The Fires of Lilliput

by Michael Martin

  “I am here. I am here!” Tears and smoke clouded her eyes. “I am alive.”

  The Russian soldiers heard her. They pressed through the smoke and saw her. They went to her and took her and she walked with them. Villagers who had made their way into the camp saw her and ran to help.

  “She is very weak,” one of the soldiers said. “Very weak and very sick.”

  “Did they bring a doctor? They must have brought a doctor?”

  “These people need doctors!”

  “Where is Chelzak?” asked one of the villagers. “Bring him. I saw him. Jakub Chelzak.”

  “Is he a doctor?”

  “No, but some say just as good.”

  Shosha’s legs gave way and the soldiers and the villagers lowered her to a blanket on the ground. A woman knelt beside her and took her hand.

  Jakub couldn’t walk well so some villagers and a Russian soldier lifted him in a litter and carried him through the haze. They set him next to Shosha. She looked at him and blinked her eyes.

  “Jakub?”

  He took her hand and squeezed it.

  “Is that you?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She licked her dry lips. “I can’t believe it,” she said. She drew in a deep breath. “I can’t believe it.” She smiled and her cheeks felt it. “Whoever visits a place like this?”

  “Janusz brought me,” Jakub said.

  “Janusz? Janusz Jerczek? Is he with you?”

  “No,” Jakub said.

  “Is he all right?”

  “Yes.”

  Jakub took her hand and pressed it to his cheek. Shosha looked up through the smoke at the sky. Then she looked at Jakub and closed her fingers around his hand.

  “L’Chaim!” she said, as loudly as she could. “L’Chaim, Jakub!”

  Jakub bent down and kissed her forehead.

  “L’Chaim, Shosha,” he said. “L’Chaim!”

  CITY-STATE

  Fifty Eight

  “In late March of the following year, Rabbi Azar Gimelman crossed the Wisla River into Warsaw and stood alone. He tried to find places he knew and streets he had walked on, and he walked over piles of bricks and heaps of cinders and he bent down many times and had to use his hands to cross from one place to the next.

  “The rabbi saw Soviet soldiers pulling stragglers from burned-out buildings and dragging men by the hair from underground bunkers. The Polish fighters had dirty faces and dusty clothes that hung limply from their starved bodies. The Red Army soldiers lined them up and yelled at them. From living for months around the Soviets in Praga, the rabbi understood that the soldiers would shoot the men if they wavered or fell.

  “Several times soldiers approached the rabbi and demanded his papers. Many of the soldiers had red faces and they stunk with vodka and cologne. They were young, young as the occupiers. They acted tough. They carried guns. They could beat or shoot any woman, man, or child without consequence.

  “Before, the rabbi had watched from Praga. He watched the Germans raze and burn the city. He watched the fires and felt the heat from across the water. He watched the Soviets. He saw their tanks along the river and their men, drunk and smoking and growing lazy in the warm glow and the river breeze. He screamed at them in Polish but they didn’t understand and told him to ‘fuck off’ in their own language.

  “When the fighting was over and the rabbi made the crossing into Warsaw, an anxious knot in his stomach replaced his chronic hunger. He spent a day without food.

  “It was the year 1945, the year of the great liberation. When the rabbi returned to Praga, he brought all that was left of the Warsaw he remembered—the gray and white dust that covered his shoes.”

  Cardinal Joseph Bernardi looked up from the papers in front of him. He peered over his reading glasses. He sat at a conference table in a decorous Vatican chamber with other Church prelates—archbishops and cardinals in the Congregation of Saints.

  “How can you be certain that what you’ve just read is an accurate portrayal?” he said. He spoke in Italian and a translator repeated in both Polish and English.

  The canon lawyer assigned to Jakub Chelzak’s case, Francisco Darrelli, looked at Shosha Mordechai. Her cheeks were red and her eyes were drawn.

  “It is, Your Eminence,” Darelli said. “It comes from the best testimony we have about Rabbi Gimelman at that time. An eyewitness, a soldier who met and remembered him.”

  “A soldier in which army?”

  Darelli looked at his notes. He looked up at the Cardinal. “The Red Army, Your Eminence.”

  “Hardly a reliable source.” The Promoter of the Faith, the “Advocatus Diaboli” or “Devil’s advocate,” Monsignor Zyporszka from Warsaw, faced the Congregation.

  “The soldier saw the rabbi several times that day,” Darelli explained. “He can’t be precise about the date, but he does remember it was early spring.”

  “Who was this soldier? We have a name but nothing else?”

  Darelli looked at his notes. “I’d say the soldier was an excellent source. He was an aide de camp to Marshal Rokossovsky, the commander of Soviet Forces.”

  The Devil’s advocate cleared his throat.

  ADVOCATUS DIABOLI. THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE. It may be apropos that so sinister a name described the contentious center of the most labyrinthine legal endeavor ever devised—canonization. Between the beginning and end of the road to sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church, centuries have often intervened. To become a saint, a person must live an exemplary—and more importantly—a verifiable life of witnessed and recorded deeds. Indisputable miracles a Vatican scientific panel documents and verifies must follow after death.

  During the “Prejuridical Phase,” Jakub Chelzak’s supporters used photographs, narratives, and a Super 8 film to petition Lazslo Jocie-Wudl, Bishop of the diocese that included Malbork, formerly Marienburg, to initiate the “Ordinary Process,” which begins after the candidate has been dead at least five years.

  The Vatican was interested in potential saints who had lived during Hitler’s purge. Once accused of looking the other way, church officials sought ways to make amends. Bishop Jocie-Wudl established a tribunal during the “Informative Phase” to determine whether anyone prayed to or otherwise venerated Chelzak after his death. People all over Poland came forward.

  Church officials scrutinized Chelzak’s written legacy during the “Judgment of Orthodoxy.” Though literate, he left few writings, so they instead reviewed letters from his brother Karl; his priest, Monsignor Jaruslaw Starska; journalists; and a biographer writing a book about mystics, stigmatics, and faith healers. Written materials such as letters, diaries, journal entries, and biographies often include evidence of heresy or thinking at odds with Church doctrine. But Chelzak left nothing behind of this sort.

  Bishop Jocie-Wudl forwarded these findings to the Vatican, where church officials declared Chelzak a “Servant of God” and appointed a Postulator to launch an exhaustive final investigation during the aptly titled “Roman Phase.” The Postulator argued Jakub Chelzak’s candidacy before the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints opposite the Devil’s Advocate.

  Chelzak's Roman Phase began with the solution of a mystery that had stalled his petition for over a decade. The one person still living who could most intimately bear witness to his life—a former Warsaw resident named Shosha Mordechai—had left Poland after the war. She had lived for a time in London, but Vatican investigators couldn’t establish her whereabouts after 1957. Sixteen years later, the Church Postulator assigned to Chelzak's case, Monsignor Jaruslaw Bachleda, located Shosha Mordechai living in an apartment in Brooklyn, New York.

  “I CALL SHOSHA MORDECHAI PRICE to the witness table,” the Devil’s advocate, Monsignor Zyporszka said.

  Cardinal Bernardi looked at Father Darelli.

  “Any objections?”

  “No, Your Eminence.”

  Shosha walked to the stand.

  “Please remember that you are under oath
during these proceedings,” the Cardinal told Shosha.

  “Signora,” the monsignor began. “This is the first we’ve heard of the rabbi’s fate during these proceedings. Did you ever see him after December of 1944—after the liberation of Melinka?”

  “No,” Shosha said. “I didn’t see him after I left Praga.”

  “Other than the subject of this inquiry, Jakub Chelzak, did you see anyone you had previously known from Warsaw?”

  “No,” Shosha said.

  “Not your madre or padre?”

  “No.”

  “And when did you last see Signor Chelzak?”

  “In 1947.”

  “The year before his death.”

  “Yes.”

  “How many times had you seen him after Melinka?”

  Shosha looked at Fr. Darelli. He nodded.

  “Several times right after,” Shosha told the monsignor. “They took us to the same hospital—in Krakow. After that, I wrote to him. I moved to London for a time and then to the States.”

  “Did Jakub Chelzak ever discover what happened to his own family?” the monsignor asked.

  “I told him about his brother. I told his mother as well,” Shosha said. “Jakub went back to live with his mother in Malbork until he died.”

  “She outlived him by twenty years, did she not?”

  “I don’t know the exact number, but it was several years.”

  “So, as close as he supposedly was to Our Lord, Jakub Chelzak died in ill health, a young man.”

  “I object to the inference,” Darelli said. “The Promoter may make such a statement during his summation, but it is not appropriate here.”

  Cardinal Bernardi looked at a woman transcribing the proceedings. “You will strike that last remark,” the Cardinal instructed. He looked at the monsignor, who turned again to Shosha. Darelli interrupted.

  “What did Signor Chelzak do when you told him about his brother?” he asked. “How did he take it?”

  Shosha looked stricken. Her face was red and pained. She was trying hard not to cry or appear weak. “Terribly,” she said.

  The Cardinals conferred. Then the room went back to a hush.

  “Is that what occasioned your seeing Signor Chelzak?” Darelli asked. “To tell him about his brother?”

  Shosha was silent for at least a minute. “One reason, yes,” she said. “I had kept it from him. We were not well enough to discuss it for a long time. I wanted to tell him in person.” Shosha paused. Her voice was unsteady. “When he died the following year, I was not there. He was better and then he died and that was not expected.”

  “You were married by this time?” the monsignor interjected.

  “In 1948.”

  “And your husband died in,” he looked through his notes, “1967?”

  “Yes,” Shosha said. “Nine years ago next month.”

  “He was ill?”

  “Yes,” Shosha said. “He had cancer.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” The Devil’s advocate paused. “Let me ask you, Signora Price—did you have occasion to pray to Jakub Chelzak to heal your husband?”

  “I object to that question,” Darelli said. “Signora Price is not here to provide witness to Signor Chelzak’s posthumous demeanor.”

  “I will allow that Signora Price can answer the question or not, according to her own wishes,” Cardinal Bernardi said.

  Monsignor Zyporszka looked at Shosha.

  “I don’t pray to saints,” Shosha said. “I’m a Jew.”

  “Indeed,” the monsignor said. “Then why are you here, Signora Price? What would motivate you to bear witness in this forum on this man’s behalf as—a Jew?”

  “Again, an objection Your Eminence,” Darelli said. “Whether or not Signora Price is a Jew is not at issue here.”

  Cardinal Bernardi looked at the men at his table. “Again,” he said, “I will allow that Signora Price answers the question only if she so desires.”

  Shosha looked at the Devil’s advocate.

  “I asked,” said the monsignor, “why you were here—why are you bearing witness at a hearing about Christian sainthood, since you yourself are a Jew?”

  Shosha thought about this question. She thought about it long enough that in the quiet of the room, you could hear fidgeting and papers rustling, and coughing, here and there.

  “I’m not here as a Jew,” Shosha said finally. “Just a person. From where we were, the name Jew or Christian only mattered to the enemy. We were just people, trying to survive.”

  “But still, you don’t believe in saints?” the monsignor said. “Why help someone become something that you yourself do not believe in?”

  Shosha looked at Fr. Darelli as he had coached her to do when questions arose that might be objectionable.

  “Must she answer that, Your Eminence?” Darelli said.

  The Cardinal conferred with the others on his panel. He looked at Fr. Darelli and Shosha.

  “We believe in light of her previous answer to the first part of the question that she must also now answer the second part,” the Cardinal said.

  Darelli looked at Shosha.

  “Again,” the monsignor said. “Why help—”

  “I remember the question,” Shosha interrupted. She thought. She looked at the frescoes on the walls and the ornate furnishings. The afternoon sun peaked through velvety drapes. The room felt hollow.

  “You’re asking me how can a Jew vouch for a saint and I would say that I can vouch for a good man. Jakub and his brother Karl were good men—two of the best men I ever knew. The rabbi was a good man. My father was a good man. Janusz Jerczek was a good man. My husband was a wonderful man and he was not a Jew.”

  “Why did you marry him?” the monsignor asked.

  “Because I loved him,” Shosha said.

  Father Darelli stood and looked at her. “You knew many saints during the war, didn’t you, Signora Price?”

  Shosha took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said.

  The room was silent. Darelli smiled. The Devil’s advocate circled and looked at Shosha.

  “You must not be observant,” the monsignor said to Shosha. She stiffened.

  “I am,” she said.

  “You married a Gentile.”

  “My husband converted.”

  “Converted?” the monsignor asked. “From what faith?”

  “Michael was Catholic,” Shosha said. The monsignor winced.

  “He did this for you?”

  “For both of us,” Shosha said. “For our children. But mostly, for himself. We raised our daughter in the faith—she had bat mitzvah at twelve and we have shared Torah ever since she was little. We are not strict Orthodox, but we observe the holidays and go regularly to Synagogue. My faith has sustained me my entire life.”

  “Your faith,” Darelli interjected. He looked at Shosha. “Your faith sustained you! But tell this proceeding, Signora, per favore, tell this proceeding: how did you sustain your faith?”

  The question hit Shosha, and she thought. Her face felt hot. She tried to answer but couldn’t find the words.

  “How did you sustain your faith?”

  “I never forgot who I was,” she said.

  “Not for one moment?” Darelli said.

  “No.”

  Monsignor Zyporska looked up from his papers. He cleared his throat. “I still believe it is unprecedented that a Jew would bear witness in a proceeding such as this.”

  “Not so,” Fr. Darelli said. “I refer to the case of Edith Stein, which has been wending its way through these chambers for some years now.”

  The Congregation looked at the Devil’s advocate. “The case of Edith Stein has not gone forward,” Monsignor Zyporszka said. “It has been stalled for years.”

  “It is moving at the usual rate,” Darelli said.

  “Edith Stein did not bear witness for a candidate.”

  “No,” Darelli said. “Edith Stein is a candidate. She was also a Jew. With her life, she bore witness fo
r herself.”

  EDITH STEIN WAS BY BIRTH A JEW AND BY FAITH an atheist in her younger years and a Carmelite nun thereafter. She was born on Yom Kippur in 1891 in Breslau, Germany, now Wroclaw, Poland. One of the first women admitted to the University of Gottingen, Stein studied under the philosophers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Husserl said she was the best doctoral student he ever had, brighter even than Heidegger.

  Stein volunteered for duty in military hospitals during the First World War. For her service, the German Army awarded her the medal of valor. After the war, she became Husserl’s assistant at the University of Freiburg. One evening in 1921, the twenty-nine year old atheist-philosopher started reading the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, founder of the Carmelite Order. She didn’t put the book down until she had finished it and at that point, she decided Catholicism was her faith. On New Year’s Day 1922, she received Catholic baptism, but continued to attend Synagogue with her aging mother.

  By the standards of the day, Stein was a radical feminist. She gave talks around Europe with titles such as The Ethos of Women’s Professions; The Spirituality of Christian Woman; Fundamental Principles of Women’s Education; The Church, Woman and Youth; and The Significance of Woman’s Intrinsic Value in National Life. Stein saw the powerful and important part women needed to play in the professions and politics. “There is no profession which cannot be practiced by a woman,” she said. “The nation...doesn’t simply need what we have. It needs what we are.”

  “Her best pupil is the Holy Father,” said another Jewish convert to Catholicism, Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris. “Anyone who has read the Pope’s encyclical on The Dignity and Vocation of Woman, or his more recent Letter to Women, will see immediately how much they owe to Edith Stein’s pioneering work on this subject.” The Holy Father to whom Cardinal Lustiger referred was Karol Joseph Wojtyla—Pope John Paul II—many years after Stein’s death.