The Fugu Plan

by Marvin Tokayer

  Jewish education in Europe was in a shambles. Scores of yeshivas - organized groups of men between about seventeen and twentyfive who devote seven days a week to studying the laws of the Torah and the voluminous commentaries on them - had been completely destroyed. To Orthodox Judaism, this destruction of scholarship was, itself, a catastrophe. Each Jew must lead his life according to the laws laid down by God in the Torah. Each adult must know the laws, must know how to interpret them, how to apply them, how to derive the most from each of them. Without this knowledge, Judaism would cease to exist. Yet inexorably, every one of the nerve centers of this crucial learning process was falling before the Nazi/ Soviet advance. Rabbis were being executed; their students were being scattered to starve, or imprisoned to be worked to death; libraries of ancient manuscripts and books were casually tossed into the fire like so much garbage. By as early as 1940 there remained in Europe - Germany, France, Poland, Rumania, the Baltic nations - only small pockets of traditional European Jewish learning: the straggling remnants of the famous schools of Tels, Lodz, Slobodka, Lublin, Radin. Only one of the major schools remained intact - the Yeshiva of Mir.

  The three hundred rabbis and students of the Mir Yeshiva had started their race with annihilation in the month of Marheshvan, the year 5700 (October 1939) after their small town in northern Poland had been shelled and was beginning to be encircled by tanks. First, the entire yeshiva fled to Vilna. Six months later, to escape anti-Semites in Vilna, they moved on again to the small town of Kaidan. And not long thereafter, to escape the occupying Russians, the yeshiva split into quarters and settled in secret, in yet smaller towns - Crok, Schat, Ramigola and Krakinava - scattered across the countryside of northern Lithuania.

  From these small towns, two representatives of the yeshiva, the principal's secretary and a student, Moishe Zupnik, had gone to Kovno to obtain three hundred of the precious Japanese transit visas from Consul Sugihara. After that, the young men went back to studying, praying, and worrying aloud.

  Yankel Gilbewitz hunched tensely against the one wooden arm of the chair he was sitting in and followed, again, the arguments of his fellow students.

  "With all respect to our principal, Rabbi Finkel," Zev Levy was saying, "it is impossible for me to believe that we can actually get to Palestine. The British are such angels? They are suddenly going to open up the door to us? 'Come, my children,' Britain is going to say. 'Come to Palestine.' I beg your pardon, I do not think Britain is going to say that. They don't want us there. They don't want us anywhere. No one wants us anywhere. Even America doesn't want us."

  "There's still hope that America will take us, if we can just pry open the door," another student insisted, gesturing with his long fingers the forcing open of a door.

  Levy harshly mimicked the gesture and the voice. "'If we can pry open the door.' What have Rabbi Kalmanowitz and the Va'ad Hatzalah, and all the other people and organizations dedicated to helping us been doing for all these months but trying to 'pry open the door.' And where are we still?"

  Levy broke into the sing-song rhythm the students used while studying the Talmud. "We are here. . . . America is there. . . . The Russians are deporting hundreds of Lithuanian Jews every week. . . . And the only reason they haven't exiled us is . . . they haven't found us!"

  He paused to let the words sink in.

  "I'll tell you, I would go to Palestine tomorrow - tonight! - if I could. I would walk on my bare feet to Odessa and float on a raft to Haifa if I thought they would let us in. But they won't. And since they won't, I want to go to the only other place where someone might let us in."

  "Japan," the other student said with mild disgust.

  Levy threw up his hands as if at the end of his patience. "No, I don't want to go to Japan! I want to go to America. But I can't get to America from here. And maybe I can get to America from there!" Levy glared at his fellow students, partly angry but mostly dismayed at their lack of understanding.

  Yankel Gilbewitz lifted his thin frame from the chair and wandered off alone into the cold, deserted kitchen. It was a large room, both kitchen and dining room for the twenty-two people packed into this borrowed house on the outskirts of Krakinava. Like fraternal twins, the kitchen area was divided into two similar but distinct halves. Each had a long tin counter holding a stack of clean dishes; each counter had a small washing sink; and, amazingly in this far-from-wealthy house, near each of the two counters was a separate cooking stove. In such a place, it was practically impossible to transgress the injunction against mixing milk and meat.

  Heedless of the cold, Yankel went to the cracked window and looked through narrowed eyes onto the frozen night. Absently fingering the delicate white fringes of the tallis katan under his shirt, he thought about the leading proponent of action, the one who had gone to get the transit visas in the first place, Moishe Zupnik. Zupnik was no more learned than the other students, but he had lived closer to the secular world than most of them. He had grown up in Germany which in itself almost guaranteed a closer brush with the goyim. In spite of this, or because of it, Moishe Zupnik was totally involved with the school and its interests. Not only had he accompanied the yeshiva's secretary to the Japanese Consulate in Kovno, he also offered to stay in the Consulate to do the actual work of stamping all three hundred passports. Yankel did envy Moishe Zupnik his worldly wisdom. He did not envy him his total dedication to Jewish scholarship. That sort of thing was fine for show; but it could get in the way of a man's true goals.

  To Yankel, born Yaacov ben Yitzhak seventeen years before, the Mir Yeshiva was an excellent sanctuary. Even in these diminished and insecure circumstances, it was a vastly superior way of life to that which seemed to have been his birthright. Sometimes his mind would focus for a moment on that fact and he would sigh with satisfaction. Thus far, he had accomplished the goal he had set as far back as he could remember - to escape from the confining shtetl world of poverty and exhaustion and mud. The Gilbewitz family Mama, Papa and three daughters - had been wretchedly poor in their tiny village in north-central Poland. Too poor to have meat even on the Sabbath unless someone out of kindness left a package by the door of their decaying hovel. Too poor to own leather shoes, which meant walking to market on muddy or icy roads in awkward, sodden boots of cardboard and cloth. Too poor even to have hope of ever being otherwise, unless, im yirzeh ha-Shem, there was a miracle. Finally, there was Yankel, and he was the miracle. Inside Yankel's head was a memory that would have been called "photographic" if anyone in town had known what a photograph was. From the age of five when he began attending cheder, it was clear that whatever entered his mind through those plain brown eyes would never be lost. Months later Yankel could repeat word for word with unfailing accuracy a verse of Torah or a line of commentary he had noted if only once in passing. In a world of learning, where each new interpretation must take into account all arguments that have come before it, such skill is invaluable. Yankel's family saw it as a gift from God; Yankel, from an early age, saw it as a means of pulling himself up and out of a world of dirt, drudgery and denial.

  The efficient working of his memory did not, however, provide Yankel with a brilliant intellect. Day and night he had to apply himself to his studies, sitting on a hard bench, forcing himself to try and grapple with the meaning and significance of the page he was able to memorize so easily. There was little pleasure or fun in his childhood. Studying furiously season after season, always making sure he was noticed, his genius and diligence appreciated, Yankel passed first through the little village cheder, then through a higher school in a larger town several miles away by foot. Finally, having gained the benefits of local Jewish education, he began to rest easier about his future. In a world that ranks the scholar just below the angels, a boy such as Yankel had no trouble slipping the confines of his family's poverty. With the help of a traditionally anonymous charitable donation, Yankel left the discomfort of home for good and went off to the illustrious Mir Yeshiva. His acceptance at Mir, in early 1938, had been a mo
ment of unmitigated joy. A Jewish scholar never earned a pfennig from his studies. But to have a scholar for a son-in-law was such an honor that, with his entrance into Mir, Yankel was all but guaranteed a wife from a good family and a better life.

  Of its own accord, Yankel's hand moved from the tallis fringe into the pocket that held a worn postcard. It had come - surprisingly, some mail did continue to flow across the border - three weeks before, from his sister. "Well, we are all alive, and are still eating, most of the time." His parents and sisters, and all their husbands were all well, thank God. "And such good news!" she said at the end. "In March, I will be having a baby! I pray for a boy and pray that he will be a fine scholar like his uncle."

  Rereading the card without bothering to look at it, Yankel felt a twinge of regret. He had never, never wanted to share in the miserable life of his family. But he had always told himself he would someday share with them any material rewards his scholarly success might bring. Now that hope was gone - at least for the immediate future. One way or another he would have to leave this land, this increasingly threatening world of Central Europe. He had not worked this hard or come this far to be denied his rewards by some goyish soldier. Others could hide their heads beneath their prayer shawls and call on God to rescue the Jewish people. He, Yankel Gilbewitz, had long ago learned the efficacy of calling on his own resources to rescue himself.

  Ever since his passport had been stamped with the bold transit visa, Yankel had spent his nights weighing the possibility of escaping on his own - sneaking across the border into Russia, somehow crossing Russia and getting to Japan. Exactly what Japan would be like or where he would go from there, he did not know. But Japan had to be different than his shtetl or Vilna or Krakinava. And at seventeen, Yankel was adventurous enough to believe that what was different would surely be better. Yet, lying in his bed, thinking of independent flight, he had to admit it would be foolish. If he had been a worldly wise fellow like Zupnik ... if he had been Zupnik, he never would have returned from his initial visit to the Japanese consul. He would have taken his passport and disappeared. Let his fellow students get their own visas! He wasn't Moishe Zupnik and he didn't know enough about dealing with the world outside the yeshiva to be able to get by on his own. In these impossible times, who would look after one lone Jew, no matter how well educated? But as part of the illustrious Mir Yeshiva, he had friends all over, even in America where Rabbi Kalmanowitz, a former teacher in the yeshiva, and other members of the Va'ad Hatzalah, the "Committee of Rescue," were raising the money that the whole school had been living on for months. So, he would stay with the veshiva - and ally himself with those encouraging it to leave.

  Outside the kitchen window, nothing moved in the winter field. There was little snow; the rocks and frozen furrows cast sharp shadows in the moonlight. Convincing the leaders of the yeshiva to apply to the Russians for exit permits from Lithuania was no easy task. Yankel had heard Moishe Zupnik, Levy and some of the others try. The principal and the teachers were set against it. Terrified of calling attention to themselves, there was even a possibility that the Russians were so far unaware of the yeshiva's presence in the country, unwilling to be responsible for the retribution that might rain down on even smaller pockets of yeshiva students hiding in other small towns, poignantly mindful of the story of Lemberg, the Mir leaders so far had refused even to consider talking to the Russians. Their fears, Yankel recognized, were not unrealistic. Application had to be made to the Russian NKVD, that terrifying mystery of a police organization that held absolute power of life and death over everyone in Lithuania. Back in Vilna, a few brave souls had applied, and some had been granted the exit permit. But who knew where those had really gone? Was it all just a repetition of Lemberg? On the other hand, if they stayed holed up like scared rabbits in Krakinava, how safe were they? Just the day before yesterday, he had seen two soldiers walking slowly along the dirt street, looking curiously at the yeshiva's house . . . and then scarcely five minutes later, walking slowly back, again staring at the building as if sizing up its dimensions and, worse, its inhabitants. It was nothing, Yankel had reassured himself at the time; soldiers have a right to keep their eyes open. But the incident had not slipped from his mind, it had cut into his heart like a cold knife. Asking the Russians for permission to leave would be a gamble, but a person would have to be a fool to think the yeshiva was safe here.

  Suddenly aware that the rattle of voices from the next room had ceased, he turned and saw Lev Levy leaning against the door jamb watching him. Levy didn't like him, Yankel had long since decided. Alone among the other students, Levy seemed able to see the sharpness that lay behind the screen of piety and studious diligence which Yankel kept drawn down over his eyes. Still, Levy needed allies in his effort to get the yeshiva to move to safety.

  "Bari, she-ma," Yankel said quietly, Talmudic shorthand for "the definite versus the doubtful." "If we stay, we are doomed. If we apply to the NKVD, we may be able to get out."

  Yankel had been correct: Levy did not like him, but the older boy did need him.

  "Did you happen to see the two soldiers walk past the house day before yesterday?" Levy asked, already knowing the answer.

  Yankel nodded.

  "Then perhaps you might mention it to Rabbi Finkel," Levy suggested. "You're not the only one here who couldn't make it on his own."

  Yankel turned his face back toward the window. "I'll do that," he said briefly. He did not appreciate having someone read his mind.

  Avram Chesno settled familiarly, if not comfortably, into one of the straight-back bentwood chairs in the Strashun Library. It was snowing outside, and in the places where the holes in his boots overlapped with the holes in his socks his feet were freezing. He could not protect his body from this December cold, but within its shivering shell, Chesno was in better psychological shape than at any time since his wife's death.

  Three months ago, while he and Orliansky were sitting around in the Club discussing nothing of importance, Orliansky's ten-year-old son, Mischa, had sat with them for a few minutes. For the few children refugees, life had many of the qualities of a vacation - the most important being that there was no school. Mischa spent hours exploring the broad streets and narrow cobblestone lanes of Vilna, standing on the bridge watching the boats pass underneath, investigating the nooks and crannies of Vilna's magnificent Great Synagogue. On this particular day, he had visited one of the relief agency headquarters where a handful of children's books, in Hebrew, had just been received. Mischa had borrowed one but, being off on some extremely important mission and not wanting to carry it around, had decided to drop it off with Papa.

  As father chatted with son, Avram absently paged through the book - long since beyond embarrassment that an intelligent adult should have nothing better to do than look at pictures in a children's book, a book whose language he had completely forgotten. But as he slowly turned over the pages, his eyes began to catch first on letters, then on the words which flashed back into his consciousness after the twenty-nine years of hibernation since his bar mitzvah. By dinner time, with the amused assistance of Orliansky - and the aid of the pictures - Avram had read the entire book. He was tremendously proud of himself! The next morning he went to the relief agency to borrow another book (making sure the woman there thought it was for Mischa). By the third day, he was beginning to build a vocabulary, and for the first time since Ruth's death, he had something to look forward to when he woke up in the morning.

  Now, nearly three months later, he was able to read, more or less, the occasional Hebrew newspaper from Palestine that made its way up to Vilna. More important, this new activity had sparked his psyche into a new mode of thinking. Bleak and problematic as it might be, there would be a future. Since he had already rejected suicide and was in reasonably good health, he would have to cope with alternatives. Staying in Vilna meant remaining a charity case indefinitely or finding work. The first was too unpalatable and the second, over the long haul, probably impossible. But
even in the unlikely event that he did find a job, staying meant yoking his energy and future to the Soviet system . . . which he had seen more than enough of in Bialystok.

  There was, of course, an alternative to staying - but it lay behind dreary brown cement walls, through a maze of dimly lit corridors, in a bare room furnished only with one desk, two hard chairs and the cold expressionless eyes of an NKVD officer. Avram was a sophisticated man, well-educated, accustomed to being in authority and dealing with authority. But the thought of confronting the NKVD made his blood as cold as the December wind made his feet. Just contemplating it, sitting there in the library reading room, he shook his head in resignation. For the moment, there was Hebrew and the story of Noah which he had set himself the task of deciphering by lunch time. A dictionary on his lap, Avram placed the Bible to catch the maximum window light on the tiny letters and settled down to work.

  The Strashun Library was more than a free and public collection of religious books. Forming one side of the courtyard, facing the Great Synagogue and the site of the former residence of the illustrious eighteenth-century Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, the eminent Gaon, the library was the headquarters of most of the community's religious and secular activities. Avram often spent three or four hours there, reading, studying or simply observing the flow of informal meetings and group discussions going on around him.