The same instinctive fear never left the people in the ghetto for almost two years. Compared to the time that followed, these were years of relative calm, but they changed our lives into an endless nightmare, since we felt with our entire being that something dreadful would happen at any moment – we were just not sure yet what danger threatened, and where it would come from.
In the morning I usually went out straight after breakfast. My daily ritual included a long walk along Miła Street to a dark, obscure den where the family of the caretaker Jehuda Zyskind lived. Under ghetto conditions, leaving the house, a perfectly normal activity, took on the character of a ceremony, particularly during the street hunts. First you had to visit neighbours, listen to their troubles and complaints, and thus find out what was going on in the city today: were there raids, had they heard of any blockades, was Chłodna Street guarded? When you had done that you left the building, but you had to repeat your questions in the street, stopping passers-by coming towards you and then asking again at every street corner. Only such precautions could ensure, with relative certainty, that you would not be picked up.
The ghetto was divided into a large ghetto and a small ghetto. After further reduction in size the small ghetto, consisting of Wielka, Sienna, Żelazna and Chłodna Streets, had only one link with the large ghetto, from the corner of Żelazna Street and over Chłodna Street. The large ghetto comprised the whole northern part of Warsaw, containing a great many narrow, evil-smelling streets and alleys and crammed with Jews living in poverty in dirty, cramped conditions. The small ghetto was crowded too, but not unreasonably so. Three or four people lived to a room, and you could walk down the streets without bumping into other pedestrians if you tacked and manoeuvred skilfully. Even if you did come into physical contact it was not too dangerous, since the people living in the small ghetto were mainly from the intelligentsia and the prosperous middle class; they were relatively free of vermin, and did their best to exterminate the vermin everyone picked up in the large ghetto. It was only when you had left Chłodna Street that the nightmare began – and you needed luck and a feeling for the right moment to get to that point in the first place.
Chłodna Street was in the ‘Aryan’ quarter of the city, and there was much coming and going of cars, trams and pedestrians. Allowing the Jewish population along Żelazna Street from the small to the large ghetto, and the other way around, meant the traffic had to be stopped as people crossed Chłodna Street. This was inconvenient for the Germans, so Jews were allowed to go through as seldom as possible.
If you walked down Żelazna Street, you could see a crowd of people on the corner of Chłodna Street at quite a distance. Those with urgent business were treading nervously from foot to foot on the spot, waiting for the policemen to be kind enough to stop the traffic. It was up to them to decide whether Chłodna Street was empty enough and Żelazna Street crammed enough to let the Jews over. When that moment came the guards moved apart, and an impatient, close-packed crowd of people surged towards each other from both sides, colliding, flinging one another to the ground, treading other people underfoot to get away from the dangerous vicinity of the Germans as quickly as possible and back inside the two ghettos. Then the chain of guards closed again, and the waiting began once more.
As the crowd grew so did its agitation, nervousness and restlessness, for the German guards were bored at their posts here, and tried to amuse themselves as best they could. One of their favourite entertainments was dancing. Musicians were fetched from the nearby side streets – the number of street bands grew with the general misery. The soldiers chose people out of the waiting crowd whose appearance they thought particularly comic and ordered them to dance waltzes. The musicians took up a position by the wall of a building, space was cleared in the road, and one of the policemen acted as conductor by hitting the musicians if they played too slowly. Others supervised the conscientious performance of the dances. Couples of cripples, old people, the very fat or the very thin had to whirl about in circles before the eyes of the horrified crowd. Short people or children were made to partner the strikingly tall. The Germans stood around this ‘dance floor’, roaring with laughter and shouting, ‘Faster! Go on, faster! Everybody dance!’
If the choice of couples was particularly successful and amusing the dancing went on longer. The crossing opened, closed and opened again, but the unfortunate dancers had to go on skipping about in waltz-time – panting, weeping with exhaustion, struggling to keep going, in the vain hope of mercy.
Only once I was safely across Chłodna Street did I see the ghetto as it really was. Its people had no capital, no secret valuables; they earned their bread by trading. The further you went into the labyrinth of narrow alleys, the livelier and more urgent the trade was. Women with children clinging to their skirts would accost passers-by, offering a few cakes for sale on a piece of cardboard. They represented the entire fortune of such women, and whether their children had a small piece of black bread to eat that evening depended on their sale. Old Jews, emaciated beyond recognition, tried to draw your attention to some sort of rags from which they hoped to make money. Young men traded in gold and notes, fighting bitter and rancorous battles over battered watch-cases, the ends of chains, or worn and dirty dollar bills that they held up to the light, announcing that they were flawed and worth almost nothing, although the sellers insisted passionately that they were ‘almost like new’.
The horse-drawn trams known as konhellerki made their way through the crowded streets with a clattering and ringing of bells, the horses and shafts dividing the crowd of human bodies as a boat makes its way through the water. The nickname came from the tram proprietors Kon and Heller, two Jewish magnates who were in the service of the Gestapo and did a flourishing trade through it. The fares were quite high, so only the prosperous took these trams, coming into the centre of the ghetto solely on business. When they got out at the tram stops they tried to be as quick as possible in making their way through the streets to the shop or office where they had an appointment, taking another tram immediately afterwards so as to leave this terrible quarter at speed.
Merely getting from the tram stop to the nearest shop was not easy. Dozens of beggars lay in wait for this brief moment of encounter with a prosperous citizen, mobbing him by pulling at his clothes, barring his way, begging, weeping, shouting, threatening. But it was foolish for anyone to feel sympathy and give a beggar something, for then the shouting would rise to a howl. That signal would bring more and more wretched figures streaming up from all sides, and the good Samaritan would find himself besieged, hemmed in by ragged apparitions spraying him with tubercular saliva, by children covered with oozing sores who were pushed into his path, by gesticulating stumps of arms, blinded eyes, toothless, stinking open mouths, all begging for mercy at this, the last moment of their lives, as if their end could be delayed only by instant support.
To get to the centre of the ghetto you had to go down Karmelicka Street, the only way there. It was downright impossible not to brush against other people in the street here. The dense crowd of humanity was not walking but pushing and shoving its way forward, forming whirlpools in front of stalls and bays outside doorways. A chilly odour of decay was given off by unaired bedclothes, old grease and rubbish rotting in the streets. At the slightest provocation the crowd would become panic-stricken, rushing from one side of the street to the other, choking, pressing close, shouting and cursing. Karmelicka Street was a particularly dangerous place: prison cars drove down it several times a day. They were taking prisoners, invisible behind grey steel sides and small opaque glass windows, from the Pawiak gaol to the Gestapo centre in Szuch Alley, and on the return journey they brought back what remained of them after their interrogation: bloody scraps of humanity with broken bones and beaten kidneys, their fingernails torn out. The escort of these cars allowed no one near them, although the cars themselves were armoured. When they turned into Karmelicka Street, which was so crowded that with the best will in the world people co
uld not take refuge in doorways, the Gestapo men would lean out and beat the crowd indiscriminately with truncheons. This would not have been especially dangerous had they been ordinary rubber truncheons, but those used by the Gestapo men were studded with nails and razor blades.
Jehuda Zyskind lived on Miła Street, not far from Carmelita Street. He looked after his building and when necessary acted as carrier, driver, trader and smuggler of goods over the ghetto wall. With his shrewd mind and the physical strength of his huge frame, he earned money wherever he could to feed his family. It was such a large family that I could not even guess its full extent. Apart from these everyday occupations, however, Zyskind was an idealistic socialist. He kept in touch with the socialist organization, smuggled secret press reports into the ghetto and tried to form cells there, although he found this last hard going. He treated me with kindly contempt, which he thought the proper approach to artists, people who were no use as conspirators. All the same, he liked me, and allowed me to call every morning and read the secret announcements that had come by radio, fresh off the press. When I think of him today, over the years of horror which divide me from the time when he was still alive and could spread his message, I admire his unyielding will. Jehuda was a determined optimist. However bad the radio news, he could always put a good interpretation on it. Once, when I had been reading the latest news, I brought my hand down in desperation on the rag of newsprint and sighed, ‘Well, you have to admit it’s all over now.’ Jehuda smiled, reached for a cigarette, made himself comfortable in his chair and replied, ‘Oh, but you don’t understand, Mr Szpilman!’ Whereupon he launched into one of his political lectures. Much of what he said I understood even less, but he had a way of talking and such an infectious belief that everything really was for the best in this best of all possible worlds that I would find I had gone over to his way of thinking, I had no idea how and when. I always came away from him feeling fortified and comforted. Not until I was home, lying in bed and going over the political news once more, did I conclude that his arguments were nonsense. But next morning I would visit him once again, and he would manage to persuade me I was wrong, and I left with an injection of optimism that lasted until evening and kept me going. Jehuda lasted until the winter of 1942, when he was caught in flagrante, with piles of secret material on the table while he, his wife and children sorted them. They were all shot there and then, even little Symche, aged three.
It was difficult for me to retain any hope once Zyskind had been murdered, and I had no one to explain everything properly to me! Only now do I know that I was wrong, and so were news reports of the day, while Zyskind was right. Unlikely as it seemed at the time, everything turned out as he had predicted.
I always went the same way home: Karmelicka Street, Leszno Street, Żelazna Street. On the way I would look in briefly to see friends and deliver, by word of mouth, the news I had gleaned from Zyskind. Then I went down Nowolipki Street to help Henryk carry his basket of books home.
Henryk’s life was a hard one. He had chosen it himself and had no intention of changing it, believing that it would be contemptible to live in any other way. Friends who valued his cultural qualities advised him to join the Jewish police, as most young men from the intelligentsia did; you could be safe there, and if you were resourceful you could earn quite well. Henryk would have nothing to do with this idea. He became quite angry, and took it as an insult. Adopting his usual strictly upright attitude, he said he was not going to work with bandits. Our friends’ feelings were hurt, but Henryk began going to Nowolipki Street every morning with a basket full of books. He traded with them, standing there dripping with sweat in summer and shivering in the winter frosts, inflexible, obstinately true to his own ideas: if, as an intellectual, he could have no other contact with books then at least he would have this, and he would not sink any lower.
When Henryk and I got home with his basket the others were usually there, just waiting for us to begin the midday meal. Mother was particularly insistent on our eating together: this was her domain, and in her own way she was trying to give us something to cling to. She made sure the table was prettily laid and the tablecloth and napkins clean. She powdered her face lightly before we sat down, tidied her hair and glanced in the mirror to see if she looked elegant. She smoothed her dress down with nervous gestures, but she could not smooth away the little wrinkles round her eyes – they were more and more obvious as the months went by – or keep the sprinkling of grey in her hair from beginning to turn white.
When we were seated at the table she brought soup in from the kitchen, and as she ladled it out she would set the conversation going. She tried to make sure no one mentioned unpleasant subjects, but if one of us did commit such a social faux pas she interrupted gently.
‘It will all pass over, you wait and see,’ she would say, changing the subject at once.
Father was not inclined to brood, and was more likely to try overwhelming us with good news instead. Supposing there had been a race raid and a dozen men had been freed later in return for bribes, he would claim, beaming, to have it on the best of authority that all men either over or under forty, either with or without an education, had been freed for one reason or another – however it might be, this was always supposed to be very encouraging. If there was no denying that the news from the city was bad, he sat down to table looking depressed, but the soup soon restored his spirits. During the second course, which usually consisted of vegetables, he cheered up and launched into carefree conversation.
Henryk and Regina were usually both deep in thought. Regina would be preparing mentally for the work she did in a lawyer’s office in the afternoons. She earned tiny sums, but worked with as much probity as if she were being paid thousands. If Henryk shook off his gloomy thoughts it was only to start an argument with me. He would stare at me for a while in astonishment, then shrug his shoulders and growl, finally venting his feelings, ‘Really, only a born fool would wear ties like Władek’s!’
‘Fool yourself! Idiot too!’ I would reply, and our quarrel was in full swing. He did not appreciate the fact that I had to be well dressed when I played the piano in public. He didn’t really want to understand me and my affairs. Now that he has been dead so long I know we loved each other in our own way, in spite of everything, although we were always getting on each other’s nerves, probably because we were very similar characters at heart.
I understood Halina least. She was the only one who did not seem like a member of our family. She was reserved and never showed her thoughts and feelings, or told us what she did when she left the house. She would come home as impassive and indifferent as ever. Day after day she simply sat at the dining table without showing the slightest interest in what might happen. I can’t say what she was really like, and now I can never find out any more about her.
Our midday meal was very simple. We almost never had meat, and Mother made the other dishes very economically. All the same, they were lavish compared to what most people in the ghetto had on their plates.
In winter, on a damp December day when the snow had turned to slush underfoot and a keen wind blew down the streets, I happened to see an old ‘grabber’ eating his own midday meal. In the ghetto, ‘grabber’ was our name for someone sunk in such dire poverty that he had to steal to keep alive. Such people would rush at a passer-by carrying a package, snatch it and run off, hoping to find something edible inside.
I was crossing Bank Square; a few steps ahead of me a poor woman was carrying a can wrapped in newspaper, and between me and the woman a ragged old man was dragging himself along. His shoulders bowed, he was shivering with cold as he made his way through the slush, in shoes with holes in them that showed his purple feet. Suddenly the old man lunged forward, seized the can and tried to tear it away from the woman. I don’t know whether he wasn’t strong enough, or whether she clung to the can too firmly, but in any case, instead of ending up in his hands the can fell on the pavement, and thick, steaming soup poured out into the dirty
street.
All three of us stood rooted to the spot. The woman was speechless with horror. The grabber stared at the can, then at the woman, and let out a groan that sounded like a whimper. Then, suddenly, he threw himself down full length in the slush, lapping the soup straight from the pavement, cupping his hands round it on both sides so that none of it would escape him, and ignoring the woman’s reaction as she kicked at his head, howling, and tore at her hair in despair.
7 ∼ A Fine Gesture by Mrs K
In the early spring of 1942 human-hunting in the ghetto, previously a systematically conducted pursuit, suddenly stopped. If it had happened two years earlier people would have been relieved, seeing it as a reason for rejoicing; they would have cherished the illusion that this was a change for the better. But now, after two and a half years living at close quarters with the Germans, no one could be deluded. If they had stopped the hunts it was only because they had thought up another and better idea for tormenting us. The question was, what sort of idea? People engaged in the most fantastic suppositions, and instead of feeling calmer they were twice as anxious as before.
At least we could sleep easy at home for the time being, and Henryk and I did not have to camp out all night in the doctors’ surgery at the slightest alarm. It was very uncomfortable there. Henryk slept on the operating table, I slept in the gynaecological chair, and when I woke in the morning my eyes would see the X-ray pictures hung up above my head to dry, showing diseased hearts, tubercular lungs, gall bladders full of stones, broken bones. However, our doctor friend, who was head of this partnership, had been right in saying that even during the most ferocious nocturnal raid it would never enter the heads of the Gestapo to search the surgery, so it was the only place where we could sleep safely.
The Pianist Page 6