Mosaic

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Mosaic Page 54

by Diane Armstrong


  Hearing his description of my parents makes me marvel at their courage. My heart aches for my father, the village chess champion, who could drink with the locals and tell bawdy jokes, and for my mother who exchanged recipes and kept up a light-hearted conversation while fear gnawed at her night and day. I feel my mother’s anxiety more intensely now than when she told me about those times, because what they tried to keep secret was clearly so obvious to this perceptive man who observed and interpreted their behaviour, yet remained silent.

  While he speaks, I keep pushing back the question that is nagging at me. Not yet, I keep thinking. Not yet. Suddenly Father Soszynski stuns me by answering my unspoken question. ‘Of course I knew that you were Jewish. We all knew.’

  My mind is whirling with confusion. Even after we arrived in Australia, I remember my parents discussing whether they should write and tell him the truth, wondering what he would say if he found out. Only a few minutes ago I’d been figuring out whether it would be too much of a shock. Yet all along he had known the life-threatening secret my parents had tried so hard to conceal.

  Father Soszynski continues his reminiscences. ‘Not long after I arrived in the village, your father asked the organist to enter his certificate of baptism into the parish records. This seemed a strange request, and I wondered then whether he had bought this certificate somewhere. If so, it was a very smart move because once the information was recorded, he’d be able to obtain authentic copies. Still, in those days it was better not to know too much so I decided not to inquire too closely into it and we entered your names in the parish records.’

  Over coffee which he brewed in his small kitchen, the priest chuckles. ‘Your father had a gift for extracting information so delicately that people didn’t even realise what he was doing. For instance, what could he possibly know about church matters? But he quickly found out what he needed to know, and remembered everything he was told. You were too tiny to be aware of these things, and you probably knew nothing about their secret. It’s just as well that you didn’t know anything, or the most precious years of your childhood would have been spoiled.’

  It’s true that I was told nothing, but children are quick to hear the urgency in their parents’ voices and read the anxiety in their eyes. I know that I sensed the whirling tensions, saw the agonised glances. Long before my brain knew, my heart understood. Already, at three, I knew that I must never reveal my real name. When Aunty Mania arrived in Piszczac and called herself Wanda Morawska, I knew I must not let on that I recognised her. That need for wariness and secrecy has affected me throughout my life, perhaps it has also affected my children.

  ‘Little Danusia went to church and scattered petals in our processions,’ he smiles fondly. While he is speaking, I want to hug myself with joy, I want to stop everything and just have a few quiet moments to revel in this marvellous thing that is happening to me. By helping me recover this solemn little girl I hardly know, Father Soszynski is handing me back the long-lost piece of a jigsaw puzzle, perhaps even the key to the rest of my life. But there is no time for reflection. Time is galloping and I must find out as much as possible in the short time I have left.

  The twinkle has gone from Father Soszynski’s eyes.

  ‘One day in 1944, Mrs Forycka, the doctor’s wife, came to see me and she dropped a bombshell. “Has Reverend Father heard the latest? The whole town is saying that the Boguslawskis are Jews!” I thought to myself, Jesus Maria, can this be true? Then I recalled that business with the baptism certificate, that embittered fellow Mr Jozek who came to work with your father but turned out to be a Jew, your mother’s nervousness, your father’s constant vigilance…But I understood. It was a matter of life and death,’ he shakes his head sadly. ‘A matter of life and death.’

  I’m listening so intently, I hardly breathe. ‘I could see that the situation was serious,’ he continues. ‘Then Mrs Forycka repeated, more vehemently, “All Piszczac is up in arms about it, everyone is saying that the Boguslawskis are Jews, they’re saying that they even light Sabbath candles, and that Reverend Father visits them. What are we going to do about it?” she wanted to know. “Well, surely we’re not going to condemn them to death,” I told her. But she rushed off, too agitated to stay any longer.

  ‘After she left, my sister told me that she too had heard the same thing, the rumour had spread around the village like wildfire. Next day, your father came to see me. He was not the same person. He had lost all his strength, he was a crushed man. Despair in his eyes. So sad to see.’ Father Soszynski shakes his head at the memory, and I can tell that he has my father’s distraught face before him. So do I. ‘“Catastrophe, Reverend Father!” he told me. “They’re saying that we are Jews, and that these rumours started with your sister. How can they make such wicked accusations? To accuse us of being Jews is inhuman.”’

  My eyes are glued to him as he tells this story which I have already heard from my father and read in his memoirs. ‘When your father came to see me that day, I felt like weeping,’ he says. ‘Such a cultured, witty man, so intelligent and companionable. How could I not extend a helping hand? I said, “Doctor Boguslawski, let’s look at it another way. There’s no merit being born a Pole any more than there is disgrace being born a Jew. It’s not up to us. It’s up to God. I can’t feel proud of being born a Pole any more than another should feel ashamed of being born a Jew. But the issue is that to accuse someone of being a Jew today is to sentence them to death.”’ He leans towards me. ‘You know, the Gestapo were stationed only three kilometres down the road in Chotylow.

  ‘So I said to your father, “Doctor, let me figure out how to climb out of this pit. I won’t run from house to house, but what I will do is come to your place this afternoon with my sister, and we will walk down the centre of the main street of the town so that everyone will see that we’re coming to visit you as if nothing has happened. Let them all see. Will you give us a glass of tea when we come?”’

  Father Soszynski is a compelling raconteur. He isn’t just relating the past, he is reliving it with every nuance of expression and feeling, his speech slow and rapid in turn, his eyes shining or troubled depending on what he is saying. I’m not just hearing an account of what happened, I’m as close to being there as it’s possible to be, with all the terror and despair, hope and humanity, conflicting feelings and divided loyalties. ‘I can still see the relief on your father’s face when I told him that I’d come over that afternoon and keep coming to visit him,’ says Father Soszynski.

  As Father Soszynski speaks, I can feel my father’s heartfelt gratitude and see his first glimmer of hope that the priest’s healing hands will pull us back from plunging into that ever-widening abyss. For the first time in my life I realise that our only hope of survival, however slight, rested entirely with Father Soszynski.

  ‘I sat my sister down and told her to zip her lips and to say no more about this matter. I told her to get ready because we were going to pay the Boguslawskis a visit. I took her by the arm and we walked down the main street so everyone could see where we were going. Your parents were overjoyed to see us. They were beginning to feel like outcasts because most people had distanced themselves from them. And remember, we had the Gestapo only three kilometres away. German soldiers often came to Piszczac, drank with their pals, listened in to conversations and spied on people.

  ‘After that visit with my sister, I kept coming more often than usual, to demonstrate my support. When the villagers saw their priest socialising with your parents, they figured out that I must know what I was doing, and decided that they had no business gossiping about them.’

  Leaning towards me, Father Soszynski says with great emphasis, ‘And no-one in that village denounced you, even though everybody knew that you were Jews. In your case, Piszczac passed with flying colours. We had drunkards, thieves and cheats amongst us, but on that occasion, everyone behaved beyond reproach.’

  Although I don’t want to argue or diminish the priest’s pride in his parishio
ners, something bothers me. ‘If not for you, they would have denounced us even though they knew us so well. How could the fact that we were Jewish outweigh the fact that they were friends and neighbours?’

  He sighs. ‘My dear, sweet Danusia. Those questions are easier to ask than to answer. Human transgression is a deep and dark mystery. According to our holy books, human nature was corrupted in the Garden of Eden. To some people, money was all that mattered. They just wanted to collect the fifty zlotys which the Germans gave them for turning Jews in. They didn’t care about the person they betrayed. Anyway, my child,’ he returns to his former theme, ‘in this case, the people of Piszczac got full marks, because every single one of them knew, yet no-one gave you away.’

  Throughout my life I had been angry that our existence in Piszczac had been so tenuous, that dangerous rumours had proliferated and that, had the war continued, one of our neighbours or acquaintances would have denounced us to the Germans. But Father Soszynski’s account of our survival helps me to see it in a different light. During the Holocaust it took only one person to send hundreds to their death, but it sometimes took one hundred people to save a single Jewish life. For the first time I realise that by their silence the people of Piszczac had helped us to survive. Whatever their reasons, the fact was that they did not betray us, and in those inhuman times that was a miracle.

  Suddenly I remember the picture of Christ which Jonathan and Susan found in my mother’s flat after she died. ‘It was I who gave your father that picture,’ Father Soszynski replies. ‘I believe that it was thanks to Our Lord’s loving kindness and intercession that you survived. And your father, may he be praised, accepted my gift in the spirit I gave it.’

  Father Soszynski has kept his own mementoes of my parents. From a drawer he takes out two letters my father wrote to him after we left Piszczac, one from Krakow, the other from Brisbane. ‘It was sad to say goodbye. Nothing binds people closer together than living through bad times. Like soldiers at the front who have looked death in the eye together.’ He explains that he hadn’t replied because the communist government persecuted those who had any contact with the west.

  Then Father Soszynski gets up, walks over to his bookcase and hands me a history of the village that he has written, called Piszczac, Once A Royal Town. He opens it and hands it to me. To my astonishment, I’m reading the story of our stay in Piszczac. What until then was my story has now become recorded history. With a firm hand, Father Soszynski inscribes the book to ‘Danusia Boguslawska who lived through a terrible time of terror during which she had to struggle for her own survival and that of her nearest and dearest’.

  As we say goodbye, I ask him whether there is anything he needs for himself or his parish. Love shines from his tear-filled eyes. ‘Danusia, my darling girl,’ he says, ‘I need nothing whatsoever. I never thought that such joy would burst into my life. Seeing you here, feeling our common humanity, and knowing that you have such a good soul, that’s the best reward I could possibly have.’

  As our car speeds away from Biala Podlaska, towards Warsaw, I am so overwhelmed by emotion that it’s a long time before I can bring myself to speak. The Talmud, which my grandfather Daniel used to study, says that every good deed tips the balance in favour of humanity, that whoever saves one life, saves the whole world. For the first time, I fully comprehend what that means.

  The late afternoon sun pours over orchards, meadows and pastures in shafts of intense golden light and glazes the haystacks and sunflowers in the stubbled wheatfields. A sudden rush of joy swells my throat so that I can hardly swallow. When I return home I will arrange for a grove of trees to be planted in Jerusalem in honour of Father Soszynski, one for every year of my life since he enfolded my parents and me in his sheltering arms.

  Tears roll down my face as I realise that I will never be able to tell my parents that I’ve visited Father Soszynski. ‘Nana would have been overjoyed to know that I’d seen him,’ I tell Justine.

  ‘Maybe she already knows,’ my daughter replies.

  EPILOGUE

  Standing by my side at the Temple Emanuel Synagogue in Sydney, Jonathan’s fiancée Susan slides her slim finger along the page of the Siddur as she follows the Hebrew prayers that I can’t read. During the Kaddish prayer, she knows I’m thinking about my mother, and her comforting arm around my shoulders feels light but strong. Jonathan turns towards me with a sympathetic look and my father’s sensitivity shines out of his Baldinger blue eyes.

  As the rabbi intones the ancient prayers for Rosh Hoshana, my mind goes back to the Shabbat dinner at home three years earlier when Susan told us that she’d decided to become Jewish. Ever since she’d started going out with Jonathan, we’d come to love this spontaneous, warm-hearted young woman with the mischievous smile and delicate strength. Her religion had never been an issue for us or for Jonathan.

  ‘I’m not doing it for you or for Jonathan,’ she said. ‘I’m doing it for myself. For the first time in my life I feel as if I’m part of a community. I’ve always liked your traditions and the way that being close as a family is important to you. When I have children, that’s what I’d like them to have.’ Her next words took my breath away. ‘Your religion has continued for thousands of years, and so many Jews have died because of it, including your relatives. I don’t want to be the one to break that continuity.’

  Jonathan was gazing at her rapturously. ‘Nana would have been thrilled, wouldn’t she?’ he said. My mother adored Susan, whose loving ways and irrepressible sense of fun had been a ray of sunshine in her last bleak years.

  Then Susan gave me the most precious gift of all. ‘When I convert, I’d like to take on your mother’s Hebrew name,’ she said. ‘I loved Nana, and I’d feel proud to carry on her heritage by taking her name.’ This loving tribute to us and to my mother made me feel as though I’d reached up and touched the stars.

  Susan walked into my arms and we hugged each other for a long time without speaking. The past few years had been full of stress and sorrow, but looking into her tear-filled eyes, I understood that God takes with one hand but gives with the other.

  And now, at the Rosh Hashana service, the New Year prayers focus on repentance, responsibility and redemption, not only for Jews but for all mankind. They remind us that time is fleeting, we are fragile, and our days are scrolls on which we record our lives by actions, not by words. At the conclusion of the service, the tall cantor wrapped in a prayer shawl stands before us like a Biblical prophet. Taking a deep breath, he raises the shofar to his lips and blows the ram’s horn to usher in the Days of Judgment. At the sound of the stirring fanfare, tears spring to my eyes.

  These notes, spiritual in concept but shrill in execution, swirl around and weave me into the mosaic which has been unfurling since time immemorial. In that solemn fanfare, which makes the air around me vibrate with meaning, I hear Daniel Baldinger’s voice and feel his firm hand reaching out to me to join the chain.

  Picture Section

  Baldinger family portrait. This photo was taken in 1934 when Uncle Avner visited Krakow. Back row, left to right, standing: Fridzia (Slawa), Izio, Rutka, Jerzy, Rozia, Tusiek, Lunia, Berus, Hesiu (Henek, my father), Andzia, Zygmunt. Front row, sitting: Avner, Lieba, Krysia, Daniel, Karola.

  My great-grandparents Abraham and Ryfka Spira, with their daughter-in-law Salomea, (the wife of their son Julek) and her sons Janek (left) and Albert (right), around 1906.

  Above: My mother Bronia’s family. This was taken in February 1938 in Lwow, at the wedding of Hania and Dolek Korner, who are not in the photograph. Fifth from left is Bronia, and sitting on her right are her parents Toni and Bernard Bratter. Standing behind my mother is my father Henek. Standing next to him is Aunty Mania and her husband Misko Schwartz.

  Left: My grandparents Daniel and Lieba on their last holiday in Krynica, August 1938.

  Above: Uncle Avner and Aunty Hela in New York, around 1970.

  Left: Hela and Avner on their wedding day, Krakow, 1918.

 
Avner with his regiment, Vienna, July 1916. Avner is in the back row, third from left. The tools of their trade are displayed in front. Avner had this photograph made into a postcard which he sent to Hela. On the back he wrote: ‘My dearest darling Helunia, I think I’ll be able to organise everything so that we can be together this week. I can’t wait to see you!’

  Fred Ross with grandson Coby in California 1997.

  Adam, me and Wanda during our reunion in Connecticut, 1990.

  Hela and Avner’s son Adam in Madrid, en route to Brazil in 1940.

  Their daughter Wanda in Rio de Janeiro, 1942.

  Aunty Rozia with her niece Krysia in the Planty Gardens in Krakow in 1936.

  Aunty Lunia’s passport photograph, 1940.

  Aunty Karola with her brothers: left, Janek (Jean) and right, Izio, taken in Zakopane in Poland, 1937.

  Aunty Lunia’s son Tusiek and his girlfriend Lula, 1939.

  Aunty Lunia at Beth Hadekel nursing home, Petach Tikvah, Israel, 1990.

  Aunty Andzia with Krysia’s daughter Ronit, Tel-Aviv, 1957.

 

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