who has a grown daughter, lives in Montreal with her husband. Visit her website at www.moniquepolak.com.