9 June ’42
Papà has been found dead with his chest ripped open by bayonet thrusts. A woman working at same textile factory as Mamma found him, thrown down near the wall of the ghetto. Mutti tried to drag him away to bury him, but two guards came at once with rifles cocked and sent her back to work. We recited the Kaddish at home at night in memory of him. Two neighbours joined us, Kasimir and Maximilian, boys who have lost their father and mother and work with me at the carpentry shop. They are from Vienna too. They brought some barley coffee, a great luxury these days, and we sat on the floor to talk. Max is extremely well informed. It seems he is friends with a young SS girl who supervises the ghetto hospital. Every now and then she gives him something to eat in exchange for a little sex. That’s what his brother says but there may be a touch of malice in it because they always go out together but Kasimir comes home with empty hands, while Max always has something in his pocket: half an apple, a slice of bread, a potato. Max says they are emptying the hospital. They have already taken away the old and ill and no one knows where to. Certainly not to work, so it must be to the cemetery. But now it seems they want to take away the children too. But to send them where?
Łódź. 11 July ’42
It’s my birthday today, Amara. But I’m so tired I can hardly write. Even so I will write, so long as there’s anything left of my pencil. Because I want what’s happening in this place to be known. Max, who is so well nourished that I think Kasimir must be right to say Max is ready to sell himself for a bowl of soup, has told me the Nazis are winning on all fronts. He doesn’t seem desperate when he says it; he has a mocking smile I don’t like. He says Sebastopol has fallen and the Führer’s armies have reached the Don district. He says that in the Chełmno and Auschwitz camps children are being shut in gas chambers and, once dead, are burned in cremation ovens. But who tells you all these horrible things? objects Mamma who as always wants to look on the bright side. She doesn’t believe the rumours but thinks they are poison spread by the SS to terrorise the Jews. Shut your nasty mouth, Max, she says angrily, but Max just looks her up and down with a cold, ironic stare that brings shudders to the spine.
Łódź. 5 September ’42
Today I went out of the carpentry shop to get some planks and stayed sitting in the sun for a few minutes. The last warmth on my back before a winter of cold. The ‘Black Man’, as we call the foreman, came and beat me up. I dragged myself home where I found my mother furious. Read this, she said, just read it; though I could hardly stand. She disinfected the cuts and bruises on my back with a little lukewarm water and soap. Read it! she repeated. An announcement from Rumkowski that had been hung up in her factory, among other places. I’ll copy it here because I believe everyone should know it in its true atrocity. ‘A terrible blow has struck the ghetto. We are being asked to give up our most precious possession – our old people and children. I have been judged unworthy of having a child of my own and thus have dedicated the best years of my life to the children of others. I have lived and breathed with the little ones and I could never have imagined I would be forced to sacrifice them at the altar with my own hands. But in my old age I have to reach out my hand and implore you: Brothers and sisters! Pass them to me! Fathers and mothers! Give me your children!’ My mother says she will go and spit in his face. I begged her to calm down. Max sniggered when I got him to read the announcement. Don’t you realise this will save us, you and me and other young people strong enough to work? The children, poor things, are too little to understand and serve no purpose. As for the old, they haven’t much time left anyway. You should thank our leader instead of criticising him, you’re as stupid as my brother Kasimir.
15 September ’42
The ghetto has entrusted its children and old people to the loving hands of our leader Rumkowski: may they depart in peace.
20 October ’42
Only four potatoes left. I’m still spitting blood. A neighbour of seventy died of hunger last night. My legs are swelling up. I’m scared, Amara. Why don’t the allies come? Why don’t they bombard the Łódź ghetto? Why does no one in the world do anything for us?
24 December ’42
The SS choirs and the Christian chapel can be heard celebrating on the other side of the wall. Tonight we’ll go and search for scraps.
25 December ’42
Found some potato peel. And a fish’s head. Also a piece of dessert but so mixed with soil it was impossible to put it in my mouth. Max made me a present of a segment of orange. Who knows where it came from! Perhaps the officers’ mess.
31 December ’42
They’ve distributed an extra ration of bread to everybody and a spoonful of jam. Mamma gave her portion to me. She said she never liked jam! In return she told me that the women workers sometimes agree for one of them to distract the foreman while the others damage the machinery so it can’t continue producing uniforms for the army. I told her the sentence for sabotage is shooting or hanging. She shrugged her shoulders.
7 January ’43
Twenty below zero. Can’t write anything. My mule-headed mother is coping better than me. I’m dying, Amara, I can’t go on.
20 January ’43
With a mouthful of blood stained on my shirt, my mother took me to Wesola Street, all that’s left of the ghetto hospital. I’ve started a cure. The Jewish doctors are kind. They get a little more to eat than us. But there aren’t many of them and they work all night. Am I going to get better, doctor? I asked. Of course – as soon as the war is over, he answered with a smile.
25 April ’43
Max says all hell has been let loose in the Warsaw ghetto. With the help of the Polish Resistance, the men hid arms they had bought at an exorbitant price. On the agreed day they pulled out these ancient revolvers and hunting rifles and started firing at their Nazi jailers. But how did it finish, Max? Well, how would you expect? With the victory of the forces of law and order. What law? The existing law, that’s the only one. The law of the SS? Jawohl! You’re a pig! I just see what the rest of you don’t see. You’ll all die. But I shall save myself. I have been promised that by Willy, who knows a thing or two. Hitler’s going to win, Willy will become a general and I shall enter Berlin with him in an open car under a torrent of flowers. You believe that swine? In any case you haven’t long to live, in the state you’ve been reduced to, poor Emanuele! Damn you, Max, I don’t want to talk to you any more, you’re a beast! But he just laughs; the rest of us get thinner but he puts on weight.
28 April ’43
Mamma arrested. I went to look for her in Czarnieckiego Street, in the ghetto prisons. They told me there was no Thelma Fink or Thelma Orenstein there. But I caught a glimpse of her behind a door that opened and closed rapidly. She was tied up and her face was all swollen from blows. I had to go back to the carpentry shop. Where Max was quick to put me in the picture: your tart of a mother formed a small group of female saboteurs. They put four machines out of action. The work of the factory was halted. Technicians were called in. The defects were discovered. Someone turned spy. She was the leader. She’ll certainly be sent to Auschwitz. And you with her, you can count on it.
30 April ’43
Thelma Fink, once famous variety star, a woman of unquenchable fortitude, owner of a thousand furs, wife of the toy-manufacturer industrialist Karl Orenstein, Florentine by adoption, worker no. 52899 at the textile factory of the Third Reich in the ghetto of Łódź, mother of one Emanuele Orenstein who works there in the carpentry shop, has been hanged in the Basarowa Street marketplace at the end of Lutomierska Street, the place nowadays preferred by Rumkowski for his addresses to the population of the ghetto whom he calls his beloved children.
6 May ’43
I wake to the sound of Mamma’s footsteps as she puts away plates in the kitchen. There’s nothing to eat, Mutti! But she continues regardless. She puts water on to boil. She strikes a match a thousand times but it won’t light and repeatedly turns the knob of the gas ring but it produces no gas. M
amma, please, go to sleep, I’ll see to it. But she won’t speak. She’s mute, diligent, insufferable. Why can’t you leave me in peace, Mutti? I told Rumkowski I’m the daughter of an officer in the Austrian army, and that my father won a medal for military valour, which was pinned to his chest by the emperor in person. Mamma, please stop it, you’re giving me a headache. But she laughs and goes on fussing over the pans. She’s driving me mad. Please let me sleep because tomorrow I must be at the carpenter’s at six. Mamma, you’re dead, can’t you understand that? But she takes no notice and goes on shifting pans and plates.
20 May ’43
Yesterday at dawn they took away all the people in the house next door. Among them Kasimir and Max. I saw them from the window, being dragged onto the lorry with the others, furious. Max was dumbfounded. Who knows what his protector will say!
Now I must get ready because they will certainly come tomorrow for the people in our building. I shall hide this exercise book in the hole in the wall. In the hope, God help me! that the building will not collapse and that someone will find it. The last lot have all been sent to Auschwitz. It seems there isn’t even room for another fly at Chełmno. But at Auschwitz they are building new accommodation. Max said so. Goodbye, Amara. I send you a last kiss. Your Emanuele.
40
At eight in the morning Hans reappears with a loaf of bread under his arm and a bag of dried figs. ‘I’ve also got some instant coffee in my pocket.’ He’s radiant. He says the city has by no means been pacified. The whole country, not only Budapest, is in revolt against the Rákosi government. There has been shooting between the ÁVH and the workers.
‘But best of all, Nagy has been chosen to head the government. And Maléter, the officer who refused to open fire on the insurgents, is now Minister of Defence,’ he adds, putting the bread down on the table. ‘Councils of workers are being formed in all the factories, on the model of the first one at Miskolc. They are working towards a general strike. The Russians seem to have got the point. Probably they don’t want to be seen as jailers by the whole world. Khrushchev is not Stalin.’
Amara fills the small pan with tap water that tastes of chlorine and contains a little rust. She lights the gas which luckily has not been cut off, and puts the water on to heat.
Horvath is still asleep. When he comes into the kitchen in his pyjamas, a blanket round his shoulders, bony white ankles sticking out and his skin a maze of blue veins, the friends receive him with applause. His floating white hair is like a halo and his blue eyes are shining.
Amara pours the coffee into the glasses which she has rinsed with the help of a fragment of soap discovered under the sink. She slices the bread and puts it on the only clean plate in the house.
Horvath claims he isn’t hungry but swallows his slice of bread in huge mouthfuls and scalds his tongue on his boiling-hot coffee. Ferenc, at the smell of the coffee, also appears in his pyjamas. With his violin stuck under his ear he plays them a Paganini Scherzo. Tadeusz watches him, smiling tenderly.
Hans, glass of coffee in hand, goes to switch on the radio.
‘They told me that in one single night any number of new free broadcasters have come onto the air. Who knows if we’ll be able to hear them on this old set!’
He places his powerful hands on the ugly great Orion with its light-coloured wooden sides and oblong glass window lit by mysterious lights. A brown cloth grille stretches between four chipped knobs. The loudspeaker blows, whistles and puffs like an old steam engine. But finally a radiant if agitated voice emerges to tell them: ‘This is Radio Borsod. We announce the dissolution of the local ÁVH and that Soviet troops stationed in the area have not intervened. Factory Councils have been meeting all night to draw up a list of proposals to present to the new Nagy government, including recognition of political parties, free elections and the expulsion of all Soviet troops from the Republic.’
The five gather once more, cold but with their glasses steaming in their hands, round the big Orion. Hans translates quickly and concisely. A happy female voice announces, ‘Gerö and his Stalinist friends have left the country! They are joining Rákosi in exile in the USSR. Let’s hope they don’t ever dare to come back!’ A triumphal march by Verdi follows.
‘All this music!’ shouts Tadeusz. ‘We want to hear how things are going!’
‘Why are you twiddling that knob?’
‘I want to hear better!’
‘You’ll lose the station it took me so much trouble to find!’
‘We’ll find another!’
Tadeusz continues turning the knob. Eventually he finds a third free station. Crowding close, the friends make out a young female voice above the crackling and hissing: ‘Radio Győr-Sopron. The world is watching us, comrades. Everyone’s eyes are on us. Radio France has announced that Hungarian workers are successfully attacking the forces of the communist police. Radio Monaco has broadcast live the voice of comrade Zoltán Frei who was present at the shoot-out in front of parliament in Budapest. He has given evidence that the police fired at a crowd armed with nothing but stones. A rumour is circulating that we are fascists. But we declare with pride that we are socialists. If attacked we shall defend our country and our liberties with weapons … The latest news: in Italy 101 communist intellectuals have signed an appeal for solidarity with the Hungarian revolution. And students in Rome, Milan and Naples are demonstrating in our support. Thank you, Italy!’
Now the five seem more cheerful. They have drunk hot coffee and eaten bread and dried figs, and now they smoke a cigarette with a satisfied air, even if their eyes never leave the radio for a moment. Tadeusz continues manipulating the knob, brilliantly capturing every word that leaps out from unofficial sources. But every now and then they are chilled by the cold and presumptuous voice of the official Radio, recaptured since yesterday, angrily commanding citizens not to leave their homes. ‘From every part of the land telegrams are reaching the Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers’ Party, expressing the indignation of the nations’ workers at the criminal actions of the counter-revolutionaries, and assuring the Party and Government of their determination to defend the socialist order from attack by any enemy.’
‘Twiddle the knob, Tadeusz, no more of that stuff!’
Tadeusz shrugs his shoulders, mortified. ‘We need to hear what the official Radio is saying too!’
But here are strident, excited voices, clearly recorded in the street: ‘Me and my sister Olga left home to go to work. After a few metres, at the corner of the ring road and Rudas László utca, near where the hairdresser’s used to be, we saw a big hole in the middle of the street. We had to go back.’ Suddenly a male voice interrupts: ‘We were lined up in front of the Astoria Hotel, workers and others, and we shouted “Soviets out of Hungary!” and “An end to martial law!” The locally-stationed Soviet tanks didn’t fire on us. We explained to the Russian soldiers that we’re not counter-revolutionaries, we’re independent socialists who want a better socialism … Some of them embraced us. I think they’d had orders not to fire on us, and they left their weapons hanging from their shoulders. We thrust the Hungarian flag into the mouths of the cannons. They invited us on board and took us where we wanted to go. I tell you, my friends, the Russian soldiers are on our side.’
‘It really seems impossible,’ broods Hans, chewing his nails.
‘Well, are we going to make it then?’ says Tadeusz.
Horvath has taken the blanket off his shoulders. Underneath he is fully clothed. He is holding a book in his hand and reading aloud from Pascal: ‘Imagine a great number of men in chains, all condemned to death, with some every day having their throats cut in full view of the others, so that the survivors see their own future in the fate of those like them and, looking at each other in sorrow and without hope, await their turn. That is the human condition.’
‘What on earth are you talking about, Horvath!’
‘Pascal said that, not me!’
‘Who cares a fig about your Pascal, keep him to y
ourself!’ says Tadeusz angrily, twiddling the knob.
‘Is this the time for that sort of stuff?’ says Hans reproachfully.
But Horvath is no way put out. Entirely serious, he opens at random another page of the Pensées: ‘To make sure passion cannot harm us, let us live as if we only had eight days of life left.’
‘Please stop!’
‘If we must make a present of eight days of our lives, we might just as well make a present of a hundred years.’
‘Well said! But that’ll do now. Let’s listen to the voices from the city.’
‘Or from the whole nation.’
Horvath lifts his eyes from the book and studies the others with compassion. He fearlessly opens another page and reads on, ignoring their protests: ‘When I consider the brevity of my life, absorbed in the eternity that has gone before it and will follow after it, and the tiny space I fill and am scarcely even aware of, buried in the infinite immensity of a universe I do not know and that does not know me, I am terrified and wonder at the fact that I am here rather than there, now rather than later. Who put me here?’
Train to Budapest Page 26