Journeys with My Mother

by Halina Rubin

  —George Bernard Shaw

  If the first achievement of my father’s juvenile years was to organise a strike in his father’s workshop, it’s not surprising that soon, and with equal determination, he wanted no less than to right the wrongs of the world.

  The revolution of 1906, the year of my father’s birth, began in Russia before spreading to the Congress of Poland. Workers demanded regular work and decent wages. They marched and sang, red flags flying high. Later Władek would learn all these anthems; they described barricades and bitter tears, sacrifice and breaking the shackles of despotism. The chants, and the issues, were not new; they would endure for many decades. Poetically speaking, my father was born under the star of revolution.

  The end of the First World War in 1918 brought liberation from three empires and the resurrection of an independent Poland. There was a renewed desire to free the country from industrial neglect and backwardness. My father remembered the elation heralded by the new constitution, which promised equal rights and cultural autonomy to all minorities in Poland. From then onwards, the Jews, too, were Polish citizens.

  He could also remember another Polish-Bolshevik war and the wave of terror that swept the country for the next few years. Jews, accused of disloyalty, were murdered and their properties destroyed. Neither emancipation nor assimilation, so eagerly embraced in previous years, brought comfort to Jewish communities. They remained as before – an unwelcome, mistrusted and despised minority.

  Zionism, the first aspirations for Jewish nationhood, was emerging as the next best thing. Though it held a different meaning for various groups, just about every Jew was a Zionist back then.

  My paternal great-grandfather, Izaak Leib, lived with his family in Gęsia Street, Warsaw. He had a workshop there which produced waterproof gabardine coats. The factory was profitable enough to support his large family of daughters and sons. Yet, out of thirteen children, only seven lived past their childhood.

  Złata, his wife, my great-grandmother, is best remembered for her choleric character and despotic nature. Her arthritic knees made her immobile; she ruled the family from her bed. All things considered, I won’t judge her too harshly. She was already an old woman when one of the early German bombardments made her blind.

  In the spring of 1943, in response to the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, the SS, acting on Himmler’s orders, combed through the ghetto, driving out the last inhabitants, the last fighters, with tanks, artillery and flamethrowers. Perhaps she could not move, or was too slow to obey orders and remained where she was; whatever the case, my great-grandmother was thrown through the window. Apparently my father was never told and I – because such things are too horrible to utter – have never talked about it. Izaak Leib had died in 1937 of diabetes. In the scheme of things, it was a merciful death.

  Before the war, all my father’s family lived at the same address, even as adults, with their spouses and children. Izaak’s sons worked in his business before branching out on their own.

  Many Jews were leaving Poland in those years. Despite their experiences of anti-Semitism, they still hoped for a peaceful and prosperous life somewhere else. Chil went to Palestine, Salomon to Argentina. Of the sons, only the oldest, Henoch (my grandfather), did not leave. Maybe filial duty kept him in Warsaw; maybe he was an optimist.

  For the first several years of Henoch’s marriage to Luba, my father Władek – affectionately called Wewek – was the only child. Henoch may have hesitated about emigrating, but certainly not about producing more children. Almost every year another one was born, and sometimes died. Eventually, there were eight, possibly nine, children. No wonder Babcia Luba seemed resigned.

  Henoch, like his father, was a tailor, but with so many children to feed and clothe, he struggled. Before visiting someone, Luba fed her offspring, telling them not to pounce on food like wild beasts.

  I have no difficulty imagining my father as a boy. He was energetic, mischievous, inventive and very good at making up stories. He remained like this for the rest of his life. Evidently, his exploits proved too much for his father. Henoch’s attempts to curb Władek’s behaviour with beatings failed, causing much bitterness and anger between father and son. Whether my father became defiant in response to Henoch’s authoritarian ways, or it was the other way round, is impossible to know. Henoch was never given a chance to present his side of the story.

  My grandparents were not orthodox, but religious traditions were the weft and warp of their lives. It was inconceivable that one day their oldest son would so willingly, even enthusiastically, leave it all behind.

  He did it in a spectacular way. Months before his sixteenth birthday, he ran away from home. He was escaping the job he abhorred and his father’s wrath. The idea of going to Palestine merged seamlessly with his vision of the future. Unwittingly, Henoch had forced Władek out of home.

  A great number of Jewish youth were eager to go to Palestine – and just as many parents were against it. Henoch and Luba most certainly would have opposed my father’s impulse, had they known about the plan. It was one thing to be in favour of the Zionists’ state and quite another to let your own, still very young, son go there. So Władek left home, without parental blessings, with no money. The fact that Palestine was so far from Warsaw, the journey fraught with difficulties, only spurred him on.

  With his friend Chaim, a skinny boy his age, Władek boarded the train going south. Urban Warsaw was displaced by villas and pine woods, dusty shacks with their little gardens; when the outskirts of the city gave way to open fields and, later, when the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains appeared on the horizon, the consequences of their decision came into sharper focus. Especially when, after hours of dodging roving conductors – thus avoiding having their ears boxed and being sent on the first train back to Warsaw – it all became too much for Chaim and he got off the train at the Romanian border, leaving Władek to his own devices.

  My father eventually arrived at the Rumanian port city of Constanţa, tired but pleased with himself. He found the pier teeming with people, everybody pushing and shoving. Caught up in the melée, he attached himself to a couple and boarded the boat as one of their many children. Worn out and uncomfortable, he tried to cope with the nausea. They sailed past the coast of Turkey. The places known to him from maps, and which he’d dreamed about, materialised before his eyes. If only his family and Chaim could see him now: a boy from Gęsia Street looking at the wonders of the world!

  If he’d had any doubts or fears, they were outshone by his sense of achievement. His tenacity had already paid off. Even years later, when telling his children about his adventures, he was pleased with his guile.

  Back then Jaffa, small and busy, was the only seaport available to steamers entering Palestine. Underwater rocks prevented docking so ships had to anchor some distance away. Local boats came and went, ferrying passengers to shore. I imagine the newcomers as pilgrims, their dullcoloured clothes set against the blue of the Mediterranean sea and sky, their mood wavering between uncertainty and anticipation. To the European eye, Jaffa was just a dusty warren of decrepit houses dotted with minarets. But Władek was captivated. Arriving in Palestine in 1922, he was amongst the third wave of migration to the Holy Land – the longed-for land of milk and honey.

  The quay was filled with a tightly packed crowd and the newcomers believed these people were there to make them welcome. They could not have been more wrong. Instead, the multitude was waiting for the boat to take them away – perhaps back home, perhaps somewhere else altogether. Life in the Promised Land was hard. It called for endurance and determination. There were years when almost as many people left as arrived.

  The land without a people for a people without a land, claimed the Zionists. So it came as a surprise to the many early settlers that the land was not, in fact, empty. Someone complained in a letter home: But there are Arabs here, I didn’t know!

  The chalutzim (pioneers) who set the agenda for this new society were secular, urba
n, educated and socialist. The future Palestine was to be a place like no other, and its people everything the Jews of the old country were not. Like their European clothes, their names were at odds with the landscape. Far away from their parents, it was easy to cast off these names – the names which, after deliberations and blessings, amid tears of joy, had been given to them at birth. In Palestine, all of this receded into the distant past, replaced by Hebrew names of biblical meaning: bold and earthy, signifying strength and courage, aspiration. What emerged was a new person. There was a whiff of baptism about it.

  My father found that his birth name, Ze’ev, which means wolf in Hebrew, very apt. To make his transformation complete, he replaced his Slavic-sounding surname with the Hebrew Edari. Until recently, I had never given a thought to the meaning of the word edari. It means flock, which makes the juxtaposition of the two words – wolf and flock – quite baffling. A wolf to his flock, with a difference? I wonder. An ideal of coexistence, a love of paradox, an expression of ambiguity?

  Away from old Europe, anything was possible. The newcomers were not weighed down by the taint of Jewishness, by centuries-old traditions, parental control, even class divisions. All this could be pushed into the past. For the first – and possibly the only – time in their lives, they felt truly free. Everything seemed attainable, if only they worked hard enough.

  The pioneers did not come to Palestine to conquer or to make money. They went where their labour was needed, doing what was asked of them to build the Jewish state, sharing work, food and free time. Ze’ev constructed houses, broke stones in the quarry, picked oranges and – his favourite occupation – herded flocks of sheep in the hills of the Galilee. It was a life on the move, of living in tents and makeshift shelters under the ferocious Middle Eastern sun.

  The few clothes Ze’ev brought with him from Warsaw did not protect him from the summer heat or cold nights. Living conditions were primitive, food provisions scarce and the diet monotonous. Many illnesses made the rounds: colds, dysentery, skin problems. Malaria was the worst. My father contracted it and it kept him company for many years. For all that, he took pride in his ability to endure.

  The early settlers viewed the sparse population of Arabs as part of the landscape, an irritating obstacle which, they were certain, could be overcome peacefully through legal means, by buying the land and wishing the Arabs would move their tents a bit further away to make room for those who didn’t have anywhere else to go. The Arab presence was not perceived as a serious threat. What the settlers feared most was losing the land to a bigger power. Much effort was put into making the Jewish presence permanent.

  At the beginning, the Arabs were not unduly disturbed by the arrival of the small number of Jewish settlers, convinced that they could neither farm nor fight well enough to threaten their existence. But by the time Ze’ev made his way to Palestine, the Arabs had realised what was at stake and their initial protests turned to indiscriminate violence.

  Despite his dedication to Zionism, Ze’ev belonged to the minority of people who tried to see the new situation from the Arabs’ point of view. Humiliation was something he understood well, as much as he did frustration and anger. Working alongside the Bedouins, he learned some Arabic and kept practising it. Curious about their culture and traditions, he was pleased to receive an invitation to visit their camp. He sat cross-legged among them in their tents, sharing their food, communicating in gestures, putting his trust in their well-known hospitality which rules out killing a guest. And as it turned out, his so-called enemies were dignified and generous hosts. Even if Ze’ev’s understanding of Arabic issues did not go beyond the obvious, he could not accept the treatment of Arabs as inferior people. As always, he wanted to change things.

  He joined the Red Faction, which supported the newly formed Palestine Communist Party. The party’s platform opposed British imperialism as much as it did the Jewish bourgeoisie. It went as far as agitating against the arrival of new settlers, encouraging fellow Arabs to join in the protests. But no matter how much energy he and his few comrades put into organising the unions of communist youth, the Red Faction’s ideas remained abhorrent to the majority. Jewish settlers were determined to extend their influence while the Arabs had their own solutions in mind. In two years the unions recruited eight Arab members. The party remained small. Ze’ev’s dream of a perfect realm of equality was rapidly receding.

  My father’s dilemmas were settled for him sooner than he might have thought. The British imperialists didn’t think much of the Zionist settlers and even less so of the communists and their program to improve the world. Ze’ev and his comrades found themselves on the ‘wanted’ list and if he wished to avoid jail, he had to make a hasty retreat, which he did.

  The six years spent building Jewish Palestine moulded Ze’ev’s character and his views. He was no longer an adolescent, instinctively feeling his way around. In 1926, at the age of twenty-two, he saw the answers to the Jewish question in internationalism. He was probably looking forward to his next political engagement. On leaving Palestine, Ze’ev also left behind the ideals of Zionism.

  Back in Warsaw, Henoch – who paid for the ticket home – embraced his undutiful son, and all was forgiven.

  6

  The Thirties

  I have known my father as a man of integrity. Still, I would like to know how he conducted himself when no longer in opposition but as part of a one-party-rule apparatus. How did he use his authority? Above all, I hope not to find among his many documents a statement bearing his signature, countersigned by Mephisto.

  I am not the only one looking into our parental past with trepidation. Many of us who grew up after the war, when the power of the party was total, want to know, if not to understand, what our parents were doing, the choices they made. Many years later, we still carry the burden of their past.

  Aware of my preoccupation, a friend tells me that it is possible to access the files of ex-army personnel. He drives me to the Central Military Archives. It is another hot day and the military precinct is on the outskirts of Warsaw.

  Here, everything runs with military precision, which I find intimidating. Then again, I feel like that at any odd institution. More than anything, I am filled with anticipation.

  But, first things first: my identity has to be checked and my passport surrendered. I have applied to see the file of Władaysław Bąk. Since his return from Palestine, he is no longer Ze’ev, and no longer Edari.

  After a short wait, I take my place at the table. The room is light and airy and only the sounds of shuffling papers break the silence. When I untie the knot of my father’s file, my hands tremble a little. Then I look through the densely typed pages, conscious of crossing the boundary into the privacy of another person, even if it is my father. It is uncanny to see his handwriting here, to read his CV, see his photograph. At the age of forty, he still looks young and handsome.

  Only later, once back home in Melbourne, do I closely examine the mass of certificates, appraisals and recommendations that span many years of his life. I also find the questionnaires he had to fill in, the army postings, his public and private life. There is no limit to what the army needed to know. Someone – no date or signature – casually wrote across one page in pencil: ‘What about the second wife?’ Strangely enough, I find this amusing; it is the least of my concerns. At any rate, I do not take it seriously.

  What I find, amongst other things, is the cause of his transfer to reserves: the first nail in his coffin. ‘He is energetic and talented’, writes someone in a superior position; ‘his military expertise is of a high standard. Morally above reproach, well respected by those under his command’.

  So far, I muse, the paragon of perfection.

  ‘In his arrogance, however, he does not always follow the orders issued by his superiors – or he does so reluctantly. He questions and often comments on their merits. He is hard and stubborn, a difficult person to convince.’ If this is correct, he was certainly playing with fire.
This is typical of him, I think, with the pleasure of recognition, forgetting how nerve-racking it would have been to manoeuvre between his views and the demands of his positions.

  What I remember, without the help of archives, is that his eventual dismissal from military service nearly killed him. He suffered his first heart attack, made worse by anxiety and lack of sleep. The records also confirm what I already know about his ‘stubbornness’, which stopped him from incriminating two of his colleagues, thereby saving them from jail.

  It wasn’t long before my capable, energetic father turned into an old man and for the first time I thought of his mortality.

  Two years before his return from Palestine, there was a military coup in Poland. The new regime was led by a socialist, Marshal Józef Piłsudski. His vision of a strong, independent, multi-ethnic Poland gained him enormous popularity. Even the communists supported him, not least because of his attempts to immobilise the extreme right. For a while, the parliament and other democratic structures functioned as before, yet, imperceptibly, the authority of the parliament was undermined. Before long, the country was governed by decree.

  Jews were barred from civic areas. During a time of global unemployment, who would employ a Jew in a post office, railway or factory? Yet their success in banking, law, medicine and publishing was visible and deeply resented.

  After years of partition, Poles desperately wanted an independent Poland while Jews, with their long history of harassment, sought to be treated as equals. Theirs was an existential anxiety. Divided by aspirations, religion and prejudice, the two groups kept apart. Jews continued to live in their own world.

  Poverty, even before the Depression, set in. Endecja, the National Democratic Party of the extreme right, emboldened by events across the border in Nazi Germany, claimed that Jewish rapacity was to blame for the economic downturn. The desire to rid Poland of Jews gained strength. Endecja called for a boycott of Jewish trade and commerce: buy ours from ours.