Mosaic

by Diane Armstrong

  One day Nadia must have drunk more vodka than usual. ‘I want to tell you something,’ she hiccuped, bringing her bloated red face closer to Mania’s. ‘Did you know that we can’t afford to buy any meat? Isn’t that a joke?’ she said bitterly in her sing-song voice. ‘In Smolensk I was the director of a government sanatorium. All my life I’ve worked for the government, and now that I’ve retired, my pension isn’t even enough for one lousy piece of meat!’ She slid closer and was about to say something else when the front door opened and clicked shut. The words froze on her lips, a frightened look came into her eyes and she put a warning finger to her lips. Her daughter Olga was back from her Komsomol meeting.

  The following day, when Olga had gone out, Nadia continued the conversation. ‘It’s dangerous to talk about these things in front of my daughter,’ she sighed. ‘Russian children are taught to report their parents’ conversations. Then the NKVD come and take them away.’ While Mania looked at her with horror, Nadia grabbed her sleeve and blurted, ‘The Bolsheviks control every aspect of our lives, even our thoughts. Our only hope is the west. If you don’t help us, how will we ever get to shake them off?’

  So many people were leaving Lwow that the exodus was even reported in the foreign press. One day the city buzzed with news. The Russians had opened registration offices for those seeking to return to German-occupied territory. Those who wanted to return were jubilant, and soon the streets surrounding the German consulate became deserted. And that, my father reckoned, was exactly what the Russians intended, because the sight of vast numbers of people, especially Jews, who were clamoring to return to German rule wasn’t good propaganda for the communist paradise.

  All the refugees from the German zone were told to register but Henek had no intention of registering or returning to German rule. Knowing the political paranoia of the Bolsheviks, he didn’t trust their promises. ‘When you think about it,’ he argued with his father-in-law, ‘registration is unnecessary. If they intend to let people leave, why do they need lists of names and addresses? They could just issue permits on the spot.’ But the Bratters kept insisting that he should register just in case he ever wanted to return. Worn down by their arguments, my father finally caved in, but when he signed his name, he gave a false address.

  Several days later, around midnight, loud banging woke them with a start. Hastily wrapping her dressing-gown around her, Toni Bratter opened the door. Pushing past her, two thick-set men in heavy belted coats with collars turned up against the cold stared with hostile eyes at Bernard and Henek and demanded to see their papers. ‘Dawaj! Dawaj!’ they barked impatiently while my grandfather fumbled for his ID card and resident’s passport. Then it was my father’s turn. They checked his date of arrival, saw that he’d arrived in Lwow before the war, thrust the papers back into his hands and stomped out, banging the door behind them so that the crystal glasses tinkled in the sideboard.

  That night the NKVD scoured every home, shop, office and warehouse in the city looking for those who’d registered to return to the German zone. There was no escape because the victims had supplied them with their names and addresses themselves. Enemies of the Russian people who had applied to return to the German zone were given a few minutes to throw a few essentials into a small case before being pushed into waiting trucks.

  My father’s instinct saved him from being deported to the frozen wastes of Siberia, a fate which befell tens of thousands of other refugees that very night. Among them was my mother’s second cousin, Srulek Kestecher, a gentle, slightly built boy of thirteen who was something of a dreamer. Srulek was the middle son of my grandmother Toni’s favourite niece Balcia who lived in the Polish village of Budy Lancutskie. When the SS ordered all the Jews out of their homes, the family split up. Srulek packed his rucksack and left for the Russian zone with his father and two older brothers, while his mother stayed behind with the two younger boys. Srulek was in Lwow the night the Russian secret police banged on their door and pushed them into a cattle truck.

  As the train sped away from Poland, the people crammed inside had no idea where they were going but Srulek was lost in his own world as usual. He thought about his mother’s tears when they’d said goodbye, and about the last Yom Kippur service which they’d held in a hut tucked deep in the woods near his home. In his memoirs, written many years later, he wrote: ‘Yom Kippur night was glorious, there had never been such a night. The moon, which silhouetted every moving figure, had never shone so brightly but the silence and solemnity of the occasion were broken by exploding rockets and shellfire. Already leaves were falling in the orchards during that golden autumn. It was nature’s way of bidding us goodbye.’

  When the train finally came to a stop for the first time, Srulek saw dozens of similar trains which had converged there, each crammed with other unfortunates who had been captured that same night. Before it stopped again, one of Srulek’s brothers jumped off the train and managed to escape. ‘Many of the passengers envied his good fortune, but that was before we found out what happened to him,’ he wrote.

  In the crowded airless cattle truck, children were screaming, women were weeping and men were talking in low, depressed tones, but in spite of the gloom all around him, Srulek was captivated by the landscape unfurling before his eyes. ‘It was early morning and the sun was rising above the horizon when the Volga came into sight,’ he records. ‘The sun reflected in the water, the wildflowers and birds singing made me temporarily forget my predicament. As we pushed deeper into Russia, fertile valleys were replaced by stark mountains and bare fields where no sun shone.’

  As the train continued its interminable journey, further and further away from the world they knew, their destination was no longer in doubt. ‘We are travelling to the end of the world, where polar bears roam and winter lasts for nine months of the year,’ someone told him. Srulek knew that Siberia was the dreaded wasteland where political prisoners were exiled, and he wondered what political crimes he and the other children on the train had committed.

  During their long journey into exile, the prophetic words of another passenger became seared into Srulek’s memory. ‘If and when this war will end, when the flames of burning towns and nations will subside, the survivors will return and trace the footsteps of their dearest ones and they will kiss those footsteps with such emotion as has never been known in the history of the world.’

  CHAPTER 17

  Eighteen months after the Russians had invaded Lwow, Mania was standing on her balcony once again, watching another conquering army march into her city. As my father had predicted, Hitler had broken the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and was invading eastern Poland. The German soldiers marched along the same road as the Russians, but the contrast between the two armies made Mania’s throat tighten with dread. One behind the other, in strict military formation they marched, blond men with arrogant faces, spruce uniforms and shiny boots whose iron studs clattered on the cobblestones.

  Down in the street the Ukrainians greeted the German soldiers with flowers, bread and salt, and rousing cheers. This time they weren’t pretending. The Germans were their allies against the Poles, Russians and Jews. Now the old scores would be settled. Mania couldn’t watch. With a sense of foreboding, she closed the door and went inside.

  On the second day of the Nazi occupation of Lwow, my father Henek went to his dental clinic as usual, but as soon as he entered the courtyard he sensed that something was wrong. The other occupants of the building were standing around the large courtyard but when he approached they moved away as though he had a contagious disease. Another thing struck him as odd: although the Gas Company had many Jewish employees, he couldn’t see a single one of them. Feeling uneasy, he turned to leave when two Ukrainians in German uniform barred his way.

  One of them held his rifle so close to my father’s face that its cold barrel brushed his cheek while the soldier said in a mocking voice, ‘Maybe I’ll shoot you right now.’

  Henek’s heart was drumming. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. �
��Shoot.’ The private’s eyes were as cold as the barrel of his gun as he motioned my father to go inside.

  In the makeshift interrogation room another Ukrainian guard glared at him. ‘You’re a Jew!’ he hissed. When Henek denied it, the soldier snapped, ‘Drop your trousers, we’ll soon see who you are!’ The ancient ritual which bound Jews to their God made them easily identifiable to their persecutors because only Jewish men were circumcised.

  Realising that there’d come a time when being a Jew would be a death sentence, my father had organised a legal looking document which purported to explain how it came about that even though he wasn’t Jewish, he’d been circumcised. Predated many years before the war, it stated that he was the illegitimate son of a Catholic woman who had been a servant in a Jewish family. When circumstances had made it necessary for her to leave him there, the Jews had brought him up and had him circumcised without her knowledge.

  This affidavit was supposed to be a will written by his mother who had since married, inherited some money from her husband, and now wanted to bequeath it to her long-lost son. She offered a reward for finding him, along with payment for a newspaper advertisement searching for him. The story seemed watertight, and as my father handed it over to the Ukrainian guard he was convinced that it would ensure his immediate release.

  But with a cursory glance at the document, the Ukrainian gave a sardonic laugh. ‘Documents like this can be bought for three hundred zloty,’ he scoffed.

  Henek looked away quickly to conceal his dismay. That was exactly what he’d paid for it. So much for my foolproof plan, he thought. Nothing could save him now. But the German officer in charge was still mulling over the paper. Instead of handing Henek over to the Ukrainian militia, whose stony faces promised swift vengeance, he decided that the military police should investigate the story. A German corporal and Ukrainian guard were detailed to escort him to the town hall.

  It was a radiant summer’s day. Heat rose from the sun-warmed cobblestones and even the leafy lime trees beneath the copper domes of the Dominican church gave little shade. Past Lwow’s solid ramparts, and the shingled roof of the medieval armory, Henek limped as fast as he could to keep up with the German corporal because the Ukrainian’s hate-filled expression made him nervous.

  As they crossed the avenue beside the opera house, Henek noticed that the open marketplace, which usually bustled with shoppers examining embroidered blouses, coral beads and wood carvings, was ominously quiet. He couldn’t conceal his agitation. ‘Why didn’t they release me?’ he asked the corporal in German. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  The corporal tried to calm him down. ‘Don’t worry, if you’re innocent, you have nothing to fear,’ he said. Henek wasn’t convinced but he felt a little comforted by the soldier’s kind manner.

  Uneasy about the guard behind him, Henek glanced around and saw that in the far corner of the marketplace hooligans were knocking trestles over and smashing them to pieces. Suddenly, as if in response to some signal, they started rushing towards him, brandishing lengths of wood and yelling ‘Ah, komisar!’ as if he was a communist official. Bloodlust blazed out of their eyes, and their weapons promised no mercy. They were already bearing down on him, clubs poised to strike. Another second and their clubs would be raining down on his head and the corporal striding ahead of them wouldn’t even know. With a strangled voice Henek called out to the soldier, who finally looked around and saw the gang rushing towards his captive. ‘Weg ihr schweine!’ ‘Get away, you scum!’ he yelled, and to Henek’s relief the louts slunk away like dogs whose bone has been taken away.

  Past fountains whose statues of Jupiter and Diana spouted delicate jets of water in the four corners of the cobbled square, Henek limped up the steps of the town hall. Inside the weathered gate the corporal handed him over to the German security police, saying, ‘Spionage verdächtig, aber so handweg kann man ihm nicht schiessen.’ ‘Suspected of spying, but shouldn’t be shot without further investigation.’

  After he’d repeatedly denied being either a spy or a communist and insisted that he was just an ordinary dentist, they ordered him to join the other suspects. About twenty people stood in the courtyard, most of them Jews. The guards yelled that nobody was to move a muscle. A German private kept watch over them and whenever anyone made the slightest movement, he strode over and with a crisp motion struck their forehead with his truncheon so ferociously that they toppled over.

  Standing in the searing heat as though nailed to the ground, Henek felt light-headed. Every cell in his body was shrieking for water, for the luxury of bending, stretching or just changing position. He could hear some sounds coming from the yard behind him. The Germans were setting up machine guns. ‘They must be for us,’ the man beside him murmured.

  Henek nodded. The same thought had occurred to him. He was surprised how little emotion he felt. It would be better to be finished off right now, killed by a quick bullet than be hunted and live in terror and humiliation. While bracing himself for the inevitable he heard his name called out. Gritting his teeth, he walked towards the German officer. Any moment now he’d find out whether the Almighty, about whom his father had talked so often, really existed. But the officer was scrutinising his passport. ‘Why were you brought here?’ he asked.

  ‘Because I’m a Jew and the Ukrainians hate Jews,’ Henek explained. The officer handed back his passport and looked at his watch. ‘It’s now six-thirty,’ he said. ‘You will be released at seven, but not a moment earlier.’

  On the dot of seven Henek walked out of the town hall as fast as his stiff leg would allow. The discomfort and anxiety of the past seven hours melted away. But when he looked around him, the blood froze in his veins and he slowed his pace. The streets of Lwow resembled a battlefield of ghostly, grotesque figures. Staggering along, clinging to the sides of buildings, were men bleeding from gashes on their heads, cradling broken arms or supporting those who could hardly walk. The sound of groaning was occasionally broken by racking spasms of sobbing. But the most terrifying sight was the haunted look in eyes which had witnessed cruelty they couldn’t describe and would never forget. And these were the fortunate ones who had survived.

  Henek had foreseen that Germany would eventually occupy Lwow, but neither he nor anybody else had envisaged that the city would soon resemble a slaughterhouse as Jews were hunted down and butchered more cruelly and relentlessly than in any other Polish city. In Lwow the Nazis had found enthusiastic accomplices. Like wolves licking their lips at the thought of the flock about to be placed in their care, some ultranationalistic Ukrainians had been eager to sink their fangs into Jewish flesh. They hadn’t had long to wait.

  On the day when he’d been detained, Germans had given the Ukrainians free rein to amuse themselves with the Jews any way they liked, but their fun had to end by seven p.m. That day, prison yards all over Lwow ran with blood, and their walls were spattered with fragments of human brains. By not releasing Henek until seven, the German officer had saved his life.

  The next day Henek’s cousin Janek Spira, an engineer who worked in the same building, was lined up with others against the courtyard wall to be shot. The rifle was already pointing at Janek’s bald head when the German officer in charge of the execution squad suddenly threw his arms up in the air. ‘Mein Gott!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m a soldier, not an executioner. I can’t take this any more!’ and he strode away in disgust, letting his stunned prisoners go free.

  Every day Jewish men were rounded up in the street. Some were lined up against the wall and peremptorily shot, many were press-ganged and later killed, while others were tortured to death in interrogation rooms. It was during those first days of the Nazi occupation that my young uncle Izio Bratter vanished.

  From the descriptions of my mother and Aunty Mania who both adored their brother, I know that Izio was short but good-looking with fair hair and green eyes, good-hearted but lazy. A bit of a waster. The youngest of four children and the only son, he was probably spoilt. When he was lit
tle, whenever their mother put corn on the table, he used to say that he’d licked every single cob so that no-one would want theirs. Because of the small quota of Jewish students admitted to Polish universities during the thirties, his parents had sent him to Italy to study medicine, but according to my mother he’d studied girls instead of books and hadn’t completed the course.

  All that my mother ever said about the disappearance of her only brother was that he went out one day and never returned. There was no-one to ask, nowhere to go for help. In those tragic times gypsies did a thriving trade prophesying happy reunions. Like other desperate wives and mothers, my grandmother crossed a fortune-teller’s palm with silver and was told that her son would return, but a neighbour told her that she had seen him being rounded up in the street by German soldiers. ‘We kept hoping that one day he’d come back but he never did,’ my mother said in the detached way she talked about these events. Much later I understood that she was keeping a tight lid over grief which, if released, might engulf her.

  ‘Izio and Hania were crazy about you,’ my mother used to tell me. ‘You were our only sunbeam in those dark days.’ As long as I can remember I’ve been the only child of an isolated nuclear family, so it’s hard to imagine that I was once surrounded by adoring aunties, uncles and grandparents.

  My mother’s favourite sister Hania was a pretty strawberry blonde who cried whenever Mania called her ‘Ginger’ because of her hair. Another bad mark for Mania. Hania was so soft-hearted that she often brought home stray cats and dogs. As a teenager she thought she was too fat and drank vinegar to lose weight, but it gave her an ulcer and spoiled her complexion.