Warsaw

by Richard Foreman

  "Dearest Thomas, I miss you and you can well imagine how much I long to see you again - for you are no doubt feeling the same longing for me. If you are not then I shall be very cross and shall want to know why. At best it seems that any positive news from the Front is constructed from half-truths.

  Things look bleak and I fear the worst. I used to lie in bed at night and wish for your safe return and for an end to this terrible war but now I just hope and pray that you will not be posted to Stalingrad. It is a piece of silly reasoning I know but I tell myself that if I pray for less, be less selfish, then my prayers might be answered and granted.

  Wilhelm, as you can see from the photo enclosed, is fine and well. From the way he is getting through his rations and shoes he will no doubt grow as large and strong as his father. Mother says as well that he is increasingly beginning to look like you, which is a blessing and a curse for when I gaze upon him sometimes I see you - but then think on your absence and where you are. I've also enclosed the most recent picture he's done of you.

  I am well so do not worry about me. I am trying to keep busy and still teaching at the school part-time. You'll be pleased to know that all the children are still devoted to you and constantly ask after "Herr Abendroth". I have also been tending to the garden of late. All the bulbs and shrubs we planted when you were last on leave have flowered or are about to flower. The garden is now awash with colour (bluebells, roses, cowslip, fiery red pansies, and gleaming marigolds). A few buttercups have also sprung up from the lawn and, last week, Wilhelm adorably spent a couple of days testing whether everyone in the village liked butter.

  How are you? I'm sorry about the barrage of questions in my last letter about what the ghetto was like and the Jews. But I can't believe anything in the news or on the radio anymore. I know I've said it before but still I can't comprehend how much things have changed. I think I would need the next ten years to catch-up and understand what has happened over the past decade - and not just because of the war. Please write soon (although I know you will). I love you so much. Maria."

  As pleased as Thomas was at receiving the letter his eyes moistened too from sadness. He was a world from his wife and child. His simple life was over and nothing would ever be the same again Thomas lamented, even if he went home tomorrow. He took up again the picture enclosed in the letter that Wilhelm had drawn of his father. ‘Papa’ was no more than a matchstick man with a big head and lop-sided grin but Thomas could recognise, through the blue helmet and red rifle, that his son had drawn him as a soldier. The two big black swastikas which flanked the figure also pained and angered the Corporal. When he was a boy clouds and the sun or moon had accompanied his pictures. The sun and stars had now turned into swastikas. His spirits seethed and sank to think of the poison that they were pouring into his son's ears while he was away. Again he flirted absurdly with the idea of deserting and trying to get back to his family and escape over the Swiss border. But he knew the dangers. They would get to his family first and he couldn't trust putting something in a letter. If intercepted, it would be as good as a death sentence for them all. He would just have to endure.

  5.

  Poland fell in three weeks. David so seldom conquers Goliath. On the 12th of October 1940, the Day of Atonement, it was announced by the occupying force that a ghetto – or ‘Jewish residential quarters’ - was to be established in the old Yiddish district of the capital. 2.4% of the city's land would house 30% of its population. Non-Jews were moved out, accepting the incentive of taking over Jewish homes and business properties. Jews were moved in, with many of their valuables and possessions being confiscated at the ghetto's gates. Around half a million Jews were soon after sealed in with barbed wire and 3.5 metre high walls topped with broken glass; the inhabitants were made to pay for the walls at their own expense. Notices reading ‘Jews, Lice, Typhoid’ were hung upon them. Rations were set at around 300 calories a day, compared to the 2,300 the Germans received. Only 1% of the apartments in the ghetto possessed running water. Smuggling and a black market alleviated part of the problem of food shortages, but nevertheless it is estimated that, even before the "transportations to the East" began, 100,000 Jews died of starvation and disease in the ghetto.

  On July 22 1942 the Warsaw ghetto was encircled by various Latvian, Ukrainian and SS soldiers. Two days previous the Judenrat (Jewish Council) was ordered to prepare and make arrangements for the resettlement of the "non-productive elements" of the ghetto's population. Basically, anyone who did not possess a work card was liable to be transported. Armament factories and slave labour camps outside the ghetto were two of the more common sources of employment. The chairman of the Jewish Council, Adam Czerniakow, was ordered to deliver 6,000 Jews per day, seven days a week, to the Umschlagplatz for evacuation. Czerniakow committed suicide, swallowing cyanide, on July 23, the first day of the Jewish deportations. Between July 23 to September 21 1942 alone, the most "productive period" of the evacuations, more than 250,000 Jews were transported from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka - and murdered.

  The Umschlagplatz (collection point) was a large oval on the inside but on the northern edge of the ghetto which ran adjacent to the railway sidings, situated on the corner of Stawki and Dzika Street. Once a market for Jewish traders in the city it acted now as a compound, or giant train platform, for those inhabitants of the ghetto due to be evacuated. On the edge of the Umschlagplatz, next to the wall, there was an additional compound or area in which there were piled dozens, sometimes hundreds of dead bodies. Some had been shot for various petty crimes or for no offence at all. SS personnel were empowered to execute (shoot) Jews without trial or justification. From the russet gore upon the wall it was also evident however that some had been murdered by having their skulls crushed, the Germans having swung their victims by the legs onto the brickwork. Due to its disturbing, gruesome sights and the unnatural smell which pervaded the area, the evacuees tried their best to avoid the fly infested open cemetery and compressed themselves into an even smaller space within the Umschlagplatz.

  Sometimes they came at night, sometimes in the morning, afternoon or at dusk - but they always came. Grey hoards, violent, unrelenting, raiding, herding, processing. Children were a liability if one hid; it was not unknown for babies to be smothered to death to save the rest of the group. The dogs developed a taste for flesh. Some people even volunteered when they heard that partners or offspring had been captured, selected. Methodical, brutal platoons, often accompanied by a Jewish policeman, would swarm through their designated blocks, sweeping the inhabitants up as if they were caught in a human tornado. The soldiers would then dump their “catch" in the Umschlagplatz and perhaps repeat the operation directly afterwards. If you couldn't produce a work pass, you were eligible.

  For all of the raids and enforced evacuations, however, there were also many who passively appeared at the Umschlagplatz, either instructed by the Judenrat to do so or persuaded by the arguments of policemen such as Meisel and Duritz. They convinced the evacuees that they were being taken to labour camps where, although the work was hard, the rations and lodgings were better - and they could still be with their families. They were not going to be killed because the Germans "need us for their war effort. It would be illogical, a false economy, for them to do away with us". Some people believed them because they wanted to believe them. Or the promise of food (bread and jam) lured desperate people onto the trains, which the Germans offered the Jews if they complied to turn up the collection point "of their own free will".

  Once caught within the Umschlagplatz a few evacuees might be taken out again for a number of reasons: they might be considered fit for certain work details, worth saving in return for the wealth that they possessed. Or their petitioning of a policeman or soldier could be successful. Few received a reprieve however.

  As many evacuees as inhumanly possible were loaded onto the cattle trucks once there was a sufficient number rounded up in the Umschlagplatz. People were beaten back with truncheons and rifle butts
as the sheer number of people meant that some spilled back out of the entrances to the carriages. Doors were nailed shut. The warm air, noxious with the smell of chlorine from where the trucks had been hosed out, soon became nauseating through the stench of the diseased and filthy bodies crammed together. Often families were split up during the loading of the trucks. Soldiers and policemen were not concerned with who travelled with who. One train alone, consisting of around sixty freight cars or cattle trucks, could evacuate 5,000-6,000 people. The trains ran seven days a week. During one of the German offensives in Russia a ban was implemented on many non-essential rail services and resources yet still the SS demanded and continued to run their daily service from the ghetto to Treblinka - situated 75 miles north-east of Warsaw.

  Adam Duritz observed the matinee idol of a Lieutenant nodding in approval as he efficiently dispatched another “shipment" of Jews to their destination. The SS officer had trained his men well, teaching them to use force only when necessary. Disturbances were just that - time consuming. The same brawny SS Private, who last week had nearly beaten a woman to death as she tried to remain with her brother, was now reassuring a family that everything was going to be all right - the work camp was half a day's ride, during which the train would stop at a station for a water break. He even put his arm around a woman and smiled.

  It was an undulating sea of people. With their various cloth caps - and women wearing headscarves - so many of the bowed heads remained faceless. So many weren't faceless though. If the Germans sustained this rate of evacuation - extermination - then the ghetto would be all but empty by the New Year, Duritz estimated. For so long it had been the policeman's mission to survive the war; now his greatest wish was just to see the end of it. He had tried his best again (and often he succeeded) to be posted away from the Umschlagplatz - offering to police and dispose of the abandoned and randomly executed dead littering the streets of the ghetto, but Duritz had to endure the sight of the living once more.

  Yitzhak Meisel, with his trained eye in terms of the wealth of people in rags and what was contained in their pockets, was weaving his way through the troubled throng and confiscating valuables, such as ration cards and watches. They would not need them where they were going was the argument Meisel defended himself with, if indeed he felt the need to defend his actions. If anyone resisted he would perform his usual trick of breaking someone's hand or nose with his wooden cudgel. Duritz often liked to confront him with the situation of what was going to happen when the ghetto was finally emptied and there would be no one left to police. What did he think the Germans would do with him? Meisel would argue back, as if now believing his own lies which he had just spouted to evacuees, that the Germans would reward loyalty and he was too valuable a worker.

  An elderly couple inserted themselves into Adam's vision. They looked lost and tubercular, as their children and grandchildren had been before them. They were two of Duritz's five. After a brief fit of coughing, in which spots of blood could be traced upon the filthy handkerchief that the wife placed over the husband's mouth, he politely asked the policeman

  "Is there a special car that we are due to travel in Mister Duritz?"

  "No, any car will suffice," the policeman replied, attempting to keep his distance from the contagious couple - whilst not wishing to appear he was doing so.

  "But you did say we could travel together?"

  "Yes. Stay close to each other and everything will be fine."

  "Thank you Adam."

  Still looking detached and diffident the pair shuffled off into the direction of the train. He wondered how they had survived this long. They looked like ghosts. His noble intention of trying to save the fittest and most valuable of his people was redundant; he was but delaying their deaths - prolonging their suffering. The British would not come. The Americans would not come. The Russians would not come. The French were even corroborative. Adam remembered again Czerniakow's suicide note, "I am powerless. My heart trembles in sorrow and compassion. I can no longer bear all this. My act will prove to everyone what the right thing to do is". Adam had also heard rumours of a speech that Jacob Gens, a fellow ghetto administrator, had given in Vilna, "When they ask for a thousand Jews, I hand them over. For if we Jews do not give our own, the Germans will come and take them by force. Then they will not take one thousand but many thousands. By handing over hundreds, I save a thousand. By handing over a thousand, I save ten thousand". The philosophy student's heart had been blighted for having to deliver up five souls each day, how much blood and conceit besmirched those who had to offer up six thousand?

  Adam stood at his post - a careworn, feverish marionette. He had nothing to do. The sepia stream of rags was directed and damned in, fluid. The processing time had been cut but the day was still tortuously too long for the policeman. It took more energy and concentration to do nothing and remain impassive than it did to police a disturbance. Adam's position was to just keep watch.

  Finally the whistle sounded, drowning out the moans and cries, and the train's wheels creaked into motion. Duritz observed the few who had been spared for the day; either their work cards were valid or excellent forgeries. Or they had mustered temporary salvation through a bribe. Despite the ordeals and emotion (relief, sorrow, shock, guilt, happiness) their faces remained colourless, blank. He observed with distaste Yitzhak Meisel next to them as the mercenary scoured with his malignant aspect the empty Umschlagplatz for any coins or jewellery shining back into his rapacious eyes. Sleep-deprived, famished, the young policeman was momentarily aroused from his jaded state by the sight of the German. Still indignant from the sight of Meisel and burning with hate Duritz glowered at the moral soldier. At that moment it was as if Adam held Thomas personally responsible for all he had seen - and would not get to see - that day. His nostrils were flared, his teeth were vice-like compressed together and his eyes were darkly ablaze. Perhaps the reason why Duritz expressed such raw contempt in his features for his old acquaintance was that he knew that Thomas would not react or reciprocate his antagonism. Adam's hate quelled remorse. The soldier could act as the policeman's scapegoat. Any other German perhaps would have stormed across the open space and coldly executed the Jew for such an impudent gaze. Upon registering the perplexity and then worry, hurt, on the soldier's face the policeman, experiencing a sense of petty victory, then grinned, sneering at the German. So as not to allow Thomas to respond, or approach him, Adam abruptly turned his back on the goy and the Umschlagplatz for the day. He would get some sleep, before accounting for his five tomorrow.

  Duritz trudged home. His body was wet inside his uniform from perspiration. There had been a flash shower also, but the sweltering sun soon returned and re-animated the unholy ordure (rotting flesh, faeces, and mouldy fruit) which saturated the ghetto. People were starting to filter out of every crevice of the district now that the selections were over for the day. Queues were forming at the water vendors. Black market food was being traded. Consumptive, tubercular coughs peppered the air. People were asking who had been taken. Adam noticed Kolya Rubenstein dart out of a building with a small bundle. The little rogue had probably got wind of a family that had just been evacuated and had helped himself to any provisions or possessions they might have left. How different he was from his sister, but that was all the time he allowed thinking upon the brother.

  Jessica Rubenstein. Her image swirled up again into his mind's eye. Part of him wanted to fuck her again, get rid of the raging despair that way. But that would have only brought him a new, different feeling of remorse. Or the same one. More than Jessica though, Duritz just needed a jug of water now. He had been dehydrated all day from the previous evening's alcohol. Yet still he thought of his old succubus.

  Jessica. It was as though Nature itself had conspired against him all those years ago. It was an afternoon in July. The sun massaged rather than burnt down upon the town. One had to squint if one gazed upwards at the bright blue sky, though one gladly did so to witness the beautiful firmament, ribbo
ned in strips of coral-white cloud. Flowers bloomed and perfumed the air. The idealistic, unsociable student had read "The Sorrows Of The Young Werther" again in one sitting the evening before. The private tutor was taking on a new pupil. He was glad of both the extra money and the excuse it would furnish him with to keep him out of the house. His father worked him in the bakery nowadays after his classes finished, being allowed to study or have some leisure time only when the clearing up and prep work for the morning had been completed. The money he brought in and gave to his father (minus the small sums which he failed to disclose out of selfishness and revolt) granted the youth freedom to be let off his chores.

  Adam’s black, greasy hair was washed and brushed. His mother had cleaned and ironed his best white shirt. He also borrowed (stole) one of his father's best ties. He looked suitably smart in the shirt and tie and hoped they would compensate, or draw attention away from, his worn trousers and old shoes. Adam wanted to make a good impression on his prospective new employers. They lived in a monied district, populated by doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats. Not only would their employment of him help pay for University but they were also would-be contacts for when he would complete his studies. He wanted to one day exist in their world not as an outsider, but as an equal. He was seduced by their polished sphere, the refined manners, beautiful possessions, intelligent conversation, love of books, fine foods, tastes, liberties and glamorous women.